Posts Tagged ‘evolution’
Earth & Environment - Nov 2, 2009 11:35 - 0 Comments
Beetles point to habitat’s role in biodiversity
VANDERBILT (US)—Tiny leaf beetles that flit among the maple and willow trees in a Vermont town have provided some of the clearest evidence yet that environmental factors play a major role in the formation of new species. (more…)
Society & Culture - Oct 27, 2009 15:41 - 0 Comments
What are you laughing at?
RUTGERS (US)—Laughing at funny things is universal, but what individuals find funny is not. An anthropologist studying the evolutionary function of laughter has found that for something to be funny, it must ring true. (more…)
Earth & Environment - Oct 13, 2009 18:46 - 0 Comments
Cuckolds with evolutionary know-how
YALE (US)—Evolutionary biology theory predicts that males usually won’t invest a lot of time raising offspring when there is a good chance they are not the fathers. Researchers have found a notable exception—a male fish in the Mediterranean that is more likely to be paternal when there is grave doubt about the offsprings’ parentage. (more…)
Earth & Environment - Oct 9, 2009 17:28 - 0 Comments
Twig by twig, climbing Earth’s ‘Tree of Life’
VANDERBILT (US)—Antonis Rokas is a member of a small cadre of scientists applying the growing power of genomics to untangle and correctly arrange the branches of the Tree of Life. (more…)
Earth & Environment - Sep 30, 2009 12:40 - 3 Comments
Hyenas in cahoots outperform primates
DUKE (US)—Spotted hyenas may not be smarter than chimpanzees, but a new study shows they perform better than primates on cooperative problem-solving tests. (more…)
Science & Technology - Sep 28, 2009 18:21 - 1 Comment
Monkey brain signals mental wanderlust
DUKE (US)—Knowing when to stay with what’s familiar or when to search for something new can be tricky, especially for those with conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. Using brain scans, researchers are able to predict when monkeys will switch from exploiting a known resource to exploring their options. (more…)
Society & Culture - Sep 21, 2009 20:38 - 9 Comments
Love’s not the only reason women have sex
TEXAS-AUSTIN (US)—Challenging the idea that women’s sexual motivations are tied exclusively to romantic emotions or reproduction, a new study finds woman are motivated by a wide array of reasons—from boredom to altruism to revenge. (more…)
Earth & Environment - Sep 14, 2009 15:10 - 0 Comments
Making heads or tails of lowly worm
YALE (US)—A group of researchers is using microRNA genes to untangle the history of the large—and still largely misunderstood—group of segmented worms known as annelids, which evolved millions of years ago and can be found in every corner of the world. (more…)
Earth & Environment - Sep 1, 2009 6:00 - 0 Comments
This ant’s just not in the mood
“Animals that are completely asexual are relatively rare, which makes this is a very interesting ant,” says Christian Rabeling about an ant variety without any males. (Credit: Alex Wild)
Science & Technology - Aug 28, 2009 16:59 - 0 Comments
Fruit flies killed by nanoparticles
Microscopy shows a clean foot and leg of a fruit fly (top), and a foot and leg covered with carbon nanostructures (bottom). Adhering nanostructures may have impeded movement, respiration and vision in adult flies but did not appear toxic to fly larvae that ingested it.
Earth & Environment - Aug 24, 2009 4:00 - 0 Comments
How ‘tubes with teeth’ fight infection
Lampreys in a laboratory tank. (Courtesy: Masa Hirano)
Health & Medicine - Aug 19, 2009 12:22 - 0 Comments
Brain ‘sees’ even when eyes can’t
Blue shows regions of the brain that were more activated when both sighted and blind participants thought about nonliving things rather than animals. (Courtesy: University of Rochester)
Earth & Environment - Aug 13, 2009 12:37 - 0 Comments
Toastier temps make for smaller sheep
Soay sheep graze on the Scottish island of Hirta. Their average size has been declining since 1985, and researchers suspect warmer temperatures are playing a role. (Credit: Tim Coulson)
Earth & Environment - Aug 10, 2009 4:00 - 0 Comments
In African rocks, traces of evolutionary blast
UNC CHAPEL HILL (US)—New research has opened the door on what some consider to be the greatest event in the history of animal life: a massive evolutionary jumpstart during the Cambrian Explosion half a billion years ago. (more…)
Earth & Environment - Jul 31, 2009 15:33 - 0 Comments
Solar energy solution buried in the mud
“We envision producing hydrogen in a photochemically driven process, where the electrons and protons needed to produce the hydrogen are furnished by water,” chemist Brian Dyer explains. “You could then burn the hydrogen as fuel and get water back. It would be a perfectly clean cycle.”
Earth & Environment - Jul 24, 2009 12:17 - 2 Comments
Predator and prey direct nature’s synchronicity
“Predators fundamentally change the way that their prey vary through time, creating a cyclic pattern that is quickly synchronized across many locations with only small amounts of dispersal,” says Yale’s David Vasseur.
Society & Culture - Jul 23, 2009 5:00 - 0 Comments
Nature? Nurture? Or simply neither?
“This is one attempt at getting the ideas out there and starting a dialogue, continuing to educate the public and the scientific community, especially the younger generation of researchers,” psychologist Mark Blumberg explains. “We know we don’t have a sound bite that’s as clean and simple and sexy as saying ‘it’s genetic.’ But we’re working on it.”
Science & Technology, Society & Culture - Jul 22, 2009 5:00 - 1 Comment
Neandertal likely killed by human-made weapon
Duke anthropologist Steven Churchill holds a facsimile Neandertal spear in his left hand and human-made, spear-throwing projectile weapon in his right. (Credit: Les Todd/Duke)
