It’s possible, says a recent Biology Direct paper: Here’s the abstract: Background: Microbial genetic diversity is often investigated via the comparison of relatively similar 16S molecules through multiple alignments between reference sequences and novel environmental samples using phylogenetic trees, direct BLAST matches, or phylotypes counts. However, are we missing novel lineages in the microbial dark universe by relying on standard phylogenetic and BLAST methods? If so, how can we probe that universe using alternative approaches? We performed a novel type of multi-marker analysis of genetic diversity exploiting the topology of inclusive sequence similarity networks. Results: Our protocol identified 86 ancient gene families, well distributed and rarely transferred across the 3 domains of life, and retrieved their environmental homologs among 10 Read More ›

In science journals: Because of super-specialization, the authors of papers themselves are nowadays often asked to suggest referees for peer review of their own work, but this, of course, leaves an opening for the practice of fraud. In a modern variant on Gogol’s Dead Souls, some scientists have been caught sending their papers for peer review to non-existent reviewers, complete with a curriculum vitae and an e-mail address. The article quotes the author of a blog on scientific research called “Retraction Watch,” who said “This is officially becoming a trend:” an odd way to put it, since either it is a trend or it isn’t, official recognition having nothing to do with it. There are even companies in China, apparently, Read More ›

Further to Jonathan Marks on why “evolutionary” “psychology” is neither (Marks: And finally, I can’t shake the feeling that the methodologies I have encountered in evolutionary psychology would not meet the standards of any other science.): Also from the Evolution Institute, Historians will look back upon the 21st century as a time when the theory of evolution, confined largely to the biological sciences during the 20th century, expanded to include all human-related knowledge. As we approach the 1/6th mark of the 21st century, this intellectual revolution is already in full swing. A sizeable community of scientists, scholars, journalists, and their readers has become fully comfortable with the statement “Nothing about X makes sense except in the light of evolution”, where X Read More ›

At the Evolution Institute, UNC Charlotte biological anthropologist Jonathan Marks, who blogs on the cultural significance of Darwinism at Anthropomics, writes, ”Evolutionary Psychology Is Neither”: … It’s presumably better than creationist psychology, but nobody practices creationist psychology – so presumably the word “evolutionary” is doing a bit more work here than it may seem at first blush. Indeed, the word seems to encode, in this context, a series of propositions that most people actually working in human evolution believe to be false, if not ridiculous. Foundationally, where students of human evolution have generally emphasized the adaptability of the human mind, evolutionary psychologists have rather attempted to call attention to the adaptedness of the human mind. From these opposed starting points, Read More ›

Over at The Best Schools, James Barham introduces an updated preface by Pierre van den Berghe, author of an older classsic on the ways academic life subverts honest enquiry: 1. Perhaps the most glaring change facing job-seeking PhD holders is a sharp deterioration in career opportunities and employment conditions. A glut of PhDs in many fields produced a shift from a seller’s to a buyer’s market. When AG appeared in 1970, US academia was approaching the end of its enormous expansion, becoming the juggernaut of world higher education. PhD production continued unabated, but job numbers stagnated or even contracted. Colleges and universities began to restrict tenure-track positions, and created a rapidly growing, semi-nomadic proletariat of instructors and lecturers on one-year, Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: “We now know what the plumage looked like on the tail, and that from the mid-femur down, it had bare skin,” says Aaron van der Reest. This is the first report of such preserved skin forming a web from the femoral shaft to the abdomen, never before seen in non-avian dinosaurs. “Ostriches use bare skin to thermoregulate. Because the plumage on this specimen is virtually identical to that of an ostrich, we can infer that Ornithomimus was likely doing the same thing, using feathered regions on their body to maintain body temperature. It would’ve looked a lot like an ostrich.” In fact, this group of animals–referred to as ornithomimids–is commonly referred to as “ostrich mimics.” The find is Read More ›

But isn’t that precisely what naturalism teaches about everything? Further to When organized crime got ID? (There always needs to be someone whose knowledge is in fact an intelligent commentary for a naturalist theory of mind to be valid, which means by definition that it isn’t), cheating supposedly random lotteries is once again in the news. From WUSA9, we hear, WASHINGTON (WUSA9) – A man who sold himself a $1,000,000 winning D.C. Lottery ticket is just one of many retailers a WUSA9 investigation found winning the lottery at rates statisticians say border on impossible. At least three retailers won the lottery around 100 times according to an analysis of D.C. Lottery records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. … Read More ›

