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Air pollution can have a “huge” negative effect on cognitive intelligence – especially amongst older men – according to a study released this past August.

Results from a research study published in Nature Communications show how the inner ear processes speech, something that has until now been unknown. The authors of the report include researchers from Linköping University.

The mere presence of a pair of eyes on a sign requesting donations makes people more likely to give more. This is according to a field study in Springer’s journal Human Nature. Lead author Caroline Kelsey of the University of Virginia in the US says the findings support the idea that people tend to act according to pro-social norms when they sense that they are being watched. It also suggests that eyes play a special role in promoting cooperation in humans. 

Stanford scientists have revealed the presence of water stored within a glacier in Greenland, where the rapidly changing ice sheet is a major contributor to the sea-level rise North America will experience in the next 100 years. This observation – which came out of a new way of looking at existing data – has been a missing component for models aiming to predict how melting glaciers will impact the planet.

Researchers at the University of Sussex have become the first in the world to develop technology which can bend sound waves around an obstacle and levitate an object above it.