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 ›

From Darren Curnoe at RealClearScience: Geneticists have found clear evidence that the choices people make can have profound impacts on the evolution of entire populations, and ultimately, our species as well. Some striking examples have been found like that both women and men are currently under selection for earlier age at first birth across a wide range of societies. Other work has shown that women are under selection for later age at last birth in some pre-industrial groups, but a later age at menopause in some post-industrial populations. The upshot is that in some groups the reproductive span seems to be getting longer for both women and men. Yet other research has shown that women are under selection for increased Read More ›

From Russell Brandom at Verge: While some predict mass unemployment or all-out war between humans and artificial intelligence, others foresee a less bleak future. Professor Manuela Veloso, head of the machine learning department at Carnegie Mellon University, envisions a future in which humans and intelligent systems are inseparable, bound together in a continual exchange of information and goals that she calls “symbiotic autonomy.” In Veloso’s future, it will be hard to distinguish human agency from automated assistance — but neither people nor software will be much use without the other. Veloso is already testing out the idea on the CMU campus, building roving, segway-shaped robots called “cobots” to autonomously escort guests from building to building and ask for human help Read More ›

From Mindy Weisberger at LiveScience: And scientists recently discovered a spider that uses a unique masquerade to hide in plain sight. It is the only known spider to have a body that bears an uncanny resemblance to a dangling, partly dried-up leaf. The species is not yet named. Apparently, mimicry is much more common in insects than in arachnids like spiders, of which only about 100 species are mimics. This is the only known leaf-haped one. Leaves close by the female spider on the branch were attached with silk, which hinted that she had placed them there deliberately to further camouflage herself. However, additional observations would be necessary to confirm this behavior, Kuntner told Live Science. More. Well, maybe spiders Read More ›

From Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus at Stat News: As it stands now, according to a new study, the pool of peer reviewers is able to keep up with the massive number of new papers published each year in biomedicine — more than 1 million, and climbing. … As we and others have argued, peer review is a deeply flawed system, but one that deserves fixing, not scrapping. The latest study does nothing to change that view. It does, however, point to a few simple changes that could go a long way toward shoring up the structure. More. They recommend paying reviewers for their time, fewer papers, and different forms of peer review, for example, sites like PubPeer.com and PubMed Read More ›

From Johnny Bartlett at the Blyth Institute: Description of the organization and its target audience We do research and education in biology, engineering, and computer science focusing on new avenues of research. This is for a book investigating alternative approaches to scientific and academic discovery and analysis. Content details Description We need a cover for the book “Naturalism and Its Alternatives in Scientific Methodologies”. The book is the result of a conference we held earlier this year. There is a template for the cover attached. US$499. A previous book that we published is this one – https://www.amazon.com/Engineering-…283863/ref There is no need to match anything about this cover, but I thought you should see what won the last competition. I usually Read More ›

From Alice Klein at New Scientist: A crafted piece of bone found in Australia looks as if it were designed to be worn in the nasal septum – making it the oldest bone jewellery belonging to Homo sapiens to be identified anywhere in the world. The finding shows that the first humans to reach Australia 50,000 years ago were as culturally advanced as their counterparts in Africa and Europe. More. Why are people who are so willing to believe nonsense about chimpanzees surprised when humans turn out to have been much more sophisticated much earlier than we had supposed? Could there be an agenda that does not rely on evidence here? See also: Code written in Stone Age art? Australia: Sophisticated Read More ›