Tag: biology
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Double genes. Redundant genes. Everything. Nothing.
The evolution of major novel traits – characteristics such as wings, flowers, horns or limbs – has long been known to play a key role in allowing organisms to exploit new opportunities in their surroundings. What’s still up for debate, though, is how these important augmentations come about from a genetic point of view. New research…
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Why do we die? Why shouldn’t we?
Life is destructive. Our environment and our internal functions all wear and tear at our body over time. Evolutionarily speaking, natural selection rewards those who can survive such hardship. So why don’t we live forever – why age at all? There have been numerous attempts to understand how and why we age – as recently…
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Bacteria mind games…
By tinkering with the gut’s bacterial residents, scientists have changed the behavior of lab animals and small numbers of people. Microbial meddling has turned anxious mice bold and shy mice social. Rats inoculated with bacteria from depressed people develop signs of depression themselves. And small studies of people suggest that eating specific kinds of bacteria…
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Zooplankton. Light. Dark. Sun. Moon. Nothing.
The daily rising and setting of the sun propels what is thought to be the world’s largest migration: Tiny zooplankton move from the near-surface waters — where they spend the night feeding — down into deeper, darker waters during the day to avoid predators that rely on sight for finding a meal. It was thought…
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Why does life exist? A very scientific (and theological) response…
Why does life exist? Popular hypotheses credit a primordial soup, a bolt of lightning, and a colossal stroke of luck. But if a provocative new theory is correct, the evolution of life could follow from the fundamental laws of nature and “should be as unsurprising as rocks rolling downhill”. From the standpoint of physics, there…
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