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Past Shows
June 19, 2004
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Altruism - Why can't we all just get along?
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Our picture of Darwinian evolution is of savage competition, and survival of the fittest, but everywhere in nature we see cooperation and altruism.
Examples of animals apparently sacrificing their own good for others abound; including birds who help raise each other's chicks, bees who sacrifice themselves with a suicidal sting and bats who share food with others who don't have enough to eat.
Dr. Sigal Balshine, an assistant professor of psychology at McMaster University, has first hand experience of some of the more exotic and complicated altruistic societies in nature. She studies a species of African Cichlid fish, who live together in communities in which “helper” fish assist breeding fish with child care and habitat maintenance. Explaining this is difficult, as a selfish animal would be expected to outcompete an altruist, and therefore the altruist would lose in the Darwinian game. Biologists are explaining this by understanding more deeply the patterns of exchange between altruistic and selfish organisms.
Dr. David Sloan Wilson, a professor of biology and anthropology at Binghamton University in New York, is one of the champions of the power of group selection. This theory demonstrates that groups of altruistic creatures can outcompete groups of selfish creatures, so evolution can work at different levels. Individuals can undermine altruistic groups, though, and there must be mechanisms that allow altruists to persist.
Dr. Joel Peck, a reader in Evolutionary Biology at the University of Sussex in the UK, has found one potential mechanism. He has shown that sex can actually prevent the selfish from infiltrating altruistic societies.
Dr. Troy Day, a professor of Mathematics and Statistics and Biology at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario does mathematical modelling of altruism. He thinks one of the most interesting areas is in understanding the role altruism has in the evolution of microbes and disease.
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Chasing the X-Prize
Interview with Geoff Sheerin
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Interview with Brian Feeney
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Space Ship 1, courtesy Scaled Composites |
This Monday could see a milestone in space travel established, with the first launch of a privately designed, built and funded vehicle. Aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan, is launching SpaceShip One, and hoping that his rocket powered craft will reach 100km – the official boundary of space. His effort is a test flight of the vehicle he hopes will win the X-Prize, a $10 million dollar prize for the first private vehicle to carry three passengers into space twice in two weeks. There are more than two dozen teams chasing the X-prize, including two Canadian efforts, and some are not far behind Rutan's team. The Canadian Arrow team, led by Geoff Sheerin, is flying a design based on the WWII german V2 missile. Mr. Sheerin hopes to begin test-flights in August. The Da Vinci project, led by Brian Feeney, is hoping to fly a rocket lanuched from high in the atmosphere after being lifted by a helium balloon. Both teams are hoping that they can take the lead in a future space-tourism industry that the X-Prize competition might stimulate. Ultimately they hope this will lead to more private space travel and exploration.
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Indigo Birds Speciating Songs
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Indigo Bird, courtesy M. Sorenson |
The indigobird, like the cuckoo, is a nest parasite – it lays its eggs in the nests of other birds, who then are obliged to raise and nourish their secretly adopted offspring. The infant indigobirds are happily raised by their adoptive parents, sharing their food and even learning their language. The mystery of the indigobird, however, is that many of the ten species of the bird found in Africa share the same forests. Somehow they’ve evolved from each other while inhabiting the same place. Dr. Michael Sorenson, a professor of Biology at Boston University and his colleagues seem to have solved the mystery, and it’s all in the secret of the song.
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