Natural Science Forum / Biology / Evolution / February 2007

any guru out there give me a quick comment on the concept of trying to
cross-breed Cannabis (Sativa/Indica/Ruderalis) with either Hops
(Humulus lupulus ?) or stinging nettles (Urtica dioica) ?
Bear in mind that I can deal with geno and phenotypes, but start to

A Simpler Origin for Life
The sudden appearance of a large self-copying molecule such as RNA was
exceedingly improbable. Energy-driven networks of small molecules afford
better odds as the initiators of life.

..Habitat of early life: Solar X-ray and UV radiation at Earth's surface
4-3.5 billion years ago Authors: I. Cnossen, J. Sanz-Forcada, F. Favata,
O. Witasse, T. Zegers, N.  F. Arnold
Journal-ref: Journal of Geophysical Research, 112, E02008 (2007)

An interesting News and Commentary piece in the journal
Nature Heredity:
http://www.nature.com/hdy/journal/v98/n3/full/6800926a.html
 The evolution of sex has been considered the queen of problems

Last year there was an announcement about a new fossil find; the animal
was mostly fish-like, but could flex it's "neck" and (if I recall
correctly) may have had the equivalent of wrist joints in its stubby
little lobes.  Has anyone made a picture of the reconstructed animal?

i am a student in 10th grade biology. i am in the 10th grade so i am
not an idiot. i need to know how plant cells and animal cells compare
in mitosis. any help would greatly please me. my teacher is not very
good. she expects my class to remember everything she says. so you

It was suggested that I post my article here after getting some
feedback on the talk.origins newsgroup.  It's an article I wrote about
Haldane's Dilemma and the problems with it.  I talk about how
subpopulations decrease the substitution cost, how sexual selection

There has been lots of speculation about why so many humans are
homosexuals. It would seem that a gene that makes someone homosexual
would not have great chance of being passed down to further
generations because homosexual sex does not result in offspring. And

Human beings have 46 chromosomes (23 pairs), while other apes,
including chimpanzees, have 48 (24 pairs). This means that at some
time since the split of the ancestral lineage connecting humans and
chimpanzees, a human ancestor lost a chromosomal pair, problably by

My apologies for this late response.
Guy A Hoelzer hoelzer@unr.edu wrote:-

Is the following true?:
- Man is a creature adapted for life under circumstances which are
very narrowly limited. A few degrees of temperature more or less, a
slight variation in the composition of the air, the precise

I think that the whole idea of there being this great mental divide
between humans and animals was largely a construction of behaviorism
in psychology ( which views the mind as a "black box") spilling over
to other areas of the biological sciences. We have to remember that

A Simpler Origin for Life
The sudden appearance of a large self-copying molecule such as RNA was
exceedingly improbable. Energy-driven networks of small molecules afford
better odds as the initiators of life.

The following posting of mine to another group might be of interest to
sci.bio.evolution.
<<<<
"In China, a genre of self-help books purports to tell the secrets of

I wonder whether the OOL experts in this group would care to comment
on a speculation of mine. This is that the very first molecule capable
of self-generation would have been vulnerable to thermal buffeting
from the moment of formation. In any environment on earth I cannot see