People are born with "kinship detectors" that help us stay away from romantic entanglements with our siblings that could lead to evolutionary disaster, a new study suggests.
But the system is far from fail-safe, the scientists found.
Comment: What is interesting is that the above article is accompanied by a sidebar that says the following:
On a "moral-wrongness" scale of 19 crimes, people ranked brother-sister sex as being below child molestation but above other, relatively minor offenses such as drug dealing and smoking marijuana. The ranked results, from most to least immoral, are below:
1. Molesting a child
2. Rape
3. A man killing his wife
4. A woman killing her husband
5. Consensual father-daughter sex
6. Consensual mother-son sex
7. Father-daughter marriage
8. Mother-son marriage
9. Consensual brother-sister sex
10. Brother-sister marriage
11. Assault with a weapon
12. Robbing a bank
13. Selling cocaine
14. Breaking and entering
15. Embezzlement
16. Smuggling illegal aliens into the country
17. Public drunkenness
18. Speeding on the highway
19. Smoking marijuana
It is a strange society we live in that ranks essentially victimless crimes above harm to others. And don't get the wrong idea; no one is suggesting that incest is even remotely a good thing. But let's get a perspective here!
The Earth's hum comes from the bottom of the sea and not from turbulence in the atmosphere, says a US researcher, backing a novel theory put forward in 2004.
The hum is a low rumble continually present in the ground even when there are no earthquakes happening, but is detectable only by very sensitive seismometers. Its frequency is near 10 millihertz, below the range of human hearing.
Janet Rettig Emanuel
EurekAlertFri, 16 Feb 2007 10:05 UTC
While human changes to the environment cause conservation biologists to worry about species extinction, Yale biologists are reversing the logic by trying to trap viruses in habitats that force their extinction, according to a report in Ecology Letters.
To avoid going extinct a population must not only survive, but also reproduce. Paul Turner, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale, tested the practicality of luring a virus population into the wrong cells within the human body, thus preventing virus reproduction and alleviating disease.
"Ecological traps for viruses might arise naturally, or could be engineered by adding viral binding sites to cells that disallow virus reproduction," said senior author Turner. "We proved the concept using a non-human virus, and variants of the bacteria cells it infects."
Exquisite colour images of the Martian surface give a tantalising glimpse into the Red Planet's watery past.
Shots of the deep valley Candor Chasma show light coloured areas of rock where water could have flowed.
These "haloes" surround fractures in the Martian bedrock which provide a promising target in the search for evidence of past life on the planet.
A geophysicist in the US has new evidence that the oceans are responsible for the Earth's strange low-frequency hum. Spahr Webb of Columbia University says that low frequency "infragravity" ocean waves interact with one another to make the ocean floor vibrate at a specific set of frequencies between 1-10 mHz. Webb says that his theory is supported by seismic and ocean data, which show correlations between hum and wave activity.
Over the past decade geophysicists have become increasingly aware that the Earth is vibrating at a series of well-defined "infrasonic" frequencies between about 1-10 mHz. The origins of this hum have been the subject of heated debate. Earthquakes were an obvious candidate, but they were ruled out along with interactions between turbulence in the atmosphere and the Earth's surface.
A Mexican man has discovered dozens of dinosaur footprints dating back up to 110 million years along the banks of a dried river, scientists said on Tuesday.
Biologist Oscar Polaco said the footprints, found by a local resident in a desert region in central Mexico, belonged to three prehistoric species that came to drink water in the area, once a swampy zone close to the sea.
Polaco said more studies needed to be done to determine what species of dinosaur the fossilized prints, each one up to 60 cm (24 inches) across, belonged to.
One of anthropology's most enduring mysteries - the origins of the ancient Etruscan civilisation - may finally have been solved, with a study of cattle.
This culturally distinct and technologically advanced civilisation inhabited central Italy from about the 8th century BC, until it was assimilated into Roman culture around the end of the 4th century BC.
The origins of the Etruscans, with their own non-Indo-European language, have been debated by archaeologists, geneticists and linguists for centuries. Writing in the 5th century BC, the Ancient Greek historian Herodotus claimed that the Etruscans had arrived in Italy from Lydia, now called Anatolia in modern-day Turkey.
The Octagon Earthworks in Newark is one remnant of the Newark Earthworks, recently listed by The Dispatch as one of the Seven Wonders of Ohio.
Earlham College professors Ray Hively and Robert Horn demonstrated in 1982 that the walls of this 2,000-yearold circle and octagon were aligned to the points on the horizon, marking the limits of the rising and setting of the moon during an 18.6-year cycle.
The blood of the largest bat in Europe reveals it can devour birds in midair at night, the only animal known to do so thus far, evidence now strongly suggests.
Roughly five billion songbirds migrate across the Mediterranean Sea every year, mainly at night. Although more than 90 percent of these birds weigh on average less than 20 grams (0.7 ounces), this could amount to about 100,000 metric tons of food upon which predators might wish to dine. (A metric ton is equivalent to 2,204 pounds).
No animal, however, was known to hunt the birds while they flew at night. Falcons catch migratory birds along the Mediterranean only during the day, while owls and some tropical bats capture vertebrate prey on or near the ground or other surfaces at night.
A laboratory set up at Princeton University, N.J., to study ESP and telekinesis will close this month, ending an awkward 30-year relationship with the scientific world. Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research lab (PEAR) was set up in 1979 to examine how the human mind can affect computers and machines.
Founder Robert Jahn, 76, said the lab, despite ageing equipment and dwindling finances and the ridicule of the scientific community, did what it needed to, showing statistically significant results. Jahn, former dean of Princeton's engineering school and an emeritus professor, told the New York Times, 'For 28 years, we've done what we wanted to do, and there's no reason to stay and generate more of the same data. If people don't believe us after all the results we've produced, then they never will,' BBC Online reported Tuesday.
Comment: What is interesting is that the above article is accompanied by a sidebar that says the following: It is a strange society we live in that ranks essentially victimless crimes above harm to others. And don't get the wrong idea; no one is suggesting that incest is even remotely a good thing. But let's get a perspective here!