Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - How to Be a Tech Hero...And Incredibly Popular (pcworld.com)

Submitted by JKSN17
JKSN17 writes: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,139503/article.html PC World has an article offering some handy tips for those of us out there that have friends and family who assume that just because you have a Computer degree or any knowledge in computing in general, you are immediately and always available to resolve any of their computer issues. The author provides a number of handy tips and articles to try and help the tech savvy look good, and regain life (or gaming) time.
Biotech

Submission + - (Open Source) Genetically Engineered Machines (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Students in an MIT competition are helping build a dev-kit for cells. Together with synthetic biologists, they're building a Registry of Standard Biological Parts called BioBricks. They aim to do for cells for what open source software has done for computers.
Biotech

Submission + - Scientists Identify Gene for Oral Sex

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The New Scientist reports that researchers have pinpointed a gene that makes females suck up sperm through their mouths. The gene was found in the cichlid fish, where the males have evolved a way to lure females close so that they can squirt sperm into their mouths. In cichlids, females hold their eggs in their mouths and incubate them there after fertilization — a behaviour that is thought to have evolved to protect the eggs from predators. As soon as a female has spawned her eggs, she collects them up in her mouth. Normally, sperm released into the water by a male nearby will then fertilize the eggs. But males of certain cichlid species in east Africa have evolved a way to increase the odds that females take up their sperm. Oval yellow markings resembling the eggs are found on the anal or pelvic fins so that when a female approaches the male, she thinks she sees an egg on its fin, so tries to vacuum it up in her mouth — and get a mouthful of sperm from the canny male in the process. "It looks like she's eager to pick up the 'egg dummy' because she thinks she's forgotten one of her own eggs," says Walter Salzburger at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, who led the study. Researchers suspect a gene called csf1ra — short for colony-stimulating factor 1 receptor a, is responsible after extracting DNA samples from 19 cichlid species — nine that had egg spots on their fins and 10 that did not and finding that species that had evolved most recently had a mutation in the csf1ra linked to the egg spots. Salzburger says this shows that the dummy egg spots are a genetic trait that provides a selective advantage because they encourage females to participate in oral mating.

Slashdot Top Deals

Get hold of portable property. -- Charles Dickens, "Great Expectations"

Close