Larry Moran has a great post on the dangers of taking science headline grabbers too seriously. In this case, early claims in the 1990s that life originated 3.5 billion years ago…. What does all this tell us about early life? It tells us that the evidence for life before 3 billion years ago is being… Continue reading

Oh boy, I’m in trouble now. From the latest Science Random Samples: Scientists at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, have unsettling news from what they say is the first-ever study of chronic multitaskers. A team headed by psychologist Eyal Ophir compared 19 “heavy media multitaskers” (HMMs), identified by questionnaires on media use, with 22… Continue reading

Meanwhile, Moon based research projects are not exactly encouraging. From this week’s Nature News briefing: Lunar losses: India formally abandoned its first lunar orbiter on 30 August, after scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) abruptly lost radio contact with the probe. Chandrayaan-1 , launched last year to map the Moon, ended its mission… Continue reading

Speaking of the Uniquely Human… Hand axes from southern Spain have been dated to nearly a million years old, suggesting that advanced Stone Age tools were present in Europe far earlier than was previously believed. Acheulian axes, which date to at least 1.5 million years ago, have been found in Africa, and similar tools at… Continue reading

In Search of Uniquely Human Genes: … in 2006, geneticists showed for the first time that they could identify truly novel genes. In fruit flies, they came across five young genes that were derived from “noncoding” DNA between existing genes and not from preexisting genes. As a result, other researchers started looking for novel genes… Continue reading