https://phys.org/science-news/ en-us The latest science news on archaeology, fossils, mathematics, and science technology from Phys.org If there's one thing most office workers can agree on, it's that they tend to feel less productive toward the end of the day and the end of each work week. Now, a team of researchers at Texas A&M University has found objective evidence of this phenomenon in action. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-workers-productive-typos-afternoonespecially-fridays.html Social Sciences Economics & Business Thu, 03 Aug 2023 03:56:43 EDT news610253796 In an analysis of more than 5,000 people, frequently working in teams was associated with a greater tendency for women and white men to put in extra effort at work, while other links between job conditions and effort varied between genders and ethnoracial groups. Wei-hsin Yu of the University of California, Los Angeles, U.S, and Janet Chen-Lan Kuo of National Taiwan University, Taiwan, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on August 2, 2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-teamwork-environments-linked-white-employees.html Social Sciences Economics & Business Wed, 02 Aug 2023 14:00:01 EDT news610189589 A single accessory—an ornate necklace from a child's grave in ancient Jordan—provides new insights into social complexity of Neolithic culture, according to a study published August 2, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Hala Alarashi of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Spain, and the Université Côte d'Azur, France and colleagues. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-neolithic-necklace-child-grave-reveals.html Archaeology Social Sciences Wed, 02 Aug 2023 14:00:01 EDT news610189573 Researchers are more likely to pen scientific papers with co-authors of the same gender, a pattern that cannot be simply explained by the varying gender representation across scientific disciplines and time, according to joint research from Cornell and the University of Washington. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-same-gender-co-authors.html Social Sciences Education Wed, 02 Aug 2023 10:59:58 EDT news610192796 Early colonial settlers likely survived the harsh frontier conditions of 17th-century Delaware because they banded as family units to work alongside enslaved African descendants and European indentured servants, according to a new study published this summer in Current Biology. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-dna-delaware-site-kinship-european.html Archaeology Wed, 02 Aug 2023 10:23:48 EDT news610190623 A team of researchers with a wide variety of backgrounds from institutions in Poland, Sweden, the U.K., Czech Republic and Ukraine has learned more about the demographic history of people living in East-Central Europe during the Bronze Age by studying the genes of people living during that time. For their paper published in the journal Nature Communications, the group conducted genetic analyses of temporal bones and/or tooth remains of 91 people. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-dna-reveals-shift-bronze-age.html Archaeology Wed, 02 Aug 2023 08:41:26 EDT news610184482 Number theory, the study of the properties of positive integers, is perhaps the purest form of mathematics. At first sight, it may seem far too abstract to apply to the natural world. In fact, the influential American number theorist Leonard Dickson wrote, "Thank God that number theory is unsullied by any application." https://phys.org/news/2023-08-scientists-uncover-theory-evolutionary-genetics.html Mathematics Tue, 01 Aug 2023 12:26:44 EDT news610111601 Around the world, political violence increased by 27% last year, affecting 1.7 billion people. The numbers come from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), which collects real-time data on conflict events worldwide. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-scientists-method-armed-conflicts.html Mathematics Political science Tue, 01 Aug 2023 12:26:35 EDT news610111592 A team of archaeologists and historians from multiple institutions in the U.K. and the U.S. has found evidence that an Iron Age warrior whose remains were found in a grave on the island of Bryher, off the coast of England, was likely female. In their study, reported in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, the group analyzed tooth enamel found in the grave. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-mystery-iron-age-warrior-small.html Archaeology Tue, 01 Aug 2023 10:30:01 EDT news610100829 A large team of archaeologists affiliated with multiple institutions in China and the U.K. has found evidence of systematic coal use by Bronze Age people in what is now China. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their findings at a dig site called Jirentaigoukou in northwest China. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-systematic-coal-fuel-source-bronze.html Archaeology Tue, 01 Aug 2023 09:26:47 EDT news610100803 When Iowa State University switched from in-person to remote learning halfway through the spring semester of 2020, psychology professor Jason Chan was worried. Would unsupervised, online exams unleash rampant cheating? https://phys.org/news/2023-07-evidence-online-unsupervised-exams.html Social Sciences Education Mon, 31 Jul 2023 11:11:31 EDT news610020686 An article published on July 31 in Nature Ecology & Evolution reveals that Luzio, the oldest human skeleton found in São Paulo state (Brazil), was a descendant of the ancestral population that settled the Americas at least 16,000 years ago and gave rise to all present-day Indigenous peoples, such as the Tupi. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-luzio-paulo-years-amerindian-indigenous.html Archaeology Mon, 31 Jul 2023 11:00:01 EDT news610015145 An international team of geologists and historians has found that an arrowhead housed at the Bern History Museum was made using meteoritic iron. In their paper published in Journal of Archaeological Science, the group describes the attributes of the arrowhead and where they believe the material it was made of came from. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-arrowhead-housed-bern-history-museum.html Archaeology Mon, 31 Jul 2023 09:40:01 EDT news610014834 Cognitive and computer scientists at the University of Toronto, Universitat Pompeu Fabra and the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies have found child language development and the historical evolution of the world's languages share a common cognitive foundation—a core knowledge base where patterns of children's language innovation can predict patterns of language evolution, and vice versa. