Research backs up the idea of “New year, new me.” In a 2014 paper, organizational psychologists introduced the idea of the “fresh start effect,” referring to a period of increased motivation at the ...

“Time flies,” “time waits for no one,” “as time goes on”: The way we speak about time tends to strongly imply that the passage of time is some sort of real process that happens out there in the world.

From “experimental archaeology” to the mysterious appeal of exploration, the wide-ranging subjects detailed in these titles captivated Smithsonian magazine’s science contributors this year Joe Spring, ...