Culture

Sure, they're from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but words and phrases from Star Wars have taken on a life of their own in modern English. For the first time, a study reveals how deep-rooted offerings like "to the dark side" truly are.

The earliest spice mix for a Southeast Asian curry has been identified on a sandstone slab excavated from the Óc Eo site in Vietnam. Incredibly, many of the ingredients are still key in curries today, but it also tells a tale about ancient trade routes.

In a study that blows apart the long-held stereotype of women historically playing the role of caregivers and homemakers in societies, researchers have discovered that across they board they've long been born hunters, equal to their male counterparts.

Scientists have demonstrated that clusters of brain cells in a lab dish can be taught to play Pong in an approximation of sentience. This is the first time that these cells have performed goal-directed tasks, opening the door for better brain models.

​In the largest cross-cultural survey ever conducted, a team of anthropologists has determined 7 moral rules they suggest are universal. Surveying ethnographic accounts from 60 different cultures the research concludes every single culture analyzed seems to be ruled by the same moral precepts.​

To us vampires are the stuff of movies, but for many ancient cultures the undead were seen as a very real threat. Now archaeologists excavating a children’s cemetery in Italy have uncovered the skeleton of a child with a large stone jammed into its mouth, to prevent the body returning from the dead.

To improve our understanding and find new potential ways to treat Alzheimer's disease, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital have produced one of the most detailed models of “Alzheimer’s-in-a-dish,” using cultures of human neural cells that display neuroinflammation.

Researchers have been able to create an artificial mouse embryo using two types of stem cells and a 3D scaffold, a milestone that could help scientists better understand the precarious early stages of embryo development in humans.

In part two of our series on Hollywood and Hacking we travel through the 1990s, a wondrous era where hackers wore day-glo rave outfits, serial killers slipped into virtual reality worlds and and all computers consisted of colorful CGI mainframes

People diss Twitter for its triviality, but give me lunch tweets and lighthearted nonsense over pitchforks, death threats and endless opinions any day, says Gizmag's James Holloway.

A new range of mobile phones from ENMAC are aimed at the Islamic market.

A new study has shown that regardless of culture or previous exposure, people were accurately able to recognize three emotions in Western music - happiness, sadness and fear.