Natural Science Forum / Biology / Evolution / April 2008

And the first animal on Earth was a...
A new study mapping the evolutionary history of animals indicates that
Earth's first animal--a mysterious creature whose characteristics can only
be inferred from fossils and studies of living animals--was probably

How is it known where pre-Cambrian strata end and Cambrian strata
begin?

Anybody in the Boston area plan on attending this conference about
race in science, medicine and technology?
http://www.culturekiosque.com/nouveau/comment/bidil_and_race_profiling_in_target
ed_medicine175.html

These authors say nay:
Is the Brain a Quantum Computer?
"We argue that computation via quantum mechanical processes is
irrelevant to explaining how brains produce thought, contrary to the

Humor research has been handicapped by the lines of approached
applide
by thinkers from antiquity to the present day. The main one being,
using the word "humor" on a neurological level when it is merely a

Yes, of course they did.  Prime numbers are concepts in human brains,
and human brains obviously evolved.  Prime numbers have no independent
existence outside of human minds.  If humans went extinct, prime numbers
would go extinct along with them.

Gene-environment interaction in yeast gene expression
The nature vs. nurture debate is familiar to most people, and modern
conclusions usually predict a balance between the two. A new paper published
this week in the open-access journal PLoS Biology shows that there is a

I just read somewhere that the genetic diversity of people in Africa
is much higher than that of people in other parts of the world. The
explanation given is that small bands of people left Africa and
populated the rest of the world. Those small bands represent genetic