biology

Chimps That Hunt Offer a New View on Evolution

Studies of hunters and gatherers — and of chimpanzees, which are often used as stand-ins for human ancestors — have cast bigger, faster and more powerful males in the hunter role. Now, a 10-year study of chimpanzees in Senegal shows females playing an unexpectedly big role in hunting and males, surprisingly, letting smaller and weaker hunters keep their prey. The results do…

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Why Iceland Is the World’s Greatest Genetic Laboratory

Today, the journal Nature Genetics released a set of four papers based entirely on the genetic sequences of Icelanders. Their results, which range from the identification of a new Alzheimer’s-associated gene to the age of the most recent male ancestor shared by all humans, are part of a long history of genetic discoveries from deCODE, a company that has been…

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Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals can Adversely Affect Reproduction of Future Generations of Fish

Bisphenol A (BPA) is a chemical that is used in a variety of consumer products, such as water bottles, dental composites and resins used to line metal food and beverage containers. Often, aquatic environments such as rivers and streams become reservoirs for contaminants, including BPA. Now, University of Missouri researchers and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists have determined that fish…

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Do Your Genes Determine Your Entire Life?

Whenever you read stories about identical twins separated at birth, they tend to follow the template set by the most remarkable of them all: the “two Jims”. James Springer and James Lewis were separated as one-month-olds, adopted by different families and reunited at age 39. When University of Minnesota psychologist Thomas Bouchard met them in 1979, he found, as a…

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‘The Biology of History’: Antibiotics, Resistant Bacteria and the Human Effect. An Interview with Hannah Landecker

To supplement the publication of ‘Antibiotic Resistance and the Biology of History’ in Body & Society, Andrea Núñez Casal, MPhil/PhD candidate at Goldsmiths, University of London, interviews the author, historian and sociologist of science Hannah Landecker, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for Society and Genetics at UCLA. In the interview, Hannah Landecker illuminates why antibiotic resistance along with…

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