From ScienceDaily: The idea that integrating abstract information drives many of the human brain’s unique abilities has been around for decades. But a paper published1 in Current Biology, which directly compares activity in human and macaque monkey brains as they listen to simple auditory patterns, provides the first physical evidence that a specific area for such integration may exist in humans. Other studies that compare monkeys and humans have revealed differences in the brain’s anatomy, for example, but not differences that could explain where humans’ abstract abilities come from, say neuroscientists. “This gives us a powerful clue about what is special about our minds,” says psychologist Gary Marcus at New York University. “Nothing is more important than understanding how we Read More ›

Here. The life forms are not abundant, and their metabolisms run at very low levels. Still, they are alive and well, surviving on powdered coal and hydrogen and pumping out methane, the signature molecule leftover by life in extreme environments. They belong to the less commonly known domain of life called Archaea, home also to the extremophiles living in volcanic hot springs and deep sea hydrothermal vents. “They’re kind of just really cool bugs,” Huber said. “They are very successful organisms.” There are still a number of questions left to answer. Have these new microbes changed over the course of time? Have they adapted or branched off into new species? Or have they always been the same critter just barely Read More ›

Small pre-Cambrian oxygen jump in atmosphere helped enable animals take first breaths Not big ones? Can someone just make a list of pop science media assumptions? Would save trouble. Maybe we could mechanize it. Here is one: We must always be looking for a “small” event that kickstarted life or some advance in life. ScienceDaily: If oxygen was a driver of the early evolution of animals, only a slight bump in oxygen levels facilitated it, according to a multi-institutional research team that includes a Virginia Tech geoscientist. The discovery, published in the journal Nature, calls into question the long held theory that a dramatic change in oxygen levels might have been responsible for the appearance of complicated life forms like Read More ›

Carpathian, sadly but predictably, in the face of remonstrance has continued his attempts to support ghettoising, stigmatising and silencing the voice of the Christian in public; making himself a poster-child of a clear and present danger to liberty in our time. For example: >>Religious activities should all be private. Any prospects for religious conversion should be invited to listen to the message from that faith but the message itself should be a private affair. There are parents who may not want their children exposed to certain religions or religious teachings and that barrier to religion should be considered a fundamental right and honored by all faiths.>> Of course, conveniently (by redefining faith into an imagined projected blind fideism) such implicitly Read More ›

Here. John Horgan is one of the most colorful and thought-provoking science writers of the last several decades. He defies pigeonholing and enjoys challenging conventional wisdom. In the best Socratic tradition, he has been a gadfly to the scientific community, constantly urging it to be more self-reflective and to strive for sober understanding of the scientific enterprise—its prospects, possibilities, and pitfalls. Excerpt. John Horgan: I still stand by the thesis of The End of Science, that the era of truly monumental, paradigmatic discoveries has ended. In fact, the argument seems even more compelling today than it did 20 years ago when the book was first published. My guess is that some of the great remaining mysteries—How, exactly, did the universe Read More ›

Dunno. He was referring to this “hair bleach” claim: Writing in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, Professor John Brindley, from the University of Leeds, and his colleagues, said: ‘The story of the relationship between hydrogen peroxide and life is complex and dynamic, and fraught with certain natural tensions which have led to human misapprehensions. ‘In this work, we show that the association may be extremely ancient, that the story may have begun more than 3.7 billion years ago, the first chapter providing the periodic pH and thermal drive that enabled the RNA world to replicate, evolve and develop enzyme activity. ‘We affirm that concern over the alleged toxicity of hydrogen peroxide to life is largely misplaced in the current Read More ›

  We are so informed, at ScienceDaily: Evolution moulds the shapes of living creatures according to the benefits they offer. At the microscopic level, do the various shapes of bacteria also contribute to their survival? Does a spherical bacterium (coccus) have a better chance of infecting its host than its stick-shaped neighbour (bacillus)? Analysis of the evolution of the pathogenic bacteria that live in the nasopharynx suggests that the shape of these bacteria has changed over time, shifting from bacillus to coccus. In an article published in the journal PLOS Genetics, Professor Frédéric Veyrier, of INRS-Institut Armand-Frappier Research Centre, and his colleagues demonstrate that this change may have occurred to make the bacteria better at slipping through the defences of Read More ›

