The Blog of Record » Science

Human Evolution and Shopping at the Mall

Al — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 03:23:24 +0000

Women like shopping because way back in prehistoric times they were gatherers, and men hate it because they were hunters:

Women in foraging societies return to the same patches that yield previous successful harvests, and usually stay close to home and use landmarks as guides, he said. Foraging is a daily activity, often social, and can include young children, if necessary. When gathering, women must be very adept at choosing just the right color, texture and smell to ensure food safety and quality. They also must time harvests and know when a certain depleted patch will regenerate and yield good harvest again.

In modern terms, women are much more likely than men to know when a specific type of item will go on sale. Women also spend much more time choosing the perfect fabric, color and texture.

Men, on the other hand, often have a specific item in mind and want to get in, get it and get out, Kruger said. It’s critical to get meat home as quickly as possible. Taking young children isn’t safe in a hunt and would likely hinder progress.

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Possible Fossil Evidence of Ancient Life on Mars Found

Al — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 02:17:01 +0000

A NASA team believes it has found fossil evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars – right here on earth, in a meteorite from the red planet that fell in Antarctica 13,000 years ago. The critters that are believed to have left their traces inside the rock would have been surprisingly similar to some microorganisms that live on earth.

If life really has evolved on two close-by planets orbiting the same star, I wonder what it tells us about how common life must be in the universe.

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Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Human Testicles but Were Afraid to Ask

Al — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:56:22 +0000

Answering the question “why do they hang like that?” is the key to understanding everything else about this part of the male human body. Related posts:The Genes That Make Us Human A fascinating article about the evolution of the human genome...Human Sperm Grown from Stem Cells British scientists have grown human sperm from stem cells in...A [...] Related posts:

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The Large Hadron Collider May Be Being Sabotaged from the Future, Scientists Say

Al — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 02:48:17 +0000

Two physicists from serious research institutions have proposed that the LHC’s problems may have been caused by time travelers sent back to our time from the future to prevent us from observing the Higgs boson.

We definitely should go on with the Higgs boson experiments. I’m dying to see what exactly got those future people so worried.

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A Third of Dinosaur Species May Have Never Existed

Al — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 01:05:02 +0000

The skeletons of many dinosaurs changed so much as they grew up that scientists may have misidentified baby dinos of already known species (such as T. rex) as unique species. The video explains why it was useful for dinosaurs to have the shape of their skeletons change with age.

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Implanting False Memories

Al — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:50:56 +0000

It’s not that difficult for a therapist to make you remember something that never happened to you, such as sexual abuse in childhood, by implanting false memories into your mind.

(Via Amy Alkon.)

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Snortable Stem Cells

Al — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 17:41:36 +0000

This can be a new and fun way of getting stem cells into the brain to treat conditions like Parkinson’s, strokes and Alzheimer’s – or maybe even boost your intelligence, if a way is found to make stem cells improve a person’s IQ:

New Scientist reports from the latest Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS – all about reversing the aging process) conference in Cambridge UK and reveals some scientists find they can deliver stem cells into mouse brains with nose drops.

Since proteins, bacteria and viruses can enter the brain this way, Lusine Danielyan at the University Hospital of Tübingen in Germany, and her colleagues, wondered if stem cells would also migrate into the brain through the cribriform plate.

To test their idea, they dripped a suspension of fluorescently labelled stem cells into the noses of mice. The mice snorted them high into their noses, and the cells migrated through the cribriform plate. Then they travelled either into the olfactory bulb – the part of the brain that detects and deciphers odours – or into the cerebrospinal fluid lining the skull, migrating across the brain. The stem cells then moved deeper into the brain.

Now all we need are stem cells suitably programmed to, for example, replace aged neurons, aged glial cells, and even aged cells in brain arteries and veins. Then snort up.

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Pet Dinosaurs Within Five Years?

Al — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 03:17:39 +0000

While others hunt for dinosaur DNA, a Canadian scientist is attempting to build a dinosaur inside a chicken egg by playing with chicken genes. He says he’s getting close to making a pet dinosaur for himself. Related posts:A Third of Dinosaur Species May Have Never Existed The skeletons of many dinosaurs changed so much as they...Resurrecting [...] Related posts:

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Artificial Life Promised Within Months

Al — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:18:56 +0000

An American biologist says he could create the first synthetic species this year. Although an important breakthrough, it won’t be anything outwardly spectacular – as you’d think, they are starting out with synthetic microbes, not with new man-made species of intelligent mammals.

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The Cooking Theory of Human Evolution

Al — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 04:17:57 +0000

Anthropologist Richard Wrangham has a hypothesis that explains the development of bigger bodies and brains in humans not with a transition to eating meat but with a transition to eating cooked meat. Plus, why a raw diet is not healthy and how the concept of marriage began not as about power or sex, but food.

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Rich Women Have More Sons

Al — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 02:44:51 +0000

A study of polygamous marriages in Rwanda demonstrates that wealthier mothers tend to have more sons while poorer women produce more daughters:

Scientists have unearthed a fascinating link between the financial status of a woman and the proportion of boys and girls she can expect to have.

The discovery adds to the increasing evidence that the sex of a baby isn’t just a matter of chance but is influenced by lifestyle and environment.

