From Retraction Watch: Author with seven retractions makes Thomson Reuters list of top scientists — plus another twist A cancer researcher who recently retired from MD Anderson Cancer Center — and also recently lost seven papers from one journal following a multi-year investigation — is one of the world’s top scientists, according to a new ranking. … We have a long history with Aggarwal — after he told us in 2012 that MD Anderson was investigating his work, he later threatened to sue us for reporting on the case. But there’s another twist to the story, and that’s the identity of the person stepping into Aggarwal’s endowed chair position (the Ransom Horne, Jr. Professorship for Cancer Research) at MD Anderson. Read More ›

Dumps photosynthesis. From New Scientist: A newly discovered Japanese plant spends most of its life hidden underground and steals nutrients from fungi rather than getting its energy from the sun. … The plant’s stem is about 3-9 centimetres long and has between nine and 15 purple star-shaped flowers, which push up above the ground. Suetsugu has named it Sciaphila yakushimensis after the island. The plant can’t photosynthesise and, like other mycoheterotrophs, steals the carbon it needs from a fungal host. The parasitic plant attracts strands of mycorrhizal fungus into its many hairy roots and then feeds off fungus growing inside the roots. … Because it doesn’t rely on photosynthesising the sun’s light for its energy, it can stay underground, reducing Read More ›

From Science: As it turns out, our universe seems to get it just about right. The existing cosmological constant means the rate of expansion is large enough that it minimizes planets’ exposure to gamma ray bursts, but small enough to form lots of hydrogen-burning stars around which life can exist. (A faster expansion rate would make it hard for gas clouds to collapse into stars.) Jimenez says the expansion of the universe played a bigger role in creating habitable worlds than he expected. “It was surprising to me that you do need the cosmological constant to clear out the region and make it more suburbanlike,” he says. Beyond what they reveal about the potential for life in our galaxy and Read More ›

From Neuroscience News: Monkeys Drive Wheelchairs Using Only Their Thoughts Neuroscientists at Duke Health have developed a brain-machine interface (BMI) that allows primates to use only their thoughts to navigate a robotic wheelchair. The BMI uses signals from hundreds of neurons recorded simultaneously in two regions of the monkeys’ brains that are involved in movement and sensation. As the animals think about moving toward their goal — in this case, a bowl containing fresh grapes — computers translate their brain activity into real-time operation of the wheelchair. The interface, described in the March 3 issue of the online journal Scientific Reports, demonstrates the future potential for people with disabilities who have lost most muscle control and mobility due to quadriplegia Read More ›

Except for losses. From Discovery: A fossil of a 520-million-year-old animal is so well preserved that its individual nerve fibers are still visible, according to a new study on the crustacean-like creature that once lived in southern China. The fossil represents the oldest and most detailed central nervous system ever found, reports the study, which is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. More. The animal is a Cambrian life form, Chengjiangocaris kunmingensis, considered “an early ancestor of modern insects, spiders and crustaceans,” and its nerve chord is “similar to the spinal cord that we and many other organisms have today. Bead-like ganglia, or bundles of nerve cells, controlled the animal’s single pair of walking legs.” Read More ›

From Templeton: Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth who has spent decades bringing spiritual insight to the public conversation through mass media, popular lectures and more than two dozen books, has been awarded the 2016 Templeton Prize. … He also boldly defends the compatibility of religion and science, a response to those who consider them necessarily separate and distinct. “Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean,” he wrote in his book, The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning.More. Naturally, we wondered, so from our files, we found: Britain’s chief rabbi on the Brit riots: Restore civil Read More ›

