Tag: biology
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X, Y, Male, Female…
In most mammals, us included, biological sex is determined by a lottery between two letters: X and Y, the sex chromosomes. Inherit one X each from mom and dad, and develop ovaries, a womb and a vagina. Inherit an X from mom and a Y from dad, and develop testes and a penis. But there…
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![Abre los ojos: Right-handed. Left-handed. It matters not… [Asymmetry is just a phenomenon]](https://harmoniaphilosophica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/321244791d742638ded9ec4ea1f54a601-236x260.jpg)
Abre los ojos: Right-handed. Left-handed. It matters not… [Asymmetry is just a phenomenon]
Other people are right-handed and other people are left-handed. "Handed-ness" or left-right asymmetry is prevalent throughout the animal kingdom, including in pigeons and zebrafish. But why do people and animals naturally favor one side over the other, and what does it teach us about the brain's inner workings? Researchers explore these questions in a Review…
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Changing color. Turing. Von Neumann. Automata. Thinking. Tautologies.
Skin colour patterns in animals arise from microscopic interactions among coloured cells that obey equations discovered by the mathematician Alan Turing. Researchers at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, and SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics reported in the journal Nature that a southwestern European lizard slowly acquires its intricate adult skin colour by changing the…
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Walking with your hands… (and feet, ok) Living. Dying.
We humans walk with our feet. This is true, but not entirely. Walking, as part of locomotion, is a coordinated whole-body movement that involves both the arms and legs. Researchers at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel and the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research have identified different subpopulations of neurons in the spinal…
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Life. As No Life. As a rock. [A case of false biosignatures and what they tell us for the philosophy of biology definitions]
The geological search for ancient life frequently zeroes in on fossilized organic structures or biominerals that can serve as "biosignatures," that survive in the rock record over extremely long time scales. Mineral elements such as sulfur are often formed through biological activity. Microbes can also produce a variety of telltale extracellular structures that resemble sheaths…
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