A growing sense of inequality is undermining trust in both society's institutions and capitalism, according to a long-running global survey. The 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer - now in its 20th year - has found many people no longer believe working hard will give them a better life. Despite strong economic performance, a majority of respondents in every developed market do not believe they will be better off in five years' time.

Imagine taking a hike through a forest or a stroll through a zoo and not a sound fills the air, other than the occasional chirp from a cricket. No birds singing, no tigers roaring, no monkeys chattering, and no human voices, either. Acoustic communication among vertebrate animals is such a familiar experience that it seems impossible to imagine a world shrouded in silence.

Since the 19th century, the average human body temperature in the United States has dropped, according to researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. “Our temperature’s not what people think it is,” said Julie Parsonnet, MD, professor of medicine and of health research and policy. “What everybody grew up learning, which is that our normal temperature is 98.6, is wrong.”

“Deer antlers [are] using essentially a controlled form of bone cancer growth,” says Edward Davis, an evolutionary paleobiologist

A brain region called the hypothalamus is smaller among women who use birth control pills, compared with non-users, a new study finds.

In nations where people's happiness is more closely linked to religious conformity, it tends to be less strongly linked to subjective freedom

Reducing air pollution at its source can substantially improve health within a few weeks, and the savings from reduced death and disease exceed the costs, according to a review of existing research.

What drives a person to smoke cigarettes—and keeps one out of six U.S. adults addicted to tobacco use, at a cost of 480,000 premature deaths each year despite decades of anti-smoking campaigns? What role do emotions play in this addictive behavior? Why do some smokers puff more often and more deeply or even relapse many years after they've quit? If policymakers had those answers, how could they strengthen the fight against the global smoking epidemic?

It’s not just a modern problem. Airborne toxins are so pernicious that they may have shaped our DNA over millions of years.

The smells of ordinary life, from traditional pubs to old books, are part of our culture and heritage – and many of them are in danger of being lost.

America’s most widely consumed oil, soybean oil, linked to metabolic and neurological changes in mice. New University of California Riverside research shows soybean oil not only leads to obesity and diabetes, but could also affect neurological conditions like autism, Alzheimer’s disease, anxiety, and depression.

The drop was largely credited to a decline in lung cancer deaths due to advances in treatments, among other factors, the American Cancer Society said.

They’ve been linked to road rage, pathological gambling, and complicated acts of fraud. It turns out many ordinary medications don’t just affect our bodies – they affect our brains.

Hercule Poirot would be appalled, but according to research, vigorous physical exercise is the key to boosting ‘the little grey cells.’ A study from the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota found that people with the best cardio-respiratory fitness also had the biggest brains, which would be a blow for Agatha Christie’s detective who did not believe in working up a sweat. In fact, for every standard deviation of difference in fitness levels, scientists showed that grey matter grew on average by 5.3 cubic cm.

To learn new things, we must sometimes fail. But what's the right amount of failure? New research led by the University of Arizona proposes a mathematical answer to that question. 

Physicians between the ages of 40 and 54 experience a higher rate of burnout than older or younger doctors, according to a recent survey of more than 15,000 physicians.

Study adds weight to claims that stereotype of knuckle-headed Neanderthals is wrong

In nations where people’s happiness is more closely linked to religious conformity, it tends to be less strongly linked to subjective freedom, and vice versa, according to new research published in the Journal of Happiness Studies.`

Developments in artificial intelligence often draw inspiration from how humans think, but now AI has turned the tables to teach us about how brains learn. Will Dabney at tech firm DeepMind in London and his colleagues have found that a recent development in machine learning called distributional reinforcement learning also provides a new explanation for how the reward pathways in the brain work. These pathways govern our response to pleasurable events and are mediated by neurons that release the brain chemical dopamine.

Charred fragments found in a cave in southern Africa suggest that the real “paleo diet” included lots of roasted root vegetables that were rich in carbohydrates