By new facts, not the latest political correctness (so this is worth paying attention to): From ScienceDaily: “It’s incredibly surprising,” said David Reich, Harvard Medical School professor of genetics and senior author of the study. “There’s a strong working model in archaeology and genetics, of which I have been a proponent, that most Native Americans today extend from a single pulse of expansion south of the ice sheets–and that’s wrong. We missed something very important in the original data.” Good thing we paid in advance to learn your earlier incorrect ideas. Previous research had shown that Native Americans from the Arctic to the southern tip of South America can trace their ancestry to a single “founding population” called the First Read More ›

Justice, classically, is often portrayed as a blindfolded lady carrying scales and a sword. This represents the challenge of impartiality and responsible and fair evaluation of cases in light of facts, rights, value and values that must consistently lie behind the unfortunate reality that the state and its officers must wield the sword in defence of the civil peace of justice. Otherwise, the state descends into incompetence or even the dark night of tyranny and its consequences: injustice, undermining of rights (especially for the weak) and loss of legitimacy that justifies a demand for reformation. Thus, justice is inevitably a moral issue and therefore inevitably raises the question of the status of OUGHT in light of the IS-OUGHT gap. Thence Read More ›

Well, get this: Far from being selfish organisms whose sole purpose is to maximize their own reproduction, bacteria in large communities work for the greater good by resolving a social conflict among individuals to enhance the survival of their entire community. This part is rubbish, of course: “It’s an example of what we call ’emergent phenomena’,” explained Gürol Süel, an associate professor of molecular biology at UC San Diego who headed the research effort. “Emergent phenomena” is an elegant of saying “We don’t know what we are talking about.” That’s fine, just admit it. Meanwhile: The conflict is essentially this: Bacteria at the outer edges of the biofilm are the most vulnerable within their community to chemical and antibiotic attacks. Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Until now, researchers believed farming was ‘invented’ some 12,000 years ago in an area that was home to some of the earliest known human civilizations. A new discovery offers the first evidence that trial plant cultivation began far earlier — some 23,000 years ago. … “While full-scale agriculture did not develop until much later, our study shows that trial cultivation began far earlier than previously believed, and gives us reason to rethink our ancestors’ capabilities,” said Prof. Sternberg. “Those early ancestors were more clever and more skilled than we knew.” And we didn’t “knew” this because … Can we just complete the thought here? Because Darwin’s boys said … ? See also: Why Darwin’s boys are of no use Read More ›

The question arose from this run-of the mill “sciencey” PR: Compared to its celestial neighbours Venus and Mars, Earth is a pretty habitable place. So how did we get so lucky? A new study sheds light on the improbable evolutionary path that enabled Earth to sustain life. … “We played out this impact erosion story forward in time and we were able to show that the effect of the conditions governing the initial composition of a planet can have profound consequences for its evolution. It’s a very special set of circumstances that make Earth.” So it is NOT science to say that the outlined story is almost impossible on its own? Like getting dealt a royal flush five time in Read More ›

Over on the other thread we’ve had a brief discussion of the recent initiative to find extraterrestrial intelligence. In response to a couple of the comments I thought it might be instructive to look at the logic behind the privileged planet hypothesis, as it relates to the search for life beyond Earth. To that end, I pose the following: What is the implication of the Earth being a Privileged Planet, assuming we subscribe to that view? Does it mean: (a) that Earth (with all of its various characteristics) is unlikely to have come about by purely natural means; and/or (b) that Earth is unique (or nearly unique) in the galaxy or the cosmos? —– The reason I pose the question Read More ›

From the Edge: Ubiquitous computing, or the Internet of things, is all supposed to disappear. The problem is, is it going to disappear into us? What could possibly go wrong? There is an argument that these machines are going to replace us, but I only think that’s relevant to you or me in the sense that it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t happen in our lifetime. The Kurzweil crowd argues this is happening faster and faster, and things are just running amok. In fact, things are slowing down. In 2045, it’s going to look more like it looks today than you think. Readers? But see also: Will robots really take over? That depends. It depends on what people can do that Read More ›

So they say, 125 mya. Velociraptor, from the BBC: The 6ft 6in (2m) creature was almost perfectly preserved in limestone, thanks to a volcanic eruption that had buried it in north-east China. And the 125-million year-old fossil suggests many other dinosaurs, including velociraptors, would have looked like “big, fluffy killer birds”. But it is unlikely that it could fly. note also: There are [museum] storerooms full of new dinosaur fossils that have never been studied before. And not on the open market as well? See also: A newly identified species of feathered dinosaur is the largest ever discovered to have a well-preserved set of bird-like wings, a study suggests. Palaeontologists working in China unearthed the fossil remains of the winged Read More ›