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Mothers who have complained through the centuries that their sons will be the death of them may be right — a Finnish study shows having boys shortens a woman’s life span. Each son takes an average of 34 weeks off a woman’s life, says evolutionary biologist Samuli Helle. On the other hand, having daughters adds, but only very slightly, to a woman’s life span.

Helle was trying to prove that having large families can cause women to die early. But his study of church records among the Sami people of northern Scandinavia found that family size did not reliably predict that a woman would die young. He says, “We found that maternal longevity was not related to the total number of children born or raised to adulthood?”
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A new book published in the U.K. claims?yet again?that UFOs are a form of cultural mass hysteria. British researchers David Clarke and Andy Roberts, who say they uncovered thousands of previously secret government and military reports and investigated dozens of sightings, have concluded that flying saucers were a product of Cold War paranoia and not visitors from outer space.

They say none of the evidence points to any form of alien contact. They believe the widespread belief in UFOs that began in the 1950s and lasts until the present day should be seen as a social phenomenon.
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The DNA sequence of the anthrax sent through the U.S. mail in 2001 has been revealed and confirms suspicions that the bacteria originally came from a U.S. military laboratory.The data released uses codenames for the reference strains against which the attack strain was compared.But it can be revealed that the two strains that are identical to the attack strain most likely originated at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute (USAMRIID) for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

The research also shows that substantial genetic differences can emerge in two samples of an anthrax culture separated for only three years. This means the attacker’s anthrax was not separated from the other anthrax at USAMRIID for long and was therefore acquired relatively recently.read more

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Trials carried out by New Zealand scientists have shown that changing pastures can directly reduce the emissions of methane – a potent greenhouse gas – from sheep and cattle. The researchers say it all depends on tannins, which are the yellow-brown chemicals found in many plants.

Scientists at New Zealand’s agricultural research institute, AgResearch Grasslands, tested the legume lotus and found that its natural condensed tannin compounds reduced the methane emissions from ruminant animals by as much as 16%.
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