According to evolutionary theory, when conditions are good, and babies are likely to be healthy, a mother’s best chance of passing on her genes to another generation is to have boys.

Fit, healthy boys will see off rivals and can potentially father hundreds of children, ensuring the survival of the family line.

But if a mother is unfit or malnourished, a baby boy is a poor investment.

A weak, sickly male is unlikely to beat off competition from other males and may not become a father or even survive.

In these circumstances it makes more evolutionary sense to have a girl who does not face competition to become pregnant to continue the family line.

Well, after it was shown that women have more orgasms with wealthy men, nothing about womenfolk surprises me anymore.

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Human Sperm Grown from Stem Cells

Al — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 02:10:51 +0000

British scientists have grown human sperm from stem cells in the laboratory:

The breakthrough in stem cell science offers a potential cure for male infertility and could be used in IVF clinics in as little as five years.

It would allow thousands of men to father children that are genetically their own, possibly from just a sliver of their skin.

But the cutting-edge work is fraught with medical and ethical problems.

It raises the possibility of babies being born entirely through artificial means, and even the macabre scenario of long-dead men ‘fathering’ children from beyond the grave.

Mankind has dealt reasonably well with ethical implications of all kinds of discoveries so far, and I don’t see why that shouldn’t be the case in the future.

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Human Brain and Chaos

Al — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 01:44:56 +0000

An interesting article about new discoveries in how the brain works. Disorder and chaos seem to play a crucial role in it. Related posts:Human Sperm Grown from Stem Cells British scientists have grown human sperm from stem cells in...A Look Into How the Human Mind Works Some interesting experiments on the human mind and what drives...The [...] Related posts:

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9/11 Hero Dog Cloned 5 Times

Al — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 03:17:29 +0000

Trackr, the German Shepherd who helped find the last 9/11 survivor under the WTC rubble, has been cloned – not once, not twice, but five times:

A dog who was hailed for his heroism during the 9/11 terrorist attacks has been cloned.

Scientists said they have successfully produced five puppies who are genetic copies of Trackr, a German Shepherd who searched for survivors in the rubble of the World Trade Centre.

The puppies called Trustt, Valor, Prodigy, Solace and Deja Vu, are aged between two and six months.

The faithful hound died in April aged 16, but before he passed away his owner James Symington entered a contest that offered to clone a pet dog for free. It currently costs owners about £75,000 to clone their pet.

Trackr was judged to be the most ‘cloneworthy dog’ after the former police officer from Canada wrote an impassioned essay.

Five puppies cloned from Trackr, with the dog's owner James Symington

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DARPA’s Physical Intelligence Program

Al — Sat, 09 May 2009 03:58:55 +0000

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is starting “Physical Intelligence” - a program that ”aspires to understand intelligence as a physical phenomenon and to make the first demonstration of the principle in electronic and chemical systems. A central tenet is that intelligence spontaneously evolves as a consequence of thermodynamics in open systems”. One of the program’s tasks is “building the first human-engineered systems that display physical intelligence in the form of abiotic, self-organizing electronic and chemical systems”.

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The Genes That Make Us Human

Al — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 23:53:26 +0000

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Near-Death Experiences: A New Theory

Al — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:47:11 +0000

Take any “paranormal” phenomenon, and as soon as people start looking for answers based in real science, they start finding them:

A newer theory suggests the arousal system is implicated, and that the near-death experience is triggered by the crisis. The idea is that rapid eye movement (or REM sleep, where most dreaming occurs, and where the sleeper is paralysed, with only the heart, diaphragm, eye muscles and the smooth muscles active) is involved. At the root of the theory is the notion that some people are more prone to a condition called REM intrusion, where sleep paralysis occurs when they are awake. It is found in people with narcolepsy, or excessive sleepiness, and it can be accompanied by hallucinations or delusional experiences that are unusually vivid and often frightening.

Research led by Dr Kevin Nelson, clinical neurophysiologist and Professor of Neurology at the University of Kentucky shows that, out of 55 people who have had near-death experiences, 60 per cent had at least one prior occasion where REM sleep state intruded into wakefulness, compared to only 24 per cent in a control group. “Instead of passing directly between the REM state and wakefulness, the brain switch in those with a near-death experience is more likely to blend the REM state and wakefulness into one another,” he says.

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Einstein, Newton and Autism

Al — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 06:43:44 +0000

Researchers at Britain’s Cambridge and Oxford universities believe Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton displayed signs of Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of autism. Or at least they believed this six years ago, because this news is from 2003. Related posts:The Man Who Wants to Build a Time Machine The Boston Phoenix: Since losing his father 53 years [...] Related posts:

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First Scientific Discovery by a Machine

Al — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 20:47:33 +0000

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Crime-Scene DNA Samples Could Be Used to Draw Pictures of Suspects

Al — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 19:21:03 +0000

In the field of DNA forensics, scientists identify genetic markers for traits revealing appearance and ethnicity:

Researchers are identifying genes that give rise to a person’s physical traits, such as facial structure, skin color or even whether they are right- or left-handed. That could allow police to build a picture of what a criminal looks like not just from sometimes-fuzzy eyewitness accounts, but by analyzing DNA found at a crime scene.

Another use for this is designing babies: offering parents to create surplus embryos, select one with the desired traits – like blonde hair – to live, and kill the others.

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