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Biology

Articles

Evolution and the Illusion of Randomness

Stephen L. Talbott on survival, fitness, and the purposiveness of organisms

What Do Organisms Mean?

Steve Talbott on how life speaks at every level

The Unbearable Wholeness of Beings

Steve Talbott confronts the language of organism-as-machine

Getting Over the Code Delusion

Steve Talbott on epigenetics and the demise of DNA as destiny

The Future of Cell Biology

The Logic of Science; Biodiversity and the Bible

From Biology to Biography

William Hurlbut on evolution and the ascent of the human person

Why Conservatives Care About Biotechnology

Adam Wolfson on conservatives, biotechnology, and the American project

Human Nature is Here to Stay

Larry Arnhart on why biotechnology will not change our bodies, brains, and desires

Carried Away with Convergence

The Merging of Nanotech, Biotech, Infotech, and Brain Sciences

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Blog Posts

The Human Egg Makes Its Debut

 

Amazing. Scientists in Belgium have just captured images of human ovulation occuring on camera--the "best ever" taken according to New Scientist--and it was all completely by accident:

"The release of the oocyte from the ovary is a crucial event in human reproduction," says Jacques Donnez at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) in Brussels, Belgium. "These pictures are clearly important to better understand the mechanism."

Observing ovulation in humans is extremely rare, and previous images have been fuzzy. Donnez captured the event by accident while preparing to carry out a partial hysterectomy on a 45-year-old woman. The release of an egg was considered a sudden, explosive event, but his pictures, to be published in Fertility and Sterility, show it taking place over a period of at least 15 minutes.

(Photo by Flickr user Darren Hester [CC])