Certain aphids manipulate plant tissues to form a hollow gall in which they then reside. But aphids will also help heal plant tissue that they’ve damaged. This behavior serves as a vital self-defense mechanism, because when the gall’s walls are eaten by caterpillars, the tender aphids inside become easy prey for other insect predators.

Stem cell treatments have proven successful for many diseases, and there is great promise that new treatments will emerge to combat even more maladies. These successful treatments involve inserting correctly functioning stem cells into tissues where native mutated cells have caused disease.

In a significant move to distance himself from the moral conservatives of the country, President Barack Obama on March 9 ordered that federal money (taxpayer money) be used to promote medical research using harvested embryonic stem cells from humans.

A very interesting article was recently published in New Scientist magazine in honor of the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth.¹ Sixteen of the world’s leading evolutionary biologists were asked to identify the biggest gaps remaining in evolutionary theory.

Scientists have accidently discovered a rare and perhaps unique fossilized brain of an iniopterygian, an extinct kind of ratfish or chimaera that supposedly lived 300 million years ago.