Excited By Life

Svante Pääbo with a reconstructed Neandertal skull. (Copyright: Frank Vinken) The history of human evolution is a fascinating study. Of particular interest is the migration of early humans out of Africa and how the different races evolved and differentiated. With the advent of gnome sequencing, the evidence is irrefutable – our European and Asian ancestors [...]

This is a regular weekly feature where we curate some of the most amazing discoveries in science from the week.   Scientists build a self-replicating molecule from synthetic DNA. Researchers at New York University have successfully created strands of DNA that can duplicate themselves. At the moment, the research is at the proof of concept [...]

This will be a regular blog post each week highlighting exciting discoveries in Science news with emphasis and how they might be applicable to our daily lives.   Generosity and Leadership Generosity is often regarded as a leadership virtue. However, a new study reveals that generosity is seen as a sign of weakness in a [...]

I just watched a TED talk on Google Labs’ Ngram Viewer. Google lets you search for words in it’s database of 5 million works from about 1500 to 2008. As an experiment I typed in the words happy and sad to see what I could discover, with some interesting results. I discovered that happiness increased [...]

It seems lately that new planets are being discovered almost weekly in other far flung solar systems to our own. There have even been some discoveries of earth-like planets. These are exciting times for space discovery. It is hard to believe but the first rocky planet outside our solar system was discovered only just last [...]

New research has shown that when a person’s self-esteem or ego is threatened, they are more likely to purchase expensive items, and especially on credit. The Study is in the May edition of Social Psychological and Personality Science (published by SAGE). When our egos are threatened by doing badly at something or being told we [...]

Researchers prove an indigenous legend of man eating Eagle to be factual. Image by t94xr The indigenous Maori people of New Zealand have a legend of the Te Hokioi , a large black and white eagle-like predator with yellow and green tinged wing tips and a red crest. Until now it has remained just a [...]

Biologists have successfully cloned what is believed to be the World’s oldest living plant, to save it from extinction. The World’s oldest known living plant is a tree species called King’s Lomatia discovered in the remote wilderness of Tasmania  (Australia). It was first discovered about 70 years ago. It’s a genetic anomaly. The plant is [...]