Word: complex
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...fruit fly is known in scientific circles, may seem irrelevant at first blush, they are anything but. Remember, it was the fruit fly, which has been used in experiments of heredity for some 100 years and whose genome was fully decoded in 2000, that first educated us far more complex human beings about the way our genes work. In essence, it was on the tiny back of the fruit fly that scientists launched a genetic revolution. (See pictures of Charles Darwin's legacy...
...lately there has been a lot of activity in the fruit-fly world. Along with information about social behaviors like aggression and fighting, fruit-fly research is beginning to yield insights into other complex behaviors, such as sleep. In two papers published today in Science, researchers find clues to the long-standing mystery of why humans need sleep, by studying the way Drosophila catches...
...That makes sense for a human. But exactly how much new information does a fruit fly acquire in a day? How complex could Drosophila's world be that it actually needs shut-eye to recharge its brain? You'd be surprised. For a fly, its brief, two-month life can only be about mating and eating - or eating and mating, depending on whether mates or food are in shorter supply - but these activities involve complex social interactions that, frankly, can be exhausting...
...made up of 14,000 genes, while the human genome contains 20,000. Much of the molecular machinery underlying species as varied as flies and humans might therefore be conserved, which is why the lowly fruit fly makes a worthy model for understanding human beings, even for such complex behaviors as aggression...
...mosque, arguing that the two 166-ft. (51 m) minarets will spoil the skyline, now dominated by the city's famous Gothic cathedral. Construction is going ahead, and Böhm hopes his design will foster an openness that will one day silence the critics. His plan for the complex, due to be completed in 2010, calls for a piazza with a fountain and a cafe, designed to draw non-Muslims to the site. The local Muslim elders hope that, once there, visitors will browse in the library, check out the art gallery or spend in the shopping mall, which...