News Desk

Your cognitive capacity is significantly reduced when your smartphone is within reach — even if it’s off.

McCombs Assistant Professor Adrian Ward and co-authors conducted experiments with nearly 800 smartphone users in an attempt to measure, for the first time, how well people can complete tasks when they have their smartphones nearby even when they’re not using them.

Children of Nso farmers in Cameroon know how to master the marshmallow test, which has tempted away the self-control of Western kids for decades.

In a direct comparison on this delayed gratification task, Cameroonian youngsters leave middle-class German children in the dust when challenged to resist a reachable treat while waiting for another goodie, a new study finds.

The saying goes that ‘power corrupts’, and a new study suggests there may be some truth behind this – especially when it comes to brain function.

Researchers have found that CEOs and other leaders may suffer damage to their brain as a result of their rise to power.

Research has shown that how trusting a person is may depend, at least in part, on his or her genes. However, distrust does not appear to be inherited in the same way, according to a new study led by the University of Arizona.

Male chimpanzees in Uganda’s notorious Ngogo clan are now known to patrol the borders of their territory, actively seeking out members of rival groups to fight and even kill.

Chimpanzees in Uganda may have changed their hunting strategy in response to being watched by scientists.

“Sonso” chimps hunt in small groups for colobus monkeys, while those from the “Waibira” troop hunt solo and catch “whatever they can get their hands on”

Whales were shrinking in size ahead of a global population collapse last century, new research has revealed, with scientists saying the finding may help them set up an early warning system for other species.

A widely used method to find oil and gas for offshore drilling can kill tiny sea creatures that are key for feeding many marine animals like shellfish, fish, and even whales. And the impacts on these tiny, drifting creatures — called zooplankton — are seen in an area much larger than previously thought.

The towering 234-year-old ‘Napoleon’ oak on the campus of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland has weathered storms both meteorological and political. The tree was young when Napoleon’s troops passed through town in 1800, and has grown into a majestic city landmark. But through it all, its genome has remained largely — and surprisingly — unchanged.

Plants adopt different strategies to survive the changing temperatures of their natural environments. This is most evident in temperate regions where forest trees shed their leaves to conserve energy during the cold season. In a new study, a team of plant biologists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) found that some plants may selectively kill part of their roots to survive under cold weather conditions.

Scientists believe they have discovered the reason behind mysterious changes to the climate that saw temperatures fluctuate by up to 15°C within just a few decades during the ice age periods.

In a new study published today, the researchers show that rising levels of CO2 could have reached a tipping point during these glacial periods, triggering a series of chain events that caused temperatures to rise abruptly.

Schoolchildren in Siberia were in for a surprise when they dug up the remains of a mysterious ancient ‘smelly beast.’

The creature, which is thought to be around 25,000 years ago, was buried in permafrost in the Yakutia region.

Archaeologists have uncovered a prehistoric ritual landscape that possibly includes a cairn cemetery around a 5,000-year-old burial mound aligned with the summer solstice sun on Anglesey.

A traditional Polynesian voyaging canoe has returned to Honolulu in Hawaii, completing the first-ever round-the-world trip by such a vessel.

Its crew navigated without modern instruments, using only the stars, wind and ocean swells as guides.

For centuries, ancient Taxila in Punjab, modern Pakistan, was revered as a center of learning and a holy city in the Buddhist and Hindu traditions. It hosted one of the earliest institutions which could be called a university, though there are disagreements over whether it counted as a true university.

It is likely to be one of the oldest prosthetic devices in human history: Together with other experts, Egyptologists have reexamined an artificial wooden big toe. The find is almost 3000 years old and was discovered in a female burial from the necropolis of Sheikh ´Abd el-Qurna close to Luxor. This area is currently being studied using state-of-the-art methods.