Fruit fly larvae adjust their behaviour in response to their social surroundings. A research team at the University of Konstanz uncovered the underlying mechanisms.

The Barrow-in-Furness (UK) accent is very different from the rest of Lancashire and Cumbria because of an intense mixing and rapid population change in the late 1800s, says new research by Lancaster University, which used the voices of Victorian speakers to inform the study.

 

People moved to Barrow, a shipbuilding centre now in Cumbria, from other parts of the UK, Scotland and Ireland, as well as surrounding areas and, says the research, the ensuing mix and population change led to the development of a new dialect in the town.

 

The new study, published in the Journal of Sociolinguistics and undertaken with researchers at Leiden University, in The Netherlands, looks at how northern dialects evolved in the nineteenth century.

 

Using recordings from the Elizabeth Roberts Working Class Oral History Archive, held at Lancaster University Regional Heritage Centre and Lancashire Archives, researchers tracked the Victorian origins of accent in Preston, Lancaster and Barrow.

A study led by researchers at Swansea University suggests that dietary patterns may play a role in adolescent mental health and sets out a detailed research roadmap to better understand this relationship.

People suffering from depression demonstrate strength in dealing with their illness on a daily basis, but this is often not perceived as such. Previous studies have shown that instead, they often encounter a contrary narrative in society according to which they are portrayed as weak. Such prejudices have a negative effect on those affected. In her new study, psychologist Christina Bauer from the University of Vienna shows how important it is for those affected to have their strength emphasised. Focusing on the strength of people with depression increases their self-confidence and enables them to better achieve their personal goals. The study was recently published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

The ASU study challenges the idea that early human societies were largely egalitarian, arguing instead that inequality in social influence has deep evolutionary roots. Drawing on archaeological evidence, psychological experiments and evolutionary simulations, researchers found that humans naturally form “prestige hierarchies” in which individuals gain influence not through dominance or aggression, but because others perceive them as skilled, knowledgeable, or successful. In experiments, people consistently preferred to copy individuals who were already popular—sometimes even more than those who were most accurate—creating a rapid “snowball effect” where a few individuals came to dominate group decisions. The findings suggest that following prestige likely helped humans learn efficiently and survive over generations, helping explain why similar patterns of unequal influence persist today in settings ranging from workplaces and politics to social media, even if such hierarchies are not always beneficial.

At a time when public policy is overwhelmingly shaped by short-term pressures, Prof. Shlomi Segall, from the Department of Political Science and the Philosophy, Economics and Political Science program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, challenges readers in his new book, The Future of Equality, to confront a fundamental moral question: what do principles of distributive justice say about people who do not yet exist?