Natural Science Forum / Biology / Evolution / August 2006

All what can be found on the Internet? Might be true, but damned if it's
easier to find.
I'm looking for information on the Hox genes. You know, the ones that
determine where things go and how they develop in a critter. I'm

This is probably a long shot question about evolution and "Wisdom
of Crowds"...
I was reading up on evolutionary algorithms and genetic programming,
where for example populations of computer programs can be made to

Short Review
Heredity (2006) 97, 157-167.
Heliconius wing patterns: an evo-devo model for understanding
 phenotypic diversity

Quote from Richard Leakey -"Origin of Mankind"
"The earliest toolmakers were predominantly right-handed,
just as modern humans are. Although individual apes are
preferentially right or left handed, there is no population

 this is a post requesting your kind participation to a survey that
Gianluca Antonini and I have prepared in the study of human perception
and classification of emotions.
The survey consists in spending a few minutes labeling a few images.

In the evolution whole individuals with poor charachteristics get
dropped away. In the evolution of a pack individuals which are poor for
the pack are more likely to drop away if the pack gives them negative
feedback for their poor qualities. This would lead me to think that the

I recently discovered some fairly interesting factoids about the
hens/birds eggs that most of us eat .
I was raised a city boy so forgive me my ignorance <grin>) but this
lead me to a few bio/genetics questions (to follow) hopefully the more

Similarity Selection and the Evolution of Sex: Revisiting the Red Queen
Aneil F. Agrawal
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

"Aquatic Ape Theory" is an inaccurate term: it's not about apes, nor about
our ancestors having been aquatic.  AAT only states that our ancestors
sometime after the Homo/Pan split relied partly on aquatic resources:
- "Homo": AAT, contrary to what many PAs think, has nothing to do ...

Published online: 9 August 2006; | doi:10.1038/news060807-9=20
Scans peer inside fossil embryos
Technique reveals secrets about earliest animals.=20
Helen Pilcher

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060701/fob1.asp
Interesting.  But I will leave it to others to explore the
evolutionary significance, if any.

Can someone please explain, preferably with reference links to the
subject, how a cell goes about the business of "ordering" a specific
RNA sequence from its nucleus, for translation to a a specific protein?
What does the cell "send" into the nucleus, some kind of "search key"?

Does Environment Influence Genes? Researcher Gives Hard Thoughts On Soft
Inheritance
Organisms, including humans, all inherit DNA from generation to generation,
what biologists call hard inheritance, because the nucleotide sequence of

it seems that becoming gays is more frequent among men than women. I
have heard people explain the phenomenon as a social one rather than
genetics related. If so, we come back to social behaviors that
characterize each individual. However, behaviors can be fixed. This

I read an article in Scientific American about
colour vision.
Apparently:
-- birds have four kinds of cones, while we only have three