http://cache.io9.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/io9.com.png http://io9.com/tag/tabloid science http://io9.com/tag/tabloid science

Not only are human beings still evolving, but it looks like life in civilization may be pressuring us to evolve faster than ever. A groundbreaking new study published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the cultural environment of homo sapiens, including high population density and rapid immigration patterns, is exerting pressure on humans to mutate and evolve. This flies in the face of the accepted evolutionary wisdom that culture protects us from the kind of natural selection that made our ancestor's skull so strange in that picture. Want to know what we're evolving into? After the jump. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=332628&view=rss&microfeed=true

Using nanotech devices sensitive to voltage, scientists at the University of Michigan have discovered that cancer cells in the human brain have electrical fields that are stronger than those in lightning bolts. (You can see a top view of the nano gadget at left.) [Technology Review] More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=332058&view=rss&microfeed=true

For the past few years, college football teams across the country have been participating in a head injury experiment. While playing games, they wear special helmets that use something called a "high impact telemetry system" to measure the impact and angle every time the players get smashed in the head. Now researchers at the University of North Carolina say the devices have yielded astonishing new facts about how hard you can get hit without getting a concussion. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=331434&view=rss&microfeed=true

"Chimera" mice grown with livers made of human cells are the ultimate test bed for new liver drugs, say scientists. Already, bio geeks have been growing mice with human brain cells, so this liver stuff is just icing on the genetic cake. [Salk Institute] More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=329867&view=rss&microfeed=true

• It's official: the Earth is getting more tropical. Global warming has expanded the tropical band around the center of the planet over the past two decades, and it looks like it will expand more over the next century. [Reuters]
• Researchers repaired major skull damage in mice using human embryonic stem cells. They grew new bone on a special tissue-engineering edifice and popped it right into the mouse skulls. So stem cells are good for something, after all. [Science Daily] Why chimps are smarter than humans and dinosaurs had hooves after the jump.

More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=329230&view=rss&microfeed=true

Massive quantities of helium were discovered leaking out of the ground in Nevada. This mysterious gas emission is even stranger because usually geologists only see this kind of thing near volcanoes. Is Nevada about to become a volcanic hellhole? [Discovery News]

10,000-year-old trees were discovered during a construction project on a farm in Michigan. They are among the best-preserved fossilized trees ever found, and scientsts speculate that they were crushed under the last glacier to stretch across North America. [Science Daily] More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=328786&view=rss&microfeed=true

Science isn't all about sex, pollution, cutting up brains, and going to outer space, but given today's headlines we can just pretend that it is. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=328044&view=rss&microfeed=true

Let us now praise the latest boob-o-gram technology.

• Scientists can now ogle my breasts from the inside-out and in 3D. A new technique called "stereoscopic digital mammography" lets researchers image breasts more accurately to check for cancer or gestating alien beings. Sounds almost as good as the 3D boobs in Beowulf. [RSNA]
• Good news! Humans are going to Mars! NASA has a plan to do it . . . at least, you know, sometime in the next century [BBC News]. Populating the solar system may take just as long as it took our distant ancestors to cross the Bering Strait from Siberia . . . after the jump.

More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=327537&view=rss&microfeed=true

We've got some artificial body parts, some bad brains, and some serious toxic sludge in the state of Washington for you in today's science news headlines. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=327043&view=rss&microfeed=true

Today's top science news story today will make Hedorah the Smog Monster happy.

• Heat emitted by smokestacks belching gloop could be harvested for thermal energy. Apparently there are nearly 50 thousand smokestacks in the United States alone whose emissions are hot enough to produce 50,000 megawatts of power. [Worldchanging]

More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=326216&view=rss&microfeed=true

I've got some good science news for you, and some bad.

• Wind power may not be a clean energy source of the future after all. Though Sweden has just built a massive wind farm at sea, most countries have found wind an inefficient and unreliable energy source. [New York Times]

More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=325801&view=rss&microfeed=true

Wake up and smell the science, people.

• A bunch of researchers say they can turn any cell into a stem cell. There's always a big problem with stem cells, despite their potential to regrow brains and stuff, because they're harvested from human embryos. That's why the Bush Administration outlawed making them for a while. But if these researchers are right, researchers could harvest stem cells from a cheek swab and sidestep a lot of moral gray areas.

More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=325285&view=rss&microfeed=true