»evolution«

Fascinating as ever to read a piece by Natalie Angier in the NY Times (20.2.2007), this time on being a mammal.

Annett Zündorf reports in Süddeutsche Zeitung (13.1.2007) about results of the EU project Picodev which aims at investigating picoplankton. As the name says its some sort of very tiny marine life and as Zündorf writes picoplankton is -- genetically -- beside animals, plants and fungi a further class of life.

Manfred Dworschak reports in Der Spiegel (18.12.2006) about the forthcoming game "Spore". It allows users to play and supervise evolutionary processes. Its creator is Will Wright who also invented "Sims". The game (according to Wikipedia) plays evolution over five phases, from the pool phase, creating higher forms of life, communities, cities, and in the end space exploration. It's a game to design new worlds, not play combat, hence a single player game. But players may download from a central server the creations from other players. Spore has been already featured by Stephan Johnson in the NY Times (8.10.2006).

Carl Zimmer reports in the NY Times (25.4.2006) about the reignited debate about the evolution of snakes. They are supposed of having had leg in evolutionary past times. Now a new palaeontological find adds new evidence.