Evolution

Biological Meaning of Selfishness, Cooperation, and Altruism – Part 3

At this point it will be useful to examine some of the selection pressures that will also affect a species. The obvious ones are the need for resources to maintain the day-to-day activities necessary for basic survival and the need to locate and contend wi ...

Blog Post - Gerhard Adam - May 21 2009 - 6:37pm

Creationism Axed- Again!

Creationism Axed- Again! The stone axe from 400,000 years ago which has been described as "the most important stone tool in the establishment of the geological antiquity of humankind" was mislaid for many years.  It has been  rediscovered thanks ...

Blog Post - Patrick Lockerby - May 26 2009 - 11:43pm

Defining Competition- Biology Part 4

The key issue in considering competition is the question of whether changes in resource availability or mates would alter the confrontation. If the answer is negative, then no competition can be said to have occurred. The mere existence of confrontation do ...

Article - Gerhard Adam - May 30 2009 - 7:08pm

Genome Evolution- Saved By Junk DNA?

VIB (the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology) researchers linked to K.U.Leuven and Harvard University say they have shown that stretches of DNA previously believed to be useless 'junk' DNA play a vital role in the evolution of our genome. Their ...

Article - News Staff - May 29 2009 - 4:38pm

The Art Of Torture

The Art Of Torture More than 28 million Americans, and many more people throughout the world, suffer from migraine headaches, one of the most debilitating of pain disorders. Symptoms like excruciating pain, visual disturbance and disorientation are often ...

Blog Post - Patrick Lockerby - May 29 2009 - 2:03pm

Cooperation Among Prey Animals- Biology Part 5

It should be clear that the vast majority of biological interactions are largely indifferent to others, while there is also a high degree of cooperation as necessitated by the evolution of sexual reproduction. It is this level of cooperation that has also ...

Article - Gerhard Adam - May 30 2009 - 7:04pm

Kamchatka, Bumpass Hell And The Origin Of Life

When we think of volcanic conditions, our minds leap to images of vast eruptions like Mount St. Helens in Washington State, or lava oozing down the slopes of Kilauea on the Big Island of Hawaii. With my family, I once visited that lava flow. We are used t ...

Article - Dave Deamer - May 31 2009 - 11:10am

Rearranging the Genetic Code

The genetic code is fixed in most organisms, but sometimes microbes pull off a swap. How that swap works is hard to fathom, because you can screw up nearly all of your genes by doing it. A paper out today in Nature finds (among many other things) looks at ...

Blog Post - Michael White - Jun 3 2009 - 5:14pm

Life: An Icy Origin?

In the last few columns, I described how laboratory simulations of a volcanic prebiotic environment showed that interesting organic reactions can be driven by the heat and pressure associated with vulcanism. I also described my own studies of volcanic sit ...

Article - Dave Deamer - Jun 4 2009 - 12:20pm

More on Natural Selection in the Human Genome

Teasing out the effects of natural selection on our genomes from the effects of other evolutionary processes is hard. A group at the University of Washington, using comparisons with the genomes of 5 other primate species, takes a crack at it: ...

Blog Post - Michael White - Jun 4 2009 - 1:57pm