Explaining the puzzle of human diversity

One of the biggest puzzles facing the social sciences is understanding our immense cultural variation. Over the past several thousand years, humanity has evolved to the point where there now exist 195 countries, more than 7000 languages, and thousands of religions. Research has begun to describe psychological variation across the globe (1–4), yet only recently have we begun to understand ecological, historical, and sociopolitical factors that produce such differences. Often absent from this mix is how religion and psychological variation are interrelated (5, 6). On page 707 of this issue, Schulz et al. (7) break new ground in showing how the specific practices of a branch of one of the world’s largest religions—Christianity—can in part explain widespread variation in human psychology around the world.

By Michele J. Gelfand

Nov 8th, 2019

Single-nanowire spectrometers

Miniaturizing spectrometers Spectroscopy is a ubiquitous characterization tool spanning most scientific and many industrial disciplines. Most handheld spectrometers are based on tabletop optical components, which limits the scale to which these spectrometers can be shrunk. … A variety of miniaturized, portable spectrometers have been developed for applications in which reduced footprint and weight take precedence over high resolution.

By Xiaomu Wang, et al.

Sep 6th, 2019