*Americans typically spend $70 billion more in December than in November and January*
Americans typically spend $70 billion more in December than in the average of November and January (the months around December). In a recent National Science Foundation-sponsored interview, Joel Waldfogel, the Carlson School’s Frederick R. Kappel Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota uses that increase to measure the amount of holiday gift-giving. This level of spending is lower than in other countries. “We’re about the 20th largest in terms of countries in the world,” said Waldfogel, referencing how much U.S. December spending increases. (more…)
*Long-term study analyzes social selection and peer influence in online environments*
New research funded by the National Science Foundation and published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by three Harvard University sociologists examines how we select our friends and the role that friendship plays in transmitting tastes and new ideas.
Relationships are basic building blocks of society, and understanding who befriends whom can therefore provide insight into patterns of social segregation, mechanisms for the reproduction of inequality, social support (including mental and emotional health), and access to job opportunities. Some have even viewed these relationships as a means to influence behavior whether to control obesity or target advertising. But is it really that easy, even on the Internet, to make friends with people who have different cultural upbringings, different interests, different backgrounds and different tastes in movies, music and books? (more…)
*Experiments on “slime mold” explain why almost all multicellular organisms begin life as a single cell*
Any multicellular animal, from a blue whale to a human being, poses a special challenge for evolution.
Most of the cells in its body will die without reproducing; only a privileged few will pass their genes to the next generation.
How could the extreme degree of cooperation required by multicellular existence actually evolve? Why aren’t all creatures unicellular individualists determined to pass on their own genes? (more…)
ANN ARBOR, Mich.— Under the cold clear waters of Lake Huron, University of Michigan researchers have found a five-and-a-half foot-long, pole-shaped piece of wood that is 8,900 years old. The wood, which is tapered and beveled on one side in a way that looks deliberate, may provide important clues to a mysterious period in North American prehistory.
“This was the stage when humans gradually shifted from hunting large mammals like mastodon and caribou to fishing, gathering and agriculture,” said anthropologist John O’Shea. “But because most of the places in this area that prehistoric people lived are now under water, we don’t have good evidence of this important shift itself– just clues from before and after the change. (more…)
A research team led by Yale University scientists has for the first time determined the original colors of an ancient moth, based on nearly 50 million-year-old fossils from Germany.
The discovery could help scientists learn the colors of a wide variety of long-extinct creatures, including birds, fishes, and other insects, and shed light on color’s function and evolution. (more…)
*Ecological changes from lakebed may have led to two different populations of once-related steelhead trout*
A catastrophic landslide 22,500 years ago dammed the upper reaches of northern California’s Eel River, forming a 30-mile-long lake which has since disappeared. It left a living legacy found today in the genes of the region’s steelhead trout.
Using remote-sensing technology known as airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) and hand-held global-positioning-systems (GPS) units, scientists recently found evidence for a late Pleistocene, landslide-dammed lake along the river. (more…)
