In 2013, President Obama threatened to shut down the government if Congress did not do what he wanted. Congress replied in kind and so we got The Sequester, where government functions were halted unless they were specially exempted. NASA and the National Science Foundation were shuttered, the Smithsonian Panda Cam was turned off, science was doomed - but while scuttling science the president kept 436 personal White House staffers were kept on the payroll as "essential".

Modern humans date back only about 200,000 years. How did that turn into the population of the planet and the extinction of Neanderthals? We have to leave the world of science to speculate on that but physical evidence does provide some guideposts.

Fossil records show that some anatomically modern human groups reached the Levantine corridor - the modern Middle East - as early as 100,000 years ago but genetic testing indicates that human populations inhabiting the globe today descended from a single group that migrated from Africa only 70,000 years ago. 30,000 years is a gigantic gap and there has been little evidence to bridge the contradictory hypotheses. 

We are all familiar with the following scenarios: a woman and a man are having a conversation. She is warm and friendly and clearly interested in the conversation. He interprets her behavior as sexual interest. Or she is warm and friendly and clearly interested in the conversation and he thinks she is just being friendly and then she wonders if he's gay.

Same behavior, different interpretations. 

Men and women misunderstand each other a lot and psychologists in the Department of Psychology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) believe that we are built that way by biology and time - we have evolved to get the wrong idea about sexual interest.

Antioxidants are natural food ingredients that protect cells from harmful influences. Their main task is to neutralize so-called "free radicals" which are produced in the process of oxidation and which are responsible for cell degeneration.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, and the University of Lund, Sweden, now show that vinegar flies are able to detect these protective substances by using olfactory cues. Odors that are exclusively derived from antioxidants attract flies, increase feeding behavior and trigger oviposition in female flies.

Neonatal intestinal disorders that prevent infants from getting the nutrients they need may be caused by defects in the lysosomal system that occur before weaning, according to a new study. Lysosomes are cellular recycling centers responsible for breaking down all kinds of biological material.

The study in PLOS Genetics links lysosomal dysfunction with intestinal disorders for the first time, pointing to a previously unknown target for research and future therapies to help infants unable to absorb milk nutrients and gain weight, a diagnosis called failure to thrive.

Both the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have recently released assessments that strongly support the safety of bisphenol A (BPA). 

Jean Valentine, a bombe operator at Bletchley in the 1940s. Rui Vieira/PA

By Bryony Norburn, University of Buckingham

Almost 2,500 women of child-bearing age in the United Kingdom are at risk of transmitting mitochondrial disease to their children, evidence of how many families could potentially be helped by new IVF techniques to it.

The paper adds data to emotional debates about new regulations.  

Mitochondrial diseases are caused by inherited mutations in the DNA contained in mitochondria - tiny structures present in every cell that generate energy. Mitochondrial diseases can be devastating and particularly affect tissues that have high energy demands - brain, muscle (including heart), liver and kidney.

90 percent of the American public consider themselves spiritual so why is there a belief that 'religious' people are less likely to accept science? Environmentalism is certainly akin to its own religion, as is alternative medicine, and they are also widely considered anti-science, yet all three groups consider themselves fans of science - just not some science they happen not to like.

Electric cars are fine for people who have another car as a back-up or who only make short trips or who are not afraid of a little charge rage in the office parking lot.

For everyone else, electric cars only work if they are heavily subsidized. 

To become mainstream, and not just toys for elites like a Tesla, batteries need to get battery or they need to be leased. Otherwise, they remain in the realm of well-connected CEOs who get gigantic government subsidies to set up shop - like Tesla.