When anthropologists consider the origins of warfare, their evolutionary theories tend to boil it down to the resource-scarcity trifecta of food, territory and mates—three resources that would justify the loss of life and risk to a warring group of...
The secret to making clothing practically indestructible could be the same thing that makes us grow out of it: sugar.
A new discovery from the University of Virginia School of Medicine reveals how sugars could be used to make almost...
Blame junk food or a lack of exercise. But long before the modern obesity epidemic, evolution made us fat too.
"We're the fat primates," said Devi Swain-Lenz, a postdoctoral associate in biology at Duke University.
The fact that humans are chubbier...
Before you take a pumice stone to your foot calluses just because they're unsightly, you might want to consider the idea that they are actually nature's shoes.
That's one of the messages from a new study suggesting that in certain...
Long ago, during the European Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci wrote that we humans "know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot." Five hundred years and innumerable technological and scientific advances later, his sentiment still...
Why is it that a master musician can learn a new score in no time, yet encounter difficulty learning something else, like skateboarding tricks? Could there is any truth to the myth that you use only 10 percent of...
Dogs have evolved new muscles around the eyes to better communicate with humans.
New research comparing the anatomy and behavior of dogs and wolves suggests dogs' facial anatomy has changed over thousands of years specifically to allow them to better communicate with...
The myth that modern wheat varieties are more heavily reliant on pesticides and fertilisers is debunked by new research published in Nature Plants today.
Lead author on the paper, Dr. Kai Voss-Fels, a research fellow at The University of Queensland, said modern...
A new discovery by researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons could fix one of the major shortcomings of current gene-editing tools, including CRISPR, and offer a powerful new approach for genetic engineering and gene therapy.
Their new...
Scientists have identified genes that may give long-lived bat species their extraordinary lifespans and cancer resistance compared to other animals.
The findings published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution show that bats limit the level of DNA damage they experience with...
Discovery of a new feature of a large class of pathogenic viruses may allow development of new antiviral medications for the common cold, polio, and other illnesses, according to a new study publishing June 11 in the open-access journal PLOS...
