Discover, June 30, 2003

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In the 1960s, a team of scientists studying the DNA of men imprisoned in a Scottish institution for violent offenders reported that a disproportionate number of them carried an extra Y chromosome. From that correlation the scientists theorized that this abnormality more or less doomed a man to a life of violent crime. One Y chromosome programs a fertilized egg to become male; the Scottish researchers concluded that if you double the Y–as happens in one out of every thousand male births–then you double all the aggression ostensibly hardwired into all men.

Continue reading “Why, Oh Y…” →

Newsweek, June 30, 2003

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It started as an odd feeling of déjà vu. Over a few weeks, the sensation grew more and more intense, until finally John (not his real name) had trouble concentrating on teaching his grade-school class. Then he started having seizures.

His doctors traced the trouble to a tumor in his brain’s left frontal lobe. The best option, they thought, was to remove the tumor surgically, and then—just to make sure there were no stray cancer cells—cut away some of the surrounding tissue. The question, though, was how much tissue could they safely remove?

Continue reading “Head Shots” →

Science, May 30, 2003

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In 1859 a rancher decided to introduce European rabbits into Australia so that he could have something to hunt. Before long the rabbits had exploded across the continent, eating so much vegetation that they began to cause serious soil erosion. In the 1950s scientists deployed a biological counteroffensive, myxoma virus, a pathogen from South America. It didn’t eliminate the rabbits, but it did provide grist for an ongoing debate about virulence.

Continue reading “Taming Pathogens: An Elegant Idea, But Does It Work?” →

Science, May 16, 2003

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Imagine a boy sitting on a couch about to unwrap a chocolate bar. His mother announces that she’s taking him to soccer practice. He tucks the chocolate under the couch for safekeeping and leaves. A few minutes later, his sister comes into the room in search of her teddy bear. When she looks under the couch she is surprised to find an unopened chocolate bar, which she then hides behind a bookshelf. When her brother comes home, drooling for chocolate, where will he look?

Continue reading “How the Mind Reads Other Minds” →

Science, May 9, 2003

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Natural selection, once seen as a stately and imperceptible process, can be speeded up to resemble a case of hyperactive jiggles. Over the past 20 years, as evolutionary biologists have begun to study natural selection in the wild, they have documented record-breaking changes in some populations of animals and plants that occur in years—not centuries or millennia.

Now conservation biologists are beginning to take note. “The last year or two have been the first time that people have really been hammering on this issue,” says Andrew Hendry of McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

Continue reading “Rapid Evolution Can Foil Even the Best-Laid Plans” →