Depictions of the “tree of life” have come a long way — and changed in meaning — since this 17th century Russian take on it. (Credit Wikimedia Commons)
Who doesn’t love free stuff? I know I do. And a renovation of open access evolution database TimeTree is a treasure chest of data for the taking.
The idea of a tree of life has been an element across many cultures for millennia, but since the days of Darwin it’s become a handy way to visualize how sp ...read more
(Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
TRAPPIST-1 opens up an exciting field for astronomers: a small, nearby, compact planetary system with seven Mars- to Earth-size worlds orbiting in days or weeks instead of months and years. What’s more, because their star is small and cool, all the planets may be habitable.
Maybe. Two new papers are out on TRAPPIST-1. One makes the chances for life even more ripe, while the other virtually strips away all chances of habitability.
The Bad News
Let’s step b ...read more
(Credit: Shutterstock)
Researchers keep moving the goal posts on exercise. For a while, the trend was to show benefits of minimal exercise, perhaps as an olive branch to people too busy for a full workout. Lately, the trend is essentially to say effort matters; more exercise means better health. So which is right? Both are. But one overrides standard health guidelines.
Health institutions say people need about 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of intense aerobic exercise each week. Moderat ...read more
Image: Flickr/Roland Tanglao
If my body could play an April Fool’s joke on me, my guess it would be this one. Here, a 32 year old patient was horrified to notice “worms” in his poop. And like any sane person would, he carefully fished a sample of the worm-laden poop out of the toilet to bring to his doctor. Given the patient’s travel history, the doctor suspected a hookworm infection, and sent the sample off to the lab. Turns out the “worms” were mung bean s ...read more
(Credit: Shutterstock)
Ancient cannibalism may not have been as nutritious as previously thought, a new calorie-counting study finds, which means ancient cannibalism may have been more complex than often thought.
Nowadays cannibalism is associated with fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter or by desperate souls as a last resort, such as the Donner Party or the survivors of the Andes flight disaster. But studies suggest cannibalism was practiced since prehistory, and even performed by extinct ...read more
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a paper describing possibly unethical stem cell injection treatments for children with autism. That paper was published in 2015 in the Journal of Stem Cells.
I’ve since discovered additional problems with this journal.
It’s important to note at the outset that the Journal of Stem Cells is not some obscure operation. It’s indexed in MEDLINE, something that the vast majority of ‘predatory’ journals could only dream of. MEDLINE is ...read more
In one of Charles R. Knight’s famous 19th century paintings, an Early Permian dimetrodon (don’t call it a dinosaur!) seems to be enjoying itself, happy and carefree, with no idea about the mass extinctions on the horizon. (Credit American Museum of Natural History/Wikimedia Commons)
It’s the mass extinction you probably haven’t heard about, because for a long time researchers have questioned whether it even existed. But a growing body of evidence, including a study ...read more
A tick preserved in amber, blood from what was likely a primate visible on its back. (Credit: George Poinar, Jr./Oregon State University)
Millions of years ago, two primates engaged contentedly in a grooming ritual that is still commonplace today. Searching diligently for pesky ticks and other insects, they cast them to the ground without so much as an afterthought. But one of those ticks would endure after landing in a patch of sticky sap, becoming entombed in amber w ...read more
