Wetenschap

It’s a mistake people start making at a very young age. A 6-year old girl can make fun of herself doing something silly when she was still 5. A moment later she can guarantee her father that when she will grow old she will give her children candy everytime they ask for it. The girl, like the rest of us, will probably keep on doing this her whole life. While perfectly aware of her former changing personality, she sees her

If you’re fond of tree climbing, here’s some good news: if you stretch up your calf muscle, you can radically improve your skills. That’s how Ugandan Twa people learn to ascend trees almost as good as chimpanzees, researchers found. The Twa people climb trees all their lives, looking for honey and fruit. Researchers studying the tribe were astonished by this skill. When they tried to climb the same trees, they found it extremely difficult. So they started to investigate what

It’s an old wisdom, but now there’s scientific proof: helping someone does not only benefit the reciever. The do-gooder also gets his or her share, in the form of more popularity and well-being. That’s at least what happened to a randomly selected group of 9-11 year olds in Vancouver that started performing acts of kindness. A team of Canadian and North-American psychologists tested 400 children in nineteen classrooms. The kids named classmates they liked and described how happy they were.

Why do so many African-American women cope with weight problems? It’s a big health issue that has been puzzling doctors for decades. Now a possible answer popped up: The ladies don’t want to ruin their hairstyle. The discovery was made by dermatologists in North Carolina that help people with skin issues. They wondered why so many of their African-American female clients were overweight, so they set up a questionnaire. Of the 103 women that answered the questions, 40 percent said

Spiders not always act according to their own will. When they are infected by a certain kind of wasp they become real life zombies. A spider then suddenly doesn’t build his web for himself. He uses a radically different design, so that the wasp larva inside him can comfortably use it. When the spider dies, the larva crawls out and settles in his new home. It sounds like sciencefiction but it’s actually old knowledge to scientists. For years they have

We all know certain smells can bring memories back to life. A christmas tree, your grandma’s baking scents or your first brand of deodorant can take your mind straight back to other times. But these smells can also help us to predict the future, science shows. Marijn van Wingerden has found the part of the brain that makes this possible. You found out how we can predict the future with smells, how did you do that?We introduced rats to a

We all believe that to be successful at something, you have to keep on practicing. It just seems fair that people who give up easily aren’t getting as far as those holding on. But new research of the University in New South Wales suggests otherwise. People with too much persistence may actually be less likely to turn their enduring training efforts into skills. Researchers Soren Ashley and Joel Pearson found this paradox by letting students practice a new skill, keeping