Science of the Week, 12/28/12

This will be the last science post of 2012. How do you feel about the turning of the year? Do you have any goals for 2013, particularly writing or reading-related ones?

Anyway, on to the links:

Birdsong study pecks at theory that music is uniquely human

Fluctuating environment may have driven human evolution

What would it mean to live forever?

Microbes lose in Amazon deforestation

Enzymes key to survival in newborn mammals

Data challenged old views about evolution of early life

How stars look young when they're not: the secret of aging well

Hawaiian Islands are dissolving, study says

Long life and resistant to diseases? Our money's on bats to survive the apocalypse


If that's not enough science for you, you can read the January 2013 issue of Scientific American. It has a special feature predicting what the next 50, 100, and 150 years will bring. There's an associated article about how space travel will affect human evolution. Other topics include bionic connections (Luke Skywalker's prosthetic hand is mentioned) and megafloods. 

Finally, twin peaks in the data from the Large Hadron Collider suggest that there may be two Higgs bosons that decay in different ways. Scientists are still unsure if this is a statistical blip or a challenge to the Standard Model of physics.

If I had to pick the top science story of the year, it would have to be the discovery of the Higgs boson. Would you agree, or do you prefer another news story?

Enjoy your weekend, and we'll be back on Monday with the final BRoP Year in Review blog post and giveaway.