Social sciences articles within Nature

Featured

  • Letter |

    Cooperation in evolutionary games can be stabilized through punishment of non-cooperators, at a cost to those who do the punishing. Punishment can take different forms, in particular peer-punishment, in which individuals punish free-riders after the event, and pool-punishment, in which a fund for sanctioning is set up beforehand. These authors show that pool-punishment is superior to peer-punishment in dealing with second-order free-riders, who cooperate in the main game but refuse to contribute to punishment.

    • Karl Sigmund
    • , Hannelore De Silva
    •  & Christoph Hauert

  • Career Brief |

    Female scientists worry about balancing work with motherhood, study finds.

  • News & Views |

    A site in Norfolk, UK, provides the earliest and northernmost evidence of human expansion into Eurasia. Environmental indicators suggest that these early Britons could adapt to a range of climatic conditions.

    • Andrew P. Roberts
    •  & Rainer Grün

  • Regions |

    The Denver area is trying to overcome the isolation factor and meagre funding to excel as a bioscience hub. Laura Cassiday reports.

    • Laura Cassiday

  • Futures |

    It's just common sense ...

    • Shelly Li

  • Letter |

    Removing the protected status from poorly performing conservation areas, selling the land and using the money better elsewhere is controversial, but has a simplistic appeal. Here, it is shown that such degazetting can reap significant conservation benefits, even for the well-designed Australian network of protected areas, and even when there is a significant economic cost to transferring protected status to a new area.

    • Richard A. Fuller
    • , Eve McDonald-Madden
    •  & Hugh P. Possingham

  • Feature |

    Energized individuals have worked hard to raise awareness. But politicians have not always listened.

    • Anna Petherick

  • Special Report |

    The self-reported contentment of researchers with their chosen profession depends on more than just salaries, according to the results of our international career survey. Gene Russo parses the data.

    • Gene Russo

  • Opinion |

    More than 10,500 industrial and academic scientists worldwide completed Nature's salary and satisfaction survey, published in this issue (see page 1104). Here, five career experts comment on the results of the poll. Differences in benefits, mentoring and contentment could have national and international ramifications, they conclude.

  • News |

    University cuts are out of step with federal government's bid to spare research.

    • Quirin Schiermeier

  • Letter |

    Network theory has become pervasive in all sectors of biology, from biochemical signalling to human societies, but identification of relevant functional communities has been impaired by many nodes belonging to several overlapping groups at once, and by hierarchical structures. These authors offer a radically different viewpoint, focusing on links rather than nodes, which allows them to demonstrate that overlapping communities and network hierarchies are two faces of the same issue.

    • Yong-Yeol Ahn
    • , James P. Bagrow
    •  & Sune Lehmann

  • News |

    Radioactive isotopes nail the timeline of Egyptian dynasties.

    • Richard Lovett

  • Futures |

    A helping hand.

    • Julian Tang

  • News |

    Minister of education and science discusses plans for rebuilding the country's research base.

    • Quirin Schiermeier
    •  & Konstantin Severinov

  • Editorial |

    The re-auditing of accounts from the closed Sixth Framework Programme is generating hostility.

  • Editorial |

    It is in researchers' interests to help funding agencies quantify the economic benefits of their work.

  • Opinion |

    Clinical trials routinely exclude expectant mothers. This is unethical and unscientific, and regulators must mandate change, says Françoise Baylis, in the second of three related pieces on gender bias in biomedicine.

    • Françoise Baylis

  • News |

    As President Lula prepares to leave office, researchers expect that innovation will invigorate the economy.

    • Anna Petherick

  • Futures |

    Welcome to the twilight zone.

    • Gregory Benford

  • Opinion |

    Many researchers avoid using female animals. Stringent measures should consign this prejudice to the past, argue Irving Zucker and Annaliese Beery, in the third piece of three on gender bias in biomedicine.

    • Irving Zucker
    •  & Annaliese K. Beery

  • Opinion |

    Gender inequalities in biomedical research are undermining patient care. In the first of three related pieces, Alison M. Kim, Candace M. Tingen and Teresa K. Woodruff call on journals, funding agencies and researchers to give women parity with men, in studies and in the clinic.

    • Alison M. Kim
    • , Candace M. Tingen
    •  & Teresa K. Woodruff

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