12 JAN 2018 by ideonexus
Neurons Use Viruses to Share Information and Learn
When genes are activated, the instructions encoded within their DNA are first transcribed into a related molecule called RNA. Shepherd’s colleague Elissa Pastuzyn showed that the Arc shells can enclose RNA and move it from one neuron to another. And that’s basically what retroviruses do—they use protein shells to protect their own RNA as it moves between cells in a host.
So our neurons use a repurposed viral gene to transmit genetic information between each other in an oddly virus-like way t... 1 
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notes08 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
Evolutionary Theory Does Not Justify Greed
Human nature as it now exists was formed in accord with the laws of evolution under conditions pertaining well before recorded human history. Fossils discovered in Ethiopia and Kenya now date human ancestors back at least 5 or 6 million years. Distinctly human species arose in Africa at least 2 million years ago, while present evidence indicates that modern humans are only about 100,000 years old. Therefore the conditions relevant to which genetic mutations were advantageous and which were no... 1 notes
notesMany economic theories relying on "human nature" assume we are greedy, but this is not supported by the evidence. We might just as likely be generous and that is our evolutionary advantage.
13 MAY 2013 by ideonexus
Dyson Tree
Many species of terrestrial plants, including the skunk cabbage that sprouts in February in the woods of Princeton, New Jersey, where I live, are warm-blooded to a limited extent. For about two weeks the skunk cabbage maintains a warm temperature by rapidly metabolizing starch stored inside the part of its anatomy known as the spadix, which contains the hidden flowers with their male and female structures. According to folklore, the spadix is warm enough to melt snow around it. The evolutiona...Folksonomies: biology speculation
Folksonomies: biology speculation
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notesA plant that grows a greenhouse to sustain itself in persistently cold climates.
29 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Crying as an Evolutionary Strategy
Crying evolved to serve the infant's purposes: to assure protection, adequate feeding, and nurturing for an organism that cannot care for itself. By definition, crying is designed to elicit a response, to activate emotions, to play on the empathy of another. The "other" is usually the mother or father or a related caretaker. The caretaker has also evolved the sensory mechanism to recognize that infant cries are a signal of unhappiness, and thus be motivated to do something about it.
This ki... 1 notes
notesInfants cry to motivate mothers to care for them and to promote continual feeding that prevents the mother from ovulating.
23 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
WWW has Replaced Sex as Propagator of Junk Data
For hundreds of millions of years, Sex was the most efficient method for propagating information of dubious provenance: the origins of all those snippets of junk DNA are lost in the sands of reproductive history. Move aside, Sex: the world-wide Web has usurped your role. A single illegal download can propagate more parasitic bits of information than a host of mating Tse Tse flies. Indeed, as I looked further afield, I found that it was not just Wikipedia that was in error: essentially every d... 1 notes
notesDNA has often propagated bad ideas, evidenced by all the extinct species throughout Earth's history; today the Internet propagates vast quantities of bad data.
