In just about every galaxy known to man, the most common feature in them is that they all have a monstrous centerpiece: a massive black hole. For some reason, Milky Way's own Sagittarius A* seems dormant, but Japanese observers say it wasn't always this way. The full story follows after the jump.

Chimpanzees, alongside gorillas, are generally referred to as the evolutionary distant cousins of humans. They possess higher-than-average intellect compared to the rest of the animal kingdom.

However, some chimps are so clever that they were able to outperform college students in a recent experiment concerning short-term memory exams. The said study was conducted by Japan's Kyoto University. The results after the jump!

There's no doubt that embryonic research does a great deal for creating more advanced medicine and medical techniques, but that's not the problem. The problem is that the means for harvesting stem cells usually involve destroying human embryos.

However, new research has started to create a process where skin cells act like stem cells. Should the research prove successful, the whole moral controversy surrounding stem cell research wouldn't an issue anymore. Find out more in the full article.

Due to the lack of fossil evidences in Africa, it is a common belief among experts that the common ancestors of great apes and humans left the region for Europe and Asia around seven to 13 million years ago. A recent finding, however, suggests otherwise. A 10 million year old jawbone of a great ape has just been found in the Nakali region of Kenya.

The team believe that the jawbone belongs to an entirely new species of the great ape. Click the "read more" link for the full story.

Wait, we didn't mean McDonald's will some day include Mickey Mouse Burgers on their menu.  But in the future, cows and maybe even elephants will come from mice. At present, scientists have successfully produced healthy baby rats from rat sperm cells grown in mouse testicles.  

Takashi Shinohara, a molecular geneticist at Kyoto University in Japan, and his colleagues developed the technique called in-vitro microinsemination. This breakthrough proves it's possible to store functional sperm cells of bigger animals in small "packages" such as mice.

Although it sounds like these scientists have too much time on their hands, the new technology could prove very useful in farming and agriculture. Cattle farmers could save space and food by growing bull sperm in mice.
 
The technique could also be used in conserving endangered animals using frozen sperm stem cells. Sperm stem cells, which give rise to cells that develop into sperm, can be transplanted into mouse testicles to produce viable sperm.