Women's Orgasms Exist Because...

Telegraph newspaper: His family once owned slaves

(NEWSER) - Renowned atheist Richard Dawkins fired back at the Telegraph today after the paper accused him of profiting—albeit indirectly—from slavery, the Guardian reports. The Telegraph's article notes that Dawkins' great great great great great grandfather, Henry Dawkins, owned 1,013 Jamaican slaves before he died in 1744. Dawkins called the article "a smear tactic" and says the family slave fortune dwindled long before he was born. More»

...but only if you had a lot of friends in high school, finds study

(NEWSER) - Is political ideology something you’re born with? Scientists have uncovered a gene that predisposes people to be liberals—provided they had a lot of friends in high school. The study, conducted at UC San Diego and Harvard, matched 2,000 subjects’ genetic information with maps of their social networks, and found that a specific variant of the DRD4 dopamine receptor made subjects much more likely to lean left as adults—provided they were socially active teens, NBC reports. More»

(NEWSER) - When you wolf down a box of cookies at midnight, it only shows you're being human and relinquishing your self-control, Meredith Small writes on LiveScience. A recent study supports your habit, showing that subjects following the story of a waiter who resists gourmet dishes finally have to eat the same food themselves. "Apparently, it's human nature to be out of control," Small writes. More»

Research in embryonic development reveals how organisms evolve

(NEWSER) - Evolutionary theory is in the early days of its third great expansion, the New York Times reports, following Darwin’s original formulation almost 150 years ago and the so-called “modern synthesis” of 1930-50. Dubbed “evo-devo” because it focuses on the embryonic development of organisms, the newest science explores how specific genes control significant aspects of an organism’s growth. More»

An advantage 4M years ago is a weakness now

(NEWSER) - Humans are more susceptible to HIV than other primates because our ancestors evolved a protein that could fight off a different retrovirus that infected chimps, says Scientific American. The most conspicuous difference between the chimpanzee genome sequenced in 2005 and the human one, says a Seattle virologist, was 130 copies of a retrovirus that inserted its DNA into cells, as HIV does today. More»