Kohagen, give the people air!

Whoops, wrong Arnie movie.

If it bleeds, we can kill it.

That's better. That's Predator. And predators are the subject of my latest article. Scientist says predation and biodiversity are tightly coupled (like my wife and I). What does this mean? Read the story (but ignore the comment at the bottom).

The story before that was about bacteria. Old bacteria. Hundreds of thousands of years old, in fact. Some say that old bacteria use the spore defence, whereby they shrivel up and cease metabolism and just hang on tight until things blow over. Now others are saying that without metabolism there would be no DNA repair, and the timespans involved mean DNA repair would be absolutely critical. You be the judge. Or foreman.

We kind of already knew this, but...

Aborigines didn't show up overnight. Still, I suppose it's nice for different lines of evidence to converge on the same point.

Published at Cosmos 8 May 2007.

Chimpanzee stone age

Nutcracker performed by chimps. I'd pay to see that.

Published at Cosmos 13 February 2007.

But can they tell how many donuts I ate last week?

I'd like to see them try. Some researchers have examined ancient teeth to find out what ye olde hominid ate.

Published at Cosmos 10 November 2006.

Social success went to our heads

Did social better getting really drive cranium growth?

Published at Cosmos 31 October 2006.