The Great Lifespan Escape

At the time when the lines begin, in the mid-18th century, life expectancy in Europe and the Americas was around 35, where it had been parked for the 225 previous years for which we have data.3 Life expectancy for the world as a whole was 29. These numbers are in the range of expected life spans for most of human history. The life expectancy of hunter-gatherers is around 32.5, and it probably decreased among the peoples who first took up farming because of their starchy diet and the diseases ...

 Breast Feeding Fuels Big Brains

The study looked at the average pregnancy term, breast-feeding length and brain size of 128 species of mammals. They saw that between different species brain size at birth was determined by the length of pregnancy, while the brain growth after birth was determined by breast-feeding duration. [...] The extreme length of pregnancy and breast-feeding in humans (nine months and three years, respectively) is required for the growth and development of our large brains, which can reach 79 cubic in...

 Pregnant Celebrities are News

"In this world, pregnancy is considered news, and it is a nine-month news cycle," the editor-in-chief of Star magazine has said. Issues featuring pregnant celebrities are often among the magazines' best sellers. The mother of all celebrity pregnancies, of course, was that of actress Demi Moore, who appeared naked and seven months pregnant on the cover of Vanity Fair> in 1991. Back then, the image still had the power to shock: on its first day on the stands, the issue sold out during the mo...