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Since Darwin proposed universal common ancestry (UCA) More than 150 years ago, the theory, though well supported, has remained beyond the scope of formal testing. But the author of a new letter in Nature says that the famous theory that underpins modern evolutionary biology has finally passed the first large scale quantitative hurdle.Darwin proposed that, "all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form." Over the last century and a half, qualitative evidence for this theory has steadily grown, in the numerous, surprising transitional forms found in the fossil record, for example, and in the identification of sweeping fundamental biological similarities at the molecular level.

Scientists from the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) and the University of Bayreuth say they have discovered how spiders form long, highly stable and elastic fibers from the proteins  stored in the silk gland. The results of their study are published in Nature.Spider silk consists of protein molecules, long chains comprising thousands of amino-acid elements. X-ray structure analyses show that the finished fiber has areas in which several protein chains are interlinked via stable physical connections. These connections provide the high stability. Between these connections are unlinked areas that give the fibers their great elasticity.

Lasers can now generate light pulses down to 100 attoseconds thereby enabling real-time measurements on ultrashort time scales that are inaccessible by any other methods. Scientists at the Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Time Spectroscopy (MBI) in Berlin have now demonstrated timing control with a residual uncertainty of 12 attoseconds - a new world record for the shortest controllable time scale.

A woman's touch tends to make us feel secure and increases our risk tolerance as a result, according to a new study in Psychological science. The authors believe this soothing effect originates during infancy, when children have a lot of physical contact with their mothers.During the study, if a female experimenter patted a participant on the back, they'd risk more money on an investment or gamble than if she just talked to them, or if a man did the patting.

Scientists have identified two new genes that may be risk factors for the development of late-onset Alzheimer's disease (AD), according to a new paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association.Using an intensive, genome-wide association analysis study (GWAS), the researchers identified two new genes at specific locations in the DNA called loci that reached the required genome-wide statistical significance threshold for the first time, thus identifying them as very likely associated with AD.

A recent survey of high school students shows that most have cheated on tests and homework and, as long the cheating requires effort, don't feel they're doing anything wrong.The study by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln gauged both the prevalence and perceptions of cheating among high-school students. It found the practice is widespread and many students carry misconceptions about academic dishonesty, and also identified patterns among students that may help teachers stop it.The study was published in the Mid-Western Educational Researcher.

ESA's Herschel infrared space telescope has located a hole in the side of a cloud of bright reflective gas known to astronomers as NGC 1999. The hole has provided scientists with a surprising glimpse into the end of the star-forming process.Stars are born in dense clouds of dust and gas that can now be studied in unprecedented detail with Herschel. Although jets and winds of gas have been seen coming from young stars in the past, it has always been a mystery exactly how a star uses these to blow away its surroundings and emerge from its birth cloud. NGC 1999 sits next to a black patch of sky. For most of the 20th century, such black patches have been known to be dense clouds of dust and gas that block light from passing through.

A new study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine suggests that minimum-wage employees are more likely to be obese than those who earn higher wages, adding to growing evidence that being poor is a risk factor for unhealthy weight. The authors say the study provides justification for raising minimum wage rates around the country which would allow low-income workers to make healthier choices."Our study clarifies a link that has been assumed but difficult to prove," said Paul Leigh, senior author of the study and professor in the UC Davis Center for Healthcare Policy and Research. "The correlation between obesity and poverty-level wages was very strong."

New images from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton, have helped astronomers detect a vast reservoir of intergalactic gas about 400 million light years from Earth. This discovery is the strongest evidence yet that the “missing matter” in the nearby Universe is located in an enormous web of hot, diffuse gas.

A Texas A&M University-led team of astronomers has uncovered what may be the earliest, most distant cluster of galaxies ever detected.The group of roughly 60 galaxies, called CLG J02182-05102, is nearly 10 billion years old — born just 4 billion years after the Big Bang. However, it's not the size nor the age of the cluster that astronomers find amazing. Rather, it's the surprisingly modern appearance of CLG J02182-05102 that has them baffled — a huge, red collection of galaxies typical of only present-day galaxies."It's like we dug an archaeological site in Rome and found pieces of modern Rome amongst the ruins," explains Dr. Casey Papovich, an assistant professor in the Texas A&M Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Computer analysis of sentiments expressed in a billion "tweets" during 2008-2009 yielded measures of consumer confidence and presidential job approval similar to those of well-established public opinion polls, Carnegie Mellon University researchers say.The findings suggest that analyzing the text found in streams of tweets could become a cheap, rapid means of gauging public opinion on at least some subjects. But tools for extracting public opinion from social media text are still crude and social media remain in their infancy, so the extent to which these methods could replace or supplement traditional polling is still unknown.

Working overtime may be bad for your heart, according to results from a long-running study following more than 10,000 government employees in London.The research, published in the European Heart Journal, found that, compared with people who did not work overtime, people who worked three or more hours longer than a normal, seven-hour day had a 60% higher risk of heart-related problems such as death due to heart disease, non-fatal heart attacks and angina.Researchers warn, however, that there study did not include any private sector employees and cannot be generalized as a result.