Tiffany Taylor, professor of microbial ecology and evolution at the University of Bath in the U.K., recommends the books that shaped her career and her outlook on life. When you purchase through links ...

"Consciousness," although challenging to define, can be thought of as a first-person awareness of one's surroundings and oneself. You sense the world through your eyes, nose, ears and hands, and track ...

In 1753, French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, noted the similarities between the skeletons of a human and a horse. He wrote that by tilting, elongating, shortening and fusing the ...

Imagine a photograph of your great-grandparents, grandparents and parents side by side. You’d see a resemblance, but each generation would look distinct from its predecessors. This is the process of ...

A fish thought to be evolution’s time capsule just surprised scientists. A detailed dissection of the coelacanth — a 400-million-year-old species often called a “living fossil” — revealed that key ...

Researchers at Scripps have created T7-ORACLE, a powerful new tool that speeds up evolution, allowing scientists to design and improve proteins thousands of times faster than nature. Using engineered ...

For over half a billion years, evolution has sculpted the nervous systems of bilaterian animals, equipping them with remarkable capabilities to process information, coordinate movements, and respond ...

The origins of consciousness date back about 540 million years ago, when animal bodies became more complex. Feelings like pleasure and pain act as a "common currency" for decision-making, as we see in ...

One hundred years ago a young teacher, John T. Scopes, went on trial in Dayton, Tenn., for violating a recently enacted state law that forbade the state’s educators “to teach any theory that denies ...

Cooking food is one of the activities that makes humanity unique. It's not just about what tastes good: advances in cooking technology have been a constant part of our progress, from the ability to ...