Plant biologists have discovered that an autoimmune response, triggered by a small number of genes, can be a barrier to producing a viable offspring. This could be a newly identified step toward speciation. This finding presents a new theory in the development of new species: two plants of the same species fail to reproduce not because of infestation or infection from an outside organism, nor from problems with reproductive organs. The biologist suggested that the necrotic plant is possibly analogous to a fertilized egg that fails to implant in the uterus. Infertility in couples might be explained by analogous auto-immune genetic profile. "How many couples can't produce progeny, but when they separate and find another mate, they do?"

The earliest domesticated pigs in Europe, which many archaeologists believed to be descended from European wild boar, were actually introduced from the Middle East by Stone Age farmers, new research suggests. While archaeologists already know that agriculture began about 12,000 years ago in the central and western parts of the Middle East, spreading rapidly across Europe between 6,800 -- 4000BC, many outstanding questions remain about the mechanisms of just how it spread. This research sheds new and important light on the actual process of the establishment of farming in Europe.

More than 100 currently available automobiles get 40 mpg or better. Why are all but two unavailable in the United States? In Autopia.