The introduction of agriculture into Europe about 8,500 years ago changed the way people lived right down to their DNA.

Until recently, scientists could try to understand the way humans adapted genetically to changes that occurred thousands of years ago only by looking at DNA variation in today's populations. But our modern genomes contain mere echoes of the past that can't be connected to specific events.

Now, an international team reports in Nature that researchers can see how natural selection happened by analyzing ancient human DNA.

Assisted dying may become legal in Canada on Feb. 6, 2016 and given that country's recent lurch to one side of the political spectrum, doctors are worried that a more social authoritarian government will penalize then if they have conscientious objections to assisted dying.

Dr. John Fletcher, Editor-in-Chief of CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) argues that just as physicians in Canada are currently allowed to opt out of referring pregnant women for abortion, so too must a similar option be available in the case of referrals for assisted death.

Engineers have developed a new technology that uses an oscillating electric field to easily and quickly isolate drug-delivery nanoparticles from blood. 

Nanoparticles are generally one thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair and are difficult to separate from plasma, the liquid component of blood, due to their small size and low density. Traditional methods to remove nanoparticles from plasma samples typically involve diluting the plasma, adding a high concentration sugar solution to the plasma and spinning it in a centrifuge, or attaching a targeting agent to the surface of the nanoparticles.

These methods either alter the normal behavior of the nanoparticles or cannot be applied to some of the most common nanoparticle types.

Champion of regeneration, the freshwater polyp Hydra is capable of reforming a complete individual from any fragment of its body. It is even able to remain alive when all its neurons have disappeared. Researcher the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, have discovered how: cells of the epithelial type modify their genetic program by overexpressing a series of genes, among which some are involved in diverse nervous functions. Studying Hydra cellular plasticity may thus influence research in the context of neurodegenerative diseases. The results are published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

Migration between different communities of bacteria is the key to the type of gene transfer that can lead to the spread of traits such as antibiotic resistance, according to researchers. While horizontal gene transfer - also known as bacterial sex - has long been acknowledged as central to microbial evolution, why it is able to exert such a strong effect has remained a mystery. 

But now scientists at Oxford University have demonstrated through mathematical modelling that the secret is migration, whereby movement between communities of microbes greatly increases the chances of different species of bacteria being able to swap DNA and adopt new traits.

The study sheds new light on how the spread of traits such as antibiotic resistance is able to happen.

While in the process of fact-checking information that is contained in the book I am finalizing, I had the pleasure to have a short discussion with Gordon Kane during the weekend. A Victor Weisskopf distinguished professor at the University of Michigan as well as a director emeritus of the Michigan Center for Theoretical Physics, Gordon is one of the fathers of Supersymmetry, and has devoted the last three decades to its study.

Most people who take up cigarette smoking, and place themselves at greater risk of cancer and lung ailments, start when they are young. A new RAND Corporation analysis finds the answer may be as simple as hiding them.

The scholars created a laboratory replica of a convenience store to examine whether limiting displays of cigarettes in retail outlets can reduce the intention of young people to begin smoking. Researchers found an 11 percent reduction in cigarette smoking susceptibility when the tobacco 'power wall' was hidden compared to when the display of tobacco products was visible behind the cashier.  

Previous research has shown that the sugar sucrose plays a role in controlling key fruit genes involved in sugar metabolism. Efforts to control these genes succeeded in increasing the sugar content in fruit but also resulted in stunted growth.

Carnegie Mellon University scientists have discovered a crucial difference in the way learning occurs in the brains of adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Published in NeuroImage, Sarah Schipul and Marcel Just examined how the brains of typical and ASD individuals gradually became adapted to visual patterns they were learning, without awareness of the pattern, or implicit learning.

Our Sun is a relatively quiet star that only occasionally releases solar flares or blasts of energetic particles that threaten satellites and power grids. You might think that smaller, cooler stars would be even more sedate. However, astronomers have now identified a tiny star with a monstrous temper. It shows evidence of much stronger flares than anything our Sun produces. If similar stars prove to be just as stormy, then potentially habitable planets orbiting them are likely to be much less hospitable than previously thought.