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notes biology

Biology is exciting and informative

Biology is exciting and informative, giving us insight into the beauty of life. What we see with the microscope is the amazing developmental process by which form emerges out of unformed material. To watch an embryo develop is to see the life of a new individual emerge, gradually, stage by stage, from very simple material […]

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notes biology

The Spiral

Here’s a personal view about body symmetry and body openings from someone who lived through the evolution of bilateral symmetry. Form? I didn’t have any; that is, I didn’t know I had one, or rather I didn’t know you could have one. I grew more or less on all sides, at random; if this is […]

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biology notes

The most important problem in biology

Heading to #embryo2017 today! Wondering how long will Conklin’s words remain current… (120 years and counting)

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biology notes science

Brachiopods and Japanese art

I visited Japan solely for the purpose of studying the Brachiopoda of the Japanese seas, and this step led to my accepting the chair of zoology in the Imperial University at Tokyo. Gradually I was drawn away from my zoological work, into archaeological investigations, by the alluring problem of the ethnic affinities of the Japanese […]

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notes science

A galaxy for insight

By empowering readers and observers with transparent access to the means by which conclusions are reached, rather than assembling them in an audience to hear the Authorities deliver the catechism from on high, we are all of us becoming scientists in this way, entering into a democracy of the intellect that is already bearing spectacular […]

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notes biology

Gastrulation

It was, Lewis Wolpert admits, a rather pretentious thing to say. The renowned biologist and author was at a European scientific meeting with colleagues when a doctor delegate asked him what he was researching. Gastrulation, Wolpert replied. The doctor’s declaration of ignorance was briskly met with: “It is not birth, marriage, or death, but gastrulation […]

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notes biology

Enigmatic echinoderms

I also here salute the echinoderms as a noble group especially designed to puzzle the zoologist. Book: The Invertebrates: Echinodermata (1955)Author: Libbie Henrietta HymanPage: Preface See more enigmatic echinoderms.

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notes biology

Statistics

It must be emphasized that statistical hypotheses are to be stated before data are collected to test them. To propose hypotheses after examination of data can invalidate a statistical test. One may, however, legitimately formulate hypotheses after inspecting data if a new set of data is then collected with which to test the hypotheses. Book: […]