Monthly Archives: February 2016
Engineering a life form to fail
| February 29, 2016 | Posted by News under Cell biology, News |
Swarmbots: Apparently, it takes ingenuity to get a life form to fail, but the trick may come in handy. From Duke University: Duke University bioengineers design cells that die if they leave the confines of their capsule Duke University researchers have engineered microbes that can’t run away from home; those that do will quickly die […]
Quantum Darwinism = Darwinism as woo-woo?
| February 29, 2016 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Culture, Darwinism, News |
From science writer Neel S. Patel at Inverse: “Survival of the fittest” is bigger than just evolutionary biology. You bet. The selfish gene even gives us medical advice. The word Darwinism has become a synecdoche for all the mechanisms implied by the Malthusian concept of “survival of the fittest” — the notion that the strongest […]
The selfish gene: Stay in bed if you have a cold
| February 29, 2016 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Evolutionary psychology, Natural selection, News |
If you have a cold. From ScienceDaily: Research suggests that our selfish genes are behind the aches, fever The symptoms that accompany illness appear to negatively affect one’s chance of survival and reproduction. So why would this phenomenon persist? Symptoms, say the scientists, are not an adaptation that works on the level of the individual. […]
Seasonal affective disorder (SAD)? No, brain works better in winter, researchers say
| February 29, 2016 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, News, Psychology |
From stalwart of science New York Mag: But scientists are coming to realize that this might not be quite right. A pair of new studies challenge many of the popular assumptions about the psychological effects of wintertime, suggesting that we should look at the season in a new, brighter light. The weather might be gray […]
FYI-FTR: On Ehrlich’s unified overview of numbers great and small (HT: DS)
| February 29, 2016 | Posted by kairosfocus under FYI-FTR, Logic and First Principles of right reason, Mathematics, Science, worldview issues/foundations and society, Selective Hyperskepticism, Stirring the pot (tentative thoughts/explorations) |
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Over the past month in response to a suggestion on an infinite temporal past (and the counter argument that such is dubious), there has been quite an exchange on numbers. In that context, it is worth headlining FYI/FTR, HT DS, a unification with continuum — oops, link — based on surreals discussed by Ehrlich: where […]
Feet to the fire: A response to Dr. Stacy Trasancos
| February 28, 2016 | Posted by vjtorley under Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Religion |
Stacy Trasancos, a homeschooling mother of seven with a Ph.D. in chemistry and an M.A. in Dogmatic Theology who is an Adjunct Professor at Holy Apostles College and Seminary, has penned a thoughtful essay over at the Catholic One Faith blog titled, Does Science Prove God Exists? Her answer, in a nutshell, is that while […]
Moralistic gods explain growth of human society?
| February 28, 2016 | Posted by News under Human evolution, News, Religion |
Abstract from Nature: Moralistic gods, supernatural punishment and the expansion of human sociality Since the origins of agriculture, the scale of human cooperation and societal complexity has dramatically expanded. This fact challenges standard evolutionary explanations of prosociality because well-studied mechanisms of cooperation based on genetic relatedness, reciprocity and partner choice falter as people increasingly engage […]
Information jumps again: some more facts, and thoughts, about Prickle 1 and taxonomically restricted genes.
| February 28, 2016 | Posted by gpuccio under Genetics, Genomics, Intelligent Design |
My previous post about information jumps, based on the example of the Prickle 1 protein, has generated a very interesting discussion, still ongoing. I add here some more thoughts about an aspect which has not been really analyzed in the first post, and which can probably contribute to the discussion. I will give here […]
Can ID be an argument for religion?
