Human evolution accelerating.

Study: Human evolution has sped up enormously in the past few thousand years, making us more different from people who lived in 3,000 BCE than they were from Neaderthals. Why? The stunning rate of population growth in that period has enabled an enormous number of mutations. Natural selection is way more interesting when there’s so …

Ossified hadrosaur discovered.

WP: Paleontologists have unearthed the mineralized soft tissue of a hadrosaur, complete with skin and flesh. It was spotted by sixteen-year-old Tyler Lyson in North Dakota back in 1999. Now a graduate student in paleontology at Yale, he returned there in 2004 to dig it up. Granted, this isn’t as cool as the tyrannosaur soft …

Study: Secondhand smoke causes lung damage.

UVa “researchers have identified structural damage to the lungs caused by secondhand cigarette smoke” They studied the lungs of non-smokers exposed to secondhand smoke with a super-sensitive MRI and found significant lung damage as a result of high levels of exposure to tobacco fumes. The results of the study were presented at a conference today. …

Less leaded fuel, less crime.

Here’s a fascinating new theory: The Clean Air Act’s elimination of leaded gasoline was the cause of the drop in crime in the 1990s — Clinton had nothing to do with it. Low level lead poisoning makes kids dumb and aggressive. The Clean Air Act caused Americans’ blood lead levels to plummet. Looking at the …

An illustration of the loss of polar ice.

The New York Times provides a great interactive graphic showing the loss of Arctic sea ice in the past years. Half of the north pole has simply vanished in the past year. It’s absolutely stunning. I wonder: If the entire north pole melts in the summer of 2008 or 2009, then will climate change deniers …

Henry Hudson lacked patience.

For the first time in recorded human history, the Northwest Passage is open, thanks to global climate change, making it possible to sail west from northern Europe directly to the Pacific. No more than a season or two will pass until this becomes an accepted fact in the world of shipping, which will no doubt …

Life is complex.

There are plenty of single-cell critters. And, of course, lots of multi-cellular creatures, like you and me. You’d expect a whole bunch in the middle — dual-cellular organisms, ten-cell organisms, etc. — but you’d be wrong. There just aren’t adult multicellular organisms with less than a thousand cells, with the 1mm long C. elegans being …