Science Says The Dress Is Blue
A debate about the color of a dress on Wired.com has been consuming people. Some say the dress is blue and black, while others say it is white and gold. Each side emphatically believes it is right.
Research News
How Peer Pressure May Encourage Tax Delinquents To Pay Up
A field experiment in Kentucky, Kansas and Wisconsin finds that shaming tax cheats is a more effective way to get scofflaws to pay up rather than threatening them with fines.
Feeding Babies Foods With Peanuts Appears To Prevent Allergies
Babies who ate the equivalent of about 4 heaping teaspoons of peanut butter weekly were about 80 percent less likely to develop a peanut allergy by their fifth birthday. So finds a landmark new study.
Gerbils Likely Pushed Plague To Europe in Middle Ages
Shifts in climate in the Middle Ages likely drove bubonic plague bacteria from gerbils in Asia to people in Europe, research now suggests. Rats don't deserve all the blame.
Infections With Dangerous Gut Microbe Still On The Rise
Clostridium difficile sickens nearly half a million Americans annually, killing about 29,000, say federal health officials. They warn hospitals and nursing homes to tighten hygiene protocols.
Kids, Allergies And A Possible Downside To Squeaky Clean Dishes
Swedish kids growing up in families that wash their dishes by hand are less likely to develop certain allergies than those in families with dishwashers, a study suggests. But there may be more to it.
Emotional Scars Of Modern Slavery Run 'Deeper Than Any Visible Wound'
Scientists interviewed more than 1,000 men, women and children who were forced into sex work and hard labor. The result is the largest study to detail the health of human trafficking survivors.
'Weird' Fern Shows The Power Of Interspecies Sex
Two species of fern that diverged 60 million years ago are as evolutionarily distant as, say, elephants and manatees. Nonetheless, the two species recently produced a hybrid, say astounded botanists.
Angry Tweets Predict Patterns Of Heart Disease, Researchers Say
Can tweets be analyzed to predict heart disease? New research suggests the answer is yes.
Maybe Early Humans Weren't The First To Get A Good Grip
The opposable thumb you use to hold a pencil was long thought to be a defining aspect of humans. But an analysis of finger bones suggests stone tool use by pre-humans — perhaps 3 million years ago.