Human Behavior, features and articles | Educational Science

Dec 31, 2011

What Are the Chances? High School to Pro Ball (Infographic)

10 Things You Didn't Know About YouHard-Hitting Sports Hold Dangers for Teen AthletesWhy Old Athletes Come Back ...

Dec 31, 2011

Flushed with Pride: 1850s Bathroom Boasts Early Plumbing Technology

In 1850s America, most people relied on privies and outhouses for their bathroom needs. But the Davis family of Natchez, Miss., had something few other Americans did: indoor hot-and-cold running water and an indoor toilet. Now this marvel of 19th-century technology is getting a new home, moving from the Dunleith...

Dec 31, 2011

What 'American Values' Really Means

American values. President Barack Obama wants to reclaim them. Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul wants to restore them. Newt Gingrich says he articulates them. Other presidential candidates, politicians and commentators have plenty to say about them as well. But what exactly are they talking about? What are American values? The...

Dec 31, 2011

Americans' Political Views Not So Far Apart

SAN DIEGO — In an election year, it's hard to turn on the television or read a newspaper without getting the sense that Americans are becoming ever more divided into red versus blue. But a new study finds that perception may be downright wrong. In fact, political polarization among the...

Dec 31, 2011

Closest Photos of Uncontacted Tribe Reveal Hidden Way of Life

New images of an uncontacted Peruvian tribe reveal a small band of people, clad in little more than beads and bands of fabric, sitting by a river in the southeastern part of the country. The photographs, released by advocacy group Survival International, are the closest-ever glimpse of uncontacted Indians ever...

Nov 30, 2013

Anti-Science Riders Lurk in Pending Farm Bill (Op-Ed)

Celia Wexler is a senior Washington representative for the Scientific Integrity Initiative at UCS. An award-winning journalist, Wexler authored Out of the News: Former Journalists Discuss a Profession in Crisis (McFarland, 2012). This article is adapted from a post on the UCS blog The Equation. There's an old and well...

Nov 30, 2013

8 Ways Magic Mushrooms Explain Santa Story

The story of Santa and his flying reindeer can be traced to an unlikely source: hallucinogenic or magic mushrooms, according to one theory. Santa is a modern counterpart of a shaman, who consumed mind-altering plants and fungi to commune with the spirit world, said John Rush, an anthropologist and instructor...

Oct 31, 2013

Pansexual: A 'New' Sexual Orientation?

Heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual — these are terms with which most people are familiar, but they aren't the only sexual orientations that exist in today's world. Pansexual, a relatively new category of sexual identity, is characterized by physical or romantic attraction to others, regardless of their gender identity or biological sex....

Oct 31, 2013

Who Killed JFK? TV Show Looks at New Evidence

Nearly 50 years after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, debate and conspiracy theories linger over how he was killed, and who exactly was behind it. In a new television special on PBS' science documentary show NOVA, a team of experts look at the assassination in a new light, in some...

Oct 31, 2013

Humanity in the Age of Frankenstein's Cat (Op-Ed)

Marc Bekoff, emeritus professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, is one of the world's pioneering cognitive ethologists, a Guggenheim Fellow, and co-founder with Jane Goodall of Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. This essay is adapted from one that appeared in Bekoff's column Animal Emotions in Psychology Today....

Sep 30, 2013

Government Shutdown Delivers Blow to BRAIN Initiative

In another casualty of the government shutdown, activities related to Obama's $100 million BRAIN initiative, due to launch in 2014, have ground to a halt. The Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative is an ambitious plan to map the human brain, from the level of individual cells up...

Sep 30, 2013

Shutdown Science: Furloughed Workers Feel the Burden of Boredom

Jennifer Wade is bored. A program director for the National Science Foundation, Wade normally spends her workdays managing grant proposals and wrangling the reviewers who will decide what research gets federal funding. But with the federal government shutdown pending a Congressional budget agreement, Wade is stuck at home — and...

Sep 30, 2013

Delayed Gratification – How the Hippocampus Helps Us Hold Off (Op-Ed)

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Would you prefer a beer right now or a bottle of champagne next week? So begins an interesting new study published today in the journal PloS Biology. Of course these...

Sep 30, 2013

How to Make a Zombie (Seriously)

The slouching, flesh-eating zombie has become one of the most in-vogue creatures in current TV and movie offerings, appearing in films like World War Z and in the AMC series The Walking Dead. Most rational people scoff at the suggestion that zombies are real, but a number of respected medical...

Aug 31, 2013

US Air Force Almost Detonated Atomic Bomb Over North Carolina

The U.S. Air Force came a hair's breadth from detonating two hydrogen bombs that were accidentally released over Goldsboro, N.C. on Jan. 23, 1961, according to newly declassified documents obtained from a Freedom of Information Act request filed by investigative journalist Eric Schlosser. The airplane, which took off from Seymour...