Marine worms might seem like lowly, slow-witted creatures, but new gene mapping shows that we might share an ancient brainy ancestor with them.
Human cognition is largely rooted in the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that enables consciousness, language and other higher-level functions...
A meticulously constructed atlas of the human brain reveals the molecular roots of mental illness—and of everyday behavior
A meticulously constructed atlas of the human brain reveals the molecular roots of mental illness—and of everyday behavior
Drug-resistant mutant bacteria produce compounds called indoles that can protect large numbers of nonresistant colony mates. New treatment strategies should follow. Steve Mirsky reports
New photos offer the best evidence yet of mollusk aeronautics
Hominids have been cutting their steak for much longer than anybody thought
The impact that a newly discovered species makes depends on the completeness of its lineage.
Okay, here's one for the annals, something that is going to make it even more difficult for evolutionary psychology to get the respect the field thinks it deserves.A controversial academic from the London School of Economics has recently penned a blog post for Psychology Today called "If Barack Obama Is Christian, Michael Jackson Was White." Satoshi Kanazawa is an evolutionary psychologist who gained attention (I'm not sure fame is the right word) for various outlandish claims, including the assertion that low intelligence is the basis for poverty and disease in places like Africa, drawing critics who suggested that he was trying to lend legitimacy to the faux science of eugenics...
The vaccinal eradication of smallpox was a watershed achievement. But with the cessation of regular vaccinations, infection rates from a related poxvirus are increasing in central Africa...
Researchers have pieced together a set of puzzling fossils from a stocky dinosaur discovered in Romania. The newly described predator helps to flesh out the spotty fossil record of carnivorous animals from Europe's Cretaceous...
An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but can knowing its genetic secrets help feed the nine billion people expected on this planet by 2050? Scientists hope so, especially considering they have added wheat this week to the list of crops that have had their genetic instruction set read...
Researchers hope to make ants a new genetic model organism to study the impact of epigenetics on everything from metabolism to social behavior
The flip side to every ending is a new beginning. We asked the visionary scientists on our advisory board what new trends will shape the decades to come
There’s a strange whiff in the media air, a sort of polyamory chic in which liberally minded journalists, an aggregate mass of antireligious pundits, and even scientists themselves have begun encouraging readers and viewers to use evolutionary theory to revisit and revise their sexual attitudes and, more importantly, their behaviors in ways that fit their animal libidos more happily.Much of this discussion is being fueled by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá’s scintillating new book Sex at Dawn , which explores how our modern, God-ridden, puritanical society conflicts with our species’ evolutionary design, a tension making us pathologically ashamed of sex...
A list of some of our favorite dystopian views of human society facing extinction
New research suggests bacteria in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico may be eating oil plumes quickly
The world's cultures have been disappearing, taking valuable knowledge with them, but there is reason to hope
Museum exhibits, conferences and events relating to the brain
New research uncovers three methods of HIV development in the male genital tract that can make the virus look different from blood-borne populations
Lasers, parasites and other methods could help prevent a disease that afflicts hundreds of millions of people
