Urban and rural differences in mortality and causes of death in historical Poland. Unfortunately good demographic data on urban vs. rural death rates only date from the early modern era, but here in this Polish data set from the 19th and early 20th century you see the large urban > small urban > rural rank order in death rates. If you dig through the literature you will find that London has older records, and a definite death over birth excess for much of the period right before and during the Industrial Revolution.
The Dingo – Australia’s Wildlife Watchdog. “Viewed from a historical perspective, the presence of dingoes was strongly associated with the persistence of native Australian animals.” Tell that to the thylacine! Though seriously, the dingo has been native to Australian for ~4,000 years, so I suppose this goes to show how ecosystems can equilibrate to the presence of invasive species over time.
Smarter Teams Are More Sensitive, Have More Women? Everyone knows that a team with all chiefs is going to have problems. An organismic model for human societies and organizations is appealing because of its analogical power, but these sorts of data indicate that the analogy may be rooted in concrete more-than-the-sum-of-their-parts dynamics.
Surprising flexibility in a conserved Hox transcription factor over 550 million years of evolution. “Our findings show that variation of a pleiotropic transcription factor is more extensive than previously imagined, suggesting that evolutionary plasticity may be widespread among regulatory genes.”