Obese children exposed to high levels of air pollutants were nearly three times as likely to have asthma, compared with non-obese children and lower levels of pollution exposure, according to a new report. 

"Adam", our most common male ancestor, walked the earth 209,000 years ago, 9,000 years earlier than previously believed and within the time frame of his other half "Eve", the genetic maternal ancestor of mankind, according to a new paper. 

Writing in the European Journal of Human Genetics, Dr. Eran Elhaik from the University of Sheffield and colleagues also take the opportunity to blow up some other research, such as the discovery that the Y chromosome predated humanity (the A00 lineage) and originated in a different species through interbreeding, which dates "Adam" to be much older. 

A new biofuel has been created from yeast and ordinary table sugar. The yeast produces oils and fats, known as lipids, that can be used in place of petroleum-derived products. 

It has something everyone can love. And hate. It's a biofuel, which environments love, but the yeast has been genetically optimized, which environments hate. And it uses table sugar, which will make Mark Bittman and New York Times readers recoil in diet fad horror.

Comments on anti-smoking public service announcements (PSAs) in online forums like YouTube degrade the persuasiveness of the videos - even if the comments are positive. PSAs lose their effectiveness when the public being protected is allowed to discuss.

Comments are controversial, and even science media is not immune. The problem is not spam, organizations can get rid of that by requiring a login. Contradictory comments are also a concern and so some popular websites that prefer to talk at the audience have banned comments by the public entirely.

Why does beer transform from a liquid to a foamy state after an impact? Science is on the wave propagation case.

As you know, if you shake a carbonated beverage, it will foam over when you open it. But one messy and slightly dangerous bar trick involves hitting a bottle on the opening and watching the base explode. It can happen unintentionally also. Home brewers of beer call this a bottle bomb.

How did we get limbs from ancestral fish fins? It's a fascinating topic, a science enigma.

Our first four-legged land ancestor came out of the sea about 350 million years ago. Watching a lungfish, our closest living fish relative, crawl on its four pointed fins gives us an idea of what the first evolutionary steps on land may have looked like. However, the transitional path between fin structural elements in fish and limbs in tetrapods remains elusive.