Have we really stopped evolving? In Cosmos magazine, Steve Jones argues that human evolution is coming to an end:

The question I have is: will human evolution really continue? I think the evidence shows that human evolution has largely come to a halt.

He lists three components necessary for human evolution:

First of all there's variation, which comes from mutation. Second, natural selection, which comes from inherited differences between individuals and their ability to reproduce.

When a fake pandemic is being generated by media corporations having a slow news week, fake medicine is sure to pop up and take advantage of it.   The Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (RPSGB) today issued a warning to the public about the risks of buying online medicines for swine influenza, such as Tamiflu or Relenza.

David Pruce, RPSGB Director of Policy said, "With the current fears about swine flu, we are concerned that unscrupulous people are exploiting the public's fears about swine flu by offering to sell the antiviral drugs Tamiflu and Relenza over the internet.

"This is a golden opportunity for counterfeiters to offer fake supplies of these drugs.

When a jet is flying faster than the speed of sound, one small mistake can tear it apart.   It was so feared that the physics blended with the supernatural in the mid 1940s.  Luckily, Chuck Yeager didn't believe in demons.

There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die. His controls would freeze up, his plane would buffet wildly, and he would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach 1 on the meter, seven hundred and fifty miles an hour, where the air could no longer move out of the way. He lived behind a barrier through which they said no man would ever pass. They called it the sound barrier.

Calculations by Ryan O'Leary and Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics suggest that hundreds of massive black holes, left over from the galaxy-building days of the early universe, may wander the Milky Way.   Rogue black holes roaming our galaxy, threatening to swallow anything that gets too close?  Do we call the UN?

No, Earth is safe. The closest rogue black hole should reside thousands of light-years away. Astronomers are eager to locate them, though, for the clues they will provide to the formation of the Milky Way. 

As you know, when different species directly compete for the same finite resource, only the fitter will survive.  A new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) says they have demonstrated that in a laboratory environment, along with how, when given a variety of resources, the different species will evolve to become increasingly specialized, each filling different niches within their common ecosystem.

We're big fans of oxytocin understanding.  It generally makes people nicer and  and relationships are difficult.   When you introduce stressful issues into relationships, such as home finances, it can only get worse.    Oxytocin has been found to make relationships a little less difficult because it can take the "edge" off sensitive discussions.

The actual biology of human social relationships is just beginning to emerge as research on social cognition conducted in animals is now informing research in humans. 

According to a 19th century nursery rhyme, the biological distinctions between males and females are thus:

What are little boys made of?
What are little boys made of? 
Frogs and snails
And puppy-dogs' tails,
That's what little boys are made of.
What are little girls made of?
What are little girls made of? 
Sugar and spice
And all things nice,
That's what little girls are made of.

This was pre-Mendel but we bet he agreed.    Boys seem to really get cheated on cute rhymes about gender differences.   But what came first, the rhyme or the differences?   

If you haven't heard of swine flu - Influenza A H1N1 - by now... well, you have unless you can't read, which means you aren't on this website.   Reading too many popular media articles may have led you to believe there's an epidemic on your doorstep.   Fortunately, it's just an epidemic of hysteria.  The number of reported swine flu cases (no deaths edit - okay, one death, still not worth a panic) in the US is 1/1000th of the regular flu deaths that occur each year.  Although a H1N1 vaccine is a few months off and would undoubtedly cure your hysteria, perhaps in the mean time learning more about thine swine flu enemy will lessen your inner fears of the microbial unknown.

Summer is coming. The time of camping and icy cold drinks. I've been working on developing a freeze dried beer that comes in a small pack and rehydrates fully carbonated with all its alcohol intact.

The march toward understanding the etiology of autism took a giant step foward today.

In a landmark genome-wide association study, published online today in Nature, researchers found that a variant on chromosome 5 was about 20 percent more common in autistic children.

Researchers examined DNA from more than 3,100 people in 780 families (with at least two autistic children), and then looked at an additional 1,200 individuals from families affected by autism, as well as nearly 6,500 healthy controls.