| February 28, 2016 | Posted by News under Biology, Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, News, Religion |
This is philosopher and photographer Laszlo Bencze’s view: I have just finished my fifth reading of Robert J. Spitzer’s book, New Proofs for the Existence of God. In this book Spitzer set himself the task of exploring how far natural theology can take us towards understanding God. The first part of the book deals purely […]
A guide to the Meyer Marshall debate, with notes
| February 27, 2016 | Posted by News under Cambrian explosion, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, News |
From Sean Pitman (2016): Late last year there was an interesting debate on Premier Christian Radio, “Unbelievable” with Justin Brierley between Stephen Meyer and Charles Marshall over Meyer’s latest book,Darwin’s Doubt. Marshall, a UC Berkeley paleontologist, had published a review of the book in the journal Science a few months earlier and this was Meyer’s […]
Excerpt from A Brief History of Creation features Carl Woese
| February 27, 2016 | Posted by News under Cell biology, News, Origin Of Life |
“One of the world’s most important biological thinkers.” From Scientific American: Excerpted from A Brief History of Creation by Bill Mesler and H. James Cleaves III. Copyright © 2016 by Bill Mesler and H. James Cleaves III. With permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. The year is 3,500,000,000 […]
Dan Graur’s 12 principles of Evolutionary Truth
| February 27, 2016 | Posted by News under 'Junk DNA', Darwinism, Evolution, News |
An earlier story here today mentioned Dan Graur: Plagiarism in science texts, not just journals? (Maybe, with enough publicity, a public explanation will be forthcoming…) From Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution Is True blog, we learn the twelve truths of Darwinian evolutionary biology, and some other stuff as well: Dan Graur, who is Professor of Biology […]
Natural selection has limits? Who knew?
| February 27, 2016 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Natural selection, News |
From Trends in Genetics: Evolutionary theory predicts that factors such as a small population size or low recombination rate can limit the action of natural selection. The emerging field of comparative population genomics offers an opportunity to evaluate these hypotheses. However, classical theoretical predictions assume that populations are at demographic equilibrium. This assumption is likely […]
Plagiarism in science text, not just journals?
| February 27, 2016 | Posted by News under News, Peer review |
From David Morrison at Phylonetworks: Some of you may have noticed the recent publication of the following book: Dan Graur (2016) Molecular and Genome Evolution. Sinauer Associates. Chapter 6 is of interest to the readers of this blog, being entitled “Reticulate evolution and phylogenetic networks”. Unfortunately, as originally published, not all of the figures in […]
New at MercatorNet
| February 27, 2016 | Posted by News under Culture, Media, News |
From O’Leary for News’ other blog, Connecting… Apple vs. FBI: Free internet is at stake. Few analysts agree with the FBI that it would end with just this one case. It can’t. Online medical information: Help, hype, or harm? A new coinage, “cyberchondria,” refers to the worry some people experience from overdosing on medical information […]
Foundational Philosophical Alternatives
| February 26, 2016 | Posted by DLH under Atheism, Big Bang, Books of interest, Cosmology, ID Foundations, Intelligent Design, Of General Interest, Origin Of Life, Philosophy, Science, worldview issues/foundations and society |
Criminologist and former atheist Mike Adams summarizes the three foundational philosophical alternatives to the Cosmos: First, we can say that it came into being spontaneously – in other words, that it came to be without a cause. Second, we can say that it has always been. Third, we can posit some cause outside the physical […]
Academic drivel is alive and you fund it
| February 26, 2016 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, News, Peer review |
If you live under the sort of enlightened regime that funds high education. From Prospect: Six years ago I submitted a paper for a panel, “On the Absence of Absences” that was to be part of an academic conference later that year—in August 2010. Then, and now, I had no idea what the phrase “absence […]
Are viruses nature’s perfect machine? Or alive?
| February 26, 2016 | Posted by News under Cell biology, News, Origin Of Life |
Machine, argues Josh Bloom at American Council for Science and Health: I recently wrote that viruses do not come even close to meeting the standards that are generally accepted requirements in defining what “alive” means. But they do have a huge impact on living organisms, because they are miracles of evolution — microbes that exist […]
Neanderthal gene legacy goes beyond stupid
| February 26, 2016 | Posted by News under Human evolution, News |
Further to “Ginning up dangers of Neanderthal genes,” from The Scientist: “They’ve looked at huge databases of medical records to see if there are traits that correlate with the presence of particular genes from Neanderthals and have found a number of them,” said anthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin who was not involved […]
Ginning up dangers of Neanderthal genes
| February 26, 2016 | Posted by News under Human evolution, News |
From New Scientist: Tony Capra at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and his colleagues studied an anonymised database containing medical records and genetic data from more than 28,000 people of European descent. Europeans retain some Neanderthal DNA, though the amount and the exact parts they have vary between individuals. They used information from the Neanderthal […]
