Plague trackers: Researchers cover thousands of years in a quest to understand the elusive origins of the Black Death

Seeking to better understand more about the origins and movement of bubonic plague, in ancient and contemporary times, researchers at McMaster University, University of Sydney and the University of Melbourne, have completed a painstaking granular examination of hundreds of modern and ancient genome sequences, creating the largest analysis of its kind.

Can Social Unrest, Riot Dynamics Be Modeled?

Episodes of social unrest rippled throughout Chile in 2019. Researchers specializing in economics, mathematics and physics in Chile and the U.K. banded together to explore the surprising social dynamics people were experiencing. In the journal Chaos, the team reports that social media is changing the rules of the game, and previously applied epidemic-like models, on their own, may no longer be enough to explain current rioting dynamics.