Twenty-three million years ago, our distant ancestors gained trichromatic color vision through means of a random genetic mutation. Trichromatic color vision and trichromacy refer to the ability to perceive color through three receptors in the eye, known as cones, which are sensitive to different wavelengths...

Even a healthy U.S. democracy would struggle to respond effectively to the “wicked” problem of climate change. As humans, we would have to overcome innate cognitive limitations to accept the connection between everyday actions like driving and attenuated effects on climate. As voters, we would...

It’s surprising that human infants as young as 10 months may be able to identify social rank. Research suggests that infants learn to distinguish who around them is dominant, using relative body size as a cue. ...

Renewable energy comes from matter that nature produces and replenishes constantly. The power generated through this source does not significantly threaten the environment, especially in comparison with fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, and natural gas, which take more than millions of years to

Those advocating for artificial intelligence tout the huge benefits of using this technology. For instance, an article in CNN points out how AI is helping Princeton scientists solve “a key problem” with fusion energy. AI that can translate text to audio and audio to...

The transition to renewable energy is inevitable given the current climate crisis and the fact that fossil fuels are a finite resource. To make the shift, a detailed plan is required to indicate the first steps and anticipate challenges in allocating resources and the policies...

Our species stands out from the animal kingdom in many ways. Some of them are obvious: we are big-brained primates who use tools and language, a social species with symbols, culture, and art. These are all artifacts of our evolution, the process by which our...

Breakthrough anthropological and scientific findings have allowed researchers to better trace the outlines, and begin to fill in the blanks, of the human evolutionary story in recent decades. We’re now able to trace the long threads of the social and cultural processes that produced today’s...

Do living beings learn and pass on to future generations some behaviors or predispositions more easily than others––and if so, how? So-called prepared learning is a question psychologists and other scientists have studied for decades, developing a series of new hypotheses about learning and experiments...

The famous American astronomer Carl Sagan once said, “You have to know the past to understand the present.” But can we ever know the history of human origins well enough to understand why humans wage large-scale acts of appalling cruelty on other members of...