Science Is Constantly Evolving
Discover the latest in climate change and evolution education news.
I’ve written before about Mimi Shirasu-Hiza, she of the twice-demonstrated ability to see the seeds of discovery in what might easily be dismissed as messy data. How did this scientist, who is unraveling the ways that fruit flies’ ability to fight off infections is affected by such variables as…
I spent the first few hours today in an uncanny glow. On opposite sides of the planet, in utterly different realms, scientists and political leaders had, in two very different ways, accomplished the unthinkable. The first instance actually hit just before I went to bed. News broke late yesterday…
The Public Petitions Committee of the Scottish Parliament heard testimony supporting the proposed ban on teaching creationism as scientifically credible in Scotland's public schools on November 11, 2014, according to the Press Association (November 11, 2014). The committee agreed to write to the…
Continuing my desultory study of Clarence Darrow, I read Donald McRae’s The Last Trials of Clarence Darrow (2009) over the past weekend. As the title suggests, McRae focuses on Darrow’s later career, including not only the Scopes trial but also the Leopold and Loeb case (in which Darrow…
After three weeks of slogging through epigenetics, I am feeling almost giddy sitting down to write this post. This week’s topic is a reader request and dovetails with many previous posts. It’s also in the news pretty much every week, so you might say it’s a favorite of journalists—which is a big…
In my previous post about Pope Francis’s remarks about evolution, I quoted the quick translation used by news reports, and some folks in the comments raised questions about what some of the remarks actually meant. Fortunately, there’s now a more thorough translation available, which appears to…
Last week we examined fossil teeth from an animal we've seen before on Fossil Friday–and recently, too! What was it? Why it was from the Camelidae family, featured on a Fossil Friday several weeks ago. From the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology: “The family Camelidae ranges back in time…
So, where were we? Ahhh, yes. I dropped the “L” word—Lamarck. When we last left our little mice friends, Dr. Skinner and his lab had established that epimutations, brought on by in utero exposure to certain nasty chemicals, had managed to persist through four generations without any…
This week I bring you yet another tooth. My goodness, you’d think I was obsessed with teeth! Or maybe even the dentist. But no, it just so happens the museum has a fantastic tooth collection–maybe it was started by a former dentist? Well, this fellow had some “good teeth,” as my dentist…