New research findings show that immune system development is affected by gravity changes when astronauts are exposed to stresses during launch and landing which disrupts their body’s natural defenses against infection. Changes to the immune system need to be investigated before astronauts undergo longer space missions. 

Researchers looked at how antibody production is affected when animal development occurs on board a space station and which part of space travel has the greatest impact on antibodies, which are the proteins that the immune system uses to protect us from diseases.

See, this is what I really like of a blog: when readers contribute significantly!

Fusion is the super-clean energy we would be thinking about if government-controlled energy science were about the best long-term solutions and not political pet projects - alas, its share of the $72 billion spent on alternate energy the last three years is negligible. 

But something is better than nothing and some recent research revealed at the International Atomic Energy Association's Fusion Energy Conference in San Diego may be worth getting excited about. 

A new phase in the Gene Wars is about to begin—this time focused on the nexus of genetics and economics.

Nature carried a provocative article last week laying the ground work for what should be a fiery debate over the nascent field of genoeconomics. The prestigious American Economic Review is set to publish a peer reviewed paper co-authored by two economists, Quamrul Ashraf and Oded Galor, that argues that a country’s economic well being could be linked to the population’s genetic make-up.

Why, in difficult driving conditions or when lost, do people turn down the volume of their radio? Some new research links motor skills and perception, specifically as it relates to a second finding; a new understanding of what the left and right brain hemispheres "hear."

The findings, the first to match human behavior with left brain/right brain auditory processing tasks, may eventually point to strategies that could help stroke patients recover their language abilities and to improve speech recognition in children with dyslexia. 

Researchers have discovered that females with multiple sexual partners can be more fertile than those that are monogamous, and this because of an “overproduction” of sons.  The study,  published as a provisional article but already one of the most accessed in BCM Evolutionary Biology, helps to explain a puzzle haunting evolutionary biologist for decades: why so many females chase multiple sexual partners in a mating season, when this is costly and dangerous, and one is enough to fertilize all her eggs.

It's no surprise that when I get interested in a topic I opt for full immersion. Come on, people--you've seen the zebra print! You've seen the wigs!

What's my latest? Apparently, a deep immersion into Peter Singer, whose chapter "Taking Life: Humans" I've assigned to my students in Comp 1, along with Harriet McBryde Johnson's "Unspeakable Conversations."

Despite the intent in biology to eliminate group selection, it invariably turns up as the only reasonable explanation for the cohesion of species and the behavior of large groups of animals.

Additionally, the struggle to explain altruism using kin selection and inclusive fitness is perpetually haunted by the requirement that the entire premise hinges on the existence of an actual "altruism" gene.  In other words, Hamilton's rule and inclusive fitness are meaningless if there isn't a genetic component to cooperation and altruism.

In a pinch and need to go back in time or flee to Alpha Centauri in a hurry?  Find a mathematician, quick!

If only Einstein's theory of special relativity were extended to work beyond the speed of light, things would be easy.   But of course Einstein's theory holds that nothing could move faster than the speed of light. Special Relativity was published in 1905 and explained how motion and speed is always relative to the observer's frame of reference. The theory connects measurements of the same physical incident viewed from these different points in a way that depends on the relative velocity of the two observers.

1. Thou shalt not screw thine early adopters. They made thou what thou art, even showing patience with thine inattention to upward compatibility. Yea, though they paid high early prices, thou hast refused them free upgrades. Now as they glance at their boxes of obsolete connectors, power sources, software and disk drives, they plan to make their next purchases from thine upstart competitor.