|  Roaring & Soaring: New Exhibit Explores the Dinosaur-Bird Connection  | "With this new exhibition, we invite visitors to question what they think they know about dinosaurs — how they looked and behaved and even whether all of them actually became extinct," Ellen Futter, president of the AMNH, said in a statement. Their research shows that the roughly 18,000 known species of birds belong to the group Dinosauria, which includes extinct dinosaurs and their living descendants.
| Read More » Homo sapiens' sex with extinct species was no one-night stand  | By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Our species, Homo sapiens, has a more adventurous sexual history than previously realized, and all that bed-hopping long ago has left an indelible mark on the human genome. People living on the remote equatorial islands of Melanesia represented the only population found to possess an appreciable level of Denisovan genetic ancestry. Many are involved in the immune system and likely helped protect against pathogens, and some play important roles in skin and hair biology, said University of Washington evolutionary geneticist Joshua Akey, who helped lead the study published in the journal Science.
| Read More » U.S., Russian crew poised to launch to space station  | By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts were preparing to head for the International Space Station in a Russian Soyuz rocket on Friday as replacements for a crew that ended a year-long flight earlier this month. U.S. astronaut Jeff Williams and cosmonauts Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin are scheduled to blast off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 5:26 p.m. EDT (2126 GMT). NASA and Russia have not yet assigned crews for additional year-long missions following the March 1 return of astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko from a 340-day spaceflight.
| Read More » Guinea No Longer Free of Ebola: 2 New Cases Two new cases of Ebola have been confirmed in Guinea, the first in the country since it was declared Ebola-free in late December, according to the World Health Organization. Family members of the deceased were tested for Ebola, and two people — a woman and her 5-year-old son — tested positive for the disease, WHO said in a statement. Guinea's Ebola outbreak was declared over on Dec. 29, 2015, but officials said they expected that additional, small outbreaks of the disease would still occur in Guinea and the two other West African countries — Liberia and Sierra Leone — where the outbreak raged for two years. Read More » Over 100 Zika Cases Confirmed in US, CDC Says More than 100 cases of Zika virus have been confirmed in the United States, a new report finds. The 116 residents who have now tested positive for the virus include one infant who was born with severe microcephaly, according to the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). All 116 cases of Zika were confirmed by lab tests at the CDC. Read More » U.S., Russian crew blast off toward space station | By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts blasted off on Friday for a six-hour ride to the International Space Station, a NASA TV broadcast showed. A Russian Soyuz capsule carrying U.S. astronaut Jeff Williams and cosmonauts Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 5:26 p.m. EDT (2126 GMT).
| Read More » Homo sapiens' sex with extinct species was no one-night stand  | By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Our species, Homo sapiens, has a more adventurous sexual history than previously realized, and all that bed-hopping long ago has left an indelible mark on the human genome. People living on the remote equatorial islands of Melanesia represented the only population found to possess an appreciable level of Denisovan genetic ancestry. Many are involved in the immune system and likely helped protect against pathogens, and some play important roles in skin and hair biology, said University of Washington evolutionary geneticist Joshua Akey, who helped lead the study published in the journal Science.
| Read More » Homo sapiens' sex with extinct species was no one-night stand  | By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Our species, Homo sapiens, has a more adventurous sexual history than previously realized, and all that bed-hopping long ago has left an indelible mark on the human genome. People living on the remote equatorial islands of Melanesia represented the only population found to possess an appreciable level of Denisovan genetic ancestry. Many are involved in the immune system and likely helped protect against pathogens, and some play important roles in skin and hair biology, said University of Washington evolutionary geneticist Joshua Akey, who helped lead the study published in the journal Science.
| Read More » Why 2016 Will Have the Earliest Spring Equinox Since 1896  | If you're ready to see blooming flowers and sunny skies, it may help to know that this year's spring equinox will be the earliest to arrive in 120 years, largely because of an old rule governing leap years, experts said. There are two equinoxes (taken from the Latin words aequus for "equal" and nox for "night") each year, marking the start of spring and fall. Usually, the spring equinox happens on March 20 or 21.
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