Internalizing Conservation through Our Own Microbes

Internalizing conservation through our own microbes.

Emerging links between the microbes that inhabit our own bodies and our health promise to revolutionize the way we perceive ecology and conservation. Redford et al. (2012 [this issue]) rightly argue that we should link the issue of the human microbiome and health to the broader conservation of species. These microbial communities are the product of 3.5 billion years of evolution and perceive ma...

Making Our Own Luck

QuickCheck-style property-based random testing [4] requires efficient generators for well-distributed random data satisfying complex logical predicates. Writing such generators by hand can be difficult and error prone. We propose a domain-specific language, Luck, in which generators are expressed by decorating predicates with lightweight annotations controlling both the distribution of generate...

Bio-hydrogen: microbes have their own agenda.

The international hydrogenase community stages a meeting every 3-4 years, and this time it was held in the University of Reading. Each congress has revealed new aspects of the complex nature of hydrogenases: their structure, molecular mechanisms and biosynthesis are all yielding up their secrets. This following introduction provides background information, and the highlights of the meeting are ...

Ancestor to Call Our Own

Controversial new fossils could bring scientists closer than ever to the origin of humanity POITIERS, FRANCE—Michel Brunet removes the cracked, brown skull from its padlocked, foam-lined metal carrying case and carefully places it on the desk in front of me. It is about the size of a coconut, with a slight snout and a thick brow visoring its stony sockets. To my inexpert eye, the face is at onc...

Do we own our bodies?