Featured news
26 Mar 2024
Researchers found that Swedes and Italians use different gestures, which may reveal culturally different ways of conceptualizing narratives when telling a story
Space sciences and astronomy
25 Mar 2024
Images from telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope have expanded the way we see space. But what if you can’t see? Can stars be turned into sounds instead?
Featured news
30 Oct 2023
by Angharad Brewer Gillham, Frontiers science writer Image/Shutterstock.com From a painting on the wall to a photo on your phone, selfies have always been a form of communication. But what are we trying to communicate with them and how are we doing it? To develop semantic profiles of this visual language, scientists asked people to look at a thousand selfies and describe their first impressions. People have used self-portraits to communicate information about themselves for centuries — and digital cameras make it easier to share a self-portrait than ever before. But even though selfies are now almost ubiquitous, we don’t understand how people use them to communicate. So scientists from the University of Bamberg set out to investigate the semantics of selfies. “Although the term ‘selfies’ is now celebrating its 21st birthday, and although selfies are known in art history for nearly 200 years in photography and more than 500 years in paintings, we still lack a clear classification of the different types of selfies,” said Tobias Schneider, lead author of the study in Frontiers in Communication and PhD student at the Bamberg Graduate School of Affective and Cognitive Sciences. Snapshots of selfhood Previous studies have established that people taking […]
Featured news
16 Oct 2023
by Deborah Pirchner, Frontiers science writer Image: Shutterstock.com At Frontiers, we bring some of the world’s best research to a global audience. But with tens of thousands of articles published each year, it’s impossible to cover all of them. Here are just five amazing papers you may have missed. Chronic pain associated with increased dementia risk Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) make up approximately 80% of the more than 47 million cases of dementia worldwide. Looking into the future, cases are expected to increase sharply in the coming decades. A large percentage of the older population is also affected by chronic pain, a leading cause of disability that shares many risk factors with ADRD. These include advanced age, depressive disorders, diabetes, obesity, social isolation, and a low level of education. Now, researchers in France have assessed the impact of chronic pain on the incidence of ADRD. They published their results in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. They found that the presence of chronic pain is associated with a higher incidence and risk of developing ADRD when compared with older adults with no chronic pain. The researchers stressed the importance of prevention, diagnosis, and management of chronic pain to limit resulting […]
Environment
05 Oct 2023
by Angharad Brewer Gillham, Frontiers science writer Image/Shutterstock.com Eating more plant-based dishes is good for your health and good for the planet – but the perception that these dishes are for women and not for men may be stopping some men from choosing plant-based meals. Scientists found that you can present vegan dishes with a masculine framing, altering the perception that these dishes are for women, but changing the perception doesn’t change people’s preferences. Eating more plant-based meals is better for our health and better for the planet. But cultural preferences are significant barriers to reducing meat consumption – especially for men, who are underrepresented among vegans and vegetarians. Studies have found that eating meat is associated with masculinity, and that gender stereotypes label plant-based diets as suitable for women but not men. So is it possible to change the perception of plant-based food with marketing, and convince men to eat more of it? “Men might be less inclined to consume vegan food due to the need to perform gender,” said Alma Scholz, lead author of a new study published in Frontiers in Communication. “However, with vegan food being framed in a masculine way, men might feel less resistance and […]
Engineering
22 May 2023
by Angharad Brewer Gillham, Frontiers science writer Image/Shutterstock.com Scientists found that students given a task by a social robot with a voice programmed to be engaging and inspiring performed better and were more creative than students who received the task from an identical robot with a flat voice. Increasingly, social robots are being used for support in educational contexts. But does the sound of a social robot affect how well they perform, especially when dealing with teams of humans? Teamwork is a key factor in human creativity, boosting collaboration and new ideas. Danish scientists set out to understand whether robots using a voice designed to sound charismatic would be more successful as team creativity facilitators. “We had a robot instruct teams of students in a creativity task. The robot either used a confident, passionate — ie charismatic — tone of voice or a normal, matter-of-fact tone of voice,” said Dr Kerstin Fischer of the University of Southern Denmark, corresponding author of the study in Frontiers in Communication. “We found that when the robot spoke in a charismatic speaking style, students’ ideas were more original and more elaborate.” Can a robot be charismatic? We know that social robots acting as facilitators […]
Featured news
27 Feb 2023
by Dr Siouxsie Wiles, University of Auckland Image by Stephen Langdon, courtesy of Siouxsie Wiles. Siouxsie Wiles is a microbiologist and award-winning science communicator based at the University of Auckland in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her academic research focuses on how the infectiousness of bacteria changes over time and developing new antibiotics. During the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, she worked with cartoonist Toby Morris to create simple graphic messages that could get public health information out to the general public quickly and effectively, reassuring and informing people throughout Aotearoa New Zealand and around the world. In this guest editorial for Frontiers, Dr Wiles explains how she came to create the famous ‘flatten the curve’ GIF. If you used or lurked on Twitter in March 2020, chances are you saw, or even shared, an animated GIF illustrating how our actions could help ‘flatten’ the Covid-19 ‘curve’. The teal and orange GIF toggled between two scenarios. In the ‘whatever’ approach, a person downplays the seriousness of Covid-19, which soon leads to healthcare capacity being overwhelmed. In the alternative ‘don’t panic, but be careful’ approach, a person is shown promoting such things as staying home when sick, which helps ‘flatten the curve’ […]
Featured news
06 Dec 2022
