Darwin's Birthday. The Beagle Project Blog: Pics in space. One of the most exciting science projects we plan to do aboard the new Beagle is to correlate ocean surface biological surveys with images of our position taken at the same time by our astronaut friends aboard the International Space Station. The premise of such a study got a big boost this week when Nature published special News Features and Commentaries on earth monitoring. The issue includes an essay by Stewart Brand of the Long Now Foundation. Way back in 1966 Brand promoted 'the idea of photographing the "whole Earth" from space, hoping that it would stimulate humanity's interest in its mega-habitat.' And oh, how it did.
Two years later, in December 1968, Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders became the first humans to leave Earth orbit and travel far enough away to see and photograph our fragile planet in the round. On Christmas Eve, they transmitted the first images of the whole Earth that anyone had ever seen. The Beagle Project Blog: Brigs in Space! Beagle and NASA in transatmospheric link-up. Well, folks, to say it's been a good week for the Beagle Project would be a bit of an understatement. First we had confirmation that we've been granted charitable status (and are therefore eligible to receive Gift Aid among other things); then we had a brilliant turnout at the House of Lords reception given for us by Lords Hunt and Livsey; but oh, how we've saved the best for last... The International Space Station as she flies above the ocean this summer.
The HMS Beagle Trust are now the very proud owners of signed NASASpace Act Agreement. Yes, you heard that right: The Beagle Project and NASA are an item. We're going to be working with NASA on a joint science, education and outreach programme centred on a direct link between the International Space Station and the new Beagle as she retraces the 1831-1836 voyage that carried a certain young naturalist around the world. You can read all the details in our press release. ~Karen and Peter. The National Academies. In the News: Your Inner Fish – A Scientific Adventure Have you ever wondered why people look the way they do? Why our hands and feet have five digits instead of six? Why we stand on two legs instead of four? It took 350 million years of evolution to produce the amazing machine we call the human body and in Your Inner Fish, a three-part series based on the best-selling book of the same name, author and evolutionary biologist Dr.
Neil Shubin looks into the past to answer these and other questions. Follow that adventure now on PBS Darwin's Insights Continue to Inspire the Academy's Work The ideas of Charles Darwin and the concept of evolution by natural selection continue to have a profound influence on modern biology – they permeate almost every area of scientific exploration. In 2010, the National Academy of Sciences awarded its most prestigious award, the Public Welfare Medal, to Dr. Origins. By Lucas Laursen Charles Darwin may have had his biggest impact on biology, but he began his scientific career as a geologist.
So it’s appropriate that earlier this year, retired geologist John Ramsay, who had long studied the famed biologist’s life, accepted a commission to compose a Darwin-themed string quartet. Darwin “did some pretty fundamental geological mapping," says Ramsay, drawing a parallel to his own geological career, during which he has drawn maps of the Scottish Highlands, South Africa, and the Swiss Alps. Ramsay says he and Darwin also share a penchant for putting "ideas that spring from other parts of one's life" into their current work. He notes that Darwin applied lessons from Earth's landscape to biology, adapting, for example, Charles Lyell's theory of gradual geological change to living things.
At the beginning of the piece, a disorganized Earth takes shape, with the core, mantle, and crust emerging into distinct musical themes. Darwin. Darwin's personal library and annotations online. Biodiversity Heritage Library. Biodiversity Heritage Library. Current Book List General Index Search Charles Darwin's Library Charles Darwin’s Library is a digital edition and virtual reconstruction of the surviving books owned by Charles Darwin. This BHL special collection draws on original copies and surrogates from other libraries. It also provides full transcriptions of his annotations and marks. In this first release (2011) we provide 330 of the 1480 titles in his library, concentrating on the most heavily annotated books. more... How to use Charles Darwin's Library A Darwin’s Library transcription pane faces each page that Darwin marked or wrote notes on. Entries in the pane have line numbers, such as lines 5-7.
In books scanned from Darwin’s personal copies you will see his writing. Click the banner to reach the Current Book List and the General Index. The pane uses a very few specialized terms and symbols: The transcription pane uses special characters to represent some elements of Darwin's annotations. Support United Kingdom United States. Excerpt--lostworldt. Michael Shermer: Why Darwin Matters. International Darwin Day Foundation. The Illustrated Guide to Epigenetics. Illustrations by Joe Kloc This month marks the ten-year anniversary of the sequencing of the human genome, that noble achievement underpinning the less noble sales of 23andMe's direct-to-consumer genetic tests.
To commemorate the scientific occasion, we've created an illustrated introduction to one subfield of genetics likely to produce even more dubious novelty science projects someday: epigenetics. What is epigenetics? Human life begins as a single cell equipped with all of the genetic information—known as the genome—it will need to develop into a full-grown adult. Through a process of repeated cell division, this cell eventually multiplies into tens of trillions of cells, each containing a complete copy of the genome.
Despite having identical genetic information, these trillions of cells somehow develop into hundreds of different cell types—from brain to liver cells—that make up the human body (FIGURE 1). FIGURE 2: DNA coils around proteins called histones, forming a nucleosome. Charles Darwin Spotlight | Learn Science at Scitable. Like so many great scientists, Charles Darwin was first drawn to science as a young boy by his intense interest in the diverse animals and plants that filled his surroundings. Later, despite his father's urgings to pursue a career in medicine, young Darwin found himself drawn to careful, empirical observation of nature, particularly through his cherished hobby of collecting beetles. His empirical instincts were further developed at the University of Cambridge through deep study under contemporary naturalists, such as John Stevens Henslow, founder of the Cambridge University Botanic Garden (1831), and through reading progressive philosophers, such as William Paley, author of Natural Theology (1802).
By the time he was serendipitously invited to accompany Captain Robert FitzRoy on a voyage of the HMS Beagle, Darwin had become an astute and insatiable scientist, primed for significant discoveries. Who could have imagined how significant his discoveries would be? Evolution - Charles Darwin's 200th Birthday. The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. Frameset?viewtype=side&itemID=F880.