Video: Jessa Gamble: Our natural sleep cycle FROM TED Talk [4 minutes]

"Well, it turns out that, when people are living without any sort of artificial light at all, they sleep twice every night. They go to bed around 8:00 pm. until midnight and then again, they sleep from about 2:00 am until sunrise. And in-between, they have a couple of hours of sort of meditative quiet in bed. And during this time, there's a surge of prolactin, the likes of which a modern day never sees."

Sense of Smell Drove Mammal Brains’ Growth By Ars Technica FROM Wired

"The cerebellum also increased in size, which suggests that the synergistic relationship between the sensory system and the motor system improved along with an enhancement in the perception of smell."

How the penis lost its spikes by Zoë Corbyn FROM Nature News

"Humans ditched DNA to evolve smooth penises and bigger brains."

Hydrogen Hypothesis FROM Wikipedia

I find it fascinating because, if true, then a momentous step towards multicellular life was taken in a definitely non-Darwinian fashion.

"The hydrogen hypothesis is a model proposed by William F. Martin and Miklós Müller in 1998 that describes a possible way in which the mitochondrion arose as an endosymbiont within a prokaryote (an archaea), giving rise to a symbiotic association of two cells from which the first eukaryotic cell could have arisen.

According to the hydrogen hypothesis:

The host that acquired the mitochondrion was a prokaryote, a hydrogen-dependent archaea, possibly similar in physiology to a modern methanogenic archaea which uses hydrogen and carbon dioxide to produce methane;

The future mitochondrion was a facultatively anaerobic eubacterium which produced hydrogen and carbon dioxide as byproducts of anaerobic respiration;

A symbiotic relationship between the two started, based on the host's hydrogen dependence (anaerobic syntrophy).

The hypothesis differs from many alternative views within the endosymbiotic theory framework, which suggest that the first eukaryotic cells evolved a nucleus but lacked mitochondria, the latter arising as a eukaryote engulfed a primitive bacterium that eventually became the mitochondrion.

The hypothesis attaches evolutionary significance to hydrogenosomes and provides a rationale for their common ancestry with mitochondria. Hydrogenosomes are anaerobic mitochondria that produce ATP by, as a rule, converting pyruvate into hydrogen, carbon dioxide and acetate. Examples from modern biology are known where methanogens cluster around hydrogenosomes within eukaryotic cells. Most theories within the endosymbiotic theory framework do not address the common ancestry of mitochondria and hydrogenosomes.

The hypothesis provides a straightforward explanation for the observation that eukaryotes are genetic chimeras with genes of archaeal and eubacterial ancestry. Furthermore, it would imply that archaea and eukarya split after the modern groups of archaea appeared. Most theories within the endosymbiotic theory framework predict that some eukaryotes never possessed mitochondria. The hydrogen hypothesis predicts that no primitively mitochondrion-lacking eukaryotes ever existed. In the 10 years following the publication of the hydrogen hypothesis, this specific prediction has been tested many times and found to be in agreement with observation."

'Mitochondrial Eve': Mother of All Humans Lived 200,000 Years Ago FROM Science Daily

"But mitochondria -- the tiny organelles that serve as energy factories inside all human cells -- have their own genome."

Even Bugs Have Personality By Jennifer Viegas FROM Discovery News

"The scientists believe their findings carry over to other bugs and animals, with genes, gender, life experiences, environmental conditions and other factors shaping personality."

The DNA of Abraham’s Children by Sharon Begley FROM Newsweek

"Jewish populations, that is, have retained their genetic coherence just as they have retained their cultural and religious traditions, despite migrations from the Middle East into Europe, North Africa, and beyond over the centuries, says geneticist Harry Ostrer of NYU Langone Medical Center, who led the study." 

'Starving yogi' Prahlad Jani astounds Indian scientists after two-week surveillance trial FROM news.com.au

"'If (Mr) Jani does not derive energy from food and water, he must be doing that from energy sources around him, sunlight being one,' said Dr Shah."

Cavemen among us: Some humans are 4 percent Neanderthal by Pete Spotts FROM The Christian Science Monitor

"Among the tale the genes tell: A few anatomically modern humans mated with Neanderthals, likely in North Africa or the Middle East as modern humans initially were moving out of Africa, the researchers say."

Like father, like son FROM The Economist

"The result, published in the latest edition of Animal Behaviour, is that children who looked and smelled like their fathers did indeed enjoy more paternal care than those who did not."

Jewish legacy inscribed on genes? By Karen Kaplan FROM The Los Angeles Times

"Cochran and Harpending are the first to make a broad case linking multiple Jewish genetic diseases to intelligence. Their theory draws on history, statistics, neurobiology and population genetics."

An alternate view of competition FROM Mutual Aid by Peter Kropotkin

" 'Don't compete!--competition is always injurious to the species, and you have plenty of resources to avoid it!' That is the tendency of nature, not always realized in full, but always present. That is the watchword which cones to us from the bush, the forest, the river, the ocean. 'Therefore, combine--practise mutual aid! That is the surest means for giving to each and to all the greatest safety, the best guarantee of existence and progress, bodily, intellectual, and moral.' That is what Nature teaches us; and that is what all those animals which have attained the highest position in their respective classes have done" [p. 61]