Suzan Mazur writes to say that her new book, on the Royal Society rethinking evolution is now available: “The test case for organized science’s ability to deal empirically with evolution.” – Microbiologist James Shapiro (commenting on the Royal Society public evolution summit) Suzan Mazur is the author of three previous books: The Altenberg 16: An Exposé of the Evolution Industry, The Origin of Life Circus: A How To Make Life Extravaganza, and The Paradigm Shifters: Overthrowing ‘the Hegemony of the Culture of Darwin’. Her reports have appeared in the Financial Times, The Economist, Forbes, Newsday, Archaeology, Astrobiology, Connoisseur, Omni, Huffington Post, Progressive Review, CounterPunch, Scoop Media and other publications, as well as on PBS, CBC and MBC. She has been Read More ›

rvb8, one of our regular self-described atheistic materialists, makes some pretty interesting assertions, considering he admits he is not a scientist: That is where you stumble, because chance and the interaction of forces and matter can explain it. I’m with Mr Dawkins there; 99% sure, and am quite happy for you to build faith upon the remaining 1%. the building blocks of life came from the first stars, and continue to be produced by Super Novas, and are ubiquitous throughout the universe. The energy required to start this process of trial and error combinations of these chemicals and water, came from the sun, the heat of the earth, impacting astroids, electrical storms etc Wikipedia has an excellent article on Miller/Urey. Read More ›

 We’ve written a lot lately about the problems with peer review. So has Nature. The good news is that a number of innovative approaches are being tried. There is doubtless a winner or two entering the field; best clock ’em all. PeerJ offers peer reviewer matching. Its aims & scope: 1 PeerJ is an Open Access, peer-reviewed, scholarly journal. It considers articles in the Biological Sciences, Medical Sciences, and Health Sciences. 2 PeerJ does not publish in the Physical Sciences, the Mathematical Sciences, the Social Sciences, or the Humanities (except where articles in those areas have clear applicability to the core areas of Biological, Medical or Health sciences). 3 PeerJ only considers Research Articles. It does not accept Literature Review Articles, Hypothesis Papers, Read More ›

From Space Telescope.org: The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field— and more The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field (2012) combines all previous observations of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field Published in 2012, the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field is not a new set of observations, but rather a combination of many existing exposures (over 2000 of them) into one image. Combining the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field – Infrared, and many other images of the same small spot of sky taken over almost 10 years, the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field pushes the limit even further. It is made up of a total of 22 days of exposure time (and 50 days of observing time, as the telescope can only observe Read More ›

No, says paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Steven Stanley of the University of Hawaii, arguing that the extinction rate was closer to 81% than 96%. From Phys.org: The Permian-Triassic mass extinction lasted for approximately 60,000 years, and was undoubtedly a tough time for the creatures that lived back then—prior research has suggested that there was an unusually large amount of volcanic activity and also possibly multiple large asteroid impacts, which together caused the planet to warm, and also resulted in an increase in ocean acidification—the conditions were so harsh that many species on land and in the sea went extinct. But, Stanley argues, it was not bad enough to wipe out most marine life entirely, as some have suggested. He points Read More ›

From Anna Azvolinsky at The Scientist: Multiple stressful events during childhood may have a greater impact on telomere length in adulthood compared to stressful events faced during adulthood. While the accumulation of stressful events throughout life increases the chance of having shorter telomeres later in life, adversities experienced during childhood appeared to have the greatest effect on these chromosome caps, according to a study published today (October 3) in PNAS. Each additional adverse event during childhood was associated with an 11 percent-increased odd of shorter telomeres—a marker of cellular aging—past age 50, the authors reported. The findings “offer new insights into what types of stressors may potentially be most harmful in impacting biological aging markers,” Judith Carroll, who studies the Read More ›

The Kingdom of Speech From E. J. Spode at 3 AM Magazine (“Whatever it is, we’re against it”), a longish review of Tom Wolfe’s The Kingdom of Speech: Because, in this day and age, it isn’t about finding the truth; it’s about winning the news cycle. This attitude is pristinely reflected in a review of the book in Canada’s Globe and Mail. “Wolfe is a reporter and an entertainer, an opinionated raconteur rather than a scientist, and that is why we will always report on his jocular provocations. And if they serve as an excuse to explain what universal grammar was in the first place – as it has done – then Chomsky should be thrilled.” Right. Because what could Read More ›

A reader draws our attention to Prof. Eric Arnoy’s comments at Calvin College, BiochemistryII: The reduction of nitrogen to ammonia, known as nitrogen fixing, is vital to agriculture: N2 + 3H2 → 2NH3 The bacteria that perform this job for plants are symbionts with th plants, exchanging ammonia for energy. The plant provides leghemoglobin to bind the oxygen. Now, here’s the interesting part: Leghemoglobin is part of the globin protein family and resembles the mammalian oxygen-binding protein myoglobin in structure, though the sequences differ greatly. But how is that? Arnoy writes, Furthermore, myoglobin is not found in plants, so it would be a stretch to suggest that leghemoglobin arose from myoglobin. Instead, what we see here is a wonderful example Read More ›

