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Not Exactly Rocket Science

My small attempt to celebrate science and to make it interesting and fun by giving jargon, confusion and elitism a solid beating with the stick of good writing.

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Ed_Yong.jpgEd Yong is an award-winning science writer based in London. Not Exactly Rocket Science is his attempt to make the latest scientific discoveries interesting to everyone by beating jargon, confusion and elitism with the stick of good writing. He finds writing about himself in the third person strange and unsettling.

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Genetics:

Dinosaurs provide clues about the shrunken genomes of birds

Category: Genetics

Despite its massive bulk, Tyrannosaurus rex's genome was no larger than a hummingbird's, and completely dwarfed by that of the humble house mouse

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Genetic diversity gives honeybees an edge

Category: Bees

Social insect queens frequently sleep with many males. Even though that makes their daughters less related to each other, it also increases their genetic diversity and that makes the colony more productive and stronger.

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Scientists "humanise" Foxp2 gene in mice to probe origins of human language

Category: Evolution

Mice with "humanised" versions of the Foxp2 gene couldn't speak like their cartoon equals, but their calls were subtly altered, their central nervous system developed in different ways, and they showed changes in parts of the brain where FOXP2 is usually expressed.

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Resistance to an extinct virus makes us more vulnerable to HIV

Category: Viruses

Immunity to viral infections sounds like a good thing, but it can come at a price. Millions of years ago, we evolved resistance to a virus that plagued other primates. Today, that virus is extinct, but our resistance to it may be making us more vulnerable to the present threat of HIV.

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Reign of termite queens rests on a single gene

Category: Animals

Termite queens depend on a gene called Neofem2 to rule over their colonies. Silence it, and the happy workers start a war of succession, headbutting each other to established dominance.

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Unintentional genetic engineering - grafted plants trade genes

Category: Horizontal gene transfer

For centuries, farmers have been genetically modifying their plants without even knowing it. Grafting, a common technique used to fuse parts of two plants together, causes the two halves to swap genes with each other.

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Retrocyclins: a defence against HIV, reawakened after 7 million years

Category: Viruses

Retrocyclins are genes that protect other primates from HIV but have lain dormant in our genomes for 7 million years. Now, these sleeping guardians are set to awaken.

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Autism linked to common gene variants that affect the connections between neurons

Category: Genetics

The largest ever study on autism genetics has found six common genetic variants that affect the risk of developing autism-spectrum disorders. The six probably control the activity of genes involved in connecting neurons together.

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Nocturnal mammals see in dark by turning displaced DNA into lenses

Category: Eye evolution

The rod cells of nocturnal mammals pack their DNA in a special way that turns the entire cell into a narrow light-collecting lens. It's completely opposite to the usual arrangement used in the rods of day-living animals and, indeed, in almost all other eukaryotic cells.

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How inbreeding killed off a line of kings

Category: Anthropology

A neat piece of historical genetics confirms that the Spanish Habsburg dynasty of kings caused its own extinction through generations of inbreeding.

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