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Most Ancient Case Of Tuberculosis Found In 500,000-year-old Human; Points To Modern Health IssuesView of the inside of a plaster cast of the skull of the newly discovered young male Homo erectus from western Turkey. The stylus points to tiny lesions 1-2 mm in size found along the rim of bone just behind the right eye orbit. The lesions were formed by a type of tuberculosis that infects the brain and, at 500,000 years in age, represents the most ancient case of TB known in humans. (Credit: Marsha Miller, the University of Texas at Austin)" ScienceDaily (Dec. 7, 2007) —...

JAMES WATSON, the DNA pioneer who claimed Africans are less intelligent than whites, has been found to have 16 times more genes of black origin than the average white European. An analysis of his genome shows that 16% of his genes are likely to have come from a black ancestor of African descent. By contrast, most people of European descent would have no more than 1%. The study was made possible when he allowed his genome - the map of all his genes - to be published on the internet in the interests of science. “This level is what you...

DR. FEERO is a family physician with a doctorate in human genetics from the University of Pittsburgh. He is a senior adviser for genomic medicine in the Office of the Director at the National Human Genome Research Institute. Our understanding of the genome is changing rapidly and drastically. For starters, the Human Genome Project has revealed that humans are, on a numerical basis, genetically less complex than a mustard plant (Arabidopsis). In fact, our genome contains between 20,000 and 25,000 sequences suggestive of “genes” encoding proteins, whereas Arabidopsis contains about 27,000. If that doesn't make much sense to you, don't...

Video showing that the Earth is getting greener BECAUSE of more co2 in the atmosphere and that the use of fossil fuels is preserving nature, not destroying it.

For a long time, scientists had assumed a gradual expansion of African people through Sinai into both Europe and Asia. Then, bizarrely, it became clear from both genetics and archaeology that Europe was peopled later (after 40,000 years ago) than Australia (before 50,000 years ago). Meanwhile, the geneticists were beginning to insist that many Africans and all non-Africans shared closely related DNA sequences that originated only after about 70,000-60,000 years ago in Africa. So a new idea was born, sometimes called the "beachcomber express," in which the first ex-Africans were seashore dwellers who spread rapidly around the coast of the...

Science writer Matt Ridley on the causes of poverty and prosperityMatt Ridley, an Oxford-educated zoologist, turned to journalism in 1983, when he got a job as The Economist’s science reporter. He soon became the magazine’s Washington correspondent and eventually served as it’s American editor. This time in the United States had a profound intellectual effect on Ridley, ultimately leading him to become a self-described classical liberal, a “person who believes in economic freedom and social freedom, too.” Ridley, 50, has written several superb books that combine clear explanations of complex biology with discussions of the science’s implications for human society....