Science

Bizarre DNA of Platypus tells a story about us

Posted by Jeff from Seattle Times

There are genes for egg laying, evidence of the animal\\\\\\\'s reptilian roots. Genes for making milk, which the platypus does in mammalian style despite not having nipples. Genes for making snake venom, which the animal stores in its legs. And there are five times more sex-determining chromosomes than scientists know what to do with.

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Abu Dhabi Aims to Build First Carbon-Neutral City : NPR

Posted by Mikep2 from NPR

Morning Edition, May 6, 2008 · In Abu Dhabi, there's an area of nothing but wind-swept desert. But 10 years from now, if all goes according to plan, a city of 6 square kilometers housing 50,000 people will rise in the United Arab Emirates - and it will be carbon neutral.

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Parachuting Dog Helped Win WWII | LiveScience

Posted by ecproject from Live Science

The Allied airmen and women of World War II were certainly brave and skilled in battle, but even they couldn't win the war on their own.

Plagued in the early, low-tech years of the war by dangerous afflictions such as altitude and decompression sickness, pilots got some help behind the front lines from a team of American physiologists who studied the effects on the body of flying.

Their research, which involved at least one parachuting dog, and the technology it initiated was a key to the Allied victory in the air, says Jay B. Dean of the University of South Florida College of Medicine.

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Balding penguin's wetsuit lets him swim again

Posted by Jeff from MSNBC

What's black and white and warm all over? A penguin in a wetsuit, naturally. Sounds like a joke, but it's quite serious for biologists at the California Academy of Sciences, who had a wetsuit created for an African penguin to help him get back in the swim of things.

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The Science of Sexuality | Sex and Relationships

Posted by Shemuses from Alternet

We should stop ignoring scientific findings that do not mesh with our political beliefs.

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A Developer, His Deals and His Ties to McCain

Posted by angelorus2000 from Feeds.feedburner

David D. Kirkpatrick and Jim Rutenberg, of The New York Times, write:

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The pope's US visit: Media, White House, Congress embrace spokesman for religious obscurantism

Posted by Sandyenglish

It is a measure of the profound decay of American democracy that when the president of the United States welcomed the Roman Catholic pontiff to Washington last week, a major concern was that the representative of a 2,000-year-old religious institution, steeped in reaction and hostility to science and human progress, might seem to criticize the US government from the left.

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