Information Theory as a Tool for Extracting Climate Signals

During Earth’s last glacial period, temperatures on the planet periodically spiked dramatically and rapidly. A new paper in the journal Chaos suggests that mathematics from information theory could offer a powerful tool for analyzing and...
16-Oct-2019 4:35 PM EDT Add to Favorites

Private Property, Not Productivity, Precipitated Neolithic Agricultural Revolution

The Neolithic Agricultural Revolution is one of the most thoroughly-studied episodes in prehistory. But a new paper by Sam Bowles and Jung-Kyoo Choi shows that most explanations for it don’t agree with the evidence, and offers a new interpretation.
11-Oct-2019 1:25 PM EDT Add to Favorites

Where to Park Your Car, According to Math

In a world where the best parking space is the one that minimizes time spent in the lot, two physicists compare parking strategies and settle on a prudent approach.
19-Sep-2019 4:35 PM EDT Add to Favorites

Study: Bigger cities boost ‘social crimes’

The same underlying mechanism that boosts urban innovation and startup businesses can also explain why certain types of crimes, like car theft and robbery, thrive in a larger population.
18-Sep-2019 9:00 AM EDT Add to Favorites

Inequality: What we’ve learned from the ‘Robots of the late Neolithic’

Seven thousand years ago, societies across Eurasia began to show signs of lasting divisions between haves and have-nots. In new research published in the journal Antiquity, scientists chart the precipitous surge of prehistoric inequality and trace...
18-Sep-2019 8:45 AM EDT Add to Favorites

It’s Not You, It’s the Network

The result of the 2016 US presidential election was, for many, a surprise lesson in social perception bias — peoples’ tendency to assume that others think as we do, and to underestimate the size and influence of a minority party. Long...
9-Aug-2019 3:05 PM EDT Add to Favorites

Three concepts from complexity could play a big role in social animal research

A new paper in Animal Behaviour lays out three concepts from complex systems science that could advance studies into animal social complexity.
1-Aug-2019 2:05 PM EDT Add to Favorites

How random tweaks in timing can lead to new game theory strategies

Most game theory models don’t reflect the relentlessly random timing of the real world. In a new paper, two economists and a physicist model what happens when players receive information or act at random times, which could make a big difference in...
24-Jul-2019 11:05 AM EDT Add to Favorites

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