Category: Ecology
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Stealing seeds. Digging earth...
Earlier this month, a federal court indicted a Chinese national for trying to steal GMO corn technology from DuPont, Monsanto, and AgReliant Genetics. The scientist's arrest is just the latest in a series of indictments against six other people linked to a Beijing seed-development company called Dabeinong Technology Group Co. The FBI alleges the Dabeinong…
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Left handed. Right handed. Human.
Men born in November, December or January are more likely of being left-handed than during the rest of the year. While the genetic bases of handedness are still under debate, scientists obtained indirect evidence of a hormonal mechanism promoting left-handedness among men. (1) We believe we are bounded by our nature. We believe we are…
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Monkeys, music, ecology...
Research published today by the American Psychological Association has shown that chimpanzees prefer listening to West African akan and North Indian raga over listening to silence. What does this say about the evolutionary purpose of music? Previous work by McDermott and Hauser showed that when tamarins and marmosets were given a choice between a lullaby…
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Astray salmons. Lost humans...
In drought-stricken California, young Chinook salmon are hitting the road, not the river, to get to the Pacific Ocean. Millions of six-month-old smolts are hitching rides in tanker trucks because California's historic drought has depleted rivers and streams, making the annual migration to the ocean too dangerous for juvenile salmon. "The drought conditions have caused lower…
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Oil spills, purple elephants, science as a tool of politics.
Much of the methane released by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout hung around until the end of that year. In a new study of data collected in the months after the spill, scientists report that the numbers of methane-munching microbes plummeted while the gas was still abundant. The result contradicts an earlier report, which suggested…
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