Evolution, Morphology and Exobiology

A killer hasinvaded the waters of California. In June 2004, biologist identified a Caulerpa toxifolia mutant algae as analien invader in the San Diego area. This alga normally grows in the warmwaters of Caribbean Sea but biologist are surprised to find out that it can nowsurvived the colder waters of the Pacific coast. Biologist wondered where and how didthis killer alga appeared. It was bred for home aquarium and then was probablydumped into the water system and then carried to the sea where it began to reproduceprolifically. The alga can overtake the normal flora of an area outstrippingand outcompeting all other living plants. Currently, more than 10 patche…

Hello forum, I'm world-building for a SF-story and would like some feedback on an exobiological idea which occurred to me recently. The setting is a planet on which rather peculiar astronomical and geological factors ultimately produce physical conditions and an ecosystem which closely resemble those found on Earth, for the most part. However, for various reasons I'd like to tie the mating cycle of all mammals (or mammal-analogs, strictly speaking) to one of those peculiar factors, namely a periodically occurring spike in brightness of one of the planet's suns. The in-universe scientific justification for this link is that mating at that time is evolutionarily ben…

We receive touch, sight, taste, smell and sound physically to the brain. But what is it in the brain that create sensation for e.g sight, touch. Is the sensation due to something else . In other words is consciousness physical.

A little while ago my uncle and I were discussing the theory of evolution and the appalling percentage of Americans (I'm Canadian, by the way) who still don't believe in evolution. I had made the claim that even though the theory may very well be incomplete, evolution is a proven phenomenon, which it is. And he made a point that I found interesting, and that was that the theory is indeed incomplete because we still are not able to explain how speciation occurs using the theory. The example he used was that even though humans have been breeding animals like dogs, cats, etc. for thousands of years, and artificially selecting for certain traits that we find appealing for one…

Hi all. I signed up just to ask this question. I only know basic knowledge about this topic, and a thought just occurred to me. The human being takes roughly eighteen to twenty years until it becomes fully grown. Or something like that. For most animals, it seems to take no more than two years. Why does the human take longer to become fully grown than say a chimpanzee? Is it because humans, as the most evolved species (I guess), need more years as infants to fully develop into grown adults? I may have just answered my own question, but can anyone confirm this for me? Hopefully you understand what I'm saying, but it's hard to put into words. Th…

There's something that I have always wondered, and which has never made sense to me. Evolution is supposed to be based on adaptations and behaviours that are beneficial to the species. I know that this is a HUGE oversimplification to an extremely complicated subject, but since I don't have time to rewrite Darwin's original manuscript on here, just bear with me. Why us it that almost all higher organisms tend to make a lot of noise when they get injured, wounded or hurt? For example, human beings tend to, depending on their age, either yell loudly or start crying. Canines tend to whimper and/or yelp. Birds will chirp loudly and thrash on the ground. The list goes on. …

p⁴ + 4p³q + 2p²q² + 4p²q² + 4pq³ + q⁴ = 1 A Google search showed me that this equation is mentioned in some genetics works written in other languages. Here is my question: why aren't these values normally included with descriptions of or calculators for the HWE? You can read further to find out what these values represent. I've attached an example problem at the bottom to make all of this more understandable. Also, I accidentally used the word "paternity" with an incorrect understanding that it encompassed both maternity and paternity. I'm new to Biology, and the way I came to that equation is very simply. I used a probability grid with the values for p2, 2pq, a…

Why do we gossip? Is there an evolutionary explanation behind it? Why do we feel the need to talk about one another behind our backs and why does it take most of our conversation?

I hear a lot of disputes over whether humans have more in common with bonobos or with common chimpanzees, the two species who are (equally) our closest relatives. Genetically, the question may be meaningless, since chimpanzees split off from us before splitting from each other. But it remains possible that our behavioral similarity to one of these species is based more on convergence, while our similarity with the other species is based more on common descent. Here's a line of questioning that may shed light on the former question, and that I haven't heard explained elsewhere: How similar are our other closest great ape relatives (chiefly gorillas, but also orangutans…

I'm curious, I hear that some of our modern day understanding of evolution have proven at least some of the things on Origin wrong. Is this true? If so, what are these things?

Hi folks. I'm hoping I can occupy a few minutes of your time. I'm not a student or scientist, I'm a writer doing research for my first novel. I know this post is broad and possibly confusing, and I apologize in advance for it. I'll try to keep this brief. In my novel, in the distant future, a group of 5,000 to 10,000 colonists have settled a new planet and separated from Earth entirely. Over the next thousand years, they spend their time in an environment which is slightly different from ours, here and there--perhaps a bit more nitrogen in the atmosphere, perhaps a bit less ultraviolet light to contend with. After that thousand years, they return to Earth looking …

Think about it: No other animal has them, not even apes, and even if some other animal DID have them, there's a trademark thing about fingerpints that doesn't make any sense form an evolutionary standpoint: No two people have the same fingerprints. Think about it: They can help police catch criminals, and... that's about it. Mother Nature doesn't give a rat's arse about fingerprints; they serve no tangible benefit other than what humans do with them, so why would natural selection create them? Unless we're going to argue that God made them (which is a big no no with modern science, even if you believe in God), then we'd have to accept that, from an evolutionary s…

In other words, why do we have music?

