Joan Birman thought her major discoveries were behind her. Then came an email from a young neighbor — a girl who knew little but wanted to learn.

Excess sugar consumption is implicated in multiple cancers through insulin resistance, chronic inflammation, and metabolic reprogramming, yet wheth...

Back at his alma mater, he’s making headlines for groundbreaking research melding AI, psychology, economics, poli sci, and more

Silva et al. show that disease transmission emerges from multiple ecological bottlenecks rather than a single host trait. Separating parasite shedding from downstream infection success reveals why hos...

Seasonal respiratory infections typically surge within a limited time window, but what determines the exact timing within a given year is not well understood. Major causes of death show a similar seas...

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A free platform for explaining your research in plain language, and managing how you communicate around it – so you can understand how best to increase its impact.

Abstract. Natural selection encodes learned information in the genome. Learned solutions may be tuned specifically to past challenges, failing in altered e

Multi-level selection and senescence do not at first sight have much in common. Here, we demonstrate that the emergent mortality patterns generated by demographic senescence can be understood as the p...

From chemical building blocks, scientists have created synthetic cells that have most of the hallmarks of life.

Microbiology Society journals contain high-quality research papers and topical review articles. We are a not-for-profit publisher and we support and invest in the microbiology community, to the benefi...

Abstract. Mathematical models have produced important insights into the relationships between disease transmission, risk perception, and human behaviour. H

In a new paper in PNAS, SFI Complexity Postdoctoral Fellow Kaleda Denton, SFI External Faculty Fellow, and Science Board Fellow Marcus Feldman, and independent researcher Jonathan F. Johannemann offer...

This declaration calls for action to address the challenges posed by the use of artificial intelligence within mathematics research.

Sarah Otto* * Department of Zoology & Biodiversity Research Centre, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver BC Canada V6T 1Z4. E-mail: otto@zoology.ubc.ca A year ago, we raised concerns about ...

FLP-15 neuropeptide regulates foraging in C. elegans via NPR-3 in dopaminergic neurons, controlling reversal dynamics and spatial exploration during off-food search

Influential themed journal issues across the life sciences.

Spatial Clustering of School Susceptibles Drives Divergent US Measles Outbreaks ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. ### Funding Statement Atkinson See...

Parasites are a ubiquitous force in nature threatening wildlife populations and ecosystems. Interactions between hosts and their parasites are impacted by host-associated microbiomes, which are essen...

Declining vaccine coverage across the United States has increased the risk of outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases. Even when vaccines have low primary failure rates, conventional epidemic theory...

Population bottlenecks shape the evolution of cooperative traits in Myxococcus xanthus through life cycle trade-offs. This study shows that stringent bottlenecks favor growth and sporulation, while re...

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In this episode of the Armen Show, Armen Shirvanian interviews Dr. Kaleda Denton, a post-doctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. They discuss the interdisciplinary nature of the Institute, the concept of niche construction in biology, and the dynamics of decision-making, particularly the differences between following the mean versus the majority. The conversation also explores the limitations of game theory, the role of cultural evolution in cooperation, and the impact of AI on accessibility and learning. They delve into the importance of reducing polarization while maintaining diversity in viewpoints, emphasizing the need for mixing and collaboration across different fields and perspectives. In this engaging conversation, Dr. Kaleda Denton and Armen Shirvanian explore a variety of topics including the distinction between majority and mean opinions, the challenges of reading in the digital age, and the implications of large language models (LLMs) on culture. They discuss the importance of communication in society, the influence of close circles versus wider communities in learning, and the role of influential figures in personal development. The conversation also delves into the concept of memes and cultural transmission, the impact of role models on cumulative culture, and the question of human uniqueness in the context of cultural evolution. Check out Kaleda's website at https://www.kaledadenton.com/ 00:00 Introduction to the Podcast and Guest 03:01 The Santa Fe Institute: A Unique Interdisciplinary Environment 05:56 Niche Construction and Extended Evolutionary Synthesis 08:56 Mean vs. Majority: Insights from Research 12:08 Game Theory and Its Limitations 15:03 Cultural Evolution and Cooperation 17:59 The Role of AI in Learning and Accessibility 20:54 Conformity Across Species and LLMs 23:59 The Importance of Current Information 27:03 Final Thoughts on AI and Human Interaction 36:57 The Quirks of AI Hallucinations 38:53 The Evolution of Language Models 39:35 Agency and Individuality in AI Interactions 41:41 The Flattening of Ideas and Language 43:42 Cognitive Offloading and Its Consequences 45:04 Reducing Polarization Through Interaction 48:39 The Importance of Mixing Perspectives 50:02 The Dangers of Majority Influence 53:51 Understanding Mean vs. Majority Opinions 01:04:32 Risks and Opportunities in Cultural Evolution 01:10:02 The Impact of Headlines on News Consumption 01:11:46 The Need for Positive News 01:15:04 Learning from Close Circles vs. Wider Communities 01:17:23 Influential Figures in Personal Development 01:18:44 The Evolution of Human Uniqueness 01:22:38 Understanding Memes and Cultural Transmission 01:23:10 The Multiplicative Costs of Altruism 01:36:09 The Role of Role Models in Cumulative Culture

This research advances a mechanistic reward learning account of social learning strategies. Through experiments and simulations, it shows how individuals learn to learn from others, dynamically shapin...

Theories of the evolution of cooperation through reciprocity explain how unrelated self-interested individuals can accomplish more together than th...

Evolutionary competition often occurs simultaneously at multiple levels of organization, in which traits or behaviors that are costly for an individual can provide collective benefits to groups to whi...

The ultimate goal of research on the evolution of cooperation could be conceived as finding a method for stabilizing strategies that always cooperate, that never deviate from cooperation, that never e...

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