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May 03, 2006
"You know, evolution didn't end with us growing thumbs. You do know that, right?"
Evolution occurs faster at the equator. The researchers appeal to heat increasing metabolism, but I think they're ignoring UV radiation. via
To investigate the reasons for this trend, Shane Wright of the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and colleagues looked at the rate of molecular evolution for 45 tropical plants and compared it to that of related species living at more temperate latitudes.
The researchers examined the rate at which DNA bases in the plants' genetic code are substituted. Like characters in a four-letter alphabet, bases are DNA molecules arranged to spell out instructions for building proteins. If one of the letters—A, T, G or C—become substituted with another, the instructions can change and a dysfunctional or entirely new and useful protein can be produced.
The researchers found that tropical plants had more than twice the rate of base substitution compared to their temperate cousins.
Warmer temperatures speed up metabolism by allowing chemical reactions to occur at a faster rate, but this increased efficiency comes at a price: it produces higher quantities of charged atoms or molecules called "free radicals," which can damage proteins—including DNA. Higher metabolism also speeds up DNA replication, which is just another chemical reaction, and this can increase the number of copying mistakes that can occur.
A brief tutorial on spherical perspective. via
I'm here to undermine your world view. We always assume that what we are taught about perspective is the way we actually see. But it's not.
In the outside world there are straight lines, so we put them that way into our pictures. We have developed complicated schemes of geometrical rules to guide us. We take photos with cameras that have lenses that carefully distort the world to make it fit with the expectation that straight line should be straight. But visually they are not.
King Tut's royal member reclaimed from the dunes. via
Photographed intact by Harry Burton (1879-1940) during Howard Carter's excavation of Tut's tomb in 1922, the royal penis was reported missing in 1968, when British scientist Ronald Harrison took a series of X-rays of the mummy.
Speculation abounded that the penis had been stolen and sold.
"Instead, it has always been there. I found it during the CT scan last year, when the mummy was lifted. It lay loose in the sand around the king's body. It was mummified," Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, told Discovery News.
In other news pyramidally regal, the royal chamber of a Mayan pyramid has been located. via
The vizfx team for the latest X-Men film have figured out how to rejuvenate actors in post-prod. via
So who would McKellen like to see portray the young Magneto? Be advised, this next part gets a little SPOILERISH. "I'll be playing the part. [laughter] I don't know if it's in the [press] notes, the first time that Patrick Stewart and I appear in this film [X-Men: The Last Stand], we appear to be 25 years younger than we are. And that's been done by a technology never used in film before, which involves no makeup, no special effects whatsoever. We just go into the studio and do the scene as is, and then they morph our faces on to photographs of ourselves 25 years ago. Lo and behold, there we are."
He continued, "They can take any shaped person and they can slim you down, they can build you up, they can bring out your shoulders, change the style and color of your hair. Remove every wrinkle. They removed so many wrinkles from my face, I looked so young that [X-Men director] Brett Ratner said, 'You've got to put a few wrinkles back. It's looking ridiculous.' So it would mean that I could play myself at 25, feasibly. As long as I can keep myself lithe and sounding young."
"I mean, that's the big story of this movie is once the stars realize that they don't have to have facelifts anymore, at least as far as their work is concerned. Meryl [Streep] and I can go on playing Romeo and Juliet for the next 20, 30 years. It's no problem. It's astonishing. It's like airbrushing but for the moving picture."
Posted by Jon Rubin at May 3, 2006 07:24 PM
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