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-common-cognitive-foundation-child-language.html Social Sciences Education Thu, 27 Jul 2023 14:00:01 EDT news609683338 An international team of linguists and geneticists led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig has achieved a significant breakthrough in our understanding of the origins of Indo-European, a family of languages spoken by nearly half of the world's population. The work is published in the journal Science. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-insights-indo-european-languages.html Archaeology Social Sciences Thu, 27 Jul 2023 14:00:01 EDT news609672188 The Social Media Archive at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research has released data focusing on the impact of Facebook and Instagram on key political attitudes during the U.S. 2020 elections. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-facebook-instagram-presidential-election.html Social Sciences Political science Thu, 27 Jul 2023 14:00:01 EDT news609672171 In addition to describing biological interactions, evolutionary theory has also become a valuable tool to make sense of the dynamics of social norms. Social norms determine which behaviors should be regarded as positive, and how community members should act towards each other. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-evolution-double-sided-social-norms-cooperative.html Mathematics Social Sciences Thu, 27 Jul 2023 12:05:18 EDT news609678315 Who lived at Machu Picchu at its height? A new study, published in Science Advances, used ancient DNA to find out for the first time where workers buried more than 500 years ago came from within the lost Inca Empire. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-ancient-dna-reveals-diverse-community.html Archaeology Wed, 26 Jul 2023 14:00:02 EDT news609579630 Rome's next luxury hotel has some very good bones: Archaeologists said Wednesday that the ruins of Nero's Theater, an imperial theater referred to in ancient Roman texts but never found, have been discovered under the garden of a future Four Seasons Hotel steps from the Vatican. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-ancient-nero-theater-garden-future.html Archaeology Wed, 26 Jul 2023 12:04:24 EDT news609591861 A team of archaeologists from Tel Aviv University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Israel Antiquities Authority has found a way to reconstruct a fire in a single building in Jerusalem burned by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. In their study, reported in Journal of Archaeological Science, the group analyzed magnetic signals in shards of pottery recovered from the site to learn more about a fire in a single building. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-ancient-pottery-shards-reveals-siege.html Archaeology Wed, 26 Jul 2023 11:30:01 EDT news609587543 The Neolithic lifestyle, based on farming instead of hunting and gathering, emerged in the Near East around 12,000 years ago and contributed profoundly to the modern way of life. The ability to produce and store extra food led Neolithic people to develop new social customs built on wealth, and therefore form social hierarchies. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-family-trees-european-neolithic-social.html Archaeology Wed, 26 Jul 2023 11:00:01 EDT news609579618 The United States has more than 10 times the number of mass shooting incidents than other developed countries, yet little research has shown the distribution and types of shootings, geographically. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-mass-states.html Social Sciences Political science Wed, 26 Jul 2023 11:00:01 EDT news609579701 A study recently published in Psychological Science reveals that when people repeatedly encounter headlines about corporate wrongdoing, they view the wrongdoing as less unethical and are more likely to believe the headlines are true. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-headlines-wrongdoing-perception-moral-offense.html Social Sciences Economics & Business Tue, 25 Jul 2023 11:31:56 EDT news609503513 Organized crime casts a long shadow, driving violence and an illicit economy. But our research, published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, has uncovered some more subtle dimensions to its influence, too. We've found that organized crime can undermine the civic honesty of ordinary, law abiding people. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-mafia-threatens-democracy-ordinary-people.html Social Sciences Political science Tue, 25 Jul 2023 11:18:03 EDT news609502681 In the quest to unravel the underlying mechanisms of natural systems, accurately identifying causal interactions is of paramount importance. Leveraging the advancements in time-series data collection through cutting-edge technologies, computational methods have emerged as powerful tools for inferring causality. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-gobi-breakthrough-package-inferring-causal.html Mathematics Tue, 25 Jul 2023 09:39:36 EDT news609496773 Jakarta … San Francisco … Shanghai … Phoenix … Houston. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-clues-urban-resiliency-ancient-cities.html Archaeology Mon, 24 Jul 2023 16:12:28 EDT news609433941 When people who publicly reject COVID-19 vaccines later die from the disease, observers have complex reactions to their fates, a new study suggests. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-people-anti-vaxxers-die-covid-.html Social Sciences Political science Mon, 24 Jul 2023 14:59:03 EDT news609429541 Earthen and shell mounds built hundreds of years ago by Indigenous people in the Mississippi River Delta contribute to biodiversity and the area's resiliency to erosion today, research by a Florida State University archaeologist has found. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-highlights-importance-indigenous-cultural-perspectives.html Archaeology Mon, 24 Jul 2023 14:47:04 EDT news609428821 It's hard to imagine a world without spice today. Fast global trade has allowed the import and export of all manner of delicious ingredients that help bring Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Sri Lankan (and so many more) cuisines to our dinner tables. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-evidence-year-old-curry-oldest-southeast.html Archaeology Mon, 24 Jul 2023 12:45:04 EDT news609421501 Eliminating forced labor is a vital starting point for creating a just and sustainable food supply, but most of us don't know much about the labor conditions involved in producing our food. It's possible that the people who picked and processed some of the items on our dinner table worked in conditions that involved force, fraud, coercion, or debt bondage. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-labor-widespread-food.html Social Sciences Economics & Business Mon, 24 Jul 2023 11:00:01 EDT news609408520