Stem cell team wins 2007 Nobel for medicine
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Stem cell researchers Mario Capecchi, Martin Evans and Oliver Smithies won the 2007 Nobel prize for medicine or physiology for their work on gene changes in mice using embryonic cells, Sweden’s Karolinska Institute said on Monday.

Reconstructing The Family Tree
The new field of genetic genealogy uses DNA to trace ancestry back hundreds of years, sometimes surprising customers with unlikely relatives.

When Your Most Significant Other is a Computer
In a survey earlier this year, 64 percent of Americans say they spend more time with their computer than with their significant other. Meanwhile, 84 percent said they were more dependent on their computer than they were three years ago.

New Prototype Phone Gives Fitness Check
CHIBA, Japan (AP) – It can take your pulse, check your body fat, time your jogs and tell you if you have bad breath. It even assesses stress levels and inspires you with a pep talk. Meet your new personal trainer: your cell phone.

As Sunlight Fades, Look Out for SAD
Seasonal affective disorder sets in in the fall, experts say.

Study Rates Heart Health of Popular Diet Plans
Ornish beat Atkins, but any weight loss is good for the heart, researchers say

Heart-Healthy Workouts Help Knees, Too
They help ward off osteoarthritis, study suggests

PSA Testing Still Valuable for Prostate Cancer
What’s key is whether the level of prostate-specific antigen is rising rapidly.

Thalidomide helps elderly cancer patients: study
LONDON (Reuters) – Elderly patients with an aggressive form of blood cancer lived about 20 months longer when given the drug thalidomide as part of their treatment, French researchers said on Friday. The drug also slowed the spread of myeloma, a disease that accounts for about 1-2 percent of all cancers, usually affects older people, and kills its victims within three years, they reported in the Lancet medical journal.

Purpose of appendix believed found
WASHINGTON (AP) — Some scientists think they have figured out the real job of the troublesome and seemingly useless appendix: It produces and protects good germs for your gut.

Study Reveals 10 Most Terrible Office Behaviors
A coworker who takes credit for someone else’s work or rattles off obnoxious jokes is engaging in one of the top 10 most offensive workplace no-no’s, according to survey results released this week.

De Waal Traces Human Behavior to Apes
Humans may have more in common with monkeys, chimpanzees and other non-human primates than they think, according to Frans de Waal, C.H. Candler professor of primate behavior… Describing social reciprocity, de Waal explained that the way humans elect their political leaders mirrors the way an alpha male gains power. Chimpanzee dominance is not determined by strength or size. Rather, a highly organized coalition of animals must support, or elect, their leader.
De Waal’s findings would be featured in my book, if I could ever find a publisher.

Vatican paper set to clear Knights Templar
The mysteries of the Order of the Knights Templar could soon be laid bare after the Vatican announced the release of a crucial document which has not been seen for almost 700 years.

Circling The Globe By Human Power Alone
In the annals of global circumnavigation, 40-year-old British adventurer Jason Lewis became a new “first”: circling the globe via bicycle, pedal boat, kayak and inline skates. The 46,000-mile trip took a mere 13 years to accomplish.

Monumental Human Voyages Revealed by Obscure Tool
During the Stone Age, early humans chipped away at hunks of rock to make hand-held adzes which were probably used to butcher animals or fashion other tools. The Egyptians refined the adze by making it from metal and then mounting the blade on a wooden handle. Other cultures made their adzes out of whatever was at hand—shell, wood, bone—anything that would slice and dice. The adze can also be a key to mapping ancient human migrations because it’s portable.

Follow in 385,000 yr-old human footsteps
NAPLES (Reuters) – Want to walk in the footsteps of the early humans? Tourists in Italy can do almost just that starting this weekend, after footpaths believed to have been left up to 385,000 years ago were opened to the public.

New Central Texas gorge open to public
A torrent of water from a bloated Canyon Lake sliced open the earth, exposing rock formations, fossils and even dinosaur footprints in just three days. To protect Canyon Lake Gorge from vandals, it’s been open only to researchers since the 2002 flood, but on Saturday, it opens to its first public tour.

Potentially Threatening Space Rock Rediscovered
A recently discovered space rock that could one day threaten Earth turns out to be an object found seen more than four decades ago but lost in space ever since… 2007 RR9 goes around the sun once every 4.7 years in an elongated orbit that carries it nearly to Jupiter. Technically, it is now called a Jupiter Family Comet.

Tiny Galaxy Spotted Halfway Across the Universe
Astronomers have spotted and weighed a tiny galaxy located 6 billion light-years away, or nearly halfway across the universe… The galactic lightweight was found using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. It was made visible by a phenomenon called gravity lensing, whereby light from a distant source is warped by the gravitational field of another massive object located directly in front of it.