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Researchers may have a new clue as to what's behind the feelings of well-being that come with activities like yoga or guided meditation. A new study shows that these forms of practiced relaxation have the potential to change which genes a person is expressing almost instantaneously. One yoga session is not going to alter your genetic structure and turn you into a superhuman, of course, but it could influence the function of genes associated with metabolism and immune system function in a hot second, which, really, is weird and surprising enough for our tastes.

As I rapidly approach the ripe old age of 30, I am becoming increasingly aware of things like my hair and whether or not I still have any. Commonly held wisdom says that baldness is passed from your mother's father, but AsapSCIENCE tackles the question to teach us just how hair loss really works in this new video.

A team of researchers at Cambridge University have spotted the first instances of DNA with four helices present inside human cells. The Cambridge team hopes their findings could have implications for treating cancer, but the discovery more broadly suggests that we still may have a lot to learn about the basic structure of DNA and the shapes it can potentially take.

What would you pay for a home genetic test that could help you trace your ancestry, let you know your risk for disease, allow you to participate in valuable research, and also probably creep you out a little? One company hopes the answer is $99. 23andMe has lowered the cost of their Personal Genome Service to only $99. Will the lower cost attract more customers, or are people still too creeped out by this kind of thing to bite?

Remember that scene in Jurassic Park where the scientist is explaining to Ian Malcolm that all the dinosaurs on the island are female because they deprive them of a specific hormone at a specific moment? Science may have just found that hormone and that moment. A team of scientists have found the protein that kicks off the development of male sex organs in mice. It could even explain why the female dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were able to breed.

Do you have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning? Good news -- it's probably not your fault. Researchers are offering more insight into a gene that seems to govern people's sleep cycles -- mutations and variations in this gene can render people genetically predisposed to being early birds or late risers. So thanks, genetics,for taking one more item off of the "Aspects Of My Personality That I'm Actually Responsible For" list. Oh, also interesting about this gene? It may help researchers predict when you're going to die, like a gypsy made of DNA.

When a class of animal is made up of only one gender, those animals tend to go extinct. That's not the case with the bdelloid rotifers, which have been exclusively female for around 80 million years. Just like we learned in Jurassic Park, life finds a way. For the bdelloids, that way is by hijacking the DNA of other species for its own benefit. Clever girl.

Chalk up another victory to the human spirit. Scientists at the University of Edinburgh have discovered a new gene they believe could explain how humans evolved from apes. This is a big discovery. Although, we're still waiting for some researchers to find the gene that would allow the apes to get super-intelligent and overthrow mankind, but this is probably a good start.

In news that makes us glad our memories are, as a team, pretty terrible, a team of researchers led by the University of Sussex has found evidence suggesting that a gene variant associated with dementia late in life is also associated with improved memory, math skills, and verbal abilities earlier in life. It's a troubling reminder that, sometimes, the candle that burns twice as bright really may burn half as long.

When the news of the day consists of things like Elmo's underage sex scandal, it's easy to think sometimes that the world and everyone in it is just getting more awful by the minute. According to a recent paper published in the journal Trends in Genetics, it appears that may be exactly the case. In even more depressing news, it seems to be because being intelligent and empathetic are no longer traits that are evolutionarily selected for. Man, we could have told you that.

For as large a role as it plays in modern medicine -- from testing to treatment -- the mechanics of the placebo effect remain a remarkably ill-understood mystery. A team of researchers at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School may have just had a break in the case, though. According to a study published in the journal PLoS ONE, the researchers have identified the first ever genetic difference between patients who respond to placeboes and patients who don't. Finding a genetic marker for the placebo effect might impact how some diseases are treated, but its real value could be in revolutionizing the way clinical trials are conducted and new drugs are approved for use.

An international team of scientists has achieved one of the holy grails of evolutionary biology, documenting the creation of new genes in a living organism for the first time. After introducing a gene engineered to be beneficial to protein synthesis into the DNA of salmonella bacteria in their labs, researchers from the University of California Davis and Sweden's Upsalla University have shown that strength in numbers may be the secret to success for mutant genes that stick around and become evolved traits of an organism.

I think we can agree that the common cold sucks. I also think we can agree that it doesn't suck nearly as badly as cancer. Researchers at the Salk Institute, though, may be on the trail of a way to turn the lesser of these two evils into a weapon in the fight against the other. This week, a study in the journal Cell reports that the Salk team has taken steps toward hijacking the common cold's ability to disable immune responses within cells. That could lead to engineered cold viruses that hunt down and destroy cancer cells, while leaving healthy cells in peace.

A new genome sequencing technique in use at Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics in Kansas City has sped up genome sequencing, sifting through the DNA of ailing newborns in just over two days, rather than the weeks it can often take to fully sequence a genome, thus speeding up being able to detect genetic disorders.

A long-theorized but only recently discovered class of genes may point to an inherent weakness in tumor cells. Even better news? The soft spot in cancer's defenses is present in cells from a wide variety of cancers, meaning that treatments derived from it could be a tool in fighting cancers across the board, not just targeting one or two types. Researchers from MIT, Harvard and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute report on these so-called CYCLOPS genes (the acronym officially stands for Copy number alterations Yielding Cancer Liabilities Owing to Partial losS, but we suspect the name stuck mostly because it just sounds cool) this week in the journal Cell.