« Previous  |  Next »

Nov. 24, 1974: Humanity, Meet Lucy. She’s Your Mom

1974: Paleonanthropologist Don Johanson and graduate student Tom Gray discover the skeleton of Lucy, the first recognizably human member of the primate family tree. One morning toward the end of his second field season in Hadar, Ethiopia, Johanson ...

From BRANDON KEIM, Wired,  23 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Stony Brook University,  Twitter Inc

Building a Better Alien-Calling Code

Alien-seeking researchers have designed a new simple code for sending messages into space. To a reasonably clever alien with math skills and a bit of astronomical training, the messages should be easy to decipher. As of now, Earthlings spend much more ...

From BRANDON KEIM, Wired,  23 Nov 2009

Related Topics: California Institute of Technology,  Stanford University,  Twitter Inc

Farmer Ants Fertilize Their Gardens With Bacteria

Thanks to their vast underground fungus farms, leafcutter ants are one of Earth’s most successful species — and one secret of their agricultural success is bacteria, which the ants use like fertilizer. By farming with microbes that pull nitrogen from ...

From BRANDON KEIM, Wired,  19 Nov 2009

Related Topics: University of Wisconsin

Plants Have a Social Life Too

After decades of seeing plants as passive recipients of fate, scientists have found them capable of behaviors once thought unique to animals. Some plants even appear to be social, favoring family while pushing strangers from the neighborhood. Research ...

From BRANDON KEIM, Wired,  18 Nov 2009

Birth of a New Species Witnessed by Scientists

On one of the Galapagos islands whose finches shaped the theories of a young Charles Darwin, biologists have witnessed that elusive moment when a single species splits in two. In many ways, the split followed predictable patterns, requiring a hybrid ...

From BRANDON KEIM, Wired,  16 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Charles Darwin,  National Academy of Sciences,  Twitter Inc

Video Close-Up: The Sun’s Surface in Swirling Detail

A telescope carried by balloon to the edge of Earth’s stratosphere has returned the most detailed video of the sun’s surface to date. Released Wednesday by an international research team led by astronomers from Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Solar ...

From BRANDON KEIM, Wired,  12 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Twitter Inc,  NASA,  Wikipedia,  WIRED Magazine

Secret Math of Fly Eyes Could Overhaul Robot Vision

By turning the brain cell activity underlying fly eyesight into mathematical equations, researchers have found an ultra-efficient method for pulling motion patterns from raw visual data. Though they built the system, the researchers don’t quite ...

From BRANDON KEIM, Wired,  12 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Twitter Inc,  Ray Kurzweil

Human-Chimp Gene Comparison Hints at Roots of Language

By comparing how a gene critical for language works in humans and chimpanzees, researchers have identified an entire network of genes involved in the incredible linguistic powers of Homo sapiens. The findings don’t explain how language functions at the ...

From BRANDON KEIM, Wired,  11 Nov 2009

Related Topics: University of California, Los Angeles,  Yale University,  Flickr,  CNS, Inc.

World’s Freakiest Worm Gets Expanded Family Tree

Five years after discovering some of the strangest creatures in the world — mouthless worms that live in the bones of dead whales — scientists have taken a peek into their genes. Though not complete, the glimpse shows these creatures to be far more ...

From BRANDON KEIM, Wired,  10 Nov 2009

Related Topics: Twitter Inc

Engineered Rabbit Penises Raise Human Hopes

Using tissue grown in a laboratory, researchers have engineered fully functional replacement penises. The organs were made for rabbits, but the technique may someday be useful for people. “This technology has considerable potential for patients ...

From BRANDON KEIM, Wired,  9 Nov 2009

Related Topics: National Academy of Sciences,  Twitter Inc

« Previous  |  Next »

Who is This?

Help us add to our database, by linking this writer their entry in Wikipedia or Source Watch, or by suggesting that we remove it from our index.

Suggest an Entry