Did the cosmos have a beginning? The Big Bang theory seems to suggest it did, but in recent decades, cosmologists have concocted elaborate theories – for example, an eternally inflating universe or a cyclic universe – which claim to avoid the need for a beginning of the cosmos. Now it appears that the universe really had a beginning after all, even if it wasn’t necessarily the Big Bang. At a meeting of scientists – titled “State of the Universe” – convened last week at Cambridge University to honor Stephen Hawking’s 70th birthday, cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University in Boston presented evidence that the universe is not eternal after all, leaving scientists at a loss to explain how the cosmos Read More ›

At PhysOrg.com, they have an article dealing with the CTCF protein and its binding sites. It turns out that the CTCF has both binding sites that are common to all mammalian lineages, and thus “conserved” and “ancient”, as well as binding sites found only in particular lineages. The binding sites found only in particular lineages are embedded inside “retro-transposons”, which “use a copy-paste mechanism to spread copies of themselves throughout the genome.” However: The retro-transposon’s copy-and-paste behaviour has long been considered totally self-serving. However, the study showed that when a retro-transposon containing a CTCF-binding sequence spreads around a mammal’s genome, it can deposit functional CTCF binding sites in novel locations, altering the activity of distant genes. Further: We looked at Read More ›

(NOTICE: Dr Larry Moran, the response to your assertions is here.) I see where UD’s News has let us know that the Eugenics Society’s papers will shortly be digitised and made available to the public. It is therefore appropriate to highlight again the Logo for the 2nd International Congress on Eugenics, with Alexander Graham Bell as honorary president and Major Leonard Darwin (son of Sir Charles) as major speaker, so we can see how leading people all across the world from North Carolina, California and Canada to Britain,  India, Japan and — sadly tellingly — Germany, were thinking about “the self-direction of human evolution”: It is worth noting — from Wiki testifying against interest as usual — that Major Darwin’s Read More ›

Some revelations there, for sure: The American Association for the History of Medicine has recently reported that the Wellcome Library, with the permission of the Galton Institute, will be digitizing the papers of the Eugenics Society. According to the report, “The collection will be digitized in full and made freely available online, subject to Data Protection and privacy issues as set out in our access policy <library.wellcome.ac.uk/assets/WTX063805.pdf>. This will become part of the Wellcome Digital Library <library.wellcome.ac.uk/node350.html>.