You wouldn’t know it by current world events, but humans actually evolved to be peaceful, cooperative and social animals.
- ‘Man the Hunter’ theory is debunked in new book, February 18, 2006, By Neil Schoenherr

So begins a discussion regarding humans as a prey species rather than predators.  It isn't true, and it doesn't even make any sense.  After all, what do any of those traits have to do with being a predator or prey?

Does anyone believe that wolves or lions aren't social?  or cooperative?  or peaceful amongst themselves?

Long ago, obesity and high blood pressure were signs of being a wealthy elite. But the world has progressed and now even the poorest countries can eat enough to be fat. As recently as 1980 those health risks were more prevalent in countries with a higher income but a new analysis in Circulation shows that the average body mass index of the population is now just as high or higher in middle-income countries. For blood pressure, the situation has reversed among women, with a tendency for blood pressure to be higher in poorer countries.

Rising temperatures will lead to a "greening" of the Arctic by mid-century, according to a new numerical model. 

The greening not only will have effects on plant life, the researchers noted, but also on the wildlife that depends on vegetation for cover. The greening could also have a multiplier effect on warming, as dark vegetation absorbs more solar radiation than ice, which reflects sunlight.

In the paper, scientists detail their new computer projections stating that wooded areas in the Arctic could increase by as much as 50 percent over the coming decades. The researchers also show that this dramatic greening will accelerate climate warming at a rate greater than previously expected. 

Chlorogenic acids, natural substances extracted from unroasted coffee beans, can help control the elevated blood sugar levels and body weight that underpin type 2 diabetes. 

Researchers visiting South Sudan identified a new genus of bat after discovering a rare specimen and determining the bat was the same as one originally captured in nearby Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1939 and named Glauconycteris superba but that it did not fit with other bats in the genus Glauconycteris.

They placed this bat into a new genus - Niumbaha. The word means "rare" or "unusual" in Zande, the language of the Azande people in Western Equatoria State, where the bat was captured. The bat is just the fifth specimen of its kind ever collected, and the first in South Sudan, which declared independence in 2011. 

Seemingly benign differences in genetic code  can predispose people to chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, a condition that is hard to predict and often debilitating enough to cause cancer patients to stop their treatment early, a Mayo Clinic study has found.

Chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy affects an estimated 20 to 30 percent of cancer patients treated with chemotherapy agents. The symptoms can be as mild as a light tingling or numbness, but can progress to a loss of feeling in the hands and feet, or to the point where patients can no longer walk normally and are left with a permanent feeling of numbness or pain. Currently, there is no way to predict which patients undergoing chemotherapy will develop this side effect or to what degree.

Some assume that evolution only occurs gradually, over hundreds or thousands of years, but scientists have shown otherwise numerous times and now a new paper in Ecology Letters affirms that environmental change can drive hard-wired evolutionary changes in animal species in a matter of generations.

Researchers found significant genetically transmitted changes in laboratory populations of soil mites in just 15 generations leading to a doubling of the age at which the mites reached adulthood and large changes in population size. The results  demonstrate that evolution can be a game-changer, even in the short-term.

Now that the Higgs has been found, the current hype in popular science magazines suggests that the most pressing question in fundamental physics research is whether new particles will be found at the Large Hadron Collider: Is Supersymmetry the right extension of the standard model? Or are there new extra dimensions of space-time ? Can microscopic black holes be created in particle collisions ? I think all of you have heard some of these questions enough times by now.

In honor of National Robotics Week 2013 (April 6-14) I am adding this article that I originally posted on my Society of Robots blog page.

In this article you will learn how to build a programmable Snap Circuits Rover by adding a PICAXE micro controller.

An analysis of how carbon is trapped and released by iron-rich volcanic magma offers clues about our early atmospheric evolution and also that of other terrestrial bodies.

The composition of a planet's atmosphere starts far beneath the surface. When mantle material melts to form magma, it traps subsurface carbon. As magma moves upward toward the surface and pressure decreases, that carbon is released as a gas. On Earth, carbon is trapped in magma as carbonate and degassed as carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that helps Earth's atmosphere trap heat from the sun. But how carbon is transferred from underground to the atmosphere in other planets — and how that might influence greenhouse conditions — wasn't well understood.