Natural Selections

Martha Foley and Dr Curt Stager talk about the ginkgo tree, an ancient species native to China. They do not spread naturally anymore, but during the time of the dinosaurs there were many types of ginkgo tree all over the world.

Martha Foley and Dr Curt Stager discuss fungal lurkers - fungi that live inside plants. Fungal lurkers are a new discovery and scientists believe that this type of fungus helps the plant it lives on but may harm animals and people.

What is a flame? Why is it shaped like that? How does it keep going? Martha Foley and Dr. Curt Stager answer some burning questions about rapid oxidation.

Martha Foley and Dr. Curt Stager discuss cosmic rays. While many people may think cosmic rays only affect astronauts or satellites - objects in space - computers and other electronic equipment on Earth can be affected, too.

Do camels really store water in their humps? Well, not really. And they aren't native to the deserts of the Middle East and Asia, either. Martha Foley and Dr. Curt Stager discuss the different ways camel physiology adapts them to survive in desert conditions, and where this family of mammals originated.

Not all evolutionary change is good. Genetic changes can be neutral or harmful, as well as beneficial. And some change can be both, conferring benefit when a single copy of a gene is present, and causing a life-threatening disease when copies are inherited from both parents. Martha Foley and Dr. Curt Stager roll the dice on evolution.

What if dogs gave birth to kittens, and those kittens grew up to have puppies? That's similar to what some species, such as haircap moss, do. Each alternate generation has a different form and function. Dr Curt Stager and Martha Foley explore the biological oddity "alternation of generations."

Dr. Curt Stager is back from a conference in Scotland where one of the topics was the possibility of lake monsters such as the famous denizen of Loch Ness, or Lake Champlain's Champy. Could the commonly reportedly long-necked monsters be plesiosaurs, left over from the Jurassic era? Probably not.

Whales are relatively new to the ocean. Fossil evidence allows evolutionary biologists to trace the whale's transformation from land mammal into air-breathing ocean dweller. Today's whales still carry a legacy of their landed past in a vestigial pelvis, femur, and other typical anatomical traits. Martha Foley and Dr. Curt Stager dig into a big topic.

Burl wood, the knobs of complex grain that some trees form, is prized by woodworkers for its beauty and utility. What causes wood grain to deviate from the straight and narrow in this way is something of a mystery. Martha Foley and Curt Stager try to untangle the knot.