From Detecting Design: Now, it is true that mitochondrial organelles are quite unique and very interesting. Unlike any other organelle, except for chloroplasts, mitochondria appear to originate only from other mitochondria. They contain some of their own DNA, which is usually, but not always, circular – like circular bacterial DNA (there are also many organisms that have linear mitochondrial chromosomes with eukaryotic-style telomeres). Mitochondria also have their own transcriptional and translational machinery to decode DNA and messenger RNA and produce proteins. Also, mitochondrial ribosomes and transfer RNA molecules are similar to those found in bacteria, as are some of the components of their membranes. In 1970, these and other similar observations led Dr. Lynn Margulis to propose an extracellular origin Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Up until now, a number of theories have sought to explain how cells came to acquire mitochondria [power plants]. Although there is consensus as to the “how” ?the first mitochondria must have been a bacterium that entered another, and remained there, becoming part of the cell? the “when” has so far been unclear. Some scientists advocated an early incorporation of mitochondria, and considered that step as the first necessary to begin advancing toward eukaryotic cells as they are known today. Other theories proposed a later inclusion of mitochondria, as a more complex host cell could favor the entry of another cell and that cell’s permanence within its interior. Now, predoctoral scientist Alexandros Pitis and ICREA research professor and Read More ›

From the New York Times: DNA Under the Scope, and a Forensic Tool Under a Cloud Marina Stajic worked for nearly three decades as director of the forensic toxicology lab at the medical examiner’s office in New York City. Last week Dr.. Stajic, 66, filed a lawsuit against the city, claiming she had been forced into retirement last year in part because of a disagreement with her superiors over the accuracy of certain DNA tests. There is more at stake here than Dr. Stajic’s retirement. The cutting-edge technique at the center of this legal dispute, called low copy number DNA analysis, has transformed not just police work, but also a range of scientific fields including cancer biology, in vitro fertilization, Read More ›

Multiverse skeptic and mathematician Peter Woit vs. multiverse activistSean Carroll on bending the rules to get the multiverse accepted without conventional evidence: From Not Even Wrong: Beyond Experiment: Why the scientific method may be old hat This week’s New Scientist has an article by Jim Baggott and Daniel Cossins entitled Beyond Experiment: Why the scientific method may be old hat, which deals with the recent controversy over attempts to excuse the failure of string theory by invoking the multiverse. The article (unfortunately behind a paywall) does a good job of describing the nature of the controversy: what do you do when it becomes clear your theory can’t be tested? Do you follow the conventional scientific norms, give up on it Read More ›

From Vox: For some reason, the scientists decided the ̊world wasn’t ready for them. So the tardigrades, and the moss they were found in, were wrapped in paper, placed in plastic baggies, and locked away in a -20 degrees Celsius freezer. There they remained — frozen and forgotten — for more than 30 years. This sounds like the start of a horror movie. But be assured: When the tardigrades unfroze in May 2014, they did not seek vengeance upon humanity for their imprisonment. Instead, they moseyed around on a plate of agar gel like nothing had happened. And then they reproduced. More. See also: Water bear’s hybrid genome now disputed Follow UD News at Twitter!

From The Conversation: Mysterious chimpanzee behaviour may be evidence of ‘sacred’ rituals … What we saw on this camera was exhilarating – a large male chimp approaches our mystery tree and pauses for a second. He then quickly glances around, grabs a huge rock and flings it full force at the tree trunk. … But what we discovered during our now-published study wasn’t a random, one-off event, it was a repeated activity with no clear link to gaining food or status – it could be a ritual. We searched the area and found many more sites where trees had similar markings and in many places piles of rocks had accumulated inside hollow tree trunks – reminiscent of the piles of Read More ›

Multi Scale Modeling of Chromatin and Nucleosomes

Well, that’s one way of looking at it. From New Scientist: Some thought it was impossible. But a population of stickleback fish that breed in the same streams is splitting into two separate species before our eyes, and at rapid speeds. Three-spine sticklebacks were introduced to Lake Constance in Switzerland around 150 years ago – a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. But since then, the fish have begun splitting into two separate types: one that lives in the main lake (pictured above left, female top, male in breeding colours below), and another that lives in the streams that flow into it (above right). The main lake dwellers are bigger, with longer spines and tougher armour. In theory, these Read More ›

The list and scope of presenters at the Alternatives to Methodological Naturalism conference continues to grow. The conference committee is very pleased with the response to the conference so far. Register today to be a part of it!
Read More ›