1. Q&A: Who is H. sapiens really, and how do we know?. Interesting FAQ explaining the latest state of scientific knowledge about human origins and our ancestors’ admixture with archaic human species such as Neanderthals and Denisovans.

2. Historic Pairing: Shuttle Docked to the ISS. Amazing pictures of the shuttle docked to the International Space Station (here is a picture of the shuttle docked to the Mir Space Station to give some perspective on the stations’ relative sizes).

3. Evolutionary psychology and the left. “[O]pponents of evolution, who were generally older and more conservative, were more likely to endorse” the evolutionary psychology implications about evolution’s effect on human mating behavior (such as that “men are more interested than women in one night stands, men are more interested in attractiveness, and women value good financial prospects in a mate more than men do”). “Interestingly, when half of the survey respondents in the second survey were explicitly told that the evolutionary psychology questions were ‘based on the THEORY OF EVOLUTION, as applied to the fields of psychology and biology’ (actual text from survey), it reduced the level of support from evolution opponents but made no difference to the response of evolution supporters.”

I find it interesting that people who don’t believe in evolution more readily accepted the evolutionary psychologists’ conclusions about evolution’s impact on human behavior than the more liberal believers in evolution. All of us are subject to the problems of confirmation bias — we should all be careful about rejecting ideas just because they disagree with our preconceived notions. In this study, the believers in evolution (the ones who are supposed to be more rational and educated) rejected very reasonable conclusions (which are backed up by evidence), likely because it contradicted their political / moral belief that average differences in men’s and women’s preferences and behavior is a product of culture and not biology.

4. Better brain wiring linked to family genes. “How well our brain functions is largely based on our family’s genetic makeup, according to a University of Melbourne led study. . . . ”

“We found that people differed greatly in terms of how cost-efficient the functioning of their brain networks were, and that over half of these differences could be explained by genes,” said Dr. Fornito.

Across the entire brain, more than half (60%) of the differences between people could be explained by genes. Some of the strongest effects were observed for regions of the prefrontal cortex which play a vital role in planning, strategic thinking, decision-making and memory.

Previous work has shown that people with more efficient brain connections score higher on tests of intelligence, and that brain network cost-efficiency is reduced in people with schizophrenia, particularly in the prefrontal cortex.