On:

Studying the Medieval skeletons of people who went through the European plague (also called the Black Death), which killed 30% of Europeans, including nearly half of the people in London, between 1347 and 1351, may help us understand how disease can affect human evolution.

Anthropologist Sharon DeWitte says that these skeletons "can tell us something about the nature of human variation today and whether there is an artifact of diseases we have faced in the past. Knowing how strongly these diseases can actually shape human biology can give us tools to work with in the future to understand disease and how it might affect us."
read more

On:

The ocean off the coast of New York once had a bivalve population of TRILLIONS that once protected the area from storm surges stabilized the shoreline from Washington to Boston.

The best place for oysters is in the margin between saltwater and freshwater, where the river meets the sea, and New York’s harbor area is filled with such places. Until the European arrived and started harvesting them, oysters themselves feasted on the huge algae blooms in that area. Layer after layers of oyster shells built up for more than 7,000 years, resulting in enormous underwater reefs around nearly every shoreline, forming a natural levee.
read more

On:

You’d expect that something like buying a winning lottery ticket would cause us to take MORE risks in the future, but it doesn’t work that way. And an unexpected loss works the same way. It turns out that it’s not whether you win or lose, but whether the outcome is expected that’s relevant here. People appear to decrease their risk-taking levels after experiencing any surprising outcome–even positive ones.
read more