This week you’ll want to be sure you check out: Reporting live from Rome, Katy Myers discusses some of the challenges with excavating inside urn—and what constitutes a person—at Bones Don’t Lie. At Inkfish, Elizabeth Preston makes a connection between naming practices and popular words—like violent weather systems. At Evoanth, Adam Benton delves into what [...]

Billionaire media mogul Ted Turner has made a $1 million donation to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International to help support a new initiative to save endangered Grauer’s gorillas (also known as eastern lowland gorillas, Gorilla beringei graueri), a subspecies living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) whose population is on the decline. [...]

A rare plant called Paris japonica has a genome 50 times longer than that of humans, making it the longest genome ever recorded. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, announced the discovery last week, and details appear in the September 2010 issue of the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society. The Paris japonica genome weighs in [...]

They work with us, play with us and comfort us when we’re down. Archaeological evidence indicates that dogs have had a close bond with humans for millennia. But exactly why and how they evolved from their wolf ancestors into our loyal companions has been something of a mystery. Now a new genetic analysis indicates that [...]

The Romani people—once known as “gypsies” or Roma—have been objects of both curiosity and persecution for centuries. Today, some 11 million Romani, with a variety of cultures, languages and lifestyles, live in Europe—and beyond. But where did they come from? Earlier studies of their language and cursory analysis of genetic patterns pinpointed India as the [...]

Genetic sequences of drug-resistant bacteria have helped scientists better understand how these dastardly infections evolve—and elude treatment. But these superbugs are still claiming lives of many who acquire them in hospitals, clinics and nursing homes. And recent outbreaks of these hard-to-treat infections can spread easily in healthcare settings. Researchers might soon be able to track [...]

Common wheat (Triticum aestivum) might seem as boring as the sliced bread it is baked into. But genetically, it is vexingly complex. Its genome is about six times as big as our own, and its genes are distributed among six sets of chromosomes (we humans have just two). In fact, the T. aestivum genome contains [...]

The world of the mollusk genome is now our oyster, as researchers have now sequenced the genetic code of this hearty (and delicious) shellfish, revealing it to be even more complex and adaptable than previously imagined. The new genome provides insights how oysters manage to cope with a dynamic habitat and how they build their [...]

Ever since two hikers happened upon the mummified body of Ötzi the Iceman on a high mountain pass in the Ötzal Alps in 1991, scientists have been working to figure out who he was and where he came from. Previous research indicated that Ötzi spent his life within a 60-kilometer radius of where the hikers [...]

A killer cancer that is threatening to wipe Tasmanian devils off the map for good has been spreading—from an original infected female 15 years ago—via live cancer cells, according to evidence from genome sequences of the cancer and the animal, published online Thursday in Cell. Finding out how this happened could help save this species [...]

The white powder that arrived in envelopes addressed to lawmakers and journalists in 2001 proved to be a deadly delivery for several people. The lethal substance—spores commonly known as Anthrax (from the bacterium Bactillus anthracis)—can cause a toxic reaction in a host’s blood stream, killing cells and leading to tissue damage,  bleeding and death. But [...]

The millions of monarchs (Danaus plexippus) that flit on fragile wings from the U.S.to a particular area of fir forest in Mexico—as far as 4,000 kilometers—are making the journey for the first time. “They have never been to the overwintering sites before and have no relatives to follow,” Steven Reppert, a neurobiologist at the University [...]

Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii) have been besieged by a highly contagious cancer that has been pushing the species ever-closer to extinction. In the past 15 years, Devil Facial Tumor Disease has spread throughout Australia’s Tasmania island, killing most Tasmanian devils that catch it. In an effort to help save the biggest living carnivorous marsupial, conservationists [...]