Free Republic

British experts have sounded the alarm over a new Covid variant believed to have emerged in Botswana that is the most mutated version of the virus yet.

President Barack Obama asked lawmakers to “pass this bill” — or made some variation of the phrase — 17 times in his jobs speech before a joint session of Congress on Thursday night. Obama unveiled his $447 billion jobs package, the American Jobs Act, during the speech.

Scientists have watched as a new species is “born”—or is that “evolved”?—on one of the Galapagos Islands, home of Darwin’s famous finches...

Why altruism paid off for our ancestors 19:00 07 December 2006 NewScientist.com news service Richard Fisher Humans may have evolved altruistic traits as a result of a cultural “tax” we paid to each other early in our evolution, a new study suggests. The research also changes what we knew about the genetic makeup of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. The origin of human altruism has puzzled evolutionary biologists for many years (see Survival of the nicest). In every society, humans make personal sacrifices for others with no expectation that it will be reciprocated. For example, we donate to charity, or care for...

In a follow-up to the Human Genome Project, a consortium of scientists has compiled a partial catalog of human genetic variation that they hope will speed the search for the genetic roots of many common diseases. The catalog is based on analyzing the genomes of people from four ethnic groups - Europeans, Japanese, Chinese and the Yoruba of Nigeria - and it has so far identified about three million sites on the three-billion-unit human genome where some people have different DNA units. These variations help make everyone unique, but they may also be the reason why people have propensities toward...