What we call mental illness today may have, at one point, been integral to the evolution of the human brain or human beings in general. That's what several recent studies suggest when their findings are taken together. Research has definitively shown for years that autistic people can commonly disp

The world-renowned, American paleontologist from Harvard, Stephen Jay Gould, published his book, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, in 1989, and in it, he focused primarily on the evolution of animal life in the Cambrian Period, a dispensation of the Paleozoic Era. He broa

So-called pseudogenes become unable to code for proteins at a certain point, and natural selection has been said in the past to acknowledge them. A new study reaffirms this notion but adds that natural selection influences said pseudogenes. The study was conducted by experts from Moscow State Unive

One of the biggest fears most common to expecting parents is that they will unwittingly ruin their children as people in some way. No one wants to raise a sociopath or stunt a child's ability to mature into a well-adjusted adult, so it's common to spend lots of time during the pregnancy worrying ab

The cockroach is one of the insects that everybody wants to kill. It is often found in dark and moist corners of homes, dining establishments, and offices, specifically in toilets and in the kitchen.Chinese researchers sequenced the DNA of the American cockroach to discover the secret to the insect

Because it is a common practice in biological sciences to use animals maintained in the laboratory to draw conclusions about the ecology and evolution of animals in the wild, researchers decided to compare results using both field and laboratory animals. Their aim was to check the assumption that

There are now 22 known genes that are considered genetic risk factors for stroke. The number tripled after researchers held the MEGASTROKE study which was published on Tuesday in the Nature Genetics journal.For the research, the scientists studied the DNA of more than 520,000 people all over the wo

Dennis Venema, a well-known biologist, published a book entitled, Adam and the Genome, and much of the content relates directly to findings of studies published by other researchers after the release of his book. In particular, the book briefly talks about Y-Chromosome Adam and Mitochondrial Eve, w

Floating in zero gravity in space for one year has changed the DNA of NASA astronaut Scott Kelly. He and his twin brother, Mark, also a NASA astronaut, are part of the space agency's Twin Study.After he set a world record by spending 340 consecutive days aboard the International Space Station, Scot

A report from Marshal Hedin at San Diego State found that two venomous spider species are more closely related than previously thought. The report identified them as the funnel-web spider and mouse spider.The study analyzed the Atrax robustus and Missulena species of spiders. While funnel-webs spid