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deevolution
Posts Tagged “Evolution”
deevolution
evolution
7 Totally AWESOME Theories Of Evolution From Scifi
If Ben Stein really wants to convince us all that evolution is a crock, he doesn't need to make a documentary and play semantic games with Richard Dawkins. He just has to sit us down and make us watch this episode of Star Trek: Voyager, where traveling at super-warp speed causes Janeway and Paris to super-evolve into lizards (and make lizard babies.) But it's not just Voyager — science fiction provides a ton of evolution theories that make intelligent design seem downright sensible. More »
evolution
The Ancient Apocalypse
Finally, a reason to think we'll survive the next apocalypse. Last week, a study that traced the origins of humans through mitochondrial DNA concluded that 70,000 years ago humanity underwent its greatest disaster ever. Africa experienced a massive drought at the time and it devastated our population, leaving perhaps as few as 2,000 people alive on the entire planet. Yet somehow we recovered — a warm thought for all the cold nights we spend dreading nuclear war, the next pandemic, dwindling water and food supplies, and global warming. More »
plague
Meet the Bacteria that Will Cause the Next Pandemic
It could be the beginning of a new global pandemic. Leptospirosis is a bacterial disease spread from animals to humans through water contaminated by infected urine. In severe cases, it can lead to liver failure, kidney failure, meningitis and eventually death. While it's been contained historically through screening and antibiotics, medical researchers in Peru recently stumbled across a new species of Lepto so genetically mutated that current tests for the disease don't detect it. More »
10,000 bc review
10,000 BC -- This Ain't Evolution
So we caught the new Roland "Independence Day" Emmerich vehicle 10,000 BC, opening in a theater near you today. It's a science fiction film in the most literal sense of those words. This flick takes the sciences of evolutionary biology and anthropology and turns them into fiction. Sadly, it wasn't the 300 style of anthropology fiction, where you know everything is wildly inaccurate but find yourself in a forgiving mood because the action is so terrific and the concept design kicks ass. 10,000 BC was actually so historically inaccurate that not even the giant ostrich attack scene made up for it. Spoilers and cranky comments about scientific accuracy ahead. More »
evolution
Plants Rapidly Evolve New Reproductive Systems in Cities
A common French weed known as Crepis sancta underwent a form of superaccelerated evolution to cope with the difficulties of spreading their seeds in cities. Scientists studying C. sancta discovered that over a period of just twelve years, the plants went from mostly producing "dispersing" seeds that spread on the wind, to producing "nondispersing" seeds that fall to the ground nearby. Why would a plant shift its reproductive cycle so radically and quickly? More »
radical evolution
First Proof that Evolution Can Work Faster Than Genetic Engineering
For years, farmers have been growing genetically-engineered cotton plants that exude an insecticide known as Bt. But now, a pest called the bollworm moth has evolved a resistance to Bt — and the altered bugs have already spread across part of the southern United States. This is the first-known example of bugs evolving resistance to an insecticide in the wild. It proves that natural selection can outrun genetic engineering in terms of its ability to transform a species quickly. More »
mad zoology
Chameleons Use Color to Communicate, Not Hide
Though most people believe chameleons use their color-changing abilities for camouflage, a new study released today proves this is incorrect. In fact, chameleons evolved the ability to transform skin color quickly to send messages to other chameleons. In a careful analysis of how and when chameleons change color, a group of researchers from South Africa and Australia showed that chameleons use color to stand out in their environments, and to signal whether they are active or passive in a conflict. Chameleons can shift to one color and back in a millisecond, too fast for a predator to see — but slow enough for other chameleons to get the message. More »
evolution
Just hold 'em under fluorescent bulbs, and they're like living, purring holiday lights! A Korean team of genetic engineers has created a super race of glowing red kitties. What everyone seems to have forgotten is that several years ago, bio-artist Eduardo Kac had some French engineers build him a glowing green bunny.
More »
It's a GMO Holiday With Glowing Red Kitty, Glowing Green Bunny
Just hold 'em under fluorescent bulbs, and they're like living, purring holiday lights! A Korean team of genetic engineers has created a super race of glowing red kitties. What everyone seems to have forgotten is that several years ago, bio-artist Eduardo Kac had some French engineers build him a glowing green bunny.
