From ScienceDaily: Pygmies show growth plasticity is key to human evolution While the stature of pygmies is well-suited to tropical rainforests, the mechanisms underlying their growth remain poorly understood. In order to decipher these mechanisms, a team of scientists from the CNRS, IRD and UPMC studied a group of Baka pygmies in Cameroon. Their findings […]
Month: August 2015
Some argue planet Jupiter formed from pebbles
From RealClearScience: The pebble accretion model, as the idea is called, suggests that tiny objects first coalesce together due to drag then gravitationally collapse and form larger objects one hundred to one thousand kilometers in size. These larger objects, now referred to as planetesimals, than draw in all the remaining pebbles and become the cores […]
Seth Shostak: Just Add Water
In a recent KCBS radio interview about his work for the search for extraterrestrial life, the Center for SETI research Director Seth Shostak repeatedly made claims about the simplicity of life. “Life is just chemistry,” Shostak informed … Read more
Mystery: Why was top Permian predator the most common fossil?
From Texas Observer: The beast was a mammal relative with a heavy skull, a mouth full of fangs, and a tall dorsal sail made of skin stretched over long struts of bone. Sinuous as a crocodile, leathery scales shining in the hot sun, it padded along black-mud swamps and highlands shaded by swaying tree ferns. […]
Congress is starving NASA? But so?
From Slate: Let me be clear: I love NASA. I think it represents the best of what we humans can do. I also know it is tied in knots trying to appease the whims of Congress and the White House, two winds that blow in vastly different directions. I have taken the president to task […]
Is E.T. calling us? Stay tuned!
New Scientist magazine reports on a paper by Hippke, Domainko and Learned, suggesting that fast radio bursts, which were first discovered in 2001, may be artificial signals produced by alien – or human – technology. Ten fast bursts of radio waves have been detected within the past 15 years, and the delay between the arrival […]
WJM States the Obvious
In a comment to my last post WJM states: if morality is subjective and there are no necessary consequences, why should I care about it? Why shouldn’t I just consider it an inhibiting evolutionary, emotional artifact (like any other emotion or feeling) and overcome its inhibiting interference with my capacity to act in this world […]
HGT: Growth of antibiotic resistance termed “bacterial sex”
From ScienceDaily: Biologist investigates how gene-swapping bacteria evade antibiotics “One of the prevailing theories for why bacteria make these antibiotic compounds is to fight off competition. But the bacteria that make the antibiotics have to be resistant to those antibiotics. Therefore, many encode antibiotic resistance genes against their own products.” Random genetic mutation is one […]
Were cave symbols early writing attempts?
Maybe, 10,000–40,000 years ago. From CBC News: Deep inside the Oxocelhaya cave in southern France, Canadian anthropologist Genevieve von Petzinger points at a small red marking barely noticeable on a rock wall. It looks like someone deliberately drew an X using two inverted V’s. … While cave paintings have long been cited as early evidence […]
Uganda chimps number three times estimate
From ScienceDaily: Chimpanzees found to survive in degraded and human-dominated habitats (Well, given that—according to the BBC—), they have entered the Stone Age … No, but seriously, wouldn’t even reasonable people expect chimps to be at least as smart as urban raccoons? A chimpanzee population in Uganda has been found to be three times larger […]
Dr. Hawking, relax, this is the auto-eject model
From New Scientist: Stephen Hawking says he has a way to escape from a black hole What you may not know is that physicists have been arguing for 40 years about what happens to the information about the physical state of those objects once they fall in. Quantum mechanics says that this information cannot be […]
Dr. Hawking, your black hole is ready now
From the Independent: Black holes are a passage to another universe, says Stephen Hawking Black holes in fact aren’t as “black” as people thought and could be a way of getting through to an alternative universe. “The existence of alternative histories with black holes suggests this might be possible,” Hawking said, according to a report […]
Epigenetics: The carnies have caught up
Unfortunately. Had to happen though. While I (O’Leary for News) was preparing a post on the significance of evolution via epigenetics—changes within parents’ genes in their own lifetime are passed on to offspring— this ScienceBlogs item whistled past the desk and crashed into the Later pile. Well, later is now: For those not familiar with […]
Some Things are Really Simple
Here is an example: Barry to Popperian: Anyone who cannot unambiguously condemn the practice of chopping little boys and girls up and selling the pieces like so much meat shares in the evil of those who do so. Popperian responds: Note how Barry is making my point for me. I wrote: From time to time, […]
Note from a reader on free macroevolution excerpt
Re the excerpt from Evolution: Making sense of life by science writer Carl Zimmer and evolutionary biologist Doug Emlen (from 2012, hardcover valued at $80): In response to the offer noted here, the reader kindly writes to say, The free download is only the first part of the chapter, not the whole thing. Most of […]