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Early Fig Farming Scientists tracing the origins of agriculture have followed the trail of cultivated grains like wheat and barley back to about 10,500 years ago in the Near East . Now a new study reported in the 2 Jun 2006 Science suggests that fig trees could have been the first domesticated crop, preceding cereals by about a thousand years. Kislev et al. ( http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/312/5778/1372) described the remains of figs found in several archaeological sites in the Jordan Valley as early as about 11,400 years ago. The carbonized fruits represent a variety of fig in which the fruit forms and...

Ediacaran assemblages immediately predate the Cambrian explosion of metazoans and should have played a crucial role in this radiation. Their wider relationships, however, have remained refractory and difficult to integrate with early metazoan phylogeny. Here, we describe a frondlike fossil, Stromatoveris (S. psygmoglena sp. nov.), from the Lower Cambrian Chengjiang Lagerstätte (Yunnan, China) that is strikingly similar to Ediacaran vendobionts. The exquisite preservation reveals closely spaced branches, probably ciliated, that appear to represent precursors of the diagnostic comb rows of ctenophores. Therefore, this finding has important implications for the early evolution of this phylum and related diploblasts, some of which...

More from that Ethiopian fossil find that sends hominid roots back more than 4 million years.

Researchers in Denmark have discovered that methane trapped in quartz crystals in microbial in origin and dates to about 3.5 billion years ago. This places methanogens among the oldest living things found on Earth.

Science requires registration. Below is my summary of the article. There are many people of the "Creationist" types occupying science classes at US universities. This appears to be no different than many years ago. A survey was done of students going in and coming out of biology classes in West Virginia. The data show that some people are persuaded toward evolution, but many resist especially where human evolution is concerned. The mushy middle remains the same. A professor in Minnesota says only half his biology students say they were taught anything about evolution in high school and half of those...

It is assumed that most organisms have sex because the resulting genetic recombination allows Darwinian selection to work better. It is now shown that in water fleas, recombination does lead to fewer deleterious mutations.

For all you science and space buffs, engineers are making a whole new generation of gizmos designed to find extraterrestrial life. I look forward to success in my lifetime.

Stone age human footprints have been found near an ancient lake in Australia. The prints date from 19,000-23,000 years and include children and several adults. Kangaroo prints are also among the finds.

Since we have recently had the Dover trial, perhaps some on both sides will appreciate some great photos of the first "Monkey Trial", including some of the primary actors.

Synthetic Biologists String Genes into Living Machines. Enjoy bacteria that make a picture of the Flying Spaghetti Monster! See some visions of the future via Biotechnology.

This article is for suscribers only. If you suscribe go here: http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/search_results.asp If you don't here is an abstract that the article is based on: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=16274263&query_hl=2 The work studies the endorphin, prodynorphin in Chimps and Humans. It purports to show that "This is the first documented instance of a nueral gene that has had its regulation shaped by natural selection during human origins" (Matthew Hahn, U. Indiana). Human generally contain 2-4 copies of the regulatory sequence in contrast to one copy for chimps, gorillas, orangutans, baboons and macaques. The investigators contend that changes in the prodynorphin regulatory sequence must have...

http://www.waronscience.com/excerpt.php?p=1 Chapter 1: The Threat IN THE SUMMER OF 2001, long before his reelection and even before he became a "wartime president," George W. Bush found himself in a political tight spot. He responded with a morsel of scientific misinformation so stunning, so certain to be exposed by enterprising journalists (as indeed it was), that one can only wonder what Bush and his handlers were thinking, or whether they were thinking at all. The issue was embryonic stem cell research, and Bush's nationally televised claim—that "more than sixty genetically diverse" embryonic stem cell lines existed at the time of his...

A snail eating caterpillar is described. It hunts down snails, ties them down with silk and devours them. "Such oddball lifestyles tend to develop in isolated ecosystems where there's a limited variety of creatures, as in Hawaii. "There's more room for evolutionary experimentation," says Gillespie. For example, Hawaiian insects evolved without ants as predators or competitors for food."

A group of microbiologist describe a new species of green-sulfur bacteria, that grow by photosynthesis at depths of 2500 meters. Since no sunlight penetrates to that depth, they show that these organisms use faint light emitted from deep sea hydrothermal vents. This light is similar to that produced when an electric burner heats up and glows red. The bacteria also thrive in low oxygen environments.

On July 31, 1948, Academician Trofim Lysenko delivered the presidential address on "The Situation in the Science of Biology," at the Session of the V.I. Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences in the U.S.S.R. The complete address, evoked by the international discussion of the subject of inheritance of acquired characteristics, can be found at Lysenko Address if you don’t mind letting marxists electrons into your computer. In 9 sections plus "Concluding Remarks" [Comments added by the poster are in [ ]. Most of the skipped sections are either of difficult verbiage, typical of communistic propaganda and therefore make little sense, or...

An excellent compilation of information related to the evolution of echolocation.

A good description of the state of Dark Matter - perfect daytime TV.

In 1927, Karpechenko made a hybrid of the common radish, Raphanus sativus, and cabbage, Brassica oleracea. Each parent has a diploid chromosome number of 2N=18. The hybrid also had 18 chromosomes, but because normal sperm and eggs could not be formed, the hybrid was sterile, as is common in such cases. However, some of the "sterile" hybrids produced a few viable seeds. These seeds were produced when the chromosome number spontaneously doubled. The doubling permitted the pairing of partner chromosomes and the formation of gametes with 1N=18. Karpechenko witnessed the birth of a new species in the passage of only...

An article purporting to show simple mathematical relationships in Biology and Ecology.

Laboratory Speciation in Helianthus Evolves a Native Species DNA examination of five species of Helianthus (H. annuus, H. petiolarus fallax, H. anomalus, H. paradoxus, and H. deserticola) suggested that H. annuus and H. petiolarus fallax are the evolutionary parents of the other three species (Rieseberg 1993, 1995, 1993). All five species are self-incompatible and fertile. Typically, H. annuus (the ancestor of the commercial sunflower) and H. petiolarus fallax form hybrids that are almost fully sterile. However, the few fertile hybrids, when subjected to sib-matings and back crossing regimes yield a new species that is fully fertile and cannot cross with...