More info at Evolution News & Views: In a New Documentary, Origin, Paul Nelson and Ann Gauger Confront the Enigma of Chemical Evolution Materialist accounts of origins face a dual challenge — biological evolution and chemical evolution. The latter describes the problem of generating life from nonlife in the hostile environment of the early Earth. To call that problem overwhelming, given the resources of matter and energy alone — in other words, blind churning — doesn’t begin to do it justice. It doesn’t even begin to begin. OriginDVD-Cover__44959.1473718956.1280.1280.jpgThat’s the takeaway from an effective new documentary from Illustra Media, Origin: Design, Chance and the First Life on Earth, featuring Discovery Institute biologist Ann Gauger and philosopher of biology Paul Nelson. Stephen Read More ›

From Todd Wood at his blog: News articles last week in El País and New Scientist report the discovery of a Neandertal infant burial in an ancient cave about 58 miles north of Madrid, Spain. … The abstract describes the discovery of Des-Cubierta cave in 2009 and the subsequent excavation of Late Pleistocene remains of a Neandertal child. From Richard Gray at New Scientist The blackened hearths surround a spot where the jaw and six teeth of a Neanderthal toddler were found in the stony sediment. Puzzlingly, within each of these hearths was the horn or antler of a herbivore, apparently carefully placed there. In total, there were 30 horns from aurochs and bison as well as red deer antlers, Read More ›

From Richard Stone at Science: It’s unknown how many papers and theses are ginned up under false pretenses. In 2014, a member of Iran’s Academy of Sciences estimated that each year as many as 5000 theses—roughly 10% of all master’s and Ph.D. theses awarded in Iran—are bought from dealers. In a recent Google search, Behzad Ataie-Ashtiani, a civil engineering professor at Sharif University of Technology here who has shined a light on the practice (Science, 18 March, p. 1273), says he found 330,000 links to paper sellers in Farsi. (paywall) – Science 16 Sep 2016: Vol. 353, Issue 6305, pp. 1197 DOI: 10.1126/science.353.6305.1197More. Of course, the problem is slightly different from the one we discussed with China because the papers Read More ›

From Julien d’Huy at Scientific American: Although the animals and the constellations may differ, the basic structure of the story does not. These sagas all belong to a family of myths known as the Cosmic Hunt that spread far and wide in Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas among people who lived more than 15,000 years ago. Every version of the Cosmic Hunt shares a core story line—a man or an animal pursues or kills one or more animals, and the creatures are changed into constellations. Folklorists, anthropologists, ethnologists and linguists have long puzzled over why complex mythical stories that surface in cultures widely separated in space and time are strikingly similar. In recent years a promising scientific approach to Read More ›

From Brian Clark Howard at National Geographic News: Published in the journal Science Advances this week, a new study reported that our surrounding area of stars, gas, and dust—called the Local Arm, Orion Spur, or Orion–Cygnus Arm—is actually about 20,000 light-years long. The immediate implications are that the galaxy is actually a little more symmetrical and regular than scientists previously thought, says one of the study’s co-authors, Mark J. Reid of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Although a better understanding of our galaxy’s structure doesn’t necessarily mean gravity or other forces acting on us are different from what we expect, it could help us better understand large-scale features in the future, notes Reid. More. See also: Cosmologist Luke Barnes on Read More ›

From Fiona Macdonald at ScienceAlert: A Chinese government investigation has revealed that more than 80 percent of the data used in clinical trials of new pharmaceutical drugs have been “fabricated”. The report uncovered fraudulent behaviour at almost every level, and showed that some pharmaceutical companies had hidden or deleted records of potentially adverse side effects, and tampered with data that didn’t meet their desired outcomes.More. Odd way of putting things: As damning as this problem is for China’s scientists, they aren’t the only ones that are under more and more pressure to publish positive and “groundbreaking” results in order to keep their jobs. A study published earlier this month revealed that the enormous pressure on academics is acting like a Read More ›

Closing our religion coverage for the week (a bit late), over at ReligionNews.com, Emily McFarlane Miller reports that Mike McHargue tells us: ‘Science Mike’ McHargue: ‘Christians aren’t stupid, and atheists aren’t evil’ … What are some of the most compelling things you’ve found in your scientific studies that point you back to God? Probably the first thing would be how ideally suited the human brain is as a host for beliefs about God, the way belief seems to be relatively inevitable a consequence of human consciousness, and the way our brains tend to develop in healthy ways when we indulge that belief, especially in a God who is loving. Beyond that, as you learn more about cosmology and physics, particle Read More ›