I've been writing for years about an alien species that is nearly identical to Humans. Without going into too much detail, there are key plot points as to why they're so similar to us. In fact living on a planet and biosphere shockingly similar to our own, especially given the rest of the alien life in the story universe is very diverse. I've always said if you passed one on the street you might not know it was a different species. There are a few key traits that have come to me over the years: -Vertically slitted pupils, giving highly acute distance but poor color vision. Color vision is limited to close distances, everything further is black and white (even pos…

<A name=OLE_LINK5>Background: The IP is the standard therapy for treatment of IVL proliferation of small cell lung cancer, but a common cause of severe diarrhea. AP treatment of small cell lung cancer potentially active, rarely diarrhea. Conducted a phase III clinical trials for efficacy comparison of AP and IP.Methods: Inclusion criteria: the proliferation of small cell lung cancer patients after chemotherapy alone, age 20-70, ECOG performance score of 0-1. Patients were randomized to take IP or AP, in order to balance the Jag1 patient's lesion location, sex and score. IP group program: every four weeks, the first 1,8, and 15 days of intravenous irinotecan (60mg/…

Polymorphonuclear esterase release from cells could be detected from the arylsulfatase A (ARSA), a wide range of clinical applications. ARSA diagnosis of urethritis caused by Neisseria gonorrhoeae (NG), Chlamydia trachomatis (Cr), the country has not been a systematic exposition. Gonorrhea diagnostic gold standard for Neisseria gonorrhoeae culture, non-gonococcal urethritis due to complex causes, by CT, mycoplasma, trichomonas, genital herpes virus and other pathogens cause, diagnosis, need to exclude gonococcal infection, and then the existence of self-cells, combining history to make a diagnosis based on urine. Less than 100% of the sensitivity of culture methods, espec…

Normal physiological conditions or pathological conditions, aldehydes and ketones, such as acrylic aldehyde (acrolein), crotonaldehyde (crotonaldehyde), 4 - hydroxy-nonenal (4-HNE in) and malondialdehyde (malondiadehyde) , if many components, including proteins and nucleic acids in the cells in vivo accumulation of too much will cause damage. This damage will lead to gene mutation, chromosomal breakage, abnormal cell signaling pathways, serious damage will result in apoptosis or necrosis. Intracellular defense system of the class of toxic metabolites of oxidation or reduction. Human arginase, type II(ARL2) are a new member of the aldo-keto reductase superfamily, which hav…

David Buss's theory can be summarized as sexual selection is only for reproduction, and also operates in human beings as well. He found that men and women seek out the mates, who best suit their reproductive needs. Women look for men who can give them resources and protection, and men look for women who appear best able to conceive and give birth to healthy and strong offspring. Through surveys, he found that women were more jealous of emotional infidelity while men were more jealous of sexual infidelity, so Buss hypothesized that women find emotional infidelity more threatening because it could lead to the loss of resources she have gained in that mate and would have to …

Why all the dinosaurs have disappeared? Dinosaurs were cold blooded. Hence,they had a very efficient energy consumption (they did not have to waste unnecessary energy heating their bodies). Therefore, they were able to reach huge size. It's quite clear that if they were hot-blooded, they would probably reach a maximal size of elephant... A sun light was needed to charge their power. Some had developed huge blood radiators panels on their back in order to get a fast heat charger. Those panels also gave them the ability to stay the whole day long in the lake and still achieve the heat which is needed for their body function. A crocodile for example, can't stay more than…

After reading the wikipedia article on dogs I realized that they are way more valuable I had ever thought (I'm more a cat person, but nowadays, I am a cat and dog person), it so seems that human and dog evolution (dogs are technically still wolves and wolves evolved independently from humans, but they are also a subespecies and all their differences from wolves are evolved from their interaction with humanity) somehow influenced each other... Culturally and phenotypically both the domesticated wolf and the human developed the most succesful symbiosis of all... Human has domesticated other animals but none to the success and variety than dogs... Anyone knows profesional bo…

Has anybody got an explanation for the structure of the skull found in Mexico called the Starchild. I read the last DNA tests were inconclusive as to its degree of human traits. It sure looks like a bug eyed ET and the scientific investigations on it seem to be valid, or is it just a big hoax. Just aman

I am a recovering Christian (you know, like a recovering alcoholic. Get it?) and I still have a hard time believing in evolution. I've always believed in micro evolution, but only in the sense that we were created as humans, and adapted into the many colors and features that we boast today. Would it be safe to say, though, that micro evolution started with homo habilis or even earlier and snowballed into macro evolution? I don't know, the way schools always talked about it was that there was one type of less evolved man and then poof, there was the next best thing and they killed them off and it kept moving in that cycle until we have us today.

i am working on a space simulator with various life forms do life forms like these seem plausible? gooncorp

OK I am probably going to feel dumb asking this but I have been given this paper to read: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/03/20/0807247106.full.pdf#page=1&view=FitH . However I'm not confident that I fully understand it. In particular I don't feel I fully understand the two central premises of the paper, which are: a) We demonstrate that specialists make more accurate resource-use decisions than generalists when the consequences of using a non-host are neutral or positive but not very positive. and b) Pronounced unsuitability of non-host resources in fact promotes higher decision accuracy in generalists. The paper then goes on to explain the fo…

I have a feeling this belongs in the Chemistry section, but not really sure... hopefully I can get some answers about it... I was reading: http://news.discovery.com/space/mars-life-120315.html and http://voices.yahoo.com/did-our-ancestors-come-mars-10203611.html What do you think? Did some (if not all) of life originate from Mars? Love to hear your thoughts...