Generally, coal is assumed to have originated in the lignin of Carboniferous forests, but now a new theory has been introduced: From The Economist: The trees of the Carboniferous were not like those of today. Moreover, which types of tree predominated varied over the vast span of time that it covered. One pertinent observation Dr Boyce and his team make is that the peak of coal formation coincided with the dominance of a group called the lycopsids. Yet lycopsid trunks were composed mostly of tissue called periderm, which corresponds to modern bark and contains little lignin. Forests that existed both before and after these lycopsid woods (but before the supposed evolution of lignin-digesting fungi) had many more lignin-rich species in Read More ›

We have had several comments lately about problems with the “captcha” function on comments.  As you might imagine, UD is inundated with spam, and the captcha function is designed to prevent the spammers from accessing the combox. We have decided, however, to ratchet back on the captcha.  Now, you will need to fill in the captcha only when you log in to your user ID.  You will not need to fill it in to post comments. We will try this for a while.  We worry that advanced spammers will take advantage of it, and if that happens we might have to change course.  But for now we will see how this works.

Yeah, we almost fell off our chairs too. Astrophysicist Thomas Kitching offers some ideas and a rationale at RealClearScience: A study that surveyed all the published cosmological literature between the years 1996 and 2008 showed that the statistics of the results were too good to be true. In fact, the statistical spread of the results was not consistent with what would be expected mathematically, which means cosmologists were in agreement with each other – but to a worrying degree. This meant that either results were being tuned somehow to reflect the status-quo, or that there may be some selection effect where only those papers that agreed with the status-quo were being accepted by journals. No kidding. Pigs fly backwards too? Read More ›

From Nature: Work that describes harm from crops was cited in Italian Senate hearing. The papers’ findings run counter to those of numerous safety tests carried out by food and drug agencies around the world, which indicate that there are no dangers associated with eating GM food. But the work has been widely cited on anti-GM websites — and results of the experiments that the papers describe were referenced in an Italian Senate hearing last July on whether the country should allow cultivation of safety-approved GM crops. … Cattaneo noted what looked like problems in all three papers: sections of images of electrophoresis gels appeared to have been obliterated, and some of the images in different papers appeared to be Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Tweak in gene expression may have helped humans walk upright Now, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Huntsville, Alabama, have identified a change in gene expression between humans and primates that may have helped give us this edge when it comes to walking upright. And they did it by studying a tiny fish called the threespine stickleback that has evolved radically different skeletal structures to match environments around the world. … The threespine stickleback is remarkable in that it has evolved to have many different body structures to equip it for life in different parts of the world. … ue to changes in the regulatory DNA sequence near this Read More ›

From Tim Requarth at Aeon, But within modern organisms there is another clue to life’s origins, one that is more obscure than DNA but just as universal – the way cells harvest energy by shuffling around electrically charged molecules. This process goes by the mouthful ‘chemiosmosis’, and was first proposed in 1961 by the eccentric British biochemist Peter Mitchell. Chemiosmosis lacks the coded rigour of DNA, but that primal messiness might be exactly what makes it so revealing. Energy, Russell thinks, must have preceded anything resembling DNA or RNA, so the origin of chemiosmosis could help to reveal how the first organisms arose. Chemiosmosis takes place deep in our body’s cells, most of which harbour hundreds or thousands of microscopic Read More ›

Yesterday, DonaldM posted an item here: United Methodists Bar Intelligent Design From General Conference The skinny: After submitting an application to be in the exhibit hall per the established process, Discovery Institute was informed that they would not allowed to be present as the Institute’s position on ID was at odds with the UMC’s Statement on Evolution and Intelligent Design which says in part that the UMC opposes “…the introduction of any faith-based theories such as Creationism or Intelligent Design into the science curriculum of our public schools.” It should be readily clear that when this language was drafted back in 2008 and inserted into the UMC’s Book of Discipline, the guiding document of the Church, that the UMC was Read More ›

The leadership of the United Methodist Church (but not the majority of its members or pastors, most of us are disgusted by this move) have decided to ban Intelligent Design from their general meeting, see here. They have apparently signed on to the unwritten treaty with materialists which says, basically, we will accept without question anything you claim “science says,” and won’t ever even look for anything in science which supports our faith, just please, please, leave us a little safe corner over here called “faith” and don’t attack us as ignorant for anything we say there. Attack the fundamentalists, they are much more ignorant than we are; in fact, we’ll help you attack them. Does this remind anyone of Read More ›

From his blog, Sandwalk: I’m looking forward to learning about all the paradigm-shifting work on evolutionary theory from the likes of Denis Noble and the Third Way crowd [Physiologists fall for the Third Way]. There may even be some famous members of the Altenberg 16 [More calls to extend the defunct Modern Synthesis]. More. His is likely to be an eclectic perspective, and we will listen with interest. See also: So who’s in and who’s out at Royal Society 2016 “rethink evolution” meet? and PZ Myers on Royal Society “rethink evolution” meet: “But that’s not how science works.” Follow UD News at Twitter!

