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Here's Where Your Backyard Was 300 Million Years Ago

We may use terms like "grounded" and terra firma to mean stability and consistency but geology...

Convergent Evolution Cheat Sheet Now 120 Million Years Old

One tenet of natural selection is a random walk of genes but nature may be more predictable than...

Synchrotron Could Shed Light On Exotic Dark Photons

There are many hypothetical particles proposed to explain dark matter and one idea to explore how...

The Pain Scale Is Broken But This May Fix It

Chronic pain is reported by over 20 percent of the global population but there is no scientific...

News Staff

News Releases From All Over The World, Right To You... Read More »

Polar Bears Genetic Ancestry Traced Back 600,000 Years

May 17 2012 | comment(s)

Polar bears are evolutionarily older and genetically more distinct than believed. This largest Arctic carnivore evolved as early as 600,000 years ago, five times older than previously recognized.

Maybe Volcanoes Are A Girl's Best Friend

May 17 2012 | comment(s)

What do diamonds and chocolate have in common? Well, urban legend says girls love them both. Maybe we can add volcanoes if we are using correlational woo.

A previously unrecognized volcanic process similar to one used in chocolate manufacturing is important in the dynamics of volcanic eruptions. 'Fluidised spray granulation' is a type of gas injection and spraying process used to form smooth coatings on confectionaries but it can also occur during kimberlite eruptions to produce well-rounded particles containing fragments from the Earth's mantle - most notably diamonds.

Rhine River - Now With 5 Million More Years!

May 16 2012 | comment(s)

Based on new fossil evidence, the age of the Rhine river is five million years older than previously believed.

The famous Rhine of song and legend flows through Switzerland, Austria, Germany and the Netherlands on its way to the North Sea. The catchment area of the Rhine, around 1,200 kilometers of it, draws from Luxembourg, Belgium, France, Lichtenstein and Italy. As widely known as the river is, its original age has remained a science puzzle.

Meat And Masculinity: Vegetarians Have An Uphill Perception Battle

May 16 2012 | comment(s)

Men are generally more reluctant to try vegetarian products and a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research says that is influenced by a strong association of meat with masculinity.

"We examined whether people in Western cultures have a metaphoric link between meat and men" write the authors. And they concluded there was a strong cultural connection to meat - especially muscle meat, like steak.

Evolutionary psychologists would likely disagree, as do unbiased dietary scientists.

False Positives: Genes Have No Meaningful Relationship To Economic Decisions And Political Attitudes

May 16 2012 | comment(s)

Around election season, in whatever country you are in (assuming you have elections) you can tell True Believers in their earnest politics truly wish the other side could be labeled as having defective brains and genetics and therefore be cured - or at least sterilized.

Hatchery Salmon Versus Wild Salmon

May 16 2012 | comment(s)

A group of studies says that salmon raised in man-made hatcheries can harm wild salmon through competition for food and habitat. Salmon, which survived millions of years of evolution, are in danger from...salmon.

The studies provide new evidence that fast-growing hatchery fish compete with wild fish for food and habitat in the ocean as well as in the rivers where they return to spawn and even raises questions about whether the ocean can supply enough food to support future increases in hatchery fish while still sustaining wild salmon.