From at Arunas Radzvilavicius at RealClearScience: A study published last month in Nature Microbiology suggests the last common ancestor of all living cells fed on hydrogen gas in a hot iron-rich environment, much like that within the vents. Advocates of the conventional theory have been sceptical that these findings should change our view of the origins of life. But the hydrothermal vent hypothesis, which is often described as exotic and controversial, explains how living cells evolved the ability to obtain energy, in a way that just wouldn’t have been possible in a primordial soup.More. In short, we have contradictory explanations but the vents are back in the news: See also: Hydrothermal vents spout life again at New Scientist Hydrothermal vent Read More ›

Abstract: In 1912, palaeontologist Arthur Smith Woodward and amateur antiquarian and solicitor Charles Dawson announced the discovery of a fossil that supposedly provided a link between apes and humans: Eoanthropus dawsoni (Dawson’s dawn man). The publication generated huge interest from scientists and the general public. However, ‘Piltdown man’s’ initial celebrity has long been overshadowed by its subsequent infamy as one of the most famous scientific frauds in history. Our re-evaluation of the Piltdown fossils using the latest scientific methods (DNA analyses, high-precision measurements, spectroscopy and virtual anthropology) shows that it is highly likely that a single orang-utan specimen and at least two human specimens were used to create the fake fossils. The modus operandi was found consistent throughout the assemblage Read More ›

From Mike Wall at Space.com: “For decades, we’ve known of four fundamental forces: gravitation, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces,” Feng added. “If confirmed by further experiments, this discovery of a possible fifth force would completely change our understanding of the universe, with consequences for the unification of forces and dark matter.” … … The Hungarians detected tantalizing evidence of a previously unknown particle just 30 times heavier than an electron — a result they published early this year. More. It would make a heck of a sci fi film See also: Dark matter skeptics wanted Follow UD News at Twitter!

From Sean Martin at  UK Express: Lead researcher Dr Sam Parnia said: “Contrary to perception, death is not a specific moment but a potentially reversible process that occurs after any severe illness or accident causes the heart, lungs and brain to cease functioning. “If attempts are made to reverse this process, it is referred to as ‘cardiac arrest’; however, if these attempts do not succeed it is called ‘death’.” Of the 2,060 patients from Austria, the US and the UK interviewed for the study who had survived cardiac arrest, almost 40 per cent said that they recall some form of awareness after being pronounced clinically dead. More. Natural death is usually a process, so such a finding should not seem surprising. Read More ›

From physicist Rob Sheldon: I think if you read the popular press, it would seem that we are making progress–we have to, because that’s what justifies all the spending, all the suppression, all the politics. But if you speak to the leading scientists of any field, if you read the peer-reviewed literature, if you attend the seminars, there is a deep depression falling over science. For progress is the goddess of materialism, the resplendent queen that shares the dais with the stern king, the one described by the end of Jacques Monod’s book “Chance and Necessity”: “Man at last knows that he is alone in the unfeeling immensity of the universe, out of which he emerged only by chance. Neither his Read More ›

Old news. Darwin noted that two centuries ago. From Agata Blaszczak-Boxe at New Scientist: New Caledonian crows have figured out how to move two things in one fell swoop. The adept tool users have been filmed inserting sticks into objects to transport both items at once – a feat that has never been seen in non-humans. More. No? Darwin wrote about that kind of thing in 1859. Here’s a book from 2007 that describes something similar. The fact that the speared object was a metal nut instead of something edible, like a grub, mainly suggests that the birds sense they are going to get fed somehow anyway. They are not entering the Metal Nut Age. But this is August and Read More ›

From a study of the impossibly ugly tomato hornworm: Eurekalert: Comparing the moth’s genes and genome to those from other insects revealed an intriguing peculiarity: “In many insects we know that genes often jump around from one location to another in their respective genomes”, described Dr Robert Waterhouse from the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and the University of Geneva, “but in moths and butterflies something seems to be reducing their freedom of movement”. Prof. Marian Goldsmith from the University of Rhode Island explained that “This exceptional conservation of gene order may be linked to the special structural properties of moth and butterfly chromosomes.” More. Free artsie education for nerds: A number of poems have been written about how ugly Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: A University of Adelaide study into New Zealand’s acanthisittid wrens has provided compelling evidence that, contrary to some suggestions, New Zealand was not completely submerged under the ocean around 21 to 25 million years ago. “Most surprisingly, we found that some of the wren species were only distantly related to each other, potentially sharing a common ancestor over 25 million years ago,” Dr Mitchell says. “Previously, researchers have suggested that New Zealand was completely submerged 21 to 25 million years ago, which implies that all of New Zealand’s unique plants and animals must have immigrated and diversified more recently than that time. … “But the ancient divergences we found among the wrens suggest that they have been resident Read More ›

