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DEET Mosquito Repellent Could Lose Its Bite
More than half a century after DEET’s invention, scientists still don’t know how the popular mosquito repellent works. Now, using a combination of artificially accelerated evolution and painstaking...
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Scientists Create First Self-Replicating Synthetic Life
Man-made DNA has booted up a cell for the first time. In a feat that is the culmination of two and a half years of tests and adjustments, researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute inserted...
View ArticleGenes & temperament; future of twitter etc; & how to sell that book
I've got a three-day run starting next Sunday in which I'll be talking to authors and journalists about book proposals; NY science writers about the future of social media; and to genomic geeks about...
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Primordial Sperm Gene Found
A gene involved in the production of sperm is shared by almost all living animals, including sea anemones, worms, insects, marine invertebrates, fish and humans. The finding suggests the ability to...
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Texas Tail Saves Florida Panthers, for Now
In a rare story of conservation success, a last-ditch effort to save the Florida panther has slowed, if not reversed, the marvelous animal’s decline. Fifteen years ago, America’s last eastern panther...
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Autism Plays Hide-and-Seek in Family Genes
Autism seems to play a genetically inspired hide-and-seek game in some families. Undiagnosed siblings in families that include two or more children with autism often grapple with language delays,...
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Black Death’s Daddy Was the Bubonic Plague
Piles of bones and historical records tell us the Black Death pandemic wiped out as much as half the population of Europe during the Middle Ages. But how and what, exactly, caused the grisly scourge...
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Human Genome Still Chock-Full of Mysteries
BOSTON — No one really knows all the genetic parts needed to make a human being. Exactly how many genes make up the human genome remains a mystery, even though scientists announced the completion of...
View ArticleGallery: Meet the Original Dogs
Even as humans have homogenized other domestic animals, replacing nature’s diversity with a few useful breeds, dog diversity has exploded. A kaleidoscope of shapes and sizes have come from an original...
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At the Edge of Invasion, Possible New Rules for Evolution
Just as Galapagos finches are icons of evolution by natural selection, Australia’s cane toads may someday be icons of “spatial sorting” — a dynamic that seems to exist at the edges of invasion,...
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Dinosaurs May Have Been Tormented by Lice
By Mark Brown, Wired UK Feathered dinosaurs may have been the first animals bedeviled by lice. That’s the finding of Illinois ornithologist Kevin Johnson, after tracing the evolutionary line of the...
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Moth Mutation Explains Classic Example of Evolution
The molecular mechanics behind a classic example of evolution that dates back to Darwin’s time may soon be revealed. As soot from coal-fired factories blackened trees and buildings in 19th-century...
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All-Female Lizard Species Created in Lab
Researchers have bred a new species of all-female lizard, mimicking a process that has happened naturally in the past but has never been directly observed. “It’s recreating the events that lead to new...
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Polar Bear Origins Traced to a Single Bear
By Mark Brown, Wired UK All living polar bears can trace their genetic lineage back to a single, female ancestor — a brown bear from Ireland, who lived around 20,000 to 50,000 years ago. Thanks to...
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Genome Revolution Is Skipping Nonwhites
The gold standard of modern genomics studies, the results of which guide thousands of investigations into the genetic roots of disease and development, are based almost exclusively on people of...
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Recent Human Evolution Detected in Quebec Town History
Though ongoing human evolution is difficult to see, researchers believe they've found signs of rapid genetic changes among the recent residents of a small Canadian town.
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Tasmanian Devils Might Survive Cancer Scourge
After years of unrelentingly dire news, biologists have found a first sign of hope for Tasmanian devils, which are threatened with extinction by a contagious, highly virulent form of cancer.
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Genes of Extinct Ancestor Survive in Modern Humans
Genes inherited from long-extinct human ancestors may be more common than thought, suggesting a Homo sapiens origin story with more than a few evolutionary one-night stands. The latest findings involve...
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Global Microbe Study Finds ‘Black Market’ of Superbug Genes
Researchers have discovered an underworld of genetic exchange among bacteria, one more vast than previously imagined.
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Cell-Aging Hack Opens Longevity Research Frontier
Research into longevity, that most fundamental and intractable of all human health challenges, is slow moving. It deserves to be described in terms of years, not individual studies. But once in a rare...
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