By Elizabeth Pennisi, ScienceNOW

Look around and it’s impossible to miss the importance of social interactions to human society. They form the basis of our families, our governments, and even our global economy. But how did we become social in the first place? Researchers have long believed that it was a gradual process, evolving from couples to clans to larger communities. A new analysis, however, indicates that primate societies expanded in a burst, most likely because there was safety in numbers.

It’s a controversial idea, admits anthropologist and study author Susanne Shultz of the U...

Seven Eastern European men have been charged in New York with operating a clickjacking scheme that infected more than 4 million computers in order to hijack surfers trying to get to the iTunes store or the IRS. The enterprise allegedly netted the crooks more than $14 million.

The scam appears to have begun in 2007 and involved six Estonians and one Russian, all residing in Eastern Europe, who allegedly used multiple front companies to operate their intricate scam, which included a bogus internet advertising agency, according to the 62-page indictment (.pdf), unsealed Wednesday in the Southern...