Chimpanzees are more likely to engage in play or groom each other if they see others performing these social behaviors first, Georgia Sandars and colleagues at Durham University, U.K. report in a study publishing November 20, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

One thing known to improve mental health among students is increased school connectedness—when students feel that the adults and peers in their school care about them as individuals in addition to their learning ability. Schools are working to improve their connectedness by adding social workers to their staff to help address the mental health concerns of students. However, according to new research from The University of Texas at Arlington and Virginia Commonwealth University, many individual schools and districts are struggling with the best way to deploy these valuable resources so that students can benefit from their care.

In “The Miraculous from the Material,” MIT professor of the practice Alan Lightman offers 35 essays about scientific understanding, each corresponding to photos of spectacular natural phenomena, from spider webs to sunsets and from galaxies to hummingbirds.