biology

Resolved: Hilton, Wright, & Heying are essentially correct about what makes a mammal either female or male.

The past few years scientists have been finding evidence of a huge subterranean biosphere. Reminds me of the new nematode found in that South African mine a couple years back. If we find no life on Mars we should consider digging. :)

A comment in the Intelligent Design thread has started me thinking. It seems to me that there are many instances where the design of the human body is obviously - not to put too fine a point on it - downright wrong. There are of course different trade-offs in any design, so it's not really a...

This may be a stupid question, but I have asked it of other people and not gotten a real answer. Where does the weight you lose actually go? Do you burn it as fuel? Excrete it? I understand that you can lose weight and fat but not the mechanism.

For my Technical Writing class, I had to contact a local organization, preferably one related to my field, and interview them, asking them some major problems they have. I then recommend a solution by the end of the semester. I just recently switched to Mechanical Engineering as my major, and I...

Just watched this - http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00q0hh2/Aristotles_Lagoon/ - wonderful! Hide your IP address (PRISM permitting ;)) for non UK viewers, but a truly wonderful programme.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/jan/31/socialists-conservatives-born-not-made Seems a little too neat to me. Are the "appetitive"/"aversive" systems actually real, or just a simple way of categorising lots of different responses to stimuli? I would suspect the latter. Anyone...

I've just been perusing this document, which seems to have been getting some attention on the web, after I was sent a link to it. [2MB PDF] Here's the abstract: It continues in this vein for 105 pages, includes a lexicon of dozens of new terms coined for this theory. Plus some nice gyroscopic...

This was a Trivial Pursuit question. According to this reputable source, all mammals have roughly the same number of heartbeats over the course of a lifetime, except humans which have more thanks to medical care. Anything in it? A cursory google would indicate that this is certainly disputed.

So children can be born from frozen embryos. But can little chickens hatch from frozen fertilised chicken eggs? Or are they too big? I would try and look it up but my brain is scrambled.

I found this article fascinating, about a very superstitious group of people who had a tendency to die mysteriously in the night of no obvious cause. Some interesting ideas, and I think I'd like to get the book: snip

Gary Bradley, an adjunct professor at the Seventh Day Adventist operated La Sierra University, has been on the radar of the adminstration because he doesn't accept young Earth creationism and this provoked problems with the church and school. Now, Bradley has been asked to resign for consuming...

This is what IDist people I know are crowing. Dawkins proved wrong! Tree of life is fiction! Based on the following: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/03/venter_vs_dawkins_on_the_tree_044681.html Of course the source's bias is clear, but is there anything to the claims within the article...

A long time ago (in a galaxy far far away), I remember learning the definition of symbiosis involved 2 species interacting with each other in a mutually beneficial way. Parasitism was defined as something all together different (one species benefits from the interaction, the other is harmed.)...

So, do you reckon you could make cheese out of human breast milk? How much milk would you need to make a wheel of it? Would it taste Gouda? Or feta-id? Would there be a market for it online? In Japan perhaps? Would you eat some? These are the questions I have been pondering this very...

So, I was given a wee USB microscope for my berfday. Hurray! Highest mag is 150x though so I don't think I'll be able to see my own sperm. Shame - I've always wondered how they are doing. So, anyone have any suggestions about what is cool to look at between 10 and 150x? (I would go through...

Split from the thread - is free will an illusion, yet necessary for ethics. I would like a discussion, evidence for/against, suggested reading etc on whether free will is physically possible. Is the brain capable of producing a choice that isn't predetermined? To give some context - I'm not...

I found this interesting. Particularly from an evolutionary point of view - it strikes me that some OCD symptoms (obsessive cleanliness, revulsion at certain foods etc) could impart a survival advantage for someone with a faulty immune system. I'm sure I'm being rather simplistic though.

This is really interesting. Seems we should add another sense to the list that started out with 5.

Although I was mildly interested in evolution before, I never really had the motivation to read about it in any depth at all. But thanks to the loudness and high media profile of ID proponents, with their smug little crowing faces and puffed up chests harping on about the need for more...

OK, so they've launched a 32% beer: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/north_east/8380412.stm The thing is, how the hell is this possible? I thought alcohol content eventually kills the yeast, which is why you don't get wines/beers above a certain percentage (in the teens I think)...

A friend of mine is slowly descending into religiosity. He is a smart chappie but cannot handle the implications of "materialism", "naturalism", etc - namely, that objective moral truths cannot exist within this worldview. Fine, I have a good time debating him philosophically over a few...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2003/jul/03/research.science Very interesting stuff. Does anyone here have more intimate knowledge of this kind of research? I am wondering about this part in particular: Given the fact that the ape sign language people are somewhat woo-ish I wonder how...

There's an article in the Telegraph about an apple which is half red and half green. They say it's a very rare mutation. I think that nature very rarely creates straight lines or, emulates planes in oval objects. Knives, on the other hand, do that quite often. So does duct tape. I have two...

I think this may have been dealt with before, but does evolution as we understand it allow for traits to develop that may lessen the survivability of an individual but overall increase the survivability of a group/species? If so, how would the trait be selected for? I guess I'm thinking of the...

I'm curious as to the opinions people here have about Lynn Margulis and her work. There is no doubt that her theory of the origin of eukaryotic cells from the symbiosis of prokaryotic cells and her tenacity in pushing it have made here a bit of a legend in Biology cirlces. However, I am noticing...

Are human beings naturally lazy? If so, why? Is there some kind of evolutionary advantage to being lazy? Are the lazy ones more likely to survive and spread their genes? I would think the answer is NO. If anything, laziness would be an evolutionary disadvantage. Why, then, is laziness so common?

Abiogenesis takes another step forward with a plausible pathway for self-assembly of RNA from "non-living" material. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/science/14rna.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=science Not the complete picture but another brick to add to a growing wall of evidence for abiogenesis.

You read that right; there are in fact animals that feed their young with bodily secretions that are not mammals. Some folks are real persnickety and won't call something "milk" unless it came from a mammal, but that's just prejudice. For some strange reason, Middle Age scholars believed that...

I moved a bit away from my planned lectures on environmental science for my two freshmen biology sections to focus on this current and very teachable event, and thought that other educators may find these lecture notes and resources useful. First off, the google swine flu map provides an...