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The study explains how variation in male traits and female preferences is maintained and evolved over time.

What makes a male animal irresistible to a female? Is it his looks, smell, skills, or genes? Scientists have been trying to answer this question for a long time. However, they have not been able to explain why some males are more attractive than others or why female preferences change over time and across species.


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Influenced by peers?

New research from a team including a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientist reaffirms that human footprints found in White Sands National Park, New Mexico, date to the Last Glacial Maximum, placing humans in North America thousands of years earlier than once thought. Explore the role of radiocarbon dating of pollen in the discovery:


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Japanese scientist Kikunae Ikeda first proposed umami as a basic taste—in addition to sweet, sour, salty and bitter—in the early 1900s. About eight decades later, the scientific community officially agreed with him.

Now, scientists led by researchers at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences have evidence of a sixth basic .

In research published in Nature Communications, USC Dornsife neuroscientist Emily Liman and her team found that the tongue responds to through the same that signals sour taste.

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According to a new theory presented by researchers at HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus and their colleagues at University College London, how useful a memory is for future situations determines where it resides in the brain.

The theory offers a new way of understanding systems consolidation, a process that transfers certain memories from the hippocampus – where they are initially stored – to the neocortex — where they reside long term.

Under the classical view of systems consolidation, all memories move from the hippocampus to the neocortex over time. But this view doesn’t always hold up; research shows some memories permanently reside in the hippocampus and are never transferred to the neocortex.