Study offers clues to how climate affected 1918 pandemic

A new study of ice-core data shows that an unusual, six-year period of cold temperatures and heavy rainfall coincided with European deaths during the 1918 Spanish flu.

---

science-technology history environments-sustainability alvin-powell michael-mccormick spanish-flu rainfall world-war-i alexander-more initiative-for-the-science-of-the-human-past long-island-university nottingham-university paul-mayewski university-of-maine

J-PAL North America launches MIT Roybal Center for Translational Research to Improve Health Care for the Aging

Center will work with affiliated researchers to test low-cost, high-impact behavioral interventions to improve health-care delivery and health outcomes for aging adults in the United States.

---

health medicine economics aging health-care research school-of-humanities-arts-and-social-sciences abdul-latif-jameel-poverty-action-lab-j-pal

Space station crew woken up to hunt for air leak

Ground controllers say the leak is coming from a Russian module on the International Space Station.

---

human-spaceflight astronauts space-exploration international-space-station

Archaeologists determined the step-by-step path taken by the first people to settle the Caribbean islands

Did people settle these islands by traveling north from South America, or in the other direction? Reanalyzing data from artifacts discovered decades ago provides a definitive answer.

---

archaeology caribbean cuba radiocarbon-dating jamaica islands human-migration trinidad human-settlements artifacts human-settlement

Did early humans cook with hot springs before fire?

Evidence of hot springs near sites where ancient hominids settled long before the control of fire suggests early humans may have used them for cooking.

---

food science-and-technology early-humans hot-springs

J-PAL North America launches research initiative to focus on Covid-19 recovery

The Covid-19 Recovery and Resilience Initiative aims to catalyze evidence-based policy solutions to the challenges posed by the pandemic.

---

poverty covid-19 economics pandemic policy health-care learning jobs k-12-education research government education-teaching-academics school-of-humanities-arts-and-social-sciences technology-and-society abdul-latif-jameel-poverty-action-lab-j-pal

How We Feel app pilots COVID prediction model

How We Feel app lays groundwork to use big data to understand and predict coronavirus infection.

---

faculty-of-arts-and-sciences institute-for-quantitative-social-science harvard-society-of-fellows health-medicine harvard-th-chan-school-of-public-health feng-zhang nature-human-behavior broad-institute-of-mit-and-harvard ben-silbermann gary-king how-we-feel-project xihong-lin harvard-department-of-statistics how-we-feel-app william-allen xin-jin

Curve on shoes makes walking easier, but may lead to foot problems

Toe springs in shoes make walking easier but may come at a cost.

---

science-technology faculty-of-arts-and-sciences juan-siliezar department-of-human-evolutionary-biology daniel-e-lieberman freddy-sichting mtp-joints nicholas-b-holowka oliver-b-hansen skeletal-biology-and-biomechanics-lab toe-springs

Joseph Henrich explores WEIRD societies

In new book Joe Henrich looks at how the West became psychologically peculiar and prosperous.

---

science-technology faculty-of-arts-and-sciences joseph-henrich department-of-human-evolutionary-biology weird

Ancient DNA is revealing the genetic landscape of people who first settled East Asia

By studying the DNA of people who lived in East Asia thousands of years ago, scientists are starting to untangle how the region was populated.

---

ancient-dna hunter-gatherers china agriculture archaeology genes genomics southeast-asia rice adna siberia paleoanthropology human-migration east-asia hunter-gatherer start-of-agriculture paleogenomics