Okay. I must confess, I’m a fan of apocalyptic-science, even though I realize that terms like “Super-volcano” are scientifically meaningless.
But how cool is this?
Once thought to be the dead remains of an extinct volcano or volcanic system, the Yellowstone Caldera is alive and well, sleeping just below our feet.
Earthquake report for Yellowstone.
Yellowstone Webcams: Watch the planet breathing.
We really are all in this together, like it or not.
In a study led by Dr. Liane 
Young of MIT, researchers have discovered that the moral compass lies in the right temporo-parietal junction of the human brain, near the surface and just behind the right ear. This region becomes excited and actively engaged when we think about other people’s errors or good deeds. Researchers using transcranial magnetic stimulation were able to disrupt the function of the area and temporarily encourage people to be “less moral.” You can read the details here.
We are all Africans. We originated
in Africa. That is proved by the continent’s rich genetic inheritance. Africans are more diverse than the rest of humanity put together, because they are drawn from the pool of humans who did not leave. As Wells points out, two Africans from the same village could be more divergent from each other than either is from a non-African. The question is whether this new understanding will reinforce prejudices against Africans, or help end them.
The story of humanity, written in the spiral pages of our DNA, from More Intelligent Life.
Scientists spent thirteen years mapping and sequencing the human genome. The Human Genome Project, though completed in 2003, was only the barest beginning of what we have yet to learn about ourselves, our own DNA, where we’ve come from, and where we’ve yet to go.
Hereditary predispositions to disease and illness—cancer, for example—may well be regulated or even eradicated in another generation or two.
Also, think of the billions of dollars to be made if we can only learn to manipulate the DNA of parents to guarantee children of unusual brilliance, custom eye-color chosen off a ring of those little color-sample chips, and perfect pitch.
Scientists are reconstructing million-year-old viruses from the remnant DNA scraps found in the human genome, according to this article in the New York Times:
Scientists who hunt for these viruses think of themselves as paleontologists searching for fossils. Just as animals get buried in rock, these viruses become trapped in the genomes of their hosts. While their free-living relatives continue to evolve, fossil viruses are effectively frozen in time.
Now, while reconstructing viruses that changed the course of human evolution may sound rather alarming, we’re told that the search for these virus fossils, and their eventual reconstitution, has a great deal of information to impart about the course that human evolution has taken:
Fossil viruses are also illuminating human evolution. Scientists estimate that 8.3 percent of the human genome can be traced back to retrovirus infections. To put that in perspective, that’s seven times more DNA than is found in all the 20,000 protein-coding genes in the human genome.
So not to worry. This is gentle pursuit of science for its own sake. It’s not as if they’re cloning dinosaurs. Or building flesh-eating battle robots.
This is a gorgeous, fascinating, 
and very fun site. It’s from the Element Collection, which includes Theodore Gray who is also the creator behind the lovely Wood Periodic Table. Sites like these remind us that science is fun, creative, and beautiful.
