Our new paper is out today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B! How does rapid environmental change reshape human sleep, one of our most fundamental biological processes? 📄: doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

Recent lifestyle change impacts sleep and circadian rhythms among the Indigenous peoples of Peninsular Malaysia

Abstract. Sleep disorders are rising globally, but their lifestyle causes remain unclear. We recorded sleep–wake patterns via actigraphy from 1039 Orang As

doi.org

🧵1/ The half-life of a grudge. Britain crushed the 1857 revolt in northern India with mass reprisals centered on Lucknow. For decades after, districts closer to that violence vaccinated their children less against smallpox and the effect faded as the generation that lived through 1857 died off.

New review out today in Evolutionary Anthropology on arranged marriage, coauthored with @dconroybeam.bsky.social and @davidwlawson.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1002/evan...

The Role and Consequences of Arranged Marriage in the Evolution of Human Mating

Mate selection has important fitness implications and thus has been a prominent focus across the evolutionary social sciences. However, despite ample evidence that human mate selection is uniquely sh....

doi.org

Trump’s new approach to global health is “extractive bilateralism”—he will only continue funding HIV medicines or other life saving treatments in a partner nation in exchange for that nation’s minerals or health data. It’s inhumane. I wrote about that for @bmj.com: www.bmj.com/content/bmj/...

Rachel Maddow@maddow.bsky.social · 2mo ago

"A handful of African nations are rejecting American health aid, outraged by the Trump administration’s demands for access to private health records and even minerals in exchange for lifesaving medicine..." www.wsj.com/world/africa...

Genuinely just bonkers to watch the USA do this to one of the most successful and innovative hubs of scientific research the world has ever seen. All those years of Free Speech On Campus debates and it turns out they actually wanted less cancer research. Absurd.

Jeremy Berg@jeremymberg.bsky.social · 5mo ago

NSF Update through March 13, 2026 1/2

New paper examining the health locus of control concept on vaccine beliefs in NW Namibia. We find that external HLC dominates, but market integration shifts beliefs towards internal HLC, and internal HLC associated with lower interest in vaccination and lower perceptions of vaccine safety.

The power of powerful others: health locus of control and vaccination behavior in rural Namibian pastoralists - BMC Global and Public Health

Background Who we believe controls our health, whether it is ourselves, chance, or powerful others, shapes how we make healthcare decisions. The health locus of control (HLC) framework has been key to...

link.springer.com

Put on your thinking caps and slip on your party shoes because EAS is coming to #Denver! Join us at #EASHBA2026 for a special symposium and a party to celebrate the return of EAS and award Dr. Eric Alden Smith our lifetime achievement award.

NSF Update Funding curve overall. A little bit of progress in the past week, but only a little bit. Now by Directorate... 1/11

This has slowly been happening at all but flagship public universities. This would accelerate the practice, and I expect more states (including some blue states) to follow suit in the coming years.

Megan Zahneis@mzahneis.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Breaking, from me: An executive order from Oklahoma's governor directs most of the state's public colleges to "phase out tenure." #AcademicSky #HigherEd @chronicle.com www.chronicle.com/article/tenu...

You can ignore science, but science will never ignore you. Measles incidence in the United States.

🚨Job alert! The ENDOW project is hiring a Research Officer in Research Database Management, to be based at @lsemethodology.bsky.social. Oversee & expand our database & contribute to research on social & economic inequality. Deadline 15 February. Share & reach out! jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

New in @nytimes.com on how some research on human origins and genetics are being cut from federal science programs. @carlzimmer.com interviews Brenna Henn, who has done much to illuminate the genetic variation and history of southern African peoples. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/02/s...

She Wanted to Improve Genetic Medicine

nytimes.com

Here's my latest contribution to the @nytimes "Lost Science" series. Brenna Henn's sweeping study of African genetics has been frozen. Gift link: nyti.ms/3Ypmm1A

The impacts of the Trump Administration's "let them eat cake" foreign policy outlined in grim detail www.propublica.org/article/usai...

Trump Officials Celebrated With Cake After Slashing Aid. Then People Died of Cholera.

Behind closed doors in Washington, top advisers made a series of decisions that had devastating repercussions for the poorest country on earth. We went to South Sudan and found people who died as a re...

propublica.org

New paper out today with Zhian Chen. We argue that modern intensive parenting is not only exhausting for parents, but in some cases disrupts healthy child development. What is 'overparenting'? And can evolutionary theory help us understand how we got here? academic.oup.com/emph/advance...

