Add methane emissions to the growing list of environmental risks posed by fracking. Opposition to the hydraulic fracturing of deep shales to release natural gas rose sharply last year over worries that the large volumes of chemical-laden water used in the operations could contaminate drinking water. Then, in early January, earthquakes in Ohio were blamed…
Neanderthals, or even older Homo erectus (“Upright Man”) might have sailed around the Mediterranean, stopping at islands such as Crete and Cyprus, new evidence suggests. The evidence suggests that these hominid species had considerable seafaring and cognitive skills. “They had to have had boats of some sort; unlikely they swam,” said Alan Simmons, lead author…
Spacefaring worms undergo genetic changes associated with longer lives in their Earth-bound cousins, research has shown. A number of Caenorhabditis elegans worms were carried aboard a mission to the International Space Station (ISS) and brought back for study. Researchers found reduced activity of five genes in the worms that, when suppressed in the species on…
A new study, published online in Biology Letters, has utilized a massive molecular dataset to reconstruct the evolutionary history of lizards and snakes. The results reveal a surprising finding about the evolution of snakes: that most snakes we see living on the surface today arose from ancestors that lived underground. The study was based on…
Eric Beinhocker’s “The Origin of Wealth” offers exciting metaphors for rethinking Darwinism and evolutionary theory.
Previous attempts to reform our education system in America have only piled more money on the heap of a broken system. We need transformative changes, not additive ones.There are three big culprits in American education policy that are crippling the ability of our schools to respond to today’s challenges: 1. Our policy of “buying reform”…