2015

From ScienceDaily: Ancient alga knew how to survive on land before it left water and evolved into the first plant Up until now it had been assumed that the alga evolved the capability to source essential nutrients for its survival after it arrived on land by forming a close association with a beneficial fungi called arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM), which still exists today and which helps plant roots obtain nutrients and water from soil in exchange for carbon. The previous discovery of 450 million year old fossilised spores similar to the spores of the AM fungi suggests this fungi would have been present in the environment encountered by the first land plants. Remnants of prehistoric fungi have also been found inside Read More ›

Any fair-minded person who read Thomist philosopher Edward Feser’s incisive and crushing refutation of physicist Lawrence Krauss’s article, “Why scientists should be militant atheists,” would have to conclude that New Atheism was on the ropes. But after reading Jerry Coyne’s spirited defense of Krauss, I was reminded of a line from Louisa Alcott’s Little Men: “’Come on, come on, I ain’t thrashed yet!’ cried Emil, who had been down five times, but did not know when he was beaten.” Judging from the comments on his latest post, many of Professor Coyne’s readers seemed to share his view that the cosmological argument for the existence of God, which is based on the contingency of the world, was no better than the Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Bacteria in ancient flea may be ancestor of the Black Death About 20 million years ago a single flea became entombed in amber with tiny bacteria attached to it, providing what researchers believe may be the oldest evidence on Earth of a dreaded and historic killer — an ancient strain of the bubonic plague. If indeed the fossil bacteria are related to plague bacteria, Yersinia pestis, the discovery would show that this scourge, which killed more than half the population of Europe in the 14th century, actually had been around for millions of years before that, traveled around much of the world, and predates the human race. Talk about stasis. One wonders what it was doing in the Read More ›

THE DESIGN OF LIFE COLLECTION is a spectacular journey to uncover stunning evidence for intelligent design in the animal kingdom. It includes three feature length documentariesIncluding Metamorphosis: the Beauty and Design of Butterflies, FLIGHT: The Genius of Birds, and LIVING WATERS: Intelligent design in the Oceans of the Earth. For more information visit: www.DesignOfLife.org From Illustra Media Note: Back to blogging shortly.

From Evolution News & Views: Following Kitzmiller v. Dover, an Excellent Decade for Intelligent Design Tomorrow marks the tenth anniversary of opening of arguments in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case that resulted in the most absurdly hyped court decision in memory. In 2005, did an obscure Federal judge in Dover, Pennsylvania, at last settle the ultimate scientific question that has fascinated mankind for millennia? Of course not. The decision by Judge John Jones established nothing about intelligent design — far from being the “death knell” sometimes claimed by Darwin defenders. A number of post-Dover achievements are listed, including – Lots of pro-ID peer-reviewed scientific papers published. – Experimental peer-reviewed research showing the unevolvability of new proteins. – Theoretical peer-reviewed papers Read More ›

No subject apart from religion has vexed Darwin’s followers more than why people sacrifice themselves for others. They have embraced the ambiguous term “altruism” because it does not clearly mean “compassion” or “heroism.” Rather, it is to be seen as the same natural force that causes worker ants to pass on their genes by serving their queen, who lays lots of eggs, instead of reproducing themselves (kin selection). Maybe this force creates the change we are looking for. A champion of this proposed mechanism was evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson. But then Wilson dramatically abandoned kin selection in 2010 in a Nature paper, “The evolution of eusociality,” co-authored with mathematicians. He argued that strict Darwinism (natural selection) “provides an exact Read More ›

From PBS: Could the Universe Be Lopsided? Physicists call a universe that appears roughly similar in all directions “isotropic.” Because the geometry of spacetime is shaped by the distribution of matter and energy, an isotropic universe must posses a geometric structure that looks the same in all directions as well. The only three such possibilities for three-dimensional spaces are positively curved (the surface of a hypersphere, like a beach ball but in a higher dimension), negatively curved (the surface of a hyperboloid, shaped like a saddle or potato chip), or flat. Russian physicist Alexander Friedmann, Belgian cleric and mathematician Georges Lemaître and others incorporated these three geometries into some of the first cosmological solutions of Einstein’s equations. (By solutions, we Read More ›

