Thinking with your gut

Via Science Daily: For the first time, researchers at McMaster University have conclusive evidence that bacteria residing in the gut influence brain chemistry and behaviour. The findings are important because several common types of gastrointestinal disease, including irritable bowel syndrome, are frequently associated with anxiety or depression. In addition there has been speculation that some [...]

Humans were not the first farmers

And it might be the case that ants weren’t, either. A Rice University graduate student may have discovered proto-agricultural behavior in amobeas: It’s too bad they don’t make microscopic overalls. The amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum could use a pair. A new study finds that the single-celled organism is a farmer of sorts. It picks up bacteria, carries [...]

A new (which is to say very old, but recently discovered) human ancestor?

Ewen Callaway writing in Nature News: The ice-age world is starting to look cosmopolitan. While Neanderthals held sway in Europe and modern humans were beginning to populate the globe, another ancient human relative lived in Asia, according to a genome sequence recovered from a finger bone in a cave in southern Siberia. A comparative analysis [...]

Is the As-bacterium overhyped? ctd

Carl Zimmer, writing in Slate, considers the evidence: None of the scientists I spoke to ruled out the possibility that such weird bacteria might exist. Indeed, some of them were co-authors of a 2007 report for the National Academies of Sciences on alien life that called for research into, among other things, arsenic-based biology. But [...]