Why have some of our genes evolved rapidly? It is widely believed that Darwinian natural selection is responsible, but research led by a group at Uppsala University suggests that a separate neutral…

Despite the fact that most of us see our four-legged friends walking around every day, most people (including many experts in natural history museums and illustrators for veterinary anatomy text…

A new study finds swimming, having a private well or septic system, and other factors not involving food consumption were major risk factors for bacterial intestinal infections not occurring in…

Some men are Baptists, others Catholics; my father was an Oldsmobile man - Jean Shepherd, "A Christmas Story" Do you have brand loyalty?   Some of it may be historical ideas of quality, to be…

Researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health have released findings identifying factors that affected evacuation from the World Trade Center (WTC) Towers after the terrorist…

The only thing that gets less respect than ethanol these days are batteries -  having to replace batteries in a Prius and the acid rain that comes from manufacturing them is why the Prius was…

People have found plenty to criticize in the last year but if we look at the last few decades, there is actually a lot more American equality - in overall happiness.   Which is really looking at…

A study published in Journal of the American Geriatrics Society suggests that the use of certain medications in elderly populations may be associated with cognitive decline. The study examined the…

Children who talk on cell phones while crossing streets are at a higher risk for injuries or death in a pedestrian accident, said psychologists at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) in a…

http://www.leukemia-lymphoma.org/all_page.adp?item_id=161418#aml

On January 25, 1945, sodium fluoride was slowly poured into Grand Rapids , Michigan ’s public water supply to prove that fluoridation reduces children’s tooth decay…

The world got lucky on February 12th, 1809 with the birth of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin. In the United States, Lincoln's 200th birthday will be celebrated in acknowledgement that he was…

It wasn't always the case that people believed in continental drift, German geologist and meteorologist Alfred Wegener's(1)  theory that parts of the Earth's crust slowly drift atop a liquid…

Genes that contain instructions for making proteins make up less than 2% of the human genome. Yet, for unknown reasons, most of our genome is transcribed into RNA.  Investigating all transcripts…

Dead zones are low-oxygen areas in the ocean where higher life forms such as fish, crabs and clams are not able to live.   In shallow coastal regions, for examples, dead zones can be caused by…

Psoriasis affects some 7.5 million people in the United States, causing sore, itchy patches of red, scaly skin. In many cases psoriasis is not only disfiguring; between 10 and 30 percent of patients…

This fascinating article at Scientific American, about human and animal consciousness, contains the following passage:"In humans, the short-term storage of symbolic information—as when you enter an…

In the latest Vanity Fair is a brilliant piece of journalism, Goodbye to All That: An Oral History of the Bush White House by Cullen Murphy and Todd Purdum. In a fun, easy-to-read format, it tells…

In a Times News Review interview, Marcus du Sautoy, our new Oxford University Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, says: I became a mathematician and not a scientist because science…

For those of you who still are not reading Evolution: Education and Outreach, here's another reason to check it out. Eugenie Scott and Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education have a…