Editorial: Research in Sport Climbing

Most altruistic behavior—in which one animal helps another at a cost to themselves—occurs between relatives. Scientists think these altruistic behaviors evolved because they increase the inclusive fitness of the animal providing help.

Life on Earth is carbon-based, as all macromolecules that make up living organisms contain carbon atoms. All organic compounds have a carbon backbone. Each carbon atom is tetravalent and can bond with four other atoms, making it an extraordinarily flexible component of biological molecules. Because carbon’s valence electrons are stable, it rarely becomes an ion. As the carbon chain increases in length, structural modifications such as ring structures, double bonds, and branching side...

The energy stored by a structure and location of matter in space is called potential energy. For instance, raising a kettlebell changes its spatial location and increases its potential energy. Similarly, a stretched rubber band contains potential energy which, under certain conditions, can be converted into other forms of energy, such as kinetic energy.
Chemical bonds that form attractive forces between atoms also contain potential energy, called chemical energy. When a chemical reaction...

The scientific method is a detailed, empirical problem-solving process used by biologists and other scientists. This iterative approach involves formulating a question based on observation, developing a testable potential explanation for the observation (called a hypothesis), making and testing predictions based on the hypothesis, and using the findings to create new hypotheses and predictions.
Generally, predictions are tested using carefully-designed experiments. Based on the outcome of these...

Cellular respiration produces 30 - 32 ATP per glucose molecule. Although most of the ATP results from oxidative phosphorylation and the electron transport chain (ETC), 4 ATP are gained beforehand (2 from glycolysis and 2 from the citric acid cycle).
The ETC is embedded in the inner mitochondrial membrane and is comprised of four main protein complexes and an ATP synthase. NADH and FADH2 pass electrons to these complexes, which pump protons into the intermembrane space. This distribution of...

As muscle contracts, the overlap between the thin and thick filaments increases, decreasing the length of the sarcomere—the contractile unit of the muscle—using energy in the form of ATP. At the molecular level, this is a cyclic, multistep process that involves binding and hydrolysis of ATP, and movement of actin by myosin.