disease

The Social Ladder’s Genetic Footprint

April 9, 2012

By Rob Mitchum From the teenage years through adulthood, people spend a lot of time worrying about their social status. Whether measured in wealth as economic class or by more abstract terms of leadership and popularity in the office or among [Read more]

The Disease Advantage of Chimpness

December 20, 2010

Within the primate family, relatives are not treated equally by disease. While AIDS, malaria, and cancer kill millions of humans each year around the world, non-human primates largely shrug these diseases off. For example, chimpanzees can be [Read more]

Fighting Air Pollution…Indoors

August 18, 2010

Since the middle of the 20th century, fighting air pollution has been a primary goal of the growing environmental movement in the United States and around the world. Encounters with smog and toxic gases inspired waves of public anger and protest [Read more]

Evolution via Cannibalism: The Case of Kuru

November 19, 2009

In the 1950s and ’60s, several villages in the Oceanic country of Papua New Guinea began to see an odd disease. Villagers of the Fore people in the Eastern Highlands – predominantly women and children – would show an array of [Read more]