Menu

Blog

Archive for the ‘evolution’ category: Page 7

Dec 21, 2023

Apes’ Long-Term Social Memory Mirrors Human Ability

Posted by in category: evolution

Researchers found that chimpanzees and bonobos can recognize former groupmates they haven’t seen for over 25 years, showing more attention to those they had positive relationships with.

This study, conducted with apes at various zoos and sanctuaries, used eye-tracking technology to measure apes’ responses to photographs of familiar and unfamiliar individuals.

The findings suggest that such enduring social memory in apes could have played a foundational role in the evolution of human culture and interpersonal relationships.

Dec 21, 2023

A new mathematical language for biological networks

Posted by in categories: biological, evolution, genetics, health, mathematics

A team of researchers around Berlin mathematics professor Michael Joswig is presenting a novel concept for the mathematical modeling of genetic interactions in biological systems. Collaborating with biologists from ETH Zurich and Carnegy Science (U.S.), the team has successfully identified master regulators within the context of an entire genetic network.

The research results provide a coherent theoretical framework for analyzing biological networks and have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

It is a longstanding goal of biologists to determine the key genes and species that have a decisive impact on evolution, ecology, and health. Researchers have now succeeded in identifying certain genes as master regulators in biological networks. These key regulators exert greater control within the system and steer essential cellular processes. Previous studies have mainly focused on pairwise interactions within the system, which can be strongly affected by genetic background or biological context.

Dec 19, 2023

Ancient Insect Mysteries Solved: 312-Million-Year-Old Fossil Sheds Light on Behavior and Evolution

Posted by in categories: biological, evolution

Prehistoric insects, with their delicate and soft bodies, are challenging to preserve as fossils. While wings are more commonly fossilized, the bodies of these insects are often fragmented or incomplete, posing difficulties for scientific study. Paleontologists often rely on trace fossils to learn about these ancient insects, which are almost exclusively found as traces on fossil plants.

“We have a great fossil plant record,” said Richard J. Knecht, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard. “Further back in time, it’s the trace fossils that tell us more about the evolution and behavior of insects than the body fossils because plants and the trace fossils on them preserve very well. And the trace, as opposed to a body, won’t move over time and is always found where it was made.”

Dec 18, 2023

Improving Gut Health with Microbiome and Probiotics

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, evolution, life extension, neuroscience

View show notes here: https://bit.ly/3GJjQKz Become a member to receive exclusive content: https://peterattiamd.com/subscribe/ Sign up to receive Peter’s email newsletter: https://peterattiamd.com/newsletter/ Colleen Cutcliffe is an expert in molecular biology and co-founder of Pendulum Therapeutics, a company working to develop treatments for a variety of diseases by targeting the microbiome. In this episode, Colleen delves into the complexity of the microbiome, how it is tested, and how it changes over time. She explores how probiotics, prebiotics, and postbiotics affect the gut and makes a compelling case that well-developed products have the potential not only to enhance gut health but also to positively influence overall metabolic well-being. Colleen emphasizes the significance of a high-fiber diet in sustaining a thriving gut microbiome, shares insights on minimizing microbiome damage during antibiotic use, provides tips for fostering and preserving a healthy gut, and much more. We discuss: 0:00:00 — Intro 0:00:34 — Colleen’s background and current focus 0:03:08 — The basics of the microbiome 0:12:37 — The study of the human microbiome 0:17:42 — Categories of bacteria, and the implications on health of the rapid evolution of bacteria 0:27:51 — Methods for measuring and understanding the microbiome, and key indicators of microbiome health 0:39:52 — The important role of fiber for promoting gut health through the production of butyrate 0:47:21 — The case for manipulating gut bacteria via fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) 0:53:25 — Dynamics of the microbiome: the gut-brain connection and how antibiotics, nutrition, stress, and more impact the microbiome’s diversity and function 0:59:16 — Factors that influence the vaginal microbiom 1:03:46 — The effect of gut microbes on obesity and challenges with fecal transplants in people 1:06:25 — Beneficial strains of gut bacteria and strains commonly found in probiotics 1:16:35 — The difference between a probiotic and prebiotic, and how CFUs are a measure of the “active ingredient” 1:21:47 — Considerations about how probiotic strains are produced, and more on the meaning of CFU 1:31:12 — Mitigating the effect of antibiotics on the microbiome 1:39:58 — What do we know about the effect of artificial sweeteners on the gut microbiome? 1:47:02 — Why Akkermansia is a keystone strain with implications for metabolic health and an individual’s response to dietary interventions 1:58:14 — The essential steps necessary to develop a robust probiotic for optimal health support 2:01:45 — How Akkermansia helps control blood glucose, and potential implications of Akkermansia in weight loss, diabetes management, and more 2:22:46 — Pendulum Therapeutics’ commitment to rigorous product develop 2:29:54 — Details about the probiotic “Glucose Control” and other probiotics developed by Pendulum Therapeutics 2:38:43 — Further studies of Akkermansia that have been proposed or are underway ——– About: The Peter Attia Drive is a deep-dive podcast focusing on maximizing longevity, and all that goes into that from physical to cognitive to emotional health. With over 70 million episodes downloaded, it features topics including exercise, nutritional biochemistry, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, mental health, and much more. Peter Attia is the founder of Early Medical, a medical practice that applies the principles of Medicine 3.0 to patients with the goal of lengthening their lifespan and simultaneously improving their healthspan.

