Fears that sex-linked chromosomes, such as the male Y chromosome, are doomed to extinction have been refuted in a new genetic study which examines the sex chromosomes of chickens. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looked at how genes on sex-linked chromosomes are passed down generations and linked…
Cells linked to empathy and consciousness in primates may offer clues to human self-awareness
One day after new test results showed that only 32 percent of U.S. 8th graders are proficient in science, a group of 26 states has helped draft a document that may bring about a major overhaul of science education in this country. Known as the Next Generation Science Standards, the draft sets ambitious new expectations…
In the future, when our kids’ kids are studying the origins of cybernetic humans, they will learn that one of the first pieces of the anatomy to be invented was the butt. And they will learn that the first robot butt was named Shiri, and its creators wanted it to be happy. Inventors at the…
Using state of the art computer simulations, a team of astronomers from the University of Bonn in Germany have found the first evidence that the way in which stars form depends on their birth environment. The team, based at the University of Bonn in Germany, publish their results in the journal Monthly Notices of the…
Teleportation is the extraordinary ability to transfer objects from one location to another without travelling through the intervening space. The idea is not that the physical object is teleported but the information that describes it. This can then be applied to a similar object in a new location which effectively takes on the new identity….
The problem of the self – what it is that makes you you – has exercised philosophers and theologians for millennia. Today it is also a hotly contested scientific question, and the science is confirming what the Buddha, Scottish philosopher David Hume and many other thinkers maintained: that there is no concrete identity at the…
Culture has long been proposed to be a distinguishing feature of the human species. However, an increasing amount of evidence from the field has shown that in several animals, differences in behaviors between populations actually reflect the presence of culture in these species. These studies have mainly come from populations that live far apart from…
Life-bearing planets may exist in vast numbers in the space between stars in our Milky Way galaxy. An international team of researchers argue a few hundred thousand billion free-floating Earth-sized planets may exist in the space between stars. Writing in the journal Astrophysics and Space Science, they propose the planets originated in the early universe…
Cambridge archaeologists working in Turkey have found the evidence for a previously unknown ancient language which dates back more than 2,500 years, to the time of the Assyrian Empire. The archaeologists working at Ziyaret Tepe, the probable site of the ancient Assyrian city of Tušhan, believe that this language may have been spoken by deportees…