About time. Readers may recall that the first billion years of life when, we are told, simple microbes dominated, have been considered boring. Well, books where we have only .01 percent of the text preserved are boring too. But things may be changing. From Science News: 1.8 billion years ago, low oxygen may not have hindered life after all After this wild youth of rapid change, things slowed down. About 1.8 billion years ago, the climate stabilized. Oxygen levels steadied. Evolution seemingly stalled. For around a billion years, not a lot changed on planet Earth. Scientists called this interval the dullest time in Earth’s history. It came to be known as the “boring billion.” But scientists are taking a fresh Read More ›

Animal mind is a fascinating topic, and I’ll be starting a five-part series on it at Evolution News & Views later this month. Meanwhile, from the world of grumpy cat vids, we learn: A study carried out between the University of Edinburgh and Bronx Zoo compared our beloved domestic cat with its wilder relatives. Compared with the snow leopard, the Scottish wildcat and the African lion, researchers found these larger predators shared similar characteristics of aggression and neurotic behaviour to domestic cats. They needed to do a study to find that out? Dominance, impulsiveness and neurotic behaviour are the most common trait shared between the domestic cat and the wild cat. More. Well, a problem arises when we characterize cats’ Read More ›

Here, according to a friend: Abstract. This paper describes the forensic analysis of what the authors believe to be the most sophisticated smart card fraud encountered to date. In 2010, Murdoch et al. [7] described a man-in-the-middle attack against EMV cards. [7] demonstrated the attack using a general purpose FPGA board, noting that “miniaturization is mostly a mechanical challenge, and well within the expertise of criminal gangs”. This indeed happened in 2011, when about 40 sophisticated card forgeries surfaced in the field. These forgeries are remarkable in that they embed two chips wired top-to-tail. The first chip is clipped from a genuine stolen card. The second chip plays the role of the man-in-the-middle and communicates directly with the point of Read More ›

It does not take a lot of familiarity to know that a common and widely repeated accusation against ID is that it is “creationism in a cheap tuxedo,” that it tries to smuggle the strictly verboten “supernatural” into scientific thought on origins, and that it is a god-of-the-gaps appeal to ignorance by way of we don’t know what happened so goddidit. In fact, every one of these assertions is false — and in light of easily accessible corrective facts and cogent argument, such are little more than a strawman tactic. (But in a day of widespread, conscience benumbed, en-darkened intellectually blind sociopathic evil where ruthless agit-prop, spin tactics and message dominance too often subvert duties of care to fairness, accuracy, Read More ›

How many lives did Dawkins save, you say?  Carson doesn’t believe in Dawkins’ religion, Darwinian evolution. All doctors should be as ignorant as Carson. As so often, we close our religion coverage for the week with a new atheist: Richard Dawkins on US prez contender Ben Carson: On Dr. Ben Carson specifically Richard Dawkins said, “You just told me all the Republican candidates except one doesn’t believe in evolution, I mean that’s a disgrace. For a senor a very eminent, distinguished doctor, as he is, to say that is even worse. Because of course evolution is the bedrock of biology and biology is the bedrock of medicine. For a distinguished doctor to not understand, I have to use the word Read More ›

Here. Highly religious Americans are less likely than others to see conflict between faith and science. People’s sense that there generally is a conflict between religion and science seems to have less to do with their own religious beliefs than it does with their perceptions of other people’s beliefs. Less than one-third of Americans polled in the new survey (30%) say their personal religious beliefs conflict with science, while fully two-thirds (68%) say there is no conflict between their own beliefs and science. People’s sense that there generally is a conflict between religion and science seems to have less to do with their own religious beliefs than it does with their perceptions of other people’s beliefs. Less than one-third of Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Belief in God and prejudice reduced by directing magnetic energy into the brain The findings, published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, reveal that people in whom the targeted brain region was temporarily shut down reported 32.8% less belief in God, angels, or heaven. They were also 28.5% more positive in their feelings toward an immigrant who criticised their country. Dr Izuma, from the University’s Department of Psychology, said: “People often turn to ideology when they are confronted by problems. We wanted to find out whether a brain region that is linked with solving concrete problems, like deciding how to move one’s body to overcome an obstacle, is also involved in solving abstract problems addressed by Read More ›

Beginning our religion coverage this week (a bit late), from Christian Post: Ten years after publication of Who Was Adam? by Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross, 13 new chapters detail the new scientific evidence on the origins of humankind in a second edition. Rana and Ross are scholars affiliated with Reasons to Believe, which also published the new edition of Who Was Adam? RTB works to spread the Gospel by showing how science supports the truths found in Scripture. Rana and Ross both have doctorate degrees in the physical sciences, biochemistry and astronomy, respectively. Reasons to Believe. Astronomer/apologist Hugh Ross. Biochemist/apologist Fazale Rana. They describe their position as Old Earth Creationism: We think that the days in Genesis 1 are Read More ›