Dec 18, 2023

New ALICE measurements shed light on the dynamics of charm and beauty particles in quark-gluon plasma

Posted by in categories: cosmology, evolution, particle physics

When two lead ions collide at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), they produce an extremely hot and dense state of matter in which quarks and gluons are not confined inside composite particles called hadrons. This fireball of particles—known as quark–gluon plasma and believed to have filled the universe in the first few millionths of a second after the Big Bang—expands and cools down rapidly. The quarks and gluons then transform back into hadrons, which fly out of the collision zone towards particle detectors.

In collisions where the two do not collide head on, the overlap region between the ions has an elliptic shape that leaves an imprint on the flow of hadrons. Measurements of such elliptic flow provide a powerful way to study quark–gluon plasma. In a recent paper posted to the arXiv preprint server, the ALICE collaboration reported a new measurement of the elliptic flow of hadrons containing heavy , which are particularly powerful probes of the plasma.

Unlike the and light quarks that make up the bulk of the quark–gluon plasma created in heavy-ion collisions, heavy charm and beauty quarks are produced in the initial stages of the collisions, before the plasma forms. They therefore interact with the plasma throughout its entire evolution, from its expansion and cooling to its transformation into hadrons.

Dec 13, 2023

Illuminating protein space with a programmable generative model

Posted by in categories: evolution, space

Evolution has produced a range of diverse proteins, and now a generative model called Chroma can expand that set by allowing the user to design new proteins and protein complexes with desired properties and functions.

Dec 12, 2023

New Breakthrough Theory Lets Physics Predict Evolution — Assembly Theory Explained

Posted by in categories: evolution, physics

Start speaking a new language in 3 weeks with Babbel 🎉 Get 60% OFF your subscription during their Black Friday sale Here: https://go.babbel.com/t?bsc=1200m6

Dec 11, 2023

Scientists find that senescence can accelerate evolution

Posted by in categories: evolution, life extension

The mystery of aging has fascinated people for millennia, with many willing to do anything to halt or reverse this process, because aging is typically associated with gradual deterioration of most body functions. While senescence is a natural part of life, biologists understand surprisingly little about the emergence of this process during evolution.

It is not clear whether aging is inevitable because there are organisms that seemingly do not age at all; moreover, the phenomenon known as negative aging, or rejuvenation, does exist: for example, some turtles’ vital functions improve with age.

Researchers of the Institute of Evolution led by Academician Eörs Szathmáry have endeavored to prove the validity of a previously proposed but still unproven theory of aging. The theory suggests that under the right circumstances, can favor the proliferation of controlling senescence.

Dec 8, 2023

The Evolutionary Psychology Of Love

Posted by in categories: evolution, neuroscience, sex

Robin Dunbar is an anthropologist, evolutionary psychologist, head of the Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group at the University of Oxford and an author. Love is something that people have been trying to describe for thousands of years. Beyond asking what love is, is the question of why humans feel something so strange in the first place. Why would evolution have exposed us to this extreme sensation with huge potential for catastrophe and pain? Expect to learn how love is adaptive, why humans need to have more sex than almost all other animals to get pregnant, why ancestral men who hunted big animals were only doing it to get laid, how the length of your fingers can tell you how promiscuous you are, whether Robin thinks humans were ancestrally monogamous and much more…

Dec 8, 2023

Understanding Relationships: Evolution’s Secrets

Posted by in categories: evolution, neuroscience, sex

Dr Andrew Thomas is a senior lecturer of psychology at Swansea University whose research focuses on sex differences and relationship preferences from an evolutionary perspective. Evolution explains a large portion of why we like the things we like. Who we’re attracted to, why we fall into and out of love, how our mental state affects our mating strategies. Therefore, if you are a human who ever intends on being in a relationship, this might be useful. Expect to learn the 5 evolutionary theories which explain much of human mating, whether ChatGPT can correctly predict what traits men and women like most in each other, how many previous sexual partners people say they want their current partner to have had, how open men & women in the West are to polyamorous relationships, how sexual arousal can ruin a faithful relationship and much more… Sponsors: Get 20% discount & free shipping on your Lawnmower 4.0 at https://manscaped.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get over 37% discount on all products site-wide from MyProtein at https://bit.ly/proteinwisdom (use code: MODERNWISDOM) Get 83% discount & 3 months free from Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/MODERNWISDOM (use code MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Follow Andrew on Twitter — https://twitter.com/DrThomasAG Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #evolution #dating #psychology — 00:00 Intro 01:20 Evolutionary Mismatch 10:18 Evolving Towards Making Small Errors Instead of Big Ones 17:33 Are Men as Picky as Women? 21:55 Is Promiscuity Heritable? 27:32 Humans Engage in Multiple Types of Sexual Strategies 36:49 The Different Levels of Sexual Harassment 46:55 Is Sexlessness in Young Men Caused by Poor Social Skills? 52:56 Attitudes in the West to Having Multiple Sexual Partners 1:04:21 How Many Previous Sexual Partners is Too Much? 1:14:52 What ChatGPT Gets Wrong About Mate Preferences 1:34:31 Where to Find Dr Thomas — Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify — https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts — https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here — https://chriswillx.com/books/ — Get in touch in the comments below or head to… Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Page 7 of 126First4567891011Last