Pnas.org

Some mass shooters openly express intent to target ethnic and racial minorities, but members of the public still do not agree on whether the gunman was indeed motivated by prejudice and/or hatred. The present research finds that members of a...

Nest-building orangutans must daily build safe and comfortable nest structures in the forest canopy and do this quickly and effectively using the branches that surround them. This study aimed to investigate the mechanical design and architecture of...

The rodent hippocampus contains neurons that code for space on the scale of meters, a discovery that was recently awarded a Nobel Prize. However, it remains unclear whether humans harness similar representations for memory at the scale of their...

Coronavirus school closures left many science professors scrambling for new ways to teach concepts traditionally explored in the lab. Not so for Pia Sörensen, a senior preceptor in chemical engineering and applied materials at Harvard University in...

Symbioses are evolutionarily and ecologically widespread, yet we lack a robust understanding of their origins, losses, and macroevolutionary consequences. We traced the evolution of partner choice and phenotype in lichens—a classic model of...

The tamoxifen (TAM)-inducible CreER/LoxP system is one of the most widely used genetic tools that have enabled precise gene manipulation in distinct cell subpopulations at any specific time point and labeling of any cell types for genetic fate...

In eukoryotes, 3′ to 5′ mRNA degradation is a major pathway to reduce mRNA levels and, thus, an important means to regulate gene expression. Herein, messenger RNA (mRNA) is hydrolyzed from the 3′ end by the exosome complex, producing short capped...

Fish have somehow colonized isolated water bodies all over the world without human assistance. It has long been speculated that these colonization events are assisted by waterbirds, transporting fish eggs attached to their feet and feathers, yet...

A long-standing problem in evolutionary biology is to understand the processes that shape the genetic composition of populations. In a population without migration, two processes that change allele frequencies are selection, which increases...

There has been widespread concern that the takeoff in income inequality in recent decades has had harmful social consequences. We provide evidence on this concern by assembling all available nationally representative datasets on college enrollment...

What predicts how happy people are with their romantic relationships? Relationship science—an interdisciplinary field spanning psychology, sociology, economics, family studies, and communication—has identified hundreds of variables that purportedly...

The global response to the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in unprecedented reductions in economic activity. We find that, after accounting for meteorological variations, lockdown events have reduced the population-weighted concentration of nitrogen...

Several factors have been examined that contribute to the unequal impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in terms of lethality and prevalence of cases across different geographical areas. Among them, intergenerational relationships (e.g.,...

Seasons strongly influence the life cycles of many species on Earth, and it is therefore not surprising that some of the best evidence we have of the ecological response to recent climate change comes from studies of phenology, the timing of...

With deliberate deception a growing threat online, social scientists are devising ways to fight back with “cognitive inoculations” In early March, after a wave of coronavirus cases struck a Muslim congregation in India, the hashtag #CoronaJihad...