Tag: evolution
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Reading books. Making things. Darwin right. Darwin wrong...
In the small town of Fayetteville in northern New York, you'll find the local library in an old furniture factory dating from the turn of the 20th century. The refurbished building retains hints of its industrial past: wooden floors, exposed beams, walls lined with carefully labelled tools. But instead of quietly perusing stacks of books,…
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Naming things. The anxiety of the "most evolved"...
Contradicting earlier claims, "The Family That Walks on All Fours," a group of quadrupedal humans made famous by a 2006 BBC documentary, have simply adapted to their inability to walk upright and do not represent an example of backward evolution, according to new research by Liza Shapiro, an anthropologist at The University of Texas at…
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Adapting, accepting, living, dying...
The World Health Organization (WHO) presented its first-ever global attempt to assess the spread of drug resistance today—and the results are sobering. Antimicrobial resistance "threatens the achievements of modern medicine," warns the study, which shows that high rates of resistance occur in most parts of the world. "Without urgent, coordinated action by many stakeholders, the…
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Species, definitions, science. Towards nothing...
An old bat specimen. Re-examined. Is it one species? Or seven species? An analysis of a museum's bones collections seems to discover issues with the categorization of bats in species. (1) The species definition problem is an old one. The definition-of-anything is actually an old problem in general. We all rely on our definitions. And…
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