When parental care hurts: Extended parental care and the evolution of overparenting

Abstract. In recent years, childrearing in high-income countries has become described as ‘relentless’ in its demands on parents. In response to growing del

academic.oup.com

New paper out on the important role of social learning in breastfeeding! academic.oup.com/emph/article...

Social learning is critical to breastfeeding success: evidence from rural Namibian pastoralists

AbstractBackground and objectives. Lactation is one of the defining features of mammals, yet many humans struggle with breastfeeding. One reason for this i

academic.oup.com

Simplistic stories about the dangers of polygamy can be compelling & intuitive, but what is the evidence that monogamous marriage is advantageous for society? theconversation.com/rethinking-p...

Rethinking polygamy – new research upends conventional thinking about the advantages of monogamous marriage

Simplistic stories about the dangers of polygamy can be compelling and intuitive. But new research suggests some arguments about its harms don’t hold up.

theconversation.com

If one man marries two women, another man must go unmarried, right? No. Demography matters. If sex ratios are skewed towards women, then polygyny can exist alongside universal marriage for men (who want to marry women). If only more people understood demography 😊

Hampton Gaddy@hggaddy.bsky.social · 10mo ago

🚨 The Economist has been telling you for years that polygamy causes civil war by locking men out of marriage. A new article with @rebeccasear.bsky.social and @anthrolog.bsky.social explains that the demography of marriage markets doesn't actually work that way. 🧵 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

"Public health is under siege in our country. This time it is not from fringe communities scattered across the nation but from our appointed leaders, who were nominated by our president and confirmed by our elected officials in the Senate." A must-read anonymous piece www.bmj.com/content/390/...

From a colleague: NSF proposal received FOUR "excellent" ratings (the highest possible...that almost never happens). Rated "highly competitive" in panel summary. 👎 ...but still rejected. Likely reason: It studied a topic disfavored by this admin.

Fun fact: even as UCLA is being extorted for $1B by a fascist government, its administration is requiring all faculty to install a “security” program that surveils everything we do and shares that information with the federal government.

Very disappointed that we were forced to cancel our field season and return early, following the suspension of our NSF grant as part of Trump’s attacks on UCLA. Particularly sad for our students, who spent significant time and effort to join us this year.

Still a projection, but a devastating projection: 30-40% drop in international students at U.S. universities this fall www.nafsa.org/about/about-... Hard to wrap your head around the full implications of this for universities

U.S. Economy Could Suffer a $7 Billion Loss from Precipitous Drop in International Students

NAFSA: Association of International Educators is the world's largest nonprofit association dedicated to international education and exchange.

nafsa.org

My new paper "Post-pandemic inequalities: Evolutionary anthropological frameworks for long-term impacts of the 1918 influenza pandemic" is now published in Evolutionary Anthropology! Please check it out at the link below! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Pleased to present our new preprint on sleep and circadian rhythms among the Orang Asli of Peninsular Malaysia. This is a fascinating system for exploring sleep biology. Lots of variation in light exposure, housing type, and subsistence. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵 below.

Federal kindergarten vaccination data shows national rates for four major vaccines, which had held steady before the COVID-19 pandemic, have fallen significantly since. In fact, measles vaccination rates were below herd immunity in most states in 2023. ➡️ Read more: propub.li/40KnM8n

The university of California is a powerhouse of innovation, healthcare, and social mobility for California and the US.

🚨🚨 Friday night news drop from National Science Foundation!! 🧪 NSF just released its detailed budget request for next year: nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/00-NSF... We knew it was going to be bad...and it lives up. Guts direct NSF support for a **quarter million people** 🧵 on some highlights...

Happy to see an update to this classic from the Wall Street Journal (Tynan DeBold, Dov Friedman), this time by @scientificdiscovery.dev and @spoonerf.bsky.social at @ourworldindata.org. 📊 New: a log chart, new colours and three relevant annotations. Source: ourworldindata.org/measles-vacc...

In other news, my engineer father has published a book! Looks like a spicy read! link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

CMOS Plasma and Process Damage

This book provides an up-to-date, single-source reference on CMOS plasma and process damage, for engineers from all disciplines.

link.springer.com