… but well, it’s Friday night … From LiveScience: Call them Franken flatworms. Scientists have created worms with the heads and brains of other species just by manipulating cell communication. The research is an example of how development is controlled by more than genetics alone. The researchers did not alter the flatworms’ DNA in any way, but instead manipulated proteins that control conversations between cells. The heads go back to normal after a few weeks. “These findings raise significant questions about how genes and bioelectric networks interact to build complex body structures,” Levin said. If genes provide a blueprint for an organism’s body, cells are like the construction workers required to turn the plan into a structure — and gap Read More ›

Physical organic chemist Michael Page asks that at The Conversation: Living systems are chemically based and therefore must obey the laws of science. Life appears to be just a series of chemical reactions – and we now understand how these reactions work at the molecular level. So surely this should tell us how life came about? But what are the laws of science? We are still looking for dark matter, and some would wish away the current Higgs boson. The assumption that early life forms must have been similar to what we see today may be preventing us from answering this question. It’s possible that there were many unsuccessful precursors that bore little resemblance to present-day life. There has been Read More ›

From University of Southampton: An international team of physicists has published ground-breaking research on the decay of subatomic particles called kaons – which could change how scientists understand the formation of the universe. Professor Christopher Sachrajda, from the Southampton Theory Astrophysics and Gravity Research Centre at the University of Southampton, has helped to devise the first calculation of how the behaviour of kaons differs when matter is swapped out for antimatter, known as direct “CP” symmetry violation. Should the calculation not match experimental results, it would be conclusive evidence of new, unknown phenomena that lie outside of the Standard Model—physicists’ present understanding of the fundamental particles and the forces between them. The current result, reported in Physical Review Letters, does Read More ›

Why? Didn’t the thing get Higgs a Nobel? Must be more prizes in there somewhere… 😉 Oh well, here: The Higgs was, in a way, the end of the line. At the heart of particle physics is what’s known as the Standard Model: a group of 17 elementary particles and the rules for how they should interact. Up until the Higgs discovery, physicists had observed 16 of these particles—and the field was desperate for a 17th that would push the model in new directions. But the Higgs turned out to be totally ordinary. It acted just like the model said it would act, obeyed every theorized rule. One of physicists’ greatest hopes for the new LHC is to not upend Read More ›

From Science Daily: The researchers found stone tools, which the early hunters are likely to have used to cut the meat from the bones. “That makes Megalopolis the only site in the Balkans where we have evidence of an elephant being butchered in the early Paleolithic,” says Professor Katerina Harvati of the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment (HEP) at the University of Tübingen. … “Despite this crucial geographic position, Paleoanthropological and Paleolithic research has been under-represented in the region due to a traditional focus on later prehistory and Classical times. As a result, very little information exists on the Lower Paleolithic of Greece. Marathousa 1 is of paramount importance for the understanding of human dispersal patterns into Europe, Read More ›

From New Scientist: Recent theory: The idea is that smaller, colder stars have thicker atmospheres. “That provides handles with which the star can grab onto the planet and vice versa,” Winn says. Over time, those gravitational handles exert a tidal force on the planet, pulling it and its star into alignment. But then: But one Jupiter-mass planet discovered earlier this year, HATS-14b, seems to threaten that idea. Because it tightly circles a small star, its orbit should have flattened out quickly – but the orbit is instead tilted a whopping 76 degrees from the plane in which its star spins. “It should have aligned with the spin of the host star, and what we’re finding is that it has not,” Read More ›

A friend must have been a really jumpin’ social event recently. Was buttonholed by a Darwin follower, just up from the crypt, who launched into the hoary old claim that the backwards eye wiring of vertebrates shows that the vertebrate eye is poorly designed—therefore not designed at all. Now, of course, it is a non-sequitur to say that something that is poorly designed is not designed at all. Which is the followers’ point. Thus, it is unclear why they find eye wiring even an interesting argument, let alone a compelling one. No matter. In any actual (rather than imaginary) situation, one can hope only for optimal, not “perfect” design. Perfection does not exist in time and space as we know Read More ›

From Science Daily: A new study shows that larger eye size is the source of a sizable reproductive advantage for a tiny freshwater crustacean, Daphnia obtusa. The research provides hard data for eye microevolution that, until now, were lacking. Huh? Hard data were lacking, for something as obvious as microevolution? It gets better: The focus of the research team was a tiny freshwater crustacean, Daphnia obtusa Kurz. Just 1 to 2 millimeters long, Daphnia would be hard to spot except for one distinguishing feature: its black eye, which is large for its body size. “A big eye is costly to maintain, because any kind of neurological tissue, including retinal tissue, is energetically demanding relative to other kinds of tissue,” Dudycha Read More ›