Further to: There are millions of habitable planets… no and Rob Sheldon reflects on the hunt for water on Mars, we now hear  from Space.com: Oxygen on Exoplanets May Not Mean Alien Life On Earth, plants release oxygen into the air through photosynthesis. If a planet beyond the solar system was found to contain oxygen in its atmosphere, scientists reasoned, that oxygen would have formed as a byproduct of life. Narita and his team decided to study the role of stellar radiation around stars similar to the sun. They found that, if enough of the mineral titania lay on the surface of a planet, it could dissolve in liquid water, producing oxygen in the atmosphere. Titania is a naturally occurring Read More ›

Contrary to earlier assumptions, and could be clue to serious disease: From ScienceDaily: Newly identified mechanism solves enduring mystery of key element of cellular organization The study focused on usually short-lived compartments called stress granules that form in cells under stress. Stress granules are just one type of the membrane-less structures or organelles that assemble as needed to handle various cell functions and then rapidly disperse. Until now, however, the mechanism underlying stress granule formation was poorly understood. Stress granules are also tied to degenerative disorders such as ALS, which is also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Genes encoding the protein components of stress granules are often mutated in patients with ALS and other diseases. These same proteins accumulate in Read More ›

Further to the recent evidence for water on Mars, and the BBC News commentary that “If we find life on Mars and it can be shown to be of a different origin to that on Earth, then that essentially means that the Universe is teeming with life. It seems almost impossible that life could spring up by chance on two adjacent planets if life was rare.” Actually, that doesn’t follow at all. It’s like saying that if there are several species of monotreme mammals in Australia, they must be common all over the planet. They are not. If one doesn’t know the history, one cannot really insist on things like that. Meanwhile, Rob Sheldon reminisces: — I had lunch with Read More ›

Says Smithsonian mag: Most higher education institutions offer a wide range of topics, from engineering and science to literature, history and sociology have long been a backbone of . But, as Alex Dean reports for The Guardian, that is changing in Japan as over 50 universities reduce or eliminate their humanities and social sciences departments entirely. The education minister wants to convert them “to serve areas that better meet society’s needs,” such as training for jobs. It’s a move that’s sending “shivers down academic spines” worldwide. Historian Erin Blakemore notes that the move has “horrified some academics,” including some in the sciences. More. It would be interesting to know if all the recent scandals in social sciences have played a Read More ›

Something new every day. From Columbia mathematician Peter Woit’s Not Even Wrong blog: Among the many oddities associated with string theory is the decision of a group in Philadelphia to name a group of charter schools there the String Theory Schools. I don’t think they teach string theory, just liked the name. The financing of these schools is now attracting controversy. It seems they are running into some financial trouble, involving huge real estate deals and tax-exempt bond financing. … For some analysis, see a Naked Capitalism piece: Private Equity Asset-Stripping Strategy Meets Charter Schools to Produce Even Better Looting. What’s significant perhaps is that the theory is well enough known in pop culture that the name would work.

O’Leary for News’ other blog Defamation law must catch up with internet age. Any blogger who linked to a website held to contain defamatory material—whether the blogger knew the fact or not—could be at risk. Android apps to control your teen’s brain? This’ll never beat the bicycle Ban the cell phone monster from normal conversation Everywhere we go, people tippy tap devices, paying little attention to the people who surround them. What really underlies five-star reviews? Often a possibly illegal publicity campaign Do poll results matter in the Internet age? Probably not, and it is worth knowing why not. How many kids have smartphones? And what difference does it make?

From the Christian Scientific Society: We will be having a regional meeting again this year, November 13-14 in Seattle, at the Discovery Institute. This year’s meeting in on the topic “What is Information?” This question seems to keep coming up. At the annual meeting in Pittsburgh, J.P. Moreland argued that information must have a spiritual/non-physical aspect. Randy Isaac has argued that there is no information in biological systems because information presumes communication between intelligent agents. Bill Dembski has argued that information can never be spontaneously created, only destroyed, except by an intelligent agent. In the physics world, information is viewed as exchangeable with energy. We have six speakers who will be addressing different aspects of this topic: Friday night: Doug Read More ›

Time to ditch natural selection? If NS were a law of nature, we would see every organism trending along the same trajectory: for instance, bearing more offspring. But NS explains opposite outcomes with equal ease (see Oct 1 entry for examples). It explains why the sloth is slow and the cheetah is fast. It explains why the roundworm is round and the flatworm is flat. It explains why some animals bear lots of young and why some bear few. We are led to believe that NS explains up, down, in, out and sideways by some mysterious, aimless force, and whatever results was caused by NS. For some time now, I have been calling NS the “Stuff Happens Law” because NS Read More ›