Since I couldn’t Digg this article, I decided to share it as it is. Full credit goes to telgraph.co.uk.

- The preference of women for men with high cheekbones helped shape human evolution, according to the Senckenberg Research Institute, Frankfurt. The popularity of film stars such as Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Viggo Mortensen may be the latest examples of the preference.

- For an enduring relationship, an attractive smell is as important as good looks. A study at St Andrews University shows that people use both visual and odour cues when seeking long-term partners.

- Women can tell whether a man is attractive and has “good” genes from a glimpse of his cheek, according to the University of Newcastle. Ninety women were asked to assess the facial attractiveness of 76 men and found that the rankings remained the same when only shown a small area of facial skin.

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The genetic survey, produced by a collaborative team led by scholars at Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin Universities, shows that Australia’s aboriginal population sprang from the same tiny group of colonists, along with their New Guinean neighbours.

The research confirms the “Out Of Africa” hypothesis that all modern humans stem from a single group of Homo sapiens who emigrated from Africa 2,000 generations ago and spread throughout Eurasia over thousands of years. These settlers replaced other early humans (such as Neanderthals), rather than interbreeding with them.

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Source: physorg.com

Note: The article says that the “settlers” replaced other early humans. Woah! Awesome!

The human and chimpanzee genomes vary by just 1.2 percent, yet there is a considerable difference in the mental and linguistic capabilities between the two species. A new study showed that a certain form of neuropsin, a protein that plays a role in learning and memory, is expressed only in the central nervous systems of humans and that it originated less than 5 million years ago. The study, which also demonstrated the molecular mechanism that creates this novel protein, will be published online in Human Mutation, the official journal of the Human Genome Variation Society.

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Source: physorg.com