This ScienceLives article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation. Marla Spivak is a MacArthur Fellow and Distinguished McKnight Professor and Extension Entomologist in the Department of Entomology at the University of Minnesota. Her research and extension efforts focus on honeybee health, breeding, behavior and on...

If they were only allowed to have one child, more Americans would prefer it be a boy rather than a girl, a new survey finds. Despite the intervening woman's movement, the results are very similar to those found when the same question was asked of Americans in 1941. The Gallup...

Humans might have evolved our two-footed posture for its fighting advantage; we punch harder standing than on all fours, and downward punches are much more forceful than upward ones. This could also be one reason why many females prefer taller mates, a new study finds. Selection for aggressive performance and...

If you're reading this, Harold Camping's predictions that the end of the world would start Saturday (May 21) failed to pan out. That's good news for most of us, but Camping and his followers were looking forward to the end. After all, they believed that they were likely to be...

Matters of birth and death are most likely to pit Americans against one another, according to new Gallup poll results finding that doctor-assisted suicide, abortion and having a baby out of wedlock are the most divisive issues in the United States. According to the poll results, released Tuesday (May 31),...

Watching Angelina Jolie kick robot butt in the 2001 movie Tomb Raider makes viewers expect real-world women to be both bold and beautiful — an ideal that has been linked to disordered eating. College students who watched clips of beautiful and aggressive women such as Jolie were more likely than...

There is no scientific study on the most-hated names, but these results, culled from hundreds of online message board postings by Baby Name Wizard blogger Laura Wattenberg, suggest that people have very strong opinions about what makes a good name. [Read full story] Here are the least-liked names for both...

Famously sadistic dictators like Saddam Hussein and Joseph Stalin share a personality profile marked by narcissism and paranoia, political psychologists say. But what of authoritarian-style dictators like Hosni Mubarak? Could an ordinary, well-meaning person turn into a repressive despot? Perhaps not overnight, but power does have an effect on the...

Several years ago, when Colton Burpo was 4 years old, he underwent cardiac arrest and was resuscitated during emergency surgery for a ruptured appendix. Four months later, Colton started saying strange things to his father, a Nebraskan pastor named Todd, and his mother, Sonja, about his near-death experience (NDE). Colton...

College is a time of learning, expanding the mind and gaining new skills, right? Not so much, according to a new study. By the end of sophomore year, 45 percent of students show no significant improvement in critical thinking, writing and complex reasoning, the Associated Press reports. The findings come...

Early in the morning of Jan. 20, FBI agents arrested more than 100 reputed mobsters at multiple locations in and around New York City. The raid brought down small-time soldiers representing all five of New York's crime families, as well as some heavy hitters, including the entire leadership of the...

North Korean state media has reported the discovery of the lair of a unicorn ridden by an ancient Korean king. But that doesn't mean the entire country is living in a fantasy world. In fact, the report is a propaganda piece likely geared at shoring up the rule of Kim...

Drug smugglers have resorted to some creative schemes to sneak cocaine, heroin and other contraband past police and border guards, but one recent failed attempt took a rather macabre turn. A 28-year-old Panamanian woman arriving at Barcelona's El Prat Airport aroused the suspicion of border agents after she answered some...

Museum of Math: Color Spheres (Image credit: Clara Moskowitz/LiveScience)Each colorful sphere makes music at this exhibit in the National Museum of Mathematics (MoMath). Hyper Hyperboloid (Image credit: Clara Moskowitz/LiveScience)The Museum of Math's Hyper Hyperboloid lets you twist straight cords into a curved shape. Museum founder Glen Whitney demonstrates. Square-Wheeled Tricycle...

You might expect the world not ending to be a cause for celebration. But for believers in doomsdays like yesterday's supposed Mayan apocalypse, the continued existence of the planet can be quite traumatic. Yesterday (Dec. 21) was widely rumored online to be the end of the world, a misunderstanding of...