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Droplets That ‘Come to Life’
...these active-droplet “protocells” divided and proliferated, evolution could have acted on them, gradually making them more complex and leading to the rise of living cells. The physics of active-droplet division...
How Could Life Evolve From Cyanide?
...evolutionary history as a recorded “tape of life” that might turn out differently if it were replayed again and again. In this episode, Steven Strogatz speaks with two researchers inspecting...
Vaccines Are Pushing Pathogens to Evolve
...Ph.D. in pathology, had always been fascinated by bacteria and evolutionary biology. And something evolutionarily profound was about to happen to bacteria in America. A new vaccine called Prevnar 7...
Quanta Writers and Editors Discuss Trends in Science and Math
...— there’s an overwhelming amount of evidence for evolution itself. There’s no question that evolution itself occurred, but there are questions about specific mechanisms by which it works. And thinking...
Billion-Year-Old Algae and Newer Genes Hint at Land Plants’ Origin
...big mysteries of evolution. Before then, terrestrial land was home only to microbial life. The first green plants to find their way out of the water were not the soaring...
Why Do We Get Old, and Can Aging Be Reversed?
...happens with age. Evolution didn’t try to make us old. Evolution tried to make us young and healthy. And sometimes that came at a cost. Strogatz (03:56): It’s a fascinating...
Moonlighting Genes Evolve for a Venomous Job
...it’s likely that this mode of evolution could have been underestimated because other studies have rarely compared evolutionary next of kin. “If you look at species that are very, very...
Computers Evolve a New Path Toward Human Intelligence
...artificial intelligence called neuroevolution, which co-opts the principles of biological evolution to design smarter algorithms. With Picbreeder, each image was the output of a computational system similar to a neural...
Decoding Flu Viruses Before an Outbreak
...humans, Rabadan’s team hopes to identify mechanisms common to different viruses. For example, if two kinds of viruses develop the same genetic change, a phenomenon known as convergent evolution, it...