A new study from OHSU finds sensitive caregiving when children are very young can protect against the negative effects of inflammation during pregnancy, including ADHD symptoms.

In the first study to measure brain activity, hormones, self-reported attitudes and behavior simultaneously to assess trust during interactions with a humanoid robot, a team led by researchers at Drexel University found that people tend to develop a more immediate bond with a robot that is interactive and engaging, but that trust can quickly dissolve if it begins making mistakes. The findings, which help to explain how humans build and lose trust through collaboration with humanoid robots, could inform social robot design as the technology expands into healthcare, customer service, education and the home. 

For decades, scientists have proposed that a unique genetic system called haplodiploidy helped drive the evolution of eusociality, the complex social organization seen in ants, bees and some wasps. A new study from Arizona State University provides one of the largest empirical tests of that long-standing hypothesis, analyzing nearly 69,000 insect species across two large evolutionary trees. The researchers found that while eusociality appears more common in haplodiploid insects, the pattern is driven almost entirely by a single lineage—the aculeate Hymenoptera (ants, bees and stinging wasps)—rather than by haplodiploidy itself. The findings suggest that lineage-specific traits and ecological factors, rather than genetics alone, better explain the repeated evolution of complex insect societies.

About the Study: Are there cross-sectional and longitudinal associations of screen use with child and adolescent psychosocial development? In this cohort study of 3786 children, after adjustment for family functioning, no significant associations were found between screen use and developmental difficulties at 5 or 10 years of age, and an association with higher difficulties score at 15 years of age were only seen for very high use of electronic games and not other forms of screen use. Early high screen use was associated with greater difficulties at 10 years of age, but this association was not sustained at 15 years of age. Increased screen use was not consistently associated with poorer development, highlighting the limitation of current guidelines solely focusing on duration of screen use.

Meggie Mapes, a communication studies researcher at the University of Kansas, has published a study that examined rhetoric around the #MeToo movement, specifically a column about "what should we do with these men." The column and its online comments focused heavliy on punishment, forced poverty and stripping of responsibility and privilege for perpetrators. It also lacked a focus on what causes gender-based violence and shows how pervasive the idea of punishment is in our society, Mapes argues.