From Philip Ball at Atlantic: The history of science has been distorted by a longstanding conviction that correct theories about nature are always the most elegant ones. … Occam’s razor was never meant for paring nature down to some beautiful, parsimonious core of truth. Because science is so difficult and messy, the allure of a philosophical tool for clearing a path or pruning the thickets is obvious. In their readiness to find spurious applications of Occam’s razor in the history of science, or to enlist, dismiss, or reshape the razor at will to shore up their preferences, scientists reveal their seduction by this vision. But they should resist it. The value of keeping assumptions to a minimum is cognitive, not Read More ›

Seversky set out the following challenge: Draw up two lists, the first being all the scientific and technological advances of the last two hundred years, say, that were based on [1] a naturalistic/materialistic/ physicalist metaphysics, [2] the second being a list of all such advances based on a teleological metaphysics. A simple comparison should reveal which has been the more prolific and productive approach. Interesting test. The answer is on list [1] there would be zero entries. On list [2] there would be all the scientific and technological advances of the last two hundred years. You see, Sev, many people spout materialism. No one actually conducts their lives, from moral choices to scientific research, as if it were true. Because Read More ›

In a previous post I demonstrated that no sane person acts as if materialism were true.  It later occurred to me that it is impossible to even speak as if materialism were true. Consider the following statement: “I believe materialism is true.” The statement implicitly affirms the following three things that are true only if monist materialism is false: Subject-object duality. There is a subject (the observer; i.e., the “I” in the statement) who perceives an object (the concept of materialism). Intentionality. A mental state exists that is directed toward some object.  Bags of chemicals do not have beliefs. Self-aware subjectivity as a declared reality. It is absurd to say the illusion of myself foisted on me by the chemicals Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: A new study that for the first time examined the internal anatomy of a fossil human relative’s heel bone, or calcaneus, shows greater similarities with gorillas than chimpanzees. … In doing this, the team revealed new insights into how our ancestors moved through and interacted with their environment approximately 2-2.5 million years ago. Similarities between the fossil from Sterkfontein and gorillas indicate that Australopithecus africanus, the species of human ancestor (or hominin) also represented by the Taung Child, or at least this individual member of the species, exhibited gorilla-like levels of joint mobility and structural reinforcement. Results of the new study were surprising because other recent studies of the australopithecine calcaneus, focusing on its external anatomy, have emphasised Read More ›

From his blog, Shadow of Oz, recounting an incident: “There was one major conservative who spoke during my freshman year . . . [he] was invited by my liberty-minded club to speak about the dangers of political correctness in academia . . . At the lecture, dozens of students shouted out and interrupted [him] to the point where he had to stop speaking in order for them to calm down. Eventually, a few students stood up and smeared fake blood on themselves, screaming that [he] represented hatred. The room fell to chaos for a solid five minutes and, while yelling expletives and making obscene hand gestures, the protesters left a beautiful mess of red paint for the custodial staff to Read More ›

I don’t want to survive. I want to live! – Captain McCrea Over the past several months, I’ve taken a new position at Truett McConnell University (TMU) as an Associate Professor of Microbiology. 1 I was attracted by what makes it different here. Virginia was a good season, but I sought to focus on closely mentoring students. TMU is unique because of its stances are uncommon in academia for the right reasons and from an Anabaptist heritage. No more non-overlapping magisteria During the 16th century, the state told everyone what to believe. The idea of separation of church and state is supposed to always let (y)our conscience be (y)our guide. Letting your conscience guide you began largely in the 16 Read More ›

In the 1980’s, some people’s lives were wrecked by false accusations made by children, people under hypnosis, etc., based on theories like “children don’t lie” or “therapy techniques can reveal truth.” Such theories were impervious to the middle ground approach: People may not be lying but that does not mean that the statements they are making are records of fact on which we should base our actions. From Julia Shaw’s guest blog at Scientific American: Just because you’re absolutely confident you remember something accurately doesn’t mean it’s true She quotes Elizabeth Loftus, a false memory researcher who played a key role in ending the late twentieth century witch hunt. According to Loftus: “The one take home message that I have Read More ›