National Geographic has published many of the most iconic images and stories over its long history. Now an exhibit showcases over 100 of its most memorable prints. The show at Beetles and Huxley runs until October 19, 2013.
See more images here.
Image: An ascent of Mont Blanc in September 1911 Courtesy: S G Wheril/National Geographic Image Collection/Beetles and Huxley.
[div class=attrib]From Wired:[end-div]
Though ongoing human evolution is difficult to see, researchers believe they’ve found signs of rapid genetic changes among the recent residents of a small Canadian town.
Between 1800 and 1940, mothers in Ile aux Coudres, Quebec gave birth at steadily younger ages, with the average age of first maternity dropping from 26 to 22. Increased fertility, and thus larger families, could have been especially useful in the rural settlement’s early history.
According to University of Quebec geneticist Emmanuel Milot and colleagues, other possible explanations, such as changing cultural or environmental influences, don’t fit. The changes appear to reflect biological evolution.
“It is often claimed that modern humans have stopped evolving because cultural and technological advancements have annihilated natural selection,” wrote Milot’s team in their Oct. 3 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper. “Our study supports the idea that humans are still evolving. It also demonstrates that microevolution is detectable over just a few generations.”
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Milot’s team based their study on detailed birth, marriage and death records kept by the Catholic church in Ile aux Coudres, a small and historically isolated French-Canadian island town in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It wasn’t just the fact that average first birth age — a proxy for fertility — dropped from 26 to 22 in 140 years that suggested genetic changes. After all, culture or environment might have been wholly responsible, as nutrition and healthcare are for recent, rapid changes in human height. Rather, it was how ages dropped that caught their eye.
The patterns fit with models of gene-influenced natural selection. Moreover, thanks to the detailed record-keeping, it was possible to look at other possible explanations. Were better nutrition responsible, for example, improved rates of infant and juvenile mortality should have followed; they didn’t. Neither did the late-19th century transition from farming to more diversified professions.
[div class=attrib]Read more here.[end-div]