Darwins

A nearly 20-year study on Darwin’s finches by McGill University has revealed that specific beak traits linked to different food types increase the birds’ lifespan, supporting the theory of adaptive radiation. The findings suggest that these finches are still evolving to better adapt to their environments.Employing data from four species of Darwin’s finches on the Galápagos Islands, a team headed by McGill University has validated a long-held theory that the diversity of species arises from adaptation to various…

For the very first time, the entire contents of the eclectic personal library of naturalist Charles Darwin has been published online, and a massive 9,300 entries come with links to the works, making them freely available to read.In a painstakingly thorough project that's taken 18 years to piece together, lead researcher John van Wyhe from the National University of Singapore (NUS) says it single-handedly takes Darwin's library from a previously known 15% to an absolute 100%. The completed library is detailed in a 300-page…

ASTRONOMY Chile radio telescope array gains keener vision ALMA, one of the world’s biggest radio telescope arrays, is getting hardware and software upgrades to allow it to collect much more data and produce sharper images. Announced last week, the latest modernizations to ALMA—officially the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, which sits high in the Chilean Andes—will cost $37 million and take 6 years to complete. Workers will upgrade the data…

You now have your chance to explore most of Charles Darwin's personal writing. The University of Cambridge has published all of the evolutionary scientist's surviving correspondence online, including 400 letters that have either surfaced or are newly "reinterpreted." The searchable collection now covers over 15,000 letters written between 1822 and 1882, ranging from his influential time aboard the HMS Beagle to On the Origin of Species and end-of-life reflections. The internet archive may even be the only way to see a…

Charles Darwin was, by all accounts, a meek and conflict-averse man. In his written work he tended not to personally attack his adversaries. He rarely gave public lectures, and he never once participated in the fractious head-to-head debates that served as the public proving ground for scientific ideas in Victorian England.Fortunately, the author of On the Origin of Species had outriders to do all that for him – most famously Thomas Henry Huxley, a mutton-chopped, square-headed, scientific pugilist who styled himself…