Part Time Scholar

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the publishing of Darwin's On the Origin of Species . It is great that we humans have made it this far in the evolutionary journey. Where will we go from here?    Prediction 1 - Humans Cease to Evolve One condition for evolution to occur is the isolation of a species for beneficial mutations to become norms. In today's ever-shrinking world however, it is hard to find isolated human populations. Instead, cross-breeding over geographic distances is the norm. Thus Darwin's evolution machine has clogged and will eventually come to a complete halt. What is more, the concept of survival of the fittest is being discounted in our species. With medical advances in developed countries, almost everyone can live long enough to produce offsprings. It is not bad news to see people living longer, but don't expect to see X-men any time soon either. Prediction 2 - Humans Continue to Evolve A recent study suggests that due to ovulatory

I have family in town this week. This means I will be taking a break from my 9-5 and (albeit, part time) blogging next week. A road trip to Gold Coast and Brisbane is in the cards. Of course, we are stopping along the way for some zorbing, sandboarding, and scuba diving. Can't wait to bring some adventures back into my life! -PTS

Halloween is tomorrow, though I find it not as celebrated in Australia than in Canada. Let's not stop learning just because it is that trick or treating time of the year. To play the Halloween theme, here is an interesting post on nature's walking dead! From frozen frogs to zombie fire ants that gets their brains devoured by mother fly larvae, Mother Nature never ceases to amaze us! -PTS

Here is an exciting experiment through 21 years and 40 000 generations of E. Coli culturing later. Amazingly, some 653 mutations had occurred by the 40 000th generation. The moral of the article is that successive mutations do generally allow organisms to become more efficient dwellers in their environment. Turns out once again that Darwin was right! -PTS