Science News

More carbon dioxide emissions lead to more CO2 dissolving in the oceans, which turns the water acidic. Those sour seas slow the growth of corals. And it turns out acidic seawater also makes clownfish and damselfish suicidally bold and reckless, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . [Philip Munday et al., http://bit.ly/blfQHy ] [More]

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The underdog creams a top-ranked opponent--and the crowd goes wild. But such a surge in the face of the odds is even more difficult than it appears, according to a recent study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology . If status is on the line, people try harder to win when they are pitted against lower-ranked opponents.

Psychologists Nathan Pettit of Cornell University and Robert Lount of Ohio State University asked Cornell students to perform simple tasks in teams--for instance, writing down as many possible uses for a knife as they could come up with. The researchers falsely told the students that they were competing against another university that was ranked higher or lower than Cornell--but they added that the tasks at hand were not indicative of academic performance, so the rankings should not predict which team would do better. When the students thought they were facing a lower-ranked school, they did better on the task.

Scientific American Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina and staff editor Michael Moyer join podcast host Steve Mirsky (pictured) to talk about articles in the July issue, including: "The Dirty Truth about Plug-In Hybrids"; "How Babies Think"; and "Birds That Lived with Dinosaurs". [More]

Thirty years ago most psychologists, philosophers and psychiatrists thought that babies and young children were irrational, egocentric and amoral. They believed children were locked in the concrete here and now--unable to understand cause and effect, imagine the experiences of other people, or appreciate the difference between reality and fantasy. People still often think of children as defective adults.

But in the past three decades scientists have discovered that even the youngest children know more than we would ever have thought possible. Moreover, studies suggest that children learn about the world in much the same way that scientists do--by conducting experiments, analyzing statistics, and forming intuitive theories of the physical, biological and psychological realms. Since about 2000, researchers have started to understand the underlying computational, evolutionary and neurological mechanisms that underpin these remarkable early abilities. These revolutionary findings not only change our ideas about babies, they give us a fresh perspective on human nature itself.

By Vincent Fribault