Word: fittest
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...theory of evolution is supposed to include the survival of the fittest and adapt or die, yet environmentalists rail against the extinction of certain species, the natural result of evolution. Their efforts to stop this natural process leads one to ask, just who do they think they are? God? Ian Stuart, DINGWALL, SCOTLAND...
Many associate Darwin with game theory, genes and the survival of the fittest. But, University of Cambridge Professor Emeritus Gillian Beer, spoke last night of a creative and empathetic Darwin who wondered at the inner lives of oysters. Beer’s talk, entitled “Darwin and the Consciousness of Others,” acknowledged the popular view that Darwin is “the man who banished mind from the universe.” But, instead of a man who saw only mechanistic natural selection, Beer said that Darwin was preoccupied with similarities of consciousness between creatures...
...territory. If someone comes back to claim the carrel, do not panic. Give them the call number for Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” (QH365.O2 1859a, fyi) and direct them to the part about “survival of the fittest.” Should this tactic fail, you can always just bare your teeth and go for the throat...
...colonies have good reason to be abstemious places. When you're trying to hold together so complex a society without - let's face it - a lot of brainpower, you want a population made up of the fittest individuals you can get. A queen that has the genetic mettle to crank out lots of good eggs that produce lots of good babies doesn't need any competition from other, lesser females setting up a nest nearby. Even the queen herself is not allowed to fool with the gene pool once it's been set. She mates only once in her life...
...Most scientists believe that the pruning is guided both by genetics and by a use-it-or-lose-it principle. Nobel prizewinning neuroscientist Gerald Edelman has described that process as "neural Darwinism" - survival of the fittest (or most used) synapses. How you spend your time may be critical. Research shows, for instance, that practicing piano quickly thickens neurons in the brain regions that control the fingers. Studies of London cab drivers, who must memorize all the city's streets, show that they have an unusually large hippocampus, a structure involved in memory. Giedd's research suggests that the cerebellum...