The Human Dynasty

On February 7, 1:00 PM, Center for Inquiry Tampa will present ten monetary awards for the "Darwin Day Poster Contest", in celebrating the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. Science teachers of Hillsborough County, FL, invited middle school science students to participate. The top ten prize winners will be awarded cash prizes, and their posters will be displayed for one week in J.F. Germany Library, science section. (PRWeb Jan 30, 2009)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/01/prweb1928154.htm

The discovery of primordial magnetic fields around small, young stars in the Milky Way boosts the case that fields existed just after the big bang

Land plants’ ability to sprout upward through the air, unsupported except by their own woody tissues, has long been considered one of the characteristics separating them from aquatic plants, which rely on water to support them. Now lignin, one of the chemical underpinnings vital to the self-supporting nature of land plants — and thought unique to them — has been found in marine algae.

(University of British Columbia) Land plants’ ability to sprout upward through the air, unsupported except by their own woody tissues, has long been considered one of the characteristics separating them from aquatic plants, which rely on water to support them.

Why have some of our genes evolved rapidly? It is widely believed that Darwinian natural selection is responsible, but new research suggests that a separate neutral (nonadaptive) process has made a significant contribution to human evolution.

(Purdue University) In an effort to improve rice varieties, a Purdue University researcher was part of a team that traced the evolutionary history of domesticated rice by using a process that focuses on one gene. Agronomy Professor Scott A. Jackson said studying the gene allows researchers to better understand how it evolved over time through natural selection and human interaction. Understanding the variations could allow scientists to place genes from wild rice species into domesticated rice to create varieties with more favorable characteristics.

Evolutionary biology tells us that replaying life’s tape will not not look at all like the original. The outcome of evolution is contingent on everything that came before. Now, scientists have turned back the clock on the evolution in the fruit fly to provide key insights into the basic mechanisms of evolution.

(Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia) Evolutionary biology tells us that replaying life’s tape will not not look at all like the original. The outcome of evolution is contingent on everything that came before. Now, scientists at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia in Portugal, New York University and the University of California, Irvine, provide the first quantitative genetic evidence of why this is so.

Videos chart old supernova remnant, give 3-D perspective

Two children have a seizure. One child never has another seizure. Twenty years later, the other child has a series of seizures and is diagnosed with epilepsy. A new study is looking at what could possibly happen in the development of these two children that would lead to such extreme variations in their neurologic health.