More »
tabloid science
Humans Are Rapidly Evolving and Mutating
Not only are human beings still evolving, but it looks like life in civilization may be pressuring us to evolve faster than ever. A groundbreaking new study published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the cultural environment of homo sapiens, including high population density and rapid immigration patterns, is exerting pressure on humans to mutate and evolve. This flies in the face of the accepted evolutionary wisdom that culture protects us from the kind of natural selection that made our ancestor's skull so strange in that picture. Want to know what we're evolving into? After the jump. More »
clones
United Nations Urges Human Rights for Clones (Sort Of)
Now that human clones are everywhere, how should we treat them? It's not just Clonaid asking anymore. The United Nations has just released a policy report saying that if we cannot reach global consensus on banning human cloning, we'll have to cope with a world full of human clones. And you know what that means. We could be facing a massive Clone Lib movement! So what does the most powerful body of international wonkitude recommend we do about the coming clone peril? More »
futurism
Future People Will Have Nicer Wobbly Bits
In just a thousand years, evolution will turn us all into supermodels, says British evolutionary psychologist and media whore Oliver Curry. That's because "sexual selection" naturally means that only people with the nicest faces and genitals get to produce babies — which anybody who's been to a baby shower will totally back up. Says Curry:Human evolution will reach its peak in about the year 3000. By then, sexual selection will have bred men into tall, handsome studs with deep voices, square jaws and substantial penises. Their female counterparts will have smooth, hairless skin, glossy hair, large eyes and perky breasts, says Curry. But after that, it's all downhill.More »
genetics
DNA Warlord James Watson Finally Spanked for a Lifetime of Racism, Sexism
James Watson, who won the Nobel Prize for helping to discover the double-helix shape of DNA, has been suspended from his administrative duties at Cold Spring Harbor Labs over comments he made to the London Times about how blacks are genetically hardwired with lower intelligence than other races. This should come as no surprise to people who have followed Watson's career. Many claim his "discovery" of DNA's structure came from peeking at (and stealing from) colleague Rosalind Franklin's work, a pioneer of microscopic imaging techniques whom Watson derided as an ugly woman who couldn't deal with people. Franklin died before the Nobel prize was given out, so she never had a chance to protest. Watson also grossed out a crowd at UC Berkeley during a public lecture in 2000 when he claimed that "darker" women had a higher sex drive due to genetics (AP mentions this lecture in a story). But what Watson said last week in the Times was much worse. More »
death
Ants Know When They Will Die
Ants apparently know exactly when they'll die, and when the insects are closer to death they choose to do more risky jobs like foraging for food far from the nest. Many scientists had observed that older ants tend to take on risky tasks, but had postulated that this was just a function of age. But a group of researchers in Poland, led by Dawid Moron, published a spooky article in Animal Behavior demonstrating that every ant knows when it will die, and the closer it gets to death, the riskier its behavior gets. Moron and his team exposed ants to carbon monoxide, which shortens their lifespans considerably, and discovered that the damaged ants started doing risky things at a young age, implying that they realized they were soon to die despite their relative youth. More »
bionic woman
The 50 Million Dollar Dame. Episode 2.
This week's show opens at a funeral; apparently Will didn't survive the shooting. Which immediately leads me to wonder: if the Berkut Group (a private, clandestine group dedicated to stopping rogue organizations from ending civilization as we know it) has all this Bionic technology, why didn't they apply it to Will? Of course, with Will out of the way, Jamie's free to wander through his apartment, smelling his clothes and discovering the dossier he's been keeping on her for two years. More »
bionic woman
Things couldn't get any worse for Jaime Sommers last night on Bionic Woman. Another bionic woman shot her fiance to death last week. To make matters worse, Jaime found a secret dossier in dead fiance's house that was all about her, dating back to years before they met. Creepy. And just to add insult to injury, when she tries to hook up with a random guy at a bar, she discovers her bionic horniness is powerful enough to send her trick to the emergency room. Maybe that's why she decides to spend the rest of the episode hanging out with the awesome, gun-toting Ruth (Molly Price), figuring out why 200 people suddenly died in a small town. I bet if Jaime had sex with Ruth, the bone-breaking would be entirely consensual.
Bionic Sex Leads To Broken Ribs!
Things couldn't get any worse for Jaime Sommers last night on Bionic Woman. Another bionic woman shot her fiance to death last week. To make matters worse, Jaime found a secret dossier in dead fiance's house that was all about her, dating back to years before they met. Creepy. And just to add insult to injury, when she tries to hook up with a random guy at a bar, she discovers her bionic horniness is powerful enough to send her trick to the emergency room. Maybe that's why she decides to spend the rest of the episode hanging out with the awesome, gun-toting Ruth (Molly Price), figuring out why 200 people suddenly died in a small town. I bet if Jaime had sex with Ruth, the bone-breaking would be entirely consensual.
heroes
