Machines Like Us – Science News

Classic evolutionary theory predicts that parasites become more virulent because they must transmit themselves between hosts, yet scientists have found little data to support this idea, until now.

More than 600 million years of evolution has taken two unlikely distant cousins -- turkeys and scallops -- down very different physical paths from a common ancestor. But University of Leeds researchers have found that a motor protein, myosin 2, remains structurally identical in both creatures.

A spectacularly preserved new Chinese fossil reveals a previously unseen stage in the early evolution of flight.

Just as religions dwell upon the eternal battle between good and evil, angels and devils, evolutionary theorists dwell upon the eternal battle between altruistic and selfish behaviors in the Darwinian struggle for existence. In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), evolutionary theorists at Binghamton University suggest that selfishness might not be such a villain after all.

To spotlight the widespread importance of evolution, a group of renowned international scientists have launched a scientific journal devoted to using evolutionary biology to tackle the world's major biological crises. The new journal, titled Evolutionary Applications publishes articles that use evolution to address pressing issues such as climate change, endangered species, food safety, infectious diseases, and invasive species.

Scientists have put more meat on the theory that dinosaurs' closest living relatives are modern-day birds. Molecular analysis, or genetic sequencing, of a 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex protein from the dinosaur's femur confirms that T. rex shares a common ancestry with chickens, ostriches, and to a lesser extent, alligators.

Darwin presented compelling evidence for evolution in On the Origin and, since his time, the case has become overwhelming. Yet despite an ever-growing mountain of evidence, most people around the world are not taught the truth about evolution, if they are taught about it at all.

Chris Comer, a science teacher in Texas, was expelled for not teaching Intelligent Design in her science class. It's a scary day indeed when our science teachers are fired for recognizing that creationism is not science.

Some primates have evolved big brains because their extra brainpower helps them live and reproduce longer, an advantage that outweighs the demands of extra years of growth and development they spend reaching adulthood, anthropologists from Duke University and the University of Zurich have concluded in a new study.

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have uncovered the first clues about the ancient origins of a mother's intricate lifeline to her unborn baby, the placenta, which delivers oxygen and nutrients critical to the baby's health.

Darwin's tree of life represents the path and estimates the time evolution took to get to the current diversity of life. Now, new findings suggest that this tree, an icon of evolution, may need to be redrawn. In research reported in the April 13 advance online issue of Nature, scientists at Rockefeller University and the University of Tokyo have joined forces to reveal that insects have adopted a strategy to detect odors that is radically different from those of other organisms -- an unexpected and controversial finding that may dissolve a dominant ideology in the field.

The Human Genome Project revealed that only a small fraction of the 3 billion “letter” DNA code actually instructs cells to manufacture proteins, the workhorses of most life processes. This has raised the question of what the remaining part of the human genome does. How much of the rest performs other biological functions, and how much is merely residue of prior genetic events?

Knowing the history of past populations and answering unresolved questions about them is highly interesting, more so when the information is obtained from the extraction of genetic material from historical remains. An example is the necropolis at Aldaieta (Araba) where some of these mysteries about these peoples have been answered -- thanks to the study of their DNA.

The number of school students in Britain who believe in creationism is becoming a growing concern for science teachers, according to Professor Richard Dawkins.

It's not Yasgur's Farm, but what happens at the Konrad Lorenz Institute in Altenberg, Austria this July promises to be far more transforming for the world than Woodstock. What it amounts to is a gathering of 16 biologists and philosophers of rock star stature -- let's call them "the Altenberg 16" -- who recognize that the theory of evolution which most practicing biologists accept and which is taught in classrooms today, is inadequate in explaining our existence. It's pre the discovery of DNA, lacks a theory for body form and does not accomodate "other" new phenomena. So the theory Charles Darwin gave us, which was dusted off and repackaged 70 years ago, seems about to be reborn as the "Extended Evolutionary Synthesis."