Horizontal and vertical: The evolution of evolution [New Scientist]

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 12:14 PM PST

"At the root of this idea is overwhelming recent evidence for horizontal gene transfer - in which organisms acquire genetic material 'horizontally' from other organisms around them, rather than vertically from their parents or ancestors. The donor organisms may not even be the same species. This mechanism is already known to play a huge role in the evolution of microbial genomes, but its consequences have hardly been explored. According to Woese and Goldenfeld, they are profound, and horizontal gene transfer alters the evolutionary process itself. Since micro-organisms represented most of life on Earth for most of the time that life has existed - billions of years, in fact - the most ancient and prevalent form of evolution probably wasn't Darwinian at all..."

Faster! Accelerate Firefox 3.6 page scrolling [Mozilla Links]

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 05:45 AM PST

"Firefox 3.6 has yet another secret feature that could significantly improve your web browsing on Windows: scroll acceleration." You need to change two values in about:config, and it seems to work pretty well...