New fossil find pushes back the origin of bilaterally symmetrical multicellular organisms
Posted 08 Jul 2012 / 0Live Science “Tiny Tracks of First Complex Animal Life Discovered“
A Minor Post, Macroevolution, PaleonotologyMatthew Zimmerman on how international relations views the evolution of groups
Posted 07 Jul 2012 / 0Social Evolution Forum “Matthew Zimmerman: Groups as the Most Natural and Useful Level of Analysis (a comment on Pinker)” I am not sure which frustrates me more: The contention that genes are the only “target” of selection; or The contention that selection on organisms is the only level at which selection occurs; or The contention Read More
A Minor Post, Altruism, Cooperation, Group Selection, Human Evolution, Multilevel Selection, Political Science, SociologyHigh-throughput screening accelerates the rate at which evolved plant chemicals can be turned into medicine
Posted 29 Jun 2012 / 0Science “Mining the Biodiversity of Plants: A Revolution in the Making” What’s fascinating to me about this is what happens when we have screened every plant we can find… will we then stop caring about the medicinal value of biodiversity?
A Minor Post, Biodiversity Loss, GeneticsChanging rice from C3 to C4 in order to feed our growing population
Posted 29 Jun 2012 / 0Science “The Development of C4 Rice: Current Progress and Future Challenges” I will be amazed if this works. The C3/C4 pathway split is a major evolutionary event in plants, and apparently we are poised to horizontally transfer this adaptation across lineages using genetic engineering. If this works, it will be an unprecedented feat of cultural Read More
A Minor Post, Food, Genetic Engineering, Sustainability, Sustainable AgricultureFences exclude invasive predators, give aid to threatened Hawaiian birds
Posted 29 Jun 2012 / 0Science “Fences Make Good Nest Sites“
A Minor Post, Biodiversity Loss, Conservation Biology, Invasive SpeciesNorth American federal governments seek to defund environmental and ecological science
Posted 29 Jun 2012 / 0Science “House Panel Set to Slash Climate, Environmental Research” Science “Environmental Science Feels Pinch in Canada’s Budget“
A Minor Post, Political Science, Public PolicyMacroecologists weigh in on how well sustainability science considers ecological limits
Posted 29 Jun 2012 / 0PLoS Biology “The Limits to Sustainability Science: Ecological Constraints or Endless Innovation?” PLoS Biology “The Shifting Boundaries of Sustainability Science: Are We Doomed Yet?” PLoS Biology “The Macroecology of Sustainability“
A Minor Post, Macroecology, SustainabilityYes, you can now believe that fairy circles live…
Posted 28 Jun 2012 / 0Science Now “Mysterious Fairy Circles Are ‘Alive’“
A Minor PostLarry Arnhart on Singer, Bowles, and Gintis and Darwinian libertarianism
Posted 28 Jun 2012 / 0Darwinian Conservatism “Does Strong Reciprocity Support a Darwinian Left?” This is a really interesting comparison of the “utopian” and “realist” versions of leftist politics, and of the struggle of thinkers like Singer. What I think needs to be kept in mind is that all these folks are doing more than just trying to produce science Read More
A Minor Post, Cooperation, Evolutionary Modeling, Punishment, Reciprocity, Social NormsDavid Sloan Wilson on narratives of regulation
Posted 28 Jun 2012 / 0Huffington Post David Sloan Wilson blog “The Nature of Regulation I: Breaking Out of Our Narrative Prisons“
A Minor Post