2015

Readers recall Brit physicist/TV presenter Brian Cox? You know, ”multiverse/“many worlds” makes sense“ and all that? Rumour has it that he became something of a target this year. A reader sends: Laughably, Prof. Brian Cox – a household name in Britain in science-communication – was attacked for having the ‘wrong’ wife. Not so laughable at all though was the large-scale harassment directed against him by flamers. They also mounted a major campaign of harassment against another person who is also a household name in Britain for science-communication, Prof. Mary Beard. The personal attacks upon Cox about his wife were in the course of Cox’ having tweeted in mild, polite support of an open letter in favour of free-speech. Though Brian Read More ›

Thoughts spurred by ISIS, apparently. From New Scientist: What turns an ordinary person into a killer? The idea that a civilised human being might be capable of barbaric acts is so alien that we often blame our animal instincts – the older, “primitive” areas of the brain taking over and subverting their more rational counterparts. But fresh thinking turns this long-standing explanation on its head. It suggests that people perform brutal acts because the “higher”, more evolved, brain overreaches. The set of brain changes involved has been dubbed Syndrome E – with E standing for evil. Yes, evil is an intelligent choice. Not a “natural” one. As Aesop’s fable tells it, the scorpion doesn’t sting because he is evil, but Read More ›

Recently, we looked at open theology in connection with the work of one-tme BioLogian Karl Giberson. “The Secret Sympathy: New Atheism, Protestant Fundamentalism, and Evolution” by Liam Jerrold Fraser for an argument for similarlity, from the open theology perspective: Abstract: In spite of the apparent differences between the two, a number of commentators have suggested an underlying sympathy between new atheism and protestant fundamentalism (e.g. De Botton 2012; Vernon 2007; Flew 2007; Robertson 2010) While such comparisons are intriguing, it not always clear whether they should be taken seriously, as they are frequently asserted without sustained argument. This paper seeks to ameliorate this lack of clarity through a textual study of new atheist and protestant fundamentalist texts. This textual study Read More ›

From Henry Center: The Creation Project recognizes the need and opportunity for establishing and strengthening this field of inquiry within the evangelical community, both among its thought leaders and the general ecclesial public. We believe that the doctrine of creation provides opportunity for humble and open inquiry and the potential for new insights at the intersection of science and theology. While some scholars have begun to wrestle with the difficult issues, much work remains. Gathering the thought leaders throughout the evangelical community—pastors, scholars, administrators, and the like—we are interested in changing the tone of discourse, research agendas, and public perception within the evangelical community and in making progress towards new insights in the doctrine of creation. Friends advise that the Read More ›

From Dr. Everett Piper, President, Oklahoma Wesleyan University: This past week, I actually had a student come forward after a university chapel service and complain because he felt “victimized” by a sermon on the topic of 1 Corinthians 13. It appears that this young scholar felt offended because a homily on love made him feel bad for not showing love! In his mind, the speaker was wrong for making him, and his peers, feel uncomfortable. I’m not making this up. Our culture has actually taught our kids to be this self-absorbed and narcissistic! Any time their feelings are hurt, they are the victims! Anyone who dares challenge them and, thus, makes them “feel bad” about themselves, is a “hater,” a Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: The Persian dwarf snake is wrongly classified as one species, scientists say. New research shows it is composed of six different species, a finding which might be important for the conservation of the snake. Well, the new finding might be important for the conservation of the snake but, together with many other instances, it isn’t doing much for a science-based use of the term “species.” That’s been noted here before. except for claiming instances of evolution right under our noses on weak evidence. The research, which was published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, revealed that the Persian dwarf snake is not a single species at all. It is composed of 6 different species, wrongly classified Read More ›

From BBC News : Tarantulas have evolved almost exactly the same shade of vibrant blue at least eight separate times. That is the conclusion of a study by US biologists, exploring how the colour is created in different tarantula species. The hue is caused by tiny structures inside the animals’ hairs, but those shapes vary across the family tree. This suggests, the researchers say, that the striking blue is not driven by sexual selection – unlike many other bright colours in the animal kingdom. This argument is also supported by the fact that tarantulas have poor colour vision, and do not appear to show off their hairy blue body parts during courtship. More. The researchers think that the blue colour Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Earth’s oxygen-rich atmosphere emerged in whiffs from a kind of cyanobacteria in shallow oceans around 2.5 billion years ago, according to new research. … “The onset of Earth’s surface oxygenation was likely a complex process characterized by multiple whiffs of oxygen until a tipping point was crossed,” said Brian Kendall, a professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Waterloo. “Until now, we haven’t been able to tell whether oxygen concentrations 2.5 billion years ago were stable or not. These new data provide a much more conclusive answer to that question.” The new data supports a hypothesis proposed by Anbar and his team in 2007. In Western Australia, they found preliminary evidence of these oxygen whiffs Read More ›

From PBS: The ability for seemingly constant things to evolve and change is an important aspect of Einstein’s legacy. If space and time can change, little else is sacred. Modern cosmologists like to contemplate an extreme version of this idea: a multiverse in which the very laws of physics themselves can change from place to place and time to time. Such changes, if they do in fact exist, wouldn’t be arbitrary; like spacetime in general relativity, they would obey very specific equations. So are we now enlisting Einstein on behalf of the multiverse? Out of interest, what would he have thought? We currently have no direct evidence that there is a multiverse, of course. But the possibility is very much Read More ›

Did farming change the human genome? If so, the genome has certainly been a work in rapid progress, and maybe regress too From : Genomic analysis of ancient human remains identifies specific genes that changed during and after the transition in Europe from hunting and gathering to farming about 8,500 years ago. Many of the genes are associated with height, immunity, lactose digestion, light skin pigmentation, blue eye color and celiac disease risk. … “From an archaeological perspective, it’s quite amazing,” said co-senior author Ron Pinhasi, associate professor of archaeology at University College Dublin. “The Neolithic revolution is perhaps the most important transition in human prehistory. We now have proof that people did actually go from Anatolia into Europe and Read More ›

… 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 ›