Science News

Author: Ian Wilmut, Roger Highfield
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Year Published: 2006
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On July 5, 1996, Dolly, the first animal ever to have been cloned from an adult cell, was born under the watchful eyes of Ian Wilmut and his team of researchers at the Roslin Institute. Dolly's birth sparked all sorts of political and ethical concerns while providing hope that cloning might one day cure major illnesses like Parkinson's and diabetes. In After Dolly, Wilmut has teamed with award winning science journalist Roger Highfield to defend cloning and argue for continued scientific research. Read the rest

A team of scientists led by anthropologist Tim D White of the University of California, Berkeley recently found 31 fossils of Australopithecus anamensis, our 4.1 million year old ancestor, while digging in Ethiopia's Middle Awash valley. The fossils, which come from at least 8 individuals, are anatomically similar to an earlier hominid, Ardipithecus ramidus, which lived 4.4 to 4.1 million years ago.

"There may have been times when one early hominid species evolved into another one without branching off into multiple species," White says. His view contrasts with that of researchers who suspect that hominids branched into many species over the past 6 million to 7 million years. Read the rest

In 1871, Darwin published his controversial Descent of Man which described how man and apes had evolved from a common ancestor and opened the floodgates on the debate for human evolution.

One of the biggest questions raised against the theory was how the human mind could have evolved from a more primitive animal brain. Humans make complex decisions, are driven by emotions, impose social and moral constructs, and participate in religious activities. Surely, there was a distinction between the human mind and the animal mind. In addition, since at least the Greeks, philosophers had been arguing for a mind/body dualism, meaning the two were fundamentally other and separate. Read the rest

If you ask the religious right, they'll tell you that homosexuality is a choice. If you ask the Gay and Lesbian community, they'll say that sexuality is something we're born with. But what do Americans think? To find out, Scientific American Mind conducted an online poll of over 4200 Americans. The results showed that only a small minority believe that sexual orientation is a conscious choice. Read the rest

One of the most extraordinary transitional fossils has been found - a 383 million year old ‘Fishapod.’ Transitional fossils are the remains of two different kinds of organisms mixed together. This one is called Tiktaalik (pronounced tic-TAH-lick) and means ‘large shallow water fish.’

Fossils of the recently discovered creature are approximately 9ft long and were dub out of rock formations on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic. It’s been dubbed ‘fishapod’ because it has the scales, teeth and gills of a fish but also a neck, bones in its pectoral fins that look like a primitive wrist and fingers, a big rib cage, which suggests the creature had lungs.

The discovery adds to the growing number of transitional fossils that evolution advocates cite as proof. In particular, it’s a great example of the fish-tetrapod transition.

For coverage, see Time, Nature, and the NY Times.

Source: Boing Boing

If you’ve ever wondered why men are hard coded for a ‘recovery period’ after orgasm, rest assured that scientists are working finding the answer.

A current study compared men’s prolactin levels after sex with a partner with levels after masturbation. It turns out that orgasm from intercourse increases blood prolactin levels 400% in both sexes. (Whether that translates to sex with a partner being 400% better, as the New Scientist Headline claims, seems a bit subjective.) Read the rest

Here’s a nifty trick to keep you calm during your next public speaking engagement. Have penetrative sex beforehand.

A recent study compared the effects of various types of sexual activity on blood pressure when a person must later engage in something strenuous. The results found that people that engaged in penetrative sex were less stressed and their blood pressure returned to normal faster than those who had only masturbated or had non-penetrative sex. Read the rest

According to a small study of 61 women in rural Guatemala, high levels of the stress hormone cortisol may cause miscarriage. Mothers with increased levels of this hormone were three times more likely to have a miscarriage than mothers that didn’t show increases in stress hormones.

The researchers found that women whose cortisol levels significantly increased over their baseline during the first three weeks of pregnancy were 2.7 times more likely to suffer a pregnancy loss than women with no cortisol increase. Nine of 10 pregnancies to women with high cortisol levels ended in miscarriage, compared with only four of 12 to women with stable cortisol.

(Source: New Scientist)