Wednesday, 8 February, 2012

A crash course in “sink or swim” teaches computerized robots to adapt to changing circumstances. When taught by “directed evolution,” robots that started without legs learned to walk sooner than robots that started with legs! Can you explain?

Dive deep, and meet the flashlight squid — with a billion-bacteria light bulb. Meet bacteria that live in boiling water, and the immense variety of weirder-than-weird critters that live between grains of sand. Plus a highly selected bio-freak show…

Scientists thought wings were the first evidence of flight. But plenty of falling ants can glide back to “their” tree to avoid being devoured on the forest floor. If an ant’s brain and body are able to detect its position and change its flight path, is gliding the first flight?

Bacteria can help or harm their hosts. Now we hear how one genus of bacteria can multiply fly reproduction. In this symbiosis, both parties benefit. This bacterium also alters insect immunity, and could lead to new tactics for killing horrific parasites.

athogens can change the behavior of their hosts — and now we see that a single viral gene forces a caterpillar to climb a tree before it dies. From that high vantage, the virus can infect more caterpillars. It’s nifty and thrifty, unless you’re a gypsy moth!

Mother is your first — and most important — relationship. What does science tell us about the effects of mothering? What happens when groups of monkeys are raised without a mother? How does a “fragile family” affect young people? What are “social risk factors,” and why should we care about them?

Darwin thought life had to predate the Cambrian era, and yet there was no evidence. In 1953, a Wisconsin geologist saw fossils aged almost 2 billion years. Now, life has been discovered in rocks from 3.5 billion years. What was life like, and how do we recognize it?

Researchers finally accept that animals can have emotions. But is love one of those emotions, and how would we be sure? What does neurochemistry and behavioral studies tell us about emotions. Does your dog really love you? Your cat? Do they love each other?

Found: The smallest farmers in the world! If you’re hungry, and moving to a land without food, the smart money says, “Take some seeds.” And that’s exactly what a common soil amoeba does: It totes along bacteria so it can eat them in its new home.

The BP spill released about 160,000 tons of methane into the Gulf of Mexico, but a new study shows that it was eaten by friendly bacteria. The seabed contains an astonishing amount of methane, a strong greenhouse gas. So can bacteria reduce the global warming hazard of massive methane releases?