EurekAlert! News by Subject: Social & Behavior - News by Subject: Social & Behavior

Social & Behavior

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 9-Jun-2025 08:09 ET (9-Jun-2025 12:09 GMT/UTC)

Environmental variability promotes the evolution of cooperation among humans: A simulation-based analysis

University of Tsukuba
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers at University of Tsukuba have demonstrated that intensified environmental variability (EV) can promote the evolution of cooperation through simulation based on evolutionary game theory. This result offers a new perspective for the reinterpretation of the variability selection hypothesis (VSH), which attributes improvement in human cognitive abilities to severe EV in Africa during the Middle Stone Age (MSA), as further relevant to the explanation of the evolution of sociality.

Journal: PLOS Complex Systems

U of A researchers discover screen time surprise under grandparents' care

University of Arizona
Peer-Reviewed Publication

New reserach from the University of Arizona found that nearly half of the time American children spend with their grandparents involves interacting with or watching media on a screen. How that screen time is managed can influence media habits and impact family relationships.

Journal: Journal of Children and Media
Funder: Social & Behavioral Sciences Research Institute at the University of Arizona

Americans don’t think bird flu is a threat, study suggests

CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy
Peer-Reviewed Publication

In an editorial in the American Journal of Public Health, a team led by researchers from the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy (CUNY SPH) say public ignorance and apathy towards bird flu (highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI) could pose a serious obstacle to containing the virus and preventing a larger-scale public health crisis.

Journal: American Journal of Public Health

UTA's 23 patents strengthen UT System's No. 3 National Academy of Inventors' ranking

University of Texas at Arlington
Business Announcement

The University of Texas at Arlington, with 23 patents granted in 2024, helped propel The University of Texas System to No. 3 in the National Academy of Inventors’ prestigious top 100 ranking of U.S. universities awarded utility patents. The UT System’s 14 institutions are collectively ranked as a single entity in the National Academy of Inventors’ (NAI) annual report. UT Arlington’s 23 patents is a 15% jump from the previous year.

Finding friendship at first whiff: Scent plays role in platonic potential

Cornell University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Two women meeting for the first time can judge within minutes whether they have the potential to be friends — guided as much by smell as any other sense, Cornell University research on friendship formation finds.

Journal: Scientific Reports
Funder: Cornell Center for Social Sciences

Breaking the American climate silence

PLOS
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Americans are more likely to discuss climate change with family and friends if they feel worried or at risk, perceive society as supportive of pro-climate behaviors or see global warming depicted in the media, according to a study published April 17, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS Climate by Margaret Orr from George Mason University College of Humanities and Social Sciences in Fairfax, Virginia, and colleagues.

Journal: PLOS Climate

Machine learning model to predict the fitness of AAV capsids for gene therapy

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A new study in the peer-reviewed journal Human Gene Therapy describes a machine learning (ML) model that can be used as a surrogate for laborious in vitro experiments. This in silico approach aims to increase the fitness of clinical adeno-associated virus (AAV) capsids to make gene therapies more economically viable for patients.

Journal: Human Gene Therapy

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