Our DNA influences our ability to read a person's thoughts and emotions from looking at their eyes, suggests a new study.

Twenty years ago, a team of scientists developed a test of 'cognitive empathy' called the 'Reading the Mind in the Eyes' Test (or the Eyes Test, for short). This revealed that people can rapidly interpret what another person is thinking or feeling from looking at their eyes alone. It also showed that some of us are better at this than others, and that women on average score better on this test than men.

Scientists have found a hellish world where the "surface" of the planet is over 4,000C - almost as hot as our Sun.

In part, that’s because KELT-9b’s host star is itself very hot, but also because this alien world resides so close to the furnace, according to BBC.

KELT-9b takes just two days to complete one orbit of the star.

Observations collected by NASA’s Curiosity rover over 3.5 years have revealed that oxygen levels in an ancient Martian lake differed between shallow and deep water.

And, researchers say this phenomenon is also common in lakes on Earth.

The discovery is a step toward better understanding whether Mars was ever able to support life, as this type of environment could have created ‘multiple opportunities for different types of microbes to survive.’

Evolutionary biologists have suspected that anatomical differences within and between species are caused by cis-regulatory elements (CREs). CREs are regions of genome DNA that do not code for proteins, and control morphology and other traits by regulating genes. According to Science daily

The international group of researchers analyzed the genomes of 48 avian species that represent the evolutionary history of modern birds and compared them to many other vertebrates to find DNA sequences specific to avians.

Fossils from Greece and Bulgaria of an ape-like creature that lived 7.2 million years ago may fundamentally alter the understanding of human origins, casting doubt on the view that the evolutionary lineage that led to people arose in Africa.

Scientists said the creature, known as Graecopithecus freybergi and known only from a lower jawbone and an isolated tooth, may be the oldest-known member of the human lineage that began after an evolutionary split from the line that led to chimpanzees, our closest cousins, according to Reuters.