Rethinking altruistic punishment: New experimental insights
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 22-Jun-2025 13:10 ET (22-Jun-2025 17:10 GMT/UTC)
An Osaka Metropolitan University research team developed a new experimental game to explore whether people avoid witnessing selfish behavior to evade punishing others or simply to avoid confronting unfairness. The study found that avoidance is driven by both the desire to not acknowledge inequality and the wish to prevent confrontation, suggesting that altruistic punishment may be less common in real-life situations than previously believed.
An interdisciplinary team of researchers from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), and Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), The Netherlands, has projected that if the rate of global CO2 emissions continues to increase and reaches a high emission scenario, sea levels would as a result very likely rise between 0.5 and 1.9 metres by 2100. The high end of this projection’s range is 90 centimetres higher than the latest United Nations’ global projection of 0.6 to 1.0 metres.
Researchers from Arizona State University, along with their colleagues from the National University of the Peruvian Amazon, have identified an unknown family of microbes uniquely adapted to the waterlogged, low-oxygen conditions of tropical peatlands in Peru’s northwestern Amazonian rainforest.
The new research shows these microbes have a dual role in the carbon cycle and the potential to either moderate or intensify climate change. This process can either stabilize carbon for long-term storage or release it into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases, particularly CO2 and methane.
University Hospitals is now offering endoscopic spine surgery for patients needing treatment for back pain due to herniated discs in their spine. Xiaofei (Sophie) Zhou, MD, completed Arthrex's Endoscopic Spine Training course to bring this advanced procedure to the health system and recently completed the first endoscopic discectomy utilizing Arthrex technology at UH. The health system is the only one in the greater Cleveland area offering this type of ultra-minimally invasive surgery.