I understand if Mr. Arrington needs to remove this post. I’ve done what I needed to do here. Thanks. [post removed] Barry:  Thank you for your understanding WJM.  This is not our focus here.

From Jennifer Ouellette at Quanta: The mere mention of “quantum consciousness” makes most physicists cringe, as the phrase seems to evoke the vague, insipid musings of a New Age guru. But if a new hypothesis proves to be correct, quantum effects might indeed play some role in human cognition. Matthew Fisher, a physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, raised eyebrows late last year when he published a paper in Annals of Physics proposing that the nuclear spins of phosphorus atoms could serve as rudimentary “qubits” in the brain — which would essentially enable the brain to function like a quantum computer. … isher’s hypothesis faces the same daunting obstacle that has plagued microtubules: a phenomenon called quantum decoherence. Read More ›

From astrophysicist Paul Sutter at Space.com: An unusually strong signal from a sun-like star. A repeated pattern that seems too precise to be natural. Bleeps and bloops from unknown sources with head-scratching signatures. Sure, there’s a ton of stuff in space that could potentially maybe kind-of-sort-of create those signals, but could this … be it? Could this be the key piece of evidence that answers one of the ultimate existential questions? Are we alone? No serious astronomer ever wants to rush out and blurt, “Hey, everyone! I’ve found aliens!” But at the same time, there’s a strong desire to get your name in the history books. So when these signals pop up, you get lots of shrugging and hemming and Read More ›

From math and computer science writer Kevin Hartnett at Quanta: Over the last decade physicists and mathematicians have been exploring a surprising correspondence that has the potential to breathe new life into the venerable Feynman diagram and generate far-reaching insights in both fields. It has to do with the strange fact that the values calculated from Feynman diagrams seem to exactly match some of the most important numbers that crop up in a branch of mathematics known as algebraic geometry. These values are called “periods of motives,” and there’s no obvious reason why the same numbers should appear in both settings. Indeed, it’s as strange as it would be if every time you measured a cup of rice, you observed Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Those with both rare and common types of autism spectrum disorder share a similar set of epigenetic modifications in the brain, according to a study. More than 68% of individuals with different types of autism spectrum disorder show evidence of the same pattern of a chemical modification of the protein scaffold around which DNA wraps. The findings suggest that a single global epigenetic pattern affecting shared molecular pathways in the brain could underlie diverse manifestations of this psychiatric disease. “We find epigenetic changes that are present in most patients with autism spectrum disorder, or ASD,” says co-senior study author Shyam Prabhakar of the Genome Institute of Singapore. “This suggests that, despite tremendous heterogeneity in the primary causes of Read More ›

From Suzan Mazur at Huffington Post on the rethinking evolution meeting earlier this month: The event would have benefited from someone in the wings with a hook restraining speakers who insisted on relying on the mantra of natural selection to fill in the blanks of their science. Repeated references to the term became almost comical. Sir Patrick Bateson finally came to the rescue, cautioning against overuse of the “metaphor,” saying further that “natural selection is not an agent.” In his defense of the meeting, principal organizer Denis Noble told me it was amazing the event happened at all because the Royal Society wanted to cancel it. Ten of the 26 presenters were part of the John Templeton Foundation-funded Extended Synthesis Read More ›

Researcher: With cell densities of over 1,000 per square millimeter and a diversity of producers and consumers, these microfossils represent a functioning terrestrial ecosystem, not just a few stray cells. From ScienceDaily: “Life was not only present but thriving in soils of the early Earth about two thirds of the way back to its formation from the solar nebula,” Retallack said. The origin of the solar system — and Earth — occurred some 4.6 billion years ago. The study outlines a microbiome of at least five different kinds of microfossils recognized from their size, shape and isotopic compositions. The largest and most distinctive microfossils are spindle-shaped hollow structures of mold-like actinobacteria, still a mainly terrestrial group of decomposers that are Read More ›

Despite being an ID advocate for several years now (and having an authors account on this forum), I haven’t really taken the time to put pen to paper and write about it, apart from a few lengthy exchanges I had with a close friend and critic of ID. He has since stepped away from the online world, and so the exchange has ended. You can still view my responses to him here, here, here, here, and here. I also published one article where I highlighted various atheists and agnostics who are critical of neo-Darwinism and supportive of ID here. The last thing I wrote on the subject was two years ago now, however this last year I’ve been wishing to start up a Read More ›

