A new analysis confirms what we already knew - the evolutionary relationships among animals are not simple and the traditional idea that animal evolution has followed a trajectory from simple to complex—from sponge to chordate—had met a dramatic exception in the metazoan tree of life.

But the new study suggests that the so-called "lower" metazoans (including Placozoa, corals, and jellyfish) evolved in parallel to "higher" animals (all other metazoans, from flatworms to chordates).  They say that means Placozoans—large amoeba-shaped, multi-cellular animals—have passed over sponges and other organisms as an animal that most closely mirrors the root of this tree of life.

Mr Yohei Sasakawa, WHO Goodwill Ambassador for the Elimination of Leprosy and Japanese Government Goodwill Ambassador for the Human Rights of People Affected by Leprosy, has called for an end to the common use of the word leper.

Speaking at the launch in London of the fourth Global Appeal to End Stigma and Discrimination Against People Affected by Leprosy, held to coincide with World Leprosy Day, he said that the word carries the meaning of a pariah, or social outcast.

Mr Sasakawa said that people affected by leprosy have demanded that the term not be used.

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 books) apparently still don't know how they do it.

A new study in Current Biology  shows that anatomists, taxidermists, and toy designers get the walking gait of horses and other quadruped animals wrong about half the time, despite the fact that their correct walking behavior was described and published more than 120 years ago.

Who says football is dangerous only to the people who have 320 lb. linemen that can do a 4.4 second 40-yard dash flying at them?    We can get hurt too, namely by choking on a chicken wing.   Or getting a tummy ache from too much Bratwurst.

Super Bowl game day is actually pretty dangerous.   People get up and cheer too quickly and pull a muscle, there are drunken driving accidents and people who drink too much and fail to get up and go to the bathroom can also develop a problem called urinary retention, a condition where the bladder gets so full that the muscles are not strong enough to generate a stream.

Can't help being the life of the party?   Us either.  

Maybe we were just born that way.

Researchers from Harvard University and the University of California, San Diego have found that our place in a social network is influenced in part by our genes, according to new findings published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.   This is the first study to examine the inherited characteristics of social networks and to establish a genetic role in the formation and configuration of these networks. 

While it might be expected that genes affect personality, these findings go further and illustrate a genetic influence on the structure and formation of an individual's social group. 

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 (nonadaptive) process has made a significant contribution to human evolution.