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MINNEAPOLIS--It’s a great irony of paleoanthropology that for all the insights scientists have been able to glean from the fossil record about our early ancestors, the australopithecines (Lucy and her kin), they have precious little to document the origin of our own genus, Homo. They know that Homo descended from one of those australopithecine species, and that over the course of that transition our ancestors evolved from chimp-size creatures with short legs and small brains into tall humans with long legs and large brains, among other hallmark traits

All parents struggle to find the right balance between encouragement and discipline when it comes to raising their kids.

MINNEAPOLIS--Newly discovered fossil footprints at a site in northern Tanzania on the shore of Lake Natron capture a moment in time around 120,000 years ago when a band of 18 humans--early members of our own species, Homo sapiens --traipsed across wet volcanic ash to an unknown destination.

One of the more predictable outcomes of a government shutdown --in fact, the hyperbolic chatter alone regarding the uncertainties of such a major disruption is enough to do the trick--is that there will be a noticeable surge in the nation’s religious beliefs. According to Duke University psychologist Aaron Kay and his colleagues, God and government are more than just two sides of the same US-issued coin. In fact, they share a common cognitive denominator.

Winter blues, spring fever--most of us take seasonal changes in mood for granted. According to a new study, the cause might be the seasons tinkering with the chemicals in our brain. As reported in the November 3 Journal of Neuroscience , researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health found evidence of seasonal differences in dopamine--a chemical messenger involved in motivation, pleasure, movement and learning.

Thirty years ago Alan H. Guth, then a struggling physics postdoc at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, gave a series of seminars in which he introduced “inflation” into the lexicon of cosmology

Feeling uncertain about who you are and what you want to do with your life? Such doubt may lead you to sympathize with a radical or extremist group, according to a new study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology . Groups that rally around radical beliefs may provide a searching person with the sense of self and social identity they are lacking

A new mother’s body goes through many changes--among them, key parts of her brain get bigger, according to research reported in October’s Behavioral Neuroscience .

The ubiquitous and unremarkable magnet, BaFe12O19, is manufactured in large volumes, has the simplest crystal structure in its class, and is often seen on refrigerator doors—but it is set for an interesting future. By substituting a few of its iron atoms with the elements scandium and magnesium, Yusuke Tokunaga and Yoshinori Tokura from the Japan Science and Technology Agency, along with Yasujiro Taguchi from the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute and their colleagues, have produced a very rare magnet. The rarity of the magnet lies in three features that, taken together, endow it with a high degree of tunability.