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Memes in the Watson category “/business and industrial/agriculture and forestry/livestock”

1–8 of 8

Spherical Cows

Milk production at a dairy farm was low, so the farmer wrote to the local university, asking for help from academia. A multidisciplinary team of professors was assembled, headed by a theoretical physicist, and two weeks of intensive on-site investigation took place. The scholars then returned to the university…

Neurons are Domesticated Cells

You really don't have to worry about one part of your laptop going rogue and trying out something on its own that the rest of the system doesn't want to do. No, they're all slaves. If they're agents, they're slaves. They are prisoners. They have very clear job descriptions. They get fed every day. They don't have to…

Ted Turner's Bison

Corporate America is also evolving as it adjusjsts busineiess practices to embrace conservation. Many American banks, for example, have committed to the World Wildlife Fund's Equator Principles, limiting investment only to companies and projects committed to environmental protection. WalVlart now only sells fish it…

Evolution of Lactose Tolerance

One case involves our ability to digest lactose, a sugar found in milk. An enzyme called lactase breaks down this sugar into the more easily absorbed sugars glucose and galactose. We are born with the ability to digest milk, of course, for that’s always been the main food of infants. But after we’re weaned, we…

It Takes Numerous Experts to Explore a One-Mile Path

Of course, no one person has the time, knowledge, or skill to learn everything about a landscape, so in my walks 1 have relied upon the labors of generations of botanists, ornithologists, zoologists, geologists, ecologists, meteorologists, astronomers. cultural historians, and a host of other specialists who have…

Antibiotics Evolve Bacteria in the Gut

New antibiotics have been coming out at frequent intervals since then, and bacteria have evolved resistance to just about every one of them. Nowadays, the most ominous example is MRSA (methycillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), which has succeeded in making many hospitals positively dangerous places to visit…

The Evolution of Whales from Land to Sea

Whales were long an enigma, but recently our knowledge of whale evolution has become rather rich. Molecular genetic evidence (see Chapter 10 for the nature of this kind of evidence) shows that the closest living cousins of whales are hippos, then pigs, then ruminants. Even more surprisingly, the molecular evidence…