Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts

Thursday, December 31, 2009

What Darwin Never Knew












PBS's NOVA had an excellent show on Darwin, evolution, natural selection, DNA, etc. the other night. It has a nice short biography of Darwin and his scientific discoveries and scientifically political challenges of his time. It goes into Darwin's theory of natural selection and then to more recent knowledge about DNA (what Darwin never knew). The new stuff for me was the information about the hierarchy of genes. There are genes that make stuff (creating the proteins that make our eyes, brain, limbs, etc.). There are genes that act like switches turning on or off the other genes, and then there are genes that control the switch genes.

The web site linked above itself appears to have further interesting information on evolution and DNA.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

The Origin Of Species



















From Wikipedia

It's a day to remember Charles Darwin. It's 150 years ago today that his On the Origin of Species was published.