The Science of Biological Evolution (no politics or religion)

I was surprised to learn this,is all.

Smoking the equivalent of a single 'spliff' of cannabis makes people less willing to work for money while 'high', finds a new UCL study.

Oh stop !....

There's the possibility that humans may have evolved to counter-exploit plant neurotoxins. Resolving the paradox of drug reward will require a synthesis of ecological and neurobiological perspectives of drug seeking and use.Several theorists have attempted to explain drug reward from an evolutionary perspective emphasizing fitness consequences. In this view, behaviours beneficial to an animal's reproductive success are rewarded and/or reinforced by positive emotions, while behaviours with fitness-impairing consequences are discouraged with negative emotions. This perspective holds that drugs of abuse subvert natural reward circuits by creating a signal inthe brain falsely indicating the arrival of a huge fitness benefit (positive reinforcement), and by blocking painful feelings or affect states, ‘short circuiting’ the adaptive functions of negative emotions...

what's next?

a single joint in 15 years causing cancer?

A fundemental mystery tied to our origins- to what makes us human- can be summarized by a single question:

Why are we so smart?

The evolution of human intelligence still puzzles scientists and philosophers. Yes, it's possible to trace the growth of our brains from earlier hominids through the emergence of Homo sapiens some 200,000 years ago. But what remains unknown is why our species suddenly and inexplicably had a burst of Intelligence 50,000 years ago.

Anthropologists refer to this moment in time as The Great Leap Forward. Theories abound, attributing this event to climate change, to genetic mutations, even to alterations in diet and nutrition. Even more disconcerting is that for that past 10,000 years our brains have been shrinking. The answer lies in solving the Great Leap Forward.

Intelligence is an accident of evolution, and not necessarily an advantage. - Isaac Asimov

The measure of intelligence is the ability to change. - Albert Einstein

Chances are that as per intelligence you can't beat 300 of them. Democratic devolution. Your single vote in any parliamental election means nothing if you think of it, either party can at best draw without you, if say by accident the one candidate you would have picked was going to win by a single vote.

"This is the ant. Treat it with respect, for it may very well be the next dominant life form of our planet. Sound incredible? Impossible? Have you ever taken a good, close look at what the ant is all about? Like these atta cephalotes - one of the 15,000 different species inhabiting our planet. This one cultivates crops of fungus for food. Others herd aphids, just as man herds cattle. And what about the warriors? The builders of bridges, roads, tunnels? Frightening, isn't it, that a creature as small as an ant is able to have a fair claim to rank next to man in the scale of intelligence?"

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/cannabis-less-harmful-than-aspirin-says-scientist-634183.html

Sorry but I'm not into religion much. Nothing is meant to be taken on a daily basis anyway, nor oftetimes as per to avoid to become an addict, not even chocolate.

You want to talk about evolution, in this case they should probably be giving the body of two individuals entitled to vote, randomly, on every election, on half of its electorate. Just a random thought.

THIS TIME-LAPSE IS one of the most compelling—and unsettling—visualizations of evolution we’ve ever seen. The overhead footage depicts a strain of the gut bacterium E. coli evolving to be 1,000 times more resistant to an antibiotic in a matter of 11 days, starkly visualizing the speed with which diseases can adapt to the drugs we throw their way.

Kishony and his team built the MEGA-plate and filled it with a media on which E. coli could grow, die, evolve, and propagate. Next they dosed the media with greater and greater concentrations of antibiotics; the outermost reaches of the plate received no antibiotic whatsoever, but by the time they got to the center of the plate, Kishony and his team had laced the agar with antibiotics at 1000 times the concentration needed to kill their starting strain of E. coli. Then they switched on their video camera, seeded the antibiotic-free section of the plate with bacteria, and watched what happened.

Went on a smear test a few times, the E. coli and its symbiotes are doing fine, the endogenous specimens weren't contagious, unfortunately.

Not entirely true. There was a teensy bit & that throws things off.

The Great Leap Foward....continued

For 150,000 homo sapiens evolved slowly, at the same rate of natural selection found in all of nature. Living in caves, primitive tools, no agriculture, no art, poorly adapted to the changing environment, facing possible total extinction due to outside factors well beyond their control. Tribes were seperare, no common ways of communucation, making war on neighbors. The evolution of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals was at a crises, their fate eminent.

Then something dramatic happened. Neanderthals died out, although a small portion of their genes remain in our DNA due to interbreeding. Suddenly, and very rapidly homo sapiens developed sophisticated tools, moved out of the caves, developed language, communication, cultivated the land, established communities, created paintings.

The Great Leap Forward had found its beginning. The revelations are just beginning to be rediscovered, 1st brought to light by Father Athanasius Kircher, known as the Leonardo da Vinci of the Jesuit Order. A master, scientist of a hundred disciplines who would influence a great many famous, future figures.

The story only begins here. The more disturbing question arises: Are we at the cusp of a 2nd Great Leap Forward? Or are we doomed to fall backward once again?

For 150,000 homo sapiens evolved slowly, at the same rate of natural selection found in all of nature. Living in caves, primitive tools.

150,000 years is nothing. They didn't live in caves. Too many poisonous insects,snakes,also large preditors liked den up in caves. They did go into caves to get out of bad weather,and for religious reasons. An aschuelian hand ax,cica 1.5 million years ago,is not a primative tool. Try and make one.

We are identical to Homo Sapians 200,000 years ago. They are us.

The ancient, big-bodied relatives of modern-day humans not only ate freshwater shellfish, but engraved their shells and used them as tools, a new study finds.

Researchers in Java, Indonesia, discovered engravings on a shell that dates to between 540,000 and 430,000 years ago. Theancient artwork could be the oldest known geometric carving made by a human ancestor, the researchers said.

The Great Leap Forward....continued:

For the longest time, it was excepted that Neanderthals were the last of our closest relatives to survive, dying off some 30-40 thousand years ago. That is until the bones of the Red Deer Cave people were found, dating back only 11 thousand years. Most paleontologists believe they're a subspecies of human, a cross breed of Homo sapiens and a more ancient hominid tribe, the Denisovans, further proving our ancestry is much more blended than previously suspected. It is well documented that humans carry the genes from both Neanderthals and Denisovans.

What remains a mystery, is that a recent, comprehensive study suggests our genetic ancestry owes a debt to a Third archaic group, one as yet unknown.