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Investigating whether we truly have free will

Does something like "free will" really exist? We often take it for granted, but philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists have debated the issue for decades—if not centuries. In his recent Ph.D. at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), titled "The Free Will Discussion: an

German paper challenges invasive raccoon myths

Raccoons are often seen as cute and harmless wildlife—but that is a misconception. "Raccoons are native animals," "They reproduce faster when hunted," "Everything about raccoons has already been said"—these are just a few of the persistent myths circulating about raccoons in

Gut length driven by 'sexual conflict' in fish species

A new study that looked at gut length variation between cichlid fish species found that some of the genetic loci for the trait are sex-specific even though males and females of the same species have the same gut length. The work supports a scenario of "sexual conflict," where

Image: Hubble captures stellar duo

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured a bright variable star, V 372 Orionis, and its companion in this festive image in this image released on Jan. 27, 2023. The pair lie in the Orion Nebula, a colossal region of star formation roughly 1,450 light-years from Earth.

A new method for analyzing the stability of sunspots

Sunspots are the most striking phenomenon of the solar magnetic field. After the invention of the telescope early in the 17th century, the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei was the first to routinely observe sunspots. In the 20th century, with the help of modern techniques