TOP 100 SCIENCE SITES
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| Q & A: In Search of the Geep If a sheep and a goat mate, is the offspring a geep? feeds.nytimes.com |
NASA to launch sky-mapping spacecraft LOS ANGELES (AP) -- NASA's latest space telescope will scan the sky in search of never-before-seen asteroids, comets, stars and galaxies, with one of its main tasks to catalog objects posing a danger to Earth. The sky-mapping WISE, or Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, is scheduled to launch no earlier than before dawn Friday from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the central California coast aboard a Delta 2 rocket.... hosted.ap.org |
Darwin and Wallace inspired by Malthus Intellectual priority is often hard to establish (Letters 3 and 8 December). Evolution was very much "in the air" in the 1850s; the crucial question was "what is the mechanism?". (As it happened, both Darwin and Wallace found their inspiration in Malthus). Wallace's letter of 1858, succinctly setting out his mechanism, sent Darwin into a panic and we know that Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker took the matter out of his hands and arranged that miscellaneous evidence of Darwin's priority, with the letter, would be presented at the Linnean Society. This was an untidy and unusual process, but I am not convinced the alleged conspiracy went further than that.Thereafter Darwin fully acknowledged their discovery to have been a joint one and Wallace seemed happy throughout his long life to regard Darwin as the senior partner in the enterprise of Darwinism, the title of his own book on natural selection. Darwin was subsequently relieved to find that Wallace was an agreeable and generous man who harboured no resentment. The most likely reason for Wallace's subsequent demotion was probably his later pursuit (right up to 1913) of unpopular causes, including land nationalisation, socialism, spiritualism and anti-militarism.Emeritus professor David CollardUniversity of Bath• Charles Darwin did not have the theory of evolution as we now understand it 20 years before publishing On the Origin of Species. His migration theory of 1844 still dominated his thoughts until Hooker damned it unreservedly in the summer of 1856. Only in the months which followed did Darwin's ideas begin to resemble those published by Alfred Russel Wallace in September 1855, September 1856 and those received in a private letter in January 1857, but which Darwin only admitted receiving in a letter he dated 1 May 1857. All this is made clear in The Darwin Conspiracy by Roy Davies.Professor Mark BrakeUniversity of GlamorganEvolutionCharles Darwinguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Scientists find clue to killer of Tasmanian devils WASHINGTON (AP) -- Fierce as they are, Tasmanian devils can't beat a contagious cancer that threatens to wipe them out. Now scientists think they've found the disease's origin, a step in the race to save Australia's snarling marsupial.... hosted.ap.org |
Play, Then Eat: Shift May Bring Gains at School A simple scheduling switch -- moving recess before lunch -- may improve children's eating habits and behavior in school. feeds.nytimes.com |