First, a happy thanksgiving. Then, while digesting turkey etc, here is something to ponder. One of the underlying issues surrounding the debates over the design inference is the question of responsible, rational freedom as a key facet of intelligent action, as opposed to blind chance and/or mechanical necessity. It has surfaced again, e.g. the WD400 thread. Some time back, this is part of how I posed the issue, emphasising the difference between self-aware responsible freedom and blindly mechanical causal chains used in computing: Even if deluded about circumstances a self-aware being is just that, self-evidently, incorrigibly self-aware. And, a key facet of that self awareness is of responsible, rational freedom. Without which we cannot choose to follow and accept a Read More ›

We fancy, for the following communications position, Zack Kopplin, that young guy who was freaked because Louisiana schoolteachers needn’t shout Darwindreck at their classes any more*. But as Adam Deen tells us: When I organised evolution conference to debate the topic of Islam and evolution, there was an obscene backlash. We were labelled as deviants by a prominent Wahhabi preacher for merely having such a debate. One of the guest lecturers was even “excommunicated” for seeking to reconcile the scientific perspective with the faith. More. These guys should be way easier to talk to than a Bayou teacher who has read Darwin’s Doubt. And how about the Darwin-in-the-schools lobby’s “aren’t I good?” girls. We’ll draft them to go talk to these Read More ›

O’Leary for News’ night job: Fake reviews, sure… but fake science journals? Bob the Robot’s TED talk: What robots are and aren’t Robot are things we create to develop our ideas. Will artificial intelligence kill our jobs? That depends. Jumbotron, the smartphone is coming to get you! New tech does not extinguish old art forms. It more often changes their role. Live to text? Well, it’s your neck … Driving while “intexticated”? Social media addiction comes, like other addictions, with a free I-deny-I-have-a-problem package. Follow UD News at Twitter!

From Discover: Holes in a Bone: Flute or Fluke? Many experts believe an approximately 45,000-year-old bear femur could be a flute — the oldest known musical instrument. Ivan Turk discovered the bone in 1995 in Slovenia’s Divje Babe Archaeological Park, among cave deposits containing Neanderthal tools. But is it a hominin-made flute, or just a bone scavenged by ancient hyenas? In Science Smackdown, we let experts argue both sides of the question. More. Readers? Hear a replica played below. See also: The search for our earliest ancestors: signals in the noise and Neanderthal Man: The long-lost relative turns up again, this time with documents Follow UD News at Twitter!

But then this is the same life form that can reassemble from a small piece, and lose all its neurons but live. Re the latter feat, new findings may shed light: From Science Daily: Champion of regeneration, the freshwater polyp Hydra is capable of reforming a complete individual from any fragment of its body. It is even able to remain alive when all its neurons have disappeared. Researcher the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, have discovered how: cells of the epithelial type modify their genetic program by overexpressing a series of genes, among which some are involved in diverse nervous functions. … “Epithelial cells do not possess typical neuronal functions. However, Hydra’s loss of neurogenesis induces epithelial cells to modify Read More ›

From The Telegraph: The human genome is littered with sequences left behind from long-ago viral infections but now scientists have found the code is still active Now researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine have found that genetic material from a retrovirus called HERV-H is not only active, but is crucial in allowing a fertilised human egg to grow into an embryo. … “What’s really interesting is that these sequences are found only in primates, raising the possibility that their function may have contributed to unique characteristics that distinguish humans from other animals. Let’s back up and be cautious here. For one thing, many primates are not particularly clever, so we need to be much more specific about why it Read More ›

From Casey Luskin’s talk at Evolution News & Views: Information is not always easy to define, but it often involves a measure of degree of randomness. The fundamental intuition behind information is a reduction in possibilities. The more possibilities you rule out, the more information you’ve conveyed. Nature can produce “information” under certain definitions. Intelligent agents also produce information (certain types, at least). As Henry Quastler observed, “The creation of new information is habitually associated with conscious activity.” To put it another way: The reduction in uncertainty could occur by an intelligent agent, or through a physical occurrence. Types of information and example follow. Conclusion To summarize, Information can be understood and defined in different ways. Some are useful for Read More ›