June 20, 2012
Today is summer solstice, the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. This means that there’s a lot of light around and as a consequence, people with the “ACHOO syndrome” might be sneezing a lot. Gesundheit! Two years ago 23andMe announced a new genetic discovery that at least partially [...]
May 14, 2012
Two of the biggest physical milestones in a woman’s life are menarche (pronounced “MEN-ar-kee”), the first menstrual period in girls, and menopause, when menstruation stops and female reproductive hormones slow. These milestones are universal and mark the beginning and end of a woman’s reproductive [...]
October 5, 2011
Lone Frank, the award-winning Danish science writer, claims to be shy, but I don’t believe her. There’s nothing reserved about exposing yourself as she’s done in her entertaining and enlightening new book My Beautiful Genome: Discovering Our Genetic Future One Quirk at a Time. (Oneworld Publications, [...]
July 1, 2011
Marcus Wohlsen is on to something. An Associated Press science and biotechnology writer, Wohlsen is the author of the book BioPunk: DIY Scientists Hack the Software of Life. The book, which came out in April, outlines the parallels between the current community of upstart amateur scientists working in [...]
June 4, 2009
Great apes really do giggle when tickled, new research says - just like you and me. Researchers from the University of Hannover in Germany recorded the tickle-induced vocalizations from three human infants and 21 infant and juvenile orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos and analyzed this acoustic [...]
April 30, 2009
When scientific research is published, the authors often confess that they wish they'd collected more data. Critical reviews of research studies often say the same thing. Indeed, if there's anything scientists love, it's more data. Which is why the members of an international team of genetic [...]
April 29, 2009
I spent the better part of my undergraduate career lugging around massive biology textbooks. General biology, genetics, embryology: It didn't matter, they all weighed a ton. I pored over endless chapters of text, highlighting the important sentences, always wishing for more photos, more diagrams, more [...]
April 15, 2009
Over the past decade, there has been no shortage of studies focused on the relationship between Neanderthals and our own species, Homo sapiens. Researchers have dug deep into the fossil record and our genomes to uncover how closely related we are to the Neanderthals, whether we interacted with them, and even [...]
April 10, 2009
Ever since European explorers first came upon the African Pygmies in the mid-19th century, they have fascinated anthropologists and other researchers. Their short stature (they rarely grow to over 5 feet), unique languages, and distinct genetic signatures have led to much speculation on how such groups of [...]
March 17, 2009
Before 500 years ago people rarely went far to find a mate, choosing a husband or wife from the locally available pool of men and women. But with the dawn of European colonialism people from different parts of the world were suddenly living side by side, and had a whole new set of people to choose from when [...]
