Scientists of all kinds turn to computer models to investigate questions they can’t get at any other way. Here’s how models work and why we can trust them.
Research suggests beards evolved to help men impress other men rather than attracting women.
Ezume Images/shutterstock
Researchers show that a sexually transmitted disease similar to gonorrhoea could have got rid of promiscuous behaviour in agricultural societies.
Illustration of ritualised human sacrifice in traditional Hawaiian culture, as documented by the French explorer and artists Jaques Arago in 1819.
Arago, Jacques. (1822). Promenade autour du monde: pendant les années 1817, 1818, 1819 et 1820, sur les corvettes du roi l’Uranie et la Physicienne, commandées par M. Freycinet
Sex roles in nature don’t always follow the same script. In fact, some females have genitals that resemble a penis. How can this be? Evolution has the answers.
You can encounter at least one of the six guineafowl species in sub-Saharan Africa.
Tim Crowe
For human groups to grow from small, intimate communities to the huge interconnected societies we know now, people needed to be willing to cooperate with strangers. Religion might have played a big role.
Just Go for it: programming a computer to play an ancient game.
Donar Reiskoffer/Wikimedia Commons
While it’s impressive, developing a computer to win at Go is not a big step toward the type of artificial intelligence used by the thinking machines we see in the movies.