Scientists have discovered that a single yeast cell gene (FLO1) expresses a protein that causes individual cells to stick to one another for protection. The cells flocculate, or form clumps “consisting of thousands of cells,”¹ with the outside cells sacrificing themselves to protect the inner cells from possible harmful chemicals.

On October 7, 2008, University College London professor and geneticist Steve Jones delivered a bold lecture entitled “Human evolution is over.”¹ In the past, he stated, elderly fathers provided more mutations for evolution to work with. Now that men are becoming fathers at younger ages, humans are not evolving much at all.

Advances in solar cell technology have produced a new European record of 39.7 percent efficiency. The result was attributed to improved “contact structures” of solar cells, according to Frank Dimroth at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE in Freiburg.¹

In South Africa, special “mirid bugs” make their homes in sticky, living-flypaper plants, feeding on other insects that get trapped in the plants’ leaf-secreted glue. How do they avoid getting stuck themselves?

Scientists at Imperial College in London have flies on their minds. "Anyone who has watched one fly chasing another at incredibly high speed, without crashing or bumping into anything, can appreciate the high-end flight performance of these animals,” Dr. Holger Krapp of the Department of Bioengineering said in an Imperial College news release.¹