Mobile phones are not associated with an increased risk of the most common type of brain tumour, finds the first UK study of the relationship between mobile phone use and risk of glioma. The results are published online by the BMJ today.

The disappearance of Neanderthals is frequently attributed to competition from modern humans, whose greater intelligence has been widely supposed to make them more efficient as hunters. However, a new study forthcoming in the February issue of Current Anthropology argues that the hunting practices of Neanderthals and early modern humans were largely indistinguishable, a conclusion leading to a different explanation, also based on archaeological data, to explain the disappearance of the Neanderthals. This study has important implications for debates surrounding behavioral evolution and the practices that eventually allowed modern humans like ourselves to displace other closely-related species.

An organism widely used for genetics-versus-environment studies has joined the panoply of mice, rats, dogs, humans and other species whose entire genomes have been sequenced.