Comprehensive for now. From ScienceDaily: One of the great mysteries in biology is how the many different cell types that make up our bodies are derived from a single cell and from one DNA sequence, or genome. We have learned a lot from studying the human genome, but have only partially unveiled the processes underlying cell determination. The identity of each cell type is largely defined by an instructive layer of molecular annotations on top of the genome — the epigenome — which acts as a blueprint unique to each cell type and developmental stage. Unlike the genome the epigenome changes as cells develop and in response to changes in the environment. Defects in the factors that read, write, and Read More ›

FromScienceDaily: Scientists studying the Chicxulub crater have shown how large asteroid impacts deform rocks in a way that may produce habitats for early life. Around 65 million years ago a massive asteroid crashed into the Gulf of Mexico causing an impact so huge that the blast and subsequent knock-on effects wiped out around 75 per cent of all life on Earth, including most of the dinosaurs. … Porous rocks provide niches for simple organisms to take hold, and there would also be nutrients available in the pores, from circulating water that would have been heated inside the Earth’s crust. Early Earth was constantly bombarded by asteroids, and the team have inferred that this bombardment must have also created other rocks Read More ›

This weekend, someone shared the e-YES joke now making the rounds with me, and I found it on YouTube: [youtube 0Al_V7fsL7g] It seems to be just a prank at first, but on a second look, it shows us how framing distorts perceptions and is potentially quite manipulative. As we consider the various issues now before our civilisation, let us ponder the framing challenge and let us ask ourselves how we may be being manipulated with more serious cases than e-YES vs EYE-s. For instance, we have cases of objectors to design theory who regularly come here and post long ASCII-coded text strings while proclaiming they see no evidence that warrants the design inference on seeing FSCO/I or the more general Read More ›

From Nick Allen at Telegraph: US President-elect Donald Trump is set to slash Nasa’s budget for monitoring climate change and instead set a goal of sending humans to the edge of the solar system by the end of the century, and possibly back to the moon. … According to Bob Walker, who has advised Mr Trump on space policy, Nasa has been reduced to “a logistics agency concentrating on space station resupply and politically correct environmental monitoring”. … Its funding has gone up 50 per cent under President Barack Obama. At the same time Mr Obama proposed cutting support for deep space exploration by $840 million next year. More. Well, if They’re out there, We’ll find them. See also: Rob Read More ›

From Andre Mitchell at Christian Today: According to a report on PR News Wire, the Discovery Institute conducted a study on nearly 3,700 American adults, including self-identified agnostics and atheists, to assess if belief on evolutionary theory really has an effect on religious belief. … The respondents were specifically given a list of ideas related to science and nature, and were asked to identify which of these ideas “have made the existence of God less likely, more likely, or have had no impact on your belief in the existence of God.” Some 45 percent of the respondents agreed with the statement that “evolution shows that human beings are not fundamentally different from other animals.” Another 43 percent also believed that Read More ›

  The millions were just “other losses,” of course. Simon Ings’ Stalin and the Scientists: a History of Triumph and Tragedy examines what happened to physics and biology under Stalin: Scientists throughout history, from Galileo to today’s experts on climate change, have often had to contend with politics in their pursuit of knowledge. But in the Soviet Union, where the ruling elites embraced, patronized, and even fetishized science like never before, scientists lived their lives on a knife edge. The Soviet Union had the best-funded scientific establishment in history. Scientists were elevated as popular heroes and lavished with awards and privileges. But if their ideas or their field of study lost favor with the elites, they could be exiled, imprisoned, Read More ›

From Toby Walsh at New Scientist: In December 2014, Stephen Hawking told the BBC that “the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race… It would take off on its own, and redesign itself at an ever increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.” Last year, he followed that up by saying that AI is likely “either the best or worst thing ever to happen to humanity”.More. You’d have to pay to find out why Walsh thinks it won’t happen (paywall) . Some of us think it won’t happen because other things will happen first. It’s one thing to want a robotic snow shovel but consider, Read More ›