United Academics

The new scientific field of music cognition challenges computer nerds, opens the eyes of cognitive scientists and even makes evolutionists very uncomfortable. Professor Henkjan Honing knows from experience. As the winner of the Distinguished Lorrentz Fellowship he will spend the following year investigating different aspects of our cognitive ability to listen to music. What is so interesting about music, other than that it just sounds good?“I like music, but I’ve never been really fascinated by its history or the biographies

Laughing about a comedian or your friend’s clever remark might feel as if you’re using some highly evolved part of your brain, but actually you’re behaving like a monkey. The brain area controlling laughter is older than the part that controls memory and speech. We even share this social ability with other primates, like bonobo’s and orangutans. But why? As opposed to what you might think, we don’t really laugh when things are funny, noted neuropscientist and psychologist Robert Provine

We’ve all had our rough moments trying no to yawn in front of company. Yawning, after all, means you’re bored, right? Not necessarily. Yawning can also be a sign of sexual arousal. Here are 10 explanations scientists have come up with. Because you're bored This is probably your first guess, and you’re quite right. People yawn when they get bored. Students watching a boring video yawn significantly more than the ones watching something amusing. According to Dr. George A. Bubenik

It sounds freaky, but Harvard Professor and leading geneticist George Church thinks it’s possible: with old DNA he wants to clone a caveman from more than 30.000 years ago. It’s not just a weird idea of some random scientist. George Church is known for his expertise in synthetic biology. He for instance helped initiate the Human Genome Project, mapping the human genome. His ideas about cloning Neanderthals were posed in an interview with the prestigious German news magazine Der Spiegel.

An analysis of freshman surveys that were held in the United States every year since 1996 shows that the modern youth is alarmingly happy with itself. Students nowadays rate their own abilities much higher than their peers did in the past. What does that say about this new generation? Researcher Keith Campbell, co-author of the publication in Self and Identity, explains: How exceptional are today’s youngsters in their self-confidence?We found that student’s rating of themselves compared to others increased since

Don’t trust your weighing scale too much, it may not be functioning as punctual as it should be. It turns out the kilogram itself has gotten fatter over the years. The official piece of metal representing the kilogram gained weight because of contaminants building up on its surface, researchers discovered. In 1875 a match box-sized piece of metal was pointed out as the official weight of the kilogram. 40 Replicas of this weight were distributed around the world, to globally

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