Climate change is starting to become a problem and I’m not strictly speaking to the melting ice caps or extreme weather—it’s creating a problem for teachers too. The debate about integrating climate change into class curriculums is one that is (no pun intended) starting to heat up. That’s why the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) has launched a new initiative to support the teaching of climate change in classrooms.
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By Melvin Berry
Ant colonies are complex, much like human societies. In fact, as small as they are, ants in many ways remind me of people. But here's one big difference: while there's only one human species, scientists have classified over 22,000 distinct species of ants.
A thousand of them have been discovered by Dr. Brian Fisher of the California Academy of Sciences. We invited Dr. Fisher to Youth Radio to give us an overview of what he's learned hunting for ants in Madagascar. His wonderful presentation made me realize that there's a lot to know about ants.
It amazed me how the colonies are run by the worker ants -- they're the backbone of the colony. And, a lot of people don’t know that ants play a big role in many ecosystems all over the world, even in our urban ecosystem in Oakland!
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By Denise Tejada, Turnstyle News
Everybody has their own opinions about pageants, but if you're like me, you watch them for humor. California has taken the crown for Miss USA this year, but the amusement continued during the pageant.
I got a good laugh seeing several of the contestants respond to questions as eloquently as possible while making no sense at all, like Miss Teen South Carolina back in 2007. Showing that they're more than just good looking, or not, the contestants responded very firmly and honestly to the question "Should evolution be taught at school?"
Their answers may surprise you.
New research done by Medical Research Council Scientists has unveiled a community in Papua New Guinea that has developed a genetic resistance to a fatal brain disease from their ritual practice of mortuary feasting, or the consumption of dead family members. This community of people in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea was originally affected by a pandemic of the "kuru" brain disease, but the inheritance of a new variation in a protein gene has built up a resistance to the disease among members of the community.
An article from Science Daily states,
"This gene mutation, which is found nowhere else in the world, seems to offer high or even complete protection against the development of kuru and has become frequent in this area through natural selection over recent history, in direct response to the epidemic. This is thought be perhaps the strongest example yet of recent natural selection in humans."
This new research is absolutely amazing to me, especially since I've been learning about evolution in my AP Biology class. Essentially, this population of Papua New Guinea underwent natural selection induced by their own cultural customs. Those who would consume the corpses of their dead infected with the disease would contract the disease and then die if they did not have the protein variation. Those with the variation would survive and pass on their genes to their children, effectively demonstrating Darwin's theory of evolution.
I hear about the Grant's finches on the Galapagos all the time in my biology class so it's a breath of fresh air to learn of current human evolution caused by a cultural practice.
(via Science Daily)
A man was found stabbed to death in his own home. No signs of struggle. No suicide note. A murder mystery? No, just another unfortunate winner of the annual and very popular Darwin Awards.
From our partners at the California Academy of Sciences:
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