In pursuit of her stories, award-winning science writer Faye Flam has weathered storms in Greenland, gotten frost nip at the South Pole, and floated weightless aboard NASA’s zero-g plane. She has a degree in geophysics from the California Institute of Technology and started her writing career with the Economist. She later took on the particle physics and cosmology beat at Science Magazine. In 1995 she became a staff writer for the Inquirer - where she’s covered everything from climate change to space exploration to cancer research. Her recent story, “Faulting the Forensics” won first prize in the 2010 Keystone competition. Her previous science column, “Carnal Knowledge,” ran from 2005 to 2008. It covered the intersection of science and sex. Her new column and blog, Planet of the Apes, explores the topic of evolution and runs in the Inquirer’s health section each Monday. It was launched in April of 2011. Email Faye at fflam@phillynews.com.
Email Planet of the at fflam@phillynews.com
- Inheritance Without Genes? Yeast Does It With Proteins
On Star Trek, the aliens often look so human that crew members fall in love with them. But in real life, scientists in the field known as astrobiology can't be sure alien life would even be carbon-based like us, or use DNA to carry a genetic code.
- Inheritance Without Genes? Yeast Does It With Proteins
Timing is everything, and if there was ever a scientist whose legacy was tarnished by bad timing, it was Jean Baptiste Lamarck. The French naturalist lived from 1744 to 1829 - and published his own evolutionary theory decades before Darwin's theory went public in 1859.
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Wing Bowlers: So disciplined
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Anyone doubting our evolutionary tie to other apes should check out that Philadelphia festival of food and fun known as Wing Bowl. The annual event has some striking parallels to behavior outlined in the article "Chimpanzee Hunting Behavior and Human Evolution," which appeared in the magazine American Scientist.
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Cheers for the word 'God'
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Planet of the Apes: Creationists may be celebrating the fact that legendary physicist Stephen Hawking used the word 'God.' But does that mean he is giving up on a scientific explanation for the origin of the universe?
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How do we know evolution really happens? Through viruses
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It's a common misconception that evolution is a matter of faith, because it happens too slowly to observe. Here's the way one reader sees it: "I don't see any fish walking around, nor do I see any other creature in mid-evolving mode. . . . Simply stated, both creationism and evolution should be taught as competing theories; both are not provable, and both cannot be duplicated in a lab."
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An evolution in guidelines for research
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Chimps are about 96 percent genetically identical to humans, and like us they are self-aware enough to recognize themselves in a mirror.
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Why we hate broccoli
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Biologists agree on the big picture when it comes to Darwinian evolution, but they're still working out many details. One longstanding puzzle is why there's so much variation from person to person, why some people like broccoli, for example, and others hate it.
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Dino-mighty sauropods
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You can call the sauropod dinosaurs fat and perhaps you can call them stupid, but you can't call them failures, and for that reason they have a lot to teach us about evolution.
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If Earth keeps heating up, bacteria may inherit
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A look into the fossil record suggests that tables may one day be turned on humanity. It probably won't happen the way it did in the original Planet of the Apes, where chimps and gorillas exploit their former exploiters. Instead, our planet could be reclaimed by a more ancient life-form - sulfur-eating bacteria.
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Not ready for Northern climes
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As the darkest days of the year close in, some of us crave the feel of sunlight on our skin. That could reflect our evolutionary heritage, since we humans are not well-adapted to live as far north as Philadelphia. We're essentially an equatorial, tropical species who migrated only recently to places with long, dark winters. There hasn't been time to adapt.
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Humans born to run, biologists say
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The thousands of people who will run in the Philadelphia Marathon this weekend can thank evolution for a number of distance running adaptations - not least of which is what Harvard evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman calls our hypertrophied gluteus maximus. That's the technical term for big butts.
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1 fish, 2 fish, smart fish, sly fish
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Goldfish don't forget every time they swim around the bowl. Fish - the smarter ones at least - have been shown to distinguish left from right, to remember mental maps of their surroundings, sometimes for months, use logic, engage in deception, and cooperate while hunting.
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