By Frontiers’ science writers Image: Shutterstock.com As part of Frontiers’ passion to make science available to all, we highlight just a small selection of the most fascinating research published with us each month to help inspire current and future researchers to achieve their research dreams. 2022 was no different, and saw many game-changing discoveries contribute to the world’s breadth of knowledge on topics ranging from the climate crisis to robotics, and exercise to the lives of our ancestors. So to round of the year, here are 10 Frontiers articles from this year that got the world’s top media talking. 1. This illusion, new to science, is strong enough to trick our reflexes Have a look at the image below. Do you perceive that the central black hole is expanding, as if you’re moving into a dark environment, or falling into a hole? If so, you’re not alone: a study published to Frontiers in Human Neuroscience showed that this ‘expanding hole’ illusion, which is new to science, is perceived by approximately 86% of people. The researchers don’t yet know why a minority seem unsusceptible to the ‘expanding hole’ illusion. Nor do they know whether other vertebrate species, or even nonvertebrate animals […]
Featured news
27 Jul 2022
By Colm Gorey, Frontiers science communications manager Image: Shutterstock.com Each month, Frontiers shines a spotlight on some of the leading research across a wide range of topics. Here are just some of the highlights that resonated strongly with readers on our news site in the month of July. Building blocks for RNA-based life abound at center of our galaxy Nitriles, a class of organic molecules with a cyano group, that is, a carbon atom bound with an unsaturated triple bond to a nitrogen atom, are typically toxic. But paradoxically, they are also a key precursor for molecules essential for life, such as ribonucleotides, composed of the nucleobases or ‘letters’ A, U, C, and G, joined to a ribose and phosphate group, which together make up RNA. Now, a team of researchers from Spain, Japan, Chile, Italy, and the US show in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences that a wide range of nitriles occurs in interstellar space within the molecular cloud G+0.693-0.027, near the center of the Milky Way. Article link: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fspas.2022.876870/full 2. Bees’ ‘waggle dance’ may revolutionize how robots talk to each other in disaster zones Where are those flowers and how far away are they? This is the […]
Featured news
18 Jul 2022
By Suzanna Burgelman, Frontiers science writer Image: Ken stocker/Shutterstock.com Hearing insults is like receiving a “mini slap in the face”, regardless of the precise context the insult is made in. That is the conclusion of a new paper published in Frontiers in Communication. The researchers used electroencephalography (EEG) and skin conductance recordings to compare the short-term impact of repeated verbal insults to that of repeated positive or neutral evaluations. The results provide us with a unique opportunity to research the intersection between emotion and language. Humans are a highly social species. We rely on ever-changing cooperation dynamics and interpersonal relations to survive and thrive. Words have a big role to play in these relations, as they are tools used to understand interpersonal behavior. As such, words can hurt, but we know little about how the impact of words comes about as someone processes an insult. “The exact way in which words can deliver their offensive, emotionally negative payload at the moment these words are being read or heard is not yet well-understood,” said corresponding author Dr Marijn Struiksma, of Utrecht University. Because insults pose a threat against our reputation and against our ‘self’, they provide a unique opportunity to research […]
Featured news
15 Oct 2021
By Dr Karina Judd and Dr Merryn McKinnon, Australian National University Image: ReeldealHD on Offset/Shutterstock.com Dr Karina Judd is a doctoral researcher in science communication at the Australian National University. She is interested in the science-society interface with her current work focusing on inclusion, diversity and equity strategies in STEM workplaces. Dr Merryn McKinnon is a senior lecturer in science communication at the Australian National University. Her work explores the relationships between science, media, and publics; and the influence of equity, inclusion and intersectionality in STEM, especially STEM communication. Together, they have published a paper in Frontiers in Communications about how diversity and inclusion within science communication research and practice is created and implemented. Within the last five years, within Australia at least, there has been an increased focus on equity in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. As two women in STEM ourselves, this was something we felt we should contribute to. But the contributions we have ended up making were not those we originally intended. Merryn started out in marine science and then moved into various science communication roles. Throughout her studies, classes and lecturers were usually a fairly even mix of genders and once in the […]
Featured news
28 Jul 2021
Secret role of swallowing in conversations revealed by new research in Frontiers in Communication
Featured news
27 Jul 2021
By Peter Rejcek, science writer The Ifesowapo dùndún ensemble performing in Igbo Ora, southwest Nigeria. Image: Dr Cecilia Durojaye A novel analysis into the acoustical similarities between Yorùbá vocalizations and a west African instrument called the dùndún found a high degree of correlation. The researchers discovered that the talking drum mimics the microstructure of the tonal language and can be categorized into four different modes. In addition, the study emphasizes the value of studying non-western culture to understand various phenomena in mainstream musicology and linguistics that go beyond western domains. Musicians like Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton are considered virtuosos, guitarists who could make their instruments sing. Drummers in west Africa who play hourglass-shaped percussion instruments called dùndúns can make their instrument not only sing, but talk. New research published in the journal Frontiers in Communication is one of the first to show the high degree of acoustic correlation between these talking drums and the spoken Yorùbá language. Dùndún drumming is a musical-oral tradition where skilled drummers, manipulating the intensity and pitch of the instrument, can mimic Yorùbá, a tonal language mainly spoken in southwest Nigeria. Dubbed ‘talking drums’, dùndúns can be used as purely musical instruments or what scientists […]
Sustainability
09 Feb 2021
Simple cues stimulate environmentally conscious behavior: Frontiers in Communication
Featured news
12 Jun 2020
Pandemic allows researchers to analyze how websites like Facebook can influence dynamics between different social groups: Frontiers in Communication