Word: fight
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...fruit flies could talk, that's probably how they would call bouts in the Fruit Fly Fight Club in Edward Kravitz's lab at Harvard University. Kravitz, a neurobiologist, has been pitting fruit flies against one another for decades and has painstakingly videotaped thousands of hours of fruit-fly fistfights (yes, they get up on their hind legs and brawl) in an effort to better understand aggression - not only in the insects but possibly in humans as well. (See the top 10 scientific discoveries...
...Take mating, for instance. When females are scarce, males, not surprisingly, have to fight for the right to mate. Females, on the other hand, are on the hunt for not just any mate but one that can provide food for both her and the clutch of eggs she will lay. (Females, in the ultimate bow to efficiency, tend to lay their eggs on a food source, thus ensuring their offspring have a ready supply of nutrition.) So for males, securing a territory with a food patch is critical to attracting the attentions of a female. (See the top 10 medical...
...Kravitz and his research team have been documenting, on video, exactly how far fruit flies are willing to go for their prize. In this fight club, the arena is a small dish, in the center of which is either a patch of food or the head of a female. (If she weren't decapitated, she wouldn't stay put, says Kravitz; and the males, being male, don't seem to care that she's not that lively.) Based on hours of footage, Kravitz says that male flies tend to use specific combat skills such as rearing up on their hind...
...face a common, external threat. They held up Alexander the Great for years - if for no other reason than pure belligerence. Something like that seems to be happening today. In February, the Taliban organizations in Pakistan and Afghanistan agreed to put aside their differences, and combine forces to fight NATO in Afghanistan. What incited the alliance was the Obama Administration's plans to send an additional 17,000 troops. (Read "The Truth About Talibanistan...
...relies on the local laborers for its trade. Business is down 30% in recent weeks, and he's already laid off one member of staff. But he's holding out little hope for help from the G-20. "People," the burly 50-year-old says, "are left to fight for themselves...