Breakthrough in apples!

CSIRO researchers have located the gene that controls the colour of apples. Which could mean new apple varieties. Okay I'm not knocking this or anything, I think apples are swell, but surely if these researchers have the skill to find specific genes, they could be doing things that are a little more useful than this. What do you think?

A new done by a team of American and Japanese researchers has shown that people who natively speak different languages may perceive rhythm differently. For example, the 'universal' though that a long tone signifies the end of a group may be just a product of Western culture/language. Also, English speaking listeners grouped short and long tones as "short-long", while Japanese speaking listeners grouped them as "long-short". The article has many more interesting points, which can be found here.

Black patients are more likely than white patients to prefer life-sustaining care when they have an incurable illness with serious mental and physical disabilites (such as brain death). The same study showed there was little correlation between religion and people's opinion on this.

Up 'till recently, scholars have thought that human rituals started out around 40,000 years ago in Europe, but a recent discovery has shown that advanced rituals were performed by Homo sapiens (us) in Africa 70,000 years ago. This is an amazing finding! Read more!

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