Biology – Page 116

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Snakes Alive! An Evolutionary Tale

April 3, 2010

Blind snakes that look like worms: they rule the world. They’re everywhere. Where did they come from? “Blindsnakes are not very pretty, are rarely noticed, and are often mistaken for earthworms,” admits Blair Hedges, professor of biology at Penn State University. “Nonetheless, they tell a very interesting evolutionary story.” So reported Science Daily. National Geographic […]

Amazing Facts

Elephants Equipped with 4WD

March 30, 2010

An elephant is built like a four-wheel drive vehicle, say scientists from the Royal Veterinary College in London. Unlike other mammals, which divide acceleration and braking between the front and rear legs, “power is applied independently to each limb,” reported PhysOrg from a paper in PNAS.1 “Elephant limbs operate analogously to four-wheel-drive vehicles,” the authors […]

Amazing Facts

Biomimetics: Science for Now

March 27, 2010

Do you want science that makes a difference in our lives? Look at real plants and animals with real solutions to practical problems. That’s where researchers are making amazing discoveries with practical spinoffs. Shellfish materials: Strong, lightweight structures are coming, thanks to the imitation of oysters and shellfish. PhysOrg reported that researchers at the University […]

Amazing Facts

Beetle Pulls 1,141 Times Its Weight

March 23, 2010

Ever watch those contest shows for the World’s Strongest Man? Compared to dung beetles, they’re wimps. Scientists at Queen Mary, University of London found that the strongest beetle tested could pull an astonishing 1,141 times its own weight – “the equivalent of a 70kg person lifting 80 tonnes (the same as six full double-decker buses),” […]

Amazing Facts

Search for Intraterrestrial Life Scores Big

March 16, 2010

Single-celled organisms may be tiny, but what they lack in bulk they make up for in volume and importance. Scientists have been appreciating more than ever the ubiquitous presence of microbes on our planet and the roles they play to sustain the biosphere. PhysOrg reported that half of the world’s life may lie […]

Amazing Facts

Fruit Flies: From Darwin to Design

March 13, 2010

The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is an icon of evolution. Since the 1930s these poor little bugs have been mutated endlessly and watched for signs of Darwinian change. So far, though, only useless mutants, unable to survive in the wild, have been produced. Recently, scientists seem more enamored with their design. Two recent articles had […]

Cell Biology

What Good Is Natural Selection without Progress?

March 8, 2010

Three papers recently claim to have seen natural selection. None of them, however, identified a functional advantage that would have tied changes to novel benefits that could improve a species. Yeast: “New Type of Genetic Variation Could Strengthen Natural Selection,” trumpeted a headline in Science Daily. It was about a study of two varieties of […]

Darwin and Evolution

Ida Not a Human Ancestor

March 3, 2010

If Ida known then what I know now: the media-frenzied presentation of Ida (Darwinius masillae) as a distant relative of human beings last year has been debunked. “Many lines of evidence indicate that Darwinius has nothing at all to do with human evolution,” said Chris Kirk (U of Texas) in an article on Science Daily. […]

Amazing Facts

Flight Design: Flies and Birds Get it Wright

March 3, 2010

Parse the following sentence for logical consistency: “Just as the Wright brothers implemented controls to achieve stable airplane flight, flying insects have evolved behavioral strategies that ensure recovery from flight disturbances.” That is the first sentence from a paper in PNAS yesterday about the stabilizers in fly wings.1 Ristroph et al just compared design principles […]

Biomimetics

Life Leads the Way to Invention

February 26, 2010

Here’s a factoid for the party: a cell is 10,000 times more energy-efficient than a transistor. PhysOrg tells us that “ In one second, a cell performs about 10 million energy-consuming chemical reactions, which altogether require about one picowatt (one millionth millionth of a watt) of power.” This and other amazing facts lead to an […]

Amazing Facts

Making Evolution Simple

February 25, 2010

Getting the vast diversity of highly complex creatures seems an impossible task for evolutionary theory, but some recent stories claim it’s not so hard. Beak of the finch: Darwin’s finches keep pecking their way into the media. A new study claims that the wide diversity of beak shapes that have evolved can be explained by […]

Amazing Facts

Spider Hair: The Perfect Water Repellant Surface

February 24, 2010

To keep dry, make like a spider. “Engineering researchers have crafted a flat surface that refuses to get wet,” began a press release from University of Florida. “Water droplets skitter across it like ball bearings tossed on ice. The inspiration? Not wax. Not glass. Not even Teflon.” The audience waits breathlessly for the answer. “Instead, […]

Amazing Facts

The Brain You Use, and How It Uses You

February 21, 2010

Neuroscientists continue to find out amazing things about the human brain. In some ways we are responsible to use our brains, but in other ways the brain does things to us. If nobody has figured out where the dividing line is for thousands of years, it’s unlikely we will today; but the following findings can […]

Amazing Facts

Life Is Smarter Than We Know

February 15, 2010

How can toads calculate? How can cells without a brain or central nervous system figure out a balanced diet? How can bugs navigate the wind for optimum flight time? These are some of the questions that can arise from observations of the living world. The more we learn about life, the more we find unexpected […]

Darwin and Evolution

For His Birthday, Darwin Gets a Scrambled Arthropod Tree

February 12, 2010

If Darwin lost his tree last year (01/22/2009), it would seem any corrections or rearrangements would be academic. Nevertheless, eight evolutionary biologists at Duke University tried rearranging one of the biggest branches on Darwin’s tree of common ancestry – the highly diverse group known as arthropods (animals with jointed appendages). Arthropods comprise the largest number […]

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