“But that’s not how science works.” From his blog Pharyngula, Larry Moran is attending — not as a representative of the crackpot contingent, but, I suspect, to cast a cynical eye on the shenanigans. The Third Way of Evolution gang seems to be excited about the meeting, which is not a good sign — these are people who have taken some useful ideas in evolutionary theory, like epigenetics and niche construction, and turned the dial up to 11 to argue that these concepts are so revolutionary that they demand a complete upheaval of neo-Darwinian thinking. Many evidence-based concepts do demand it, actually. What’s changed is this: Darwinism (natural selection acting on random mutation) was once a default explanation of change Read More ›

Suzan Mazur, author of The Paradigm Shifters: Overthrowing “the Hegemony of the Culture of Darwin,” draws attention to a notice of the Royal Society’s upcoming “rethink evolution” meet in the online Progressive Review: Moving beyond Darwin One of the problems with the stubbornly ignorant approach towards evolution by the reactionary right is that the media has reduced the matter to a simplistic debate largely determined by the dumb. But Darwin clearly didn’t have all the answers, and science has moved many miles since his time. One of the few journalists following this story has been Suzan Mazur, whose reports we have published from time to time. Now she’s writing about a conference next November that will undoubtedly give post-Darwinian science Read More ›

This is prompted primarily by a recent post and by the unfortunate realization that some people still do not understand the design inference, despite years of involvement in the debate. Specifically, there was discussion at Barry’s prior post about whether Elizabeth Liddle admits that “biological design inferences” may be valid in principle. Over 200 comments appeared on the prior thread, including a fair amount of back and forth between Barry, Elizabeth and me, all of which may be worth reviewing for those who are interested. However, the primary takeaway from that thread is that we need another back-to-basics primer on intelligent design – specifically, what the design inference is and how it works. Yes, I know regular readers have a great Read More ›

Yes, animals have minds. No, they are not people. From Heather Dockray at Mashable: Earlier this week, a photo began circulating on the Internet that featured three predictably adorable kangaroos. The story, as many news organizations projected it, featured a male kangaroo, reaching out to hold his dying kangaroo wife, who just wanted to embrace her baby. As a story, it had the key, painterly, elements of viral triptych: a cute animal + a sad death + a tiny, human-like gesture. For 24 hours, it dominated the Internet, grabbed our headlines, and stole our desperate little hearts. It was also completely and totally wrong, as Mashable reported. After the picture went viral, scientists began to speak up. No, this wasn’t Read More ›

Focus on supporting stable, long term gains. From editor Jonathan Gitlin at Ars Technica, responding to the recent U.S. State of the Union (SOTU) address: Science needs steady sustainable boring growth, not flashy ill-formed initiatives. Done correctly, history shows that lofty scientific and engineering challenges can work. The actual moonshot for example, or the Human Genome Project. Both of those had one thing in common: a clear and well-defined goal at the beginning. “Before 1970, fly someone to the Moon and return them safely.” “Sequence the entire human genome.” But Nebulous concepts like “end all cancer” get good applause—curing all cancers is right up there with sunshine and puppies. But such concepts are effectively meaningless. Hey, reality check: There isn’t Read More ›

The United Methodist Church (UMC), whose motto is “Open Minds, Open Hearts, Open Doors” has barred Discovery Institute from having an information table in the exhibit hall at their upcoming quadrennial General Conference this May. After submitting an application to be in the exhibit hall per the established process, Discovery Institute was informed that they would not allowed to be present as the Institute’s position on ID was at odds with the UMC’s Statement on Evolution and Intelligent Design which says in part that the UMC opposes “…the introduction of any faith-based theories such as Creationism or Intelligent Design into the science curriculum of our public schools.” It should be readily clear that when this language was drafted back in Read More ›