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Personality Traits Linked to Bedtime Procrastination Revealed

Bedtime procrastination in young adults is associated with negative emotions DARIEN, IL – A new study to be presented at the SLEEP 2025 annual meeting found that bedtime procrastination in young adults is associated with specific personality traits, including depressive tendencies. Results show that bedtime procrastination was associated with higher neuroticism and lower conscientiousness and extraversion. These results remained significant after statistically adjusting for chronotype. “Our study demonstrated that individuals who habitually procrastinate their bedtime were actually less likely to…

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Social Sciences

UK Gig Economy: Riders and Drivers Face Anxiety Over Ratings

Some two-thirds of riders and drivers for food delivery and ride-hailing apps in the UK may work in fear of “unfair feedback” and experience anxiety over sudden changes to working hours, a new survey study led by the University of Cambridge suggests.* Three-quarters of riders and drivers in the study report anxiety over potential for income to drop, with over half (51%) saying they risk health and safety while working. Some 42% of delivery and driver gig workers say they…

Social Sciences

Board Game Empowers Autistic Voices Through Storytelling

Researchers found the illustrated cards used in Dixit helped evoke emotions in a way that could bridge the gaps between people with and without autism A board game through which players use images on cards to develop and tell their own stories could be particularly appreciated among people with autism as it offers a means to explain their thoughts and feelings, a new study has shown. Dixit, an award-winning game published by the French company Libellud, invites participants to select…

Social Sciences

Enhancing Classroom Inclusion for Children with Disabilities

Q&A with Child Development journal author According to the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, approximately 1 in 6 children in the United States have developmental disabilities which include physical, learning, language or behavior-related disabilities. Students with disabilities often receive accommodations (how students access and learn the same content as their classmates) at school, but teachers rarely explain them to typically-developing classmates. Children with disabilities are increasingly included in general education classrooms alongside typically-developing classmates. Accommodations such as…

Social Sciences

Emotional Responses Shape Attitudes Toward Self-Driving Cars

PULLMAN, Wash. — When it comes to public attitudes toward using self-driving cars, understanding how the vehicles work is important—but so are less obvious characteristics like feelings of excitement or pleasure and a belief in technology’s social benefits. Those are key insights of a new study from researchers at Washington State University, who are examining attitudes toward self-driving cars as the technology creeps toward the commercial market—and as questions persist about whether people will readily adopt them. The study, published…

Example of the hidden picture puzzles in the black/white images on the left; corresponding real-world pictures on the right.
Science Education

Brain Scans Unlock Secrets of Insightful Thinking

Research sheds light on how ‘aha!’ moments help you remember what you learn DURHAM, N.C. — Have you ever been stuck on a problem, puzzling over something for what felt like ages without getting anywhere, but then suddenly the answer came to you like a bolt from the blue? We’ve all experienced that “aha! moment,” that sudden clarity or magical epiphany you feel when a new idea or perspective pops into your head as if out of nowhere. Now, new…

250508-Uchiyama-Relatedness-Image
Social Sciences

How Nature Visits Boost Urban Well-Being for All

How relatedness to nature is linked to well-being is determined by district-level socioeconomic status. The Kobe University analysis is based on survey results from two major Japanese metropolitan areas. Hiking. Camping. Even just walking in the park. Be it a current hobby or a childhood pastime, many urban residents have engaged in activities that have nurtured in them a positive relationship with nature. But in our modern society, disparities in access to nature have only grown larger between residential areas….

Monk parakeet
Social Sciences

Social Parrots: How Interaction Boosts Their Vocabulary

How social networks shape the vocal diversity of monk parakeets In the urban parks of Barcelona, Spain, the calls of a tropical parrot fill the air. The bright green monk parakeet, native to South America, has found a new home in European cities. Monk parakeets thrive in huge colonies where they communicate with each other using many distinct sounds—offering scientists a unique window into understanding the interplay of individual social relationships with vocal variety. For social animals, communication is a…

Chavin de Huantar
Social Sciences

Ancient Andes: Hallucinogens and Social Order Insights

Two thousand years before the Inca empire dominated the Andes, a lesser-known society known as the Chavín Phenomenon shared common art, architecture, and materials throughout modern-day Peru. Through agricultural innovations, craft production, and trade, Chavín shaped a growing social order and laid the foundations for hierarchical society among the high peaks. But one of their most powerful tools wasn’t farming. It was access to altered states of consciousness. That’s according to a new study that uncovered the earliest-known direct evidence…

University of Oklahoma College of Medicine researcher Min Li, Ph.D. Credit: University of Oklahoma
Studies and Analyses

