For more than a century, the human appendix has been written off as a biological relic, a shrunken leftover from plant-eating ancestors that serves no real purpose. That view is now outdated. A ...

Most people know only two things about the appendix: You don’t need it – and if it bursts, you need surgery fast. That basic ...

A long-disputed rule in biology says bigger is better, but a new computer model illuminates why that’s not necessarily true. By Lauren Leffer Published Jan 18, 2024 11:45 AM EST Get the Popular ...

An international team of researchers has developed a new theoretical framework that bridges physics and biology to provide a unified approach for understanding how complexity and evolution emerge in ...

When closely related species mate, their offspring sometimes survive but cannot reproduce. This pattern often affects males ...

Human evolution is often told as a tidy story of adaptation, yet some of our most familiar body parts still defy straightforward explanation. From the jut of the human chin to the curve of the outer ...

Ever since scientists first read the complete genetic codes of creatures like fruit flies and humans more than two decades ago, the field of genomics has promised major leaps forward in understanding ...

Katie has a PhD in maths, specializing in the intersection of dynamical systems and number theory. She reports on topics from maths and history to society and animals. Katie has a PhD in maths, ...

Selection in Assembly Space. (A) Pictorial representation of the assembly space represents the formation of combinatorial object space from building blocks and physical constraints. (B) Observed copy ...

Assembly theory bridges the gap between physics and biology in explaining how complex objects are identifiable as products of evolution and how reusability of parts allows novelty and identical ...