Copying others can lead to greater comfort with riskier behavior

The best things in life are unlikely to occur. In many situations, taking at least moderate risks yields higher expected rewards. Yet many people struggle with taking such risks: they are overly cautious and forego high payoffs. ...

A model ecosystem fish story

Have I got a fish story for you. Any angler beginning a yarn like that usually ends up spinning a tall tale, an exaggeration or bald-faced lie.

Research on the wisdom of crowds: Making the bandwagon better

With a web browser or a cellphone, consumers today are making decisions about causes to fund, stocks to pick, movies to watch, restaurants to visit, products to buy and music to hear partly based on the answer to a single ...

Armchair science: Bag and tag glowing galactic clouds

(Phys.org)—A new galactic game launching today lets citizen scientists identify the glowing clouds where future stars will be born. The online experience, called Clouds, is a new addition to the Milky Way Project, where ...

OpenLearning launches into competitive MOOCs market

A start-up that allows universities to offer massive open online courses (MOOCs) has opened for business, signing on more than 1,000 students to a 12-week computer science and engineering course from the University of New ...

Crowd mentality

Do you know what the price of gas will be in six months? How about the extent of the expected U.S. troop drawdown in Afghanistan by year’s end? As an individual, predicting such things with any degree of confidence may ...