Zinc-Transporting Protein Linked to Aggressive Brain Tumor Growth

In a study published Wednesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), University of Oklahoma researchers detail their discoveries about why the brain tumor glioblastoma is so aggressive. Their findings center on ZIP4, a protein that transports zinc throughout the body and sets off a cascade of events that drive tumor growth. About half of all malignant brain tumors are glioblastomas, the deadliest form of brain cancer with a median survival rate of 14 months. “Surgery for…

Ayahuasca being gathered Credit: Image Credit: ICEERS, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Social Sciences

Ayahuasca’s Long-Term Psychological Effects Explained

Some acute post-ayahuasca “adverse effects” like visual distortions were associated with better reported mental health at a later date, while other adverse effects like feeling isolated or energetically attacked were associated with worse mental health Mounting evidence supports ayahuasca’s potential to improve mental health, but its long-term effects are shaped by both individual mental health history and the context in which the psychedelic is used, according to a study published on April 30, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS Mental…

Five of the children who received treatment in a gene therapy clinical trial co-led by UCLA. Credit: UCLA Broad Stem Cell Research Center/Great Ormond Street Hospital
Studies and Analyses

Gene Therapy Boosts Immune Function in Children with Rare Disorder

9 children born with severe LAD-l are symptom-free two years after treatment An investigational gene therapy has successfully restored immune function in all nine children treated with the rare and life-threatening immune disorder called severe leukocyte adhesion deficiency-I, or LAD-I, in an international clinical trial co-led by UCLA. LAD-I is a genetic condition that affects approximately one in a million people in the world. It is caused by mutations in the gene that produces CD18, a protein that enables white…

An edited version of a figure from the research shows the ventral tegmental area, highlighting dopamine-associated neurons in green and one that connects to the posterior amygdala (magnified in inset) in red Credit: Tonegawa Lab/MIT Picower Institute
Social Sciences

Dopamine Signals: When Fear Can Be Forgotten

Study shows how a dopamine circuit between two brain regions enables mice to extinguish fear after a peril has passed Dangers come but dangers also go and when they do, the brain has an “all-clear” signal that teaches it to extinguish its fear. A new study in mice by MIT neuroscientists shows that the signal is the release of dopamine along a specific interregional brain circuit. The research therefore pinpoints a potentially critical mechanism of mental health, restoring calm when…

Wild juvenile orangutan called Eden manipulating wood Credit: S. Vilela
Studies and Analyses

Zoo Life Enhances Object Exploration in Orangutans

Wild and zoo-housed orangutans explore the world differently, study finds A new study comparing wild and zoo-housed Sumatran orangutans reveals that life in a zoo significantly alters how orangutans interact with their environment. Researchers analyzed over 12,000 instances of daily exploratory object manipulation (EOM)—the active manipulation and visual inspection of objects associated with learning and problem-solving—across 51 orangutans aged 0.5 to 76 years. The findings show that orangutans living in zoos engage in more frequent, more diverse, and more complex…

Dr. Jean-Claude Béïque, full professor in theFaculty’s Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicineand co-director of theuOttawa Brain and Mind Research Institute's Centre for Neural Dynamics and Artificial Intelligence. Credit: Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa
Studies and Analyses

University of Ottawa Research Unveils New Insights on Serotonin

The study’s findings could potentially help develop targeted therapeutics for mood disorders like major depressive disorder Our lives are filled with binary decisions – choices between one of two alternatives. But what’s really happening inside our brains when we engage in this kind of decision making? A University of Ottawa Faculty of Medicine-led study published in Nature Neuroscience sheds new light on these big questions, illuminating a general principle of neural processing in a mysterious region of the midbrain that is the very origin…

The cattledove (Subulo gouazoubira), one of the species found in the Atlantic Rainforest, is suffering from hunting and other anthropogenic pressures Credit: Pedro H. F. Peres
Studies and Analyses

Human Impact on Atlantic Rainforest Deer Density: Study Insights

The most robust estimate ever made in the biome shows that hunting, predation by domestic dogs, livestock diseases and competition with wild boars are among the main anthropogenic influences. A group of Brazilian researchers has, for the first time in the entire Atlantic Rainforest, estimated the population density of the five deer species of the biome. This allowed them to measure the main factors that influence the number of deer per square kilometer (km²) in forest areas. The results suggest…

A person interacts with a custom-built Minecraft environment used to study adaptive social learning in a virtual foraging experiment. This study, published in Nature Communications, was designed to investigate how humans adapt their decision-making through both social and asocial learning strategies. Credit: ©Charley Wu
Social Sciences

Unlocking Success: How Minecraft Enhances Social Learning

Using the video game Minecraft to understand human social learning The ability to learn socially from one another is a defining feature of the human species. Social learning enables humans to gradually accumulate information across generations. And although we are able to build cities full of skyscrapers, send people into space, and collectively develop cures for diseases, most studies investigating social learning mechanisms focus on relatively simple, abstract tasks that bear little resemblance to real-world social learning environments. As a…

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