The surviving species will “be the ones we decide to save,” Stokes says. If zoos decide not to save “ugly” animals, they could go extinct. Snails and insects, for example, almost never make it into zoos.
via Scientific American.
Category: Life Is Like Science Fiction
A developing fetus’s entire genome lurks in its mother’s blood, potentially offering prospective parents a non-invasive way of testing for any congenital disease. Scientists in Hong Kong and the United States have mapped hundreds of thousands of DNA code variations spread across the genome of an unborn child in order to determine whether or not it would inherit a rare blood disorder.
via Scientific American.
Whether your roommate is Samantha Sleeps-Around or Paul the Prude, cut him or her some slack: People’s predilections for promiscuity lie partially in their DNA, according to a new study.
A particular version of a dopamine receptor gene called DRD4 is linked to people’s tendency toward both infidelity and uncommitted one-night stands, the researchers reported Nov. 30 in the online open-access journal PloS One.
Toss the Rogaine and Viagra? Not just yet. But Harvard scientists have found that some effects of aging, such as hair loss, infertility and decreased brain function, can be stopped. And not just stopped: the scientists’ research, published today in the journal Nature, showed that it’s possible even to reverse the signs of aging.
via CBS News.
The woman, from the Melbourne suburb of Noble Park, was hit in her driveway Wednesday afternoon when her car rolled backward out of the driveway.
The car then crossed the road, struck a fence and bounced back, hitting the woman again.
via UPI.com.
About 30,000 Dutch households are to receive marijuana-scented scratch cards in an effort to uncover illegal urban cannabis plantations.
Authorities in Rotterdam and The Hague say they are distributing the cards to help people recognise what cannabis smells like.
via BBC News
“It was really fun,” Olaso said of the Star Trek themed wedding, which a small number of family and friends attended.
A friend had suggested holding the wedding in Vulcan, Alta. and that seemed to make sense to the couple.
McDonald – who named their fish Tiberius, after Star Trek captain James Tiberius Kirk – has been to the last six annual Star Trek conventions held in Vulcan.
Wildlife smugglers will do just about anything for a quick buck, including sneaking a live predator onto an airplane with no regard for the risk to the animal or fellow passengers.
This illegal activity reached a devastating and absurdist extreme recently when a man reportedly smuggled a live crocodile onto a plane departing from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
via Extinction Countdown: 20 die in air disaster after smuggled crocodile escapes on a plane.
Could this be what we’ve all been waiting for? NASA has announced it will hold a special news conference Thursday “to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.”
via AOL
But, whether it’s for super-strong sutures for surgery or an air bag, how do you come up with enough raw material? Spider farms have been tried, but arachnids tend to kill each other.
“The problem is that the spiders are territorial, and so no matter what you do, there are only a certain number of spiders you can put in a certain space,” says Lewis.
That’s where the goats come in.
via nsf.gov
