2016

From ScienceDaily: Tweak in gene expression may have helped humans walk upright Now, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Huntsville, Alabama, have identified a change in gene expression between humans and primates that may have helped give us this edge when it comes to walking upright. And they did it by studying a tiny fish called the threespine stickleback that has evolved radically different skeletal structures to match environments around the world. … The threespine stickleback is remarkable in that it has evolved to have many different body structures to equip it for life in different parts of the world. … ue to changes in the regulatory DNA sequence near this Read More ›

From Tim Requarth at Aeon, But within modern organisms there is another clue to life’s origins, one that is more obscure than DNA but just as universal – the way cells harvest energy by shuffling around electrically charged molecules. This process goes by the mouthful ‘chemiosmosis’, and was first proposed in 1961 by the eccentric British biochemist Peter Mitchell. Chemiosmosis lacks the coded rigour of DNA, but that primal messiness might be exactly what makes it so revealing. Energy, Russell thinks, must have preceded anything resembling DNA or RNA, so the origin of chemiosmosis could help to reveal how the first organisms arose. Chemiosmosis takes place deep in our body’s cells, most of which harbour hundreds or thousands of microscopic Read More ›

Yesterday, DonaldM posted an item here: United Methodists Bar Intelligent Design From General Conference The skinny: After submitting an application to be in the exhibit hall per the established process, Discovery Institute was informed that they would not allowed to be present as the Institute’s position on ID was at odds with the UMC’s Statement on Evolution and Intelligent Design which says in part that the UMC opposes “…the introduction of any faith-based theories such as Creationism or Intelligent Design into the science curriculum of our public schools.” It should be readily clear that when this language was drafted back in 2008 and inserted into the UMC’s Book of Discipline, the guiding document of the Church, that the UMC was Read More ›

The leadership of the United Methodist Church (but not the majority of its members or pastors, most of us are disgusted by this move) have decided to ban Intelligent Design from their general meeting, see here. They have apparently signed on to the unwritten treaty with materialists which says, basically, we will accept without question anything you claim “science says,” and won’t ever even look for anything in science which supports our faith, just please, please, leave us a little safe corner over here called “faith” and don’t attack us as ignorant for anything we say there. Attack the fundamentalists, they are much more ignorant than we are; in fact, we’ll help you attack them. Does this remind anyone of Read More ›

From his blog, Sandwalk: I’m looking forward to learning about all the paradigm-shifting work on evolutionary theory from the likes of Denis Noble and the Third Way crowd [Physiologists fall for the Third Way]. There may even be some famous members of the Altenberg 16 [More calls to extend the defunct Modern Synthesis]. More. His is likely to be an eclectic perspective, and we will listen with interest. See also: So who’s in and who’s out at Royal Society 2016 “rethink evolution” meet? and PZ Myers on Royal Society “rethink evolution” meet: “But that’s not how science works.” Follow UD News at Twitter!

“But that’s not how science works.” From his blog Pharyngula, Larry Moran is attending — not as a representative of the crackpot contingent, but, I suspect, to cast a cynical eye on the shenanigans. The Third Way of Evolution gang seems to be excited about the meeting, which is not a good sign — these are people who have taken some useful ideas in evolutionary theory, like epigenetics and niche construction, and turned the dial up to 11 to argue that these concepts are so revolutionary that they demand a complete upheaval of neo-Darwinian thinking. Many evidence-based concepts do demand it, actually. What’s changed is this: Darwinism (natural selection acting on random mutation) was once a default explanation of change Read More ›

Suzan Mazur, author of The Paradigm Shifters: Overthrowing “the Hegemony of the Culture of Darwin,” draws attention to a notice of the Royal Society’s upcoming “rethink evolution” meet in the online Progressive Review: Moving beyond Darwin One of the problems with the stubbornly ignorant approach towards evolution by the reactionary right is that the media has reduced the matter to a simplistic debate largely determined by the dumb. But Darwin clearly didn’t have all the answers, and science has moved many miles since his time. One of the few journalists following this story has been Suzan Mazur, whose reports we have published from time to time. Now she’s writing about a conference next November that will undoubtedly give post-Darwinian science Read More ›

This is prompted primarily by a recent post and by the unfortunate realization that some people still do not understand the design inference, despite years of involvement in the debate. Specifically, there was discussion at Barry’s prior post about whether Elizabeth Liddle admits that “biological design inferences” may be valid in principle. Over 200 comments appeared on the prior thread, including a fair amount of back and forth between Barry, Elizabeth and me, all of which may be worth reviewing for those who are interested. However, the primary takeaway from that thread is that we need another back-to-basics primer on intelligent design – specifically, what the design inference is and how it works. Yes, I know regular readers have a great Read More ›

Yes, animals have minds. No, they are not people. From Heather Dockray at Mashable: Earlier this week, a photo began circulating on the Internet that featured three predictably adorable kangaroos. The story, as many news organizations projected it, featured a male kangaroo, reaching out to hold his dying kangaroo wife, who just wanted to embrace her baby. As a story, it had the key, painterly, elements of viral triptych: a cute animal + a sad death + a tiny, human-like gesture. For 24 hours, it dominated the Internet, grabbed our headlines, and stole our desperate little hearts. It was also completely and totally wrong, as Mashable reported. After the picture went viral, scientists began to speak up. No, this wasn’t Read More ›

Focus on supporting stable, long term gains. From editor Jonathan Gitlin at Ars Technica, responding to the recent U.S. State of the Union (SOTU) address: Science needs steady sustainable boring growth, not flashy ill-formed initiatives. Done correctly, history shows that lofty scientific and engineering challenges can work. The actual moonshot for example, or the Human Genome Project. Both of those had one thing in common: a clear and well-defined goal at the beginning. “Before 1970, fly someone to the Moon and return them safely.” “Sequence the entire human genome.” But Nebulous concepts like “end all cancer” get good applause—curing all cancers is right up there with sunshine and puppies. But such concepts are effectively meaningless. Hey, reality check: There isn’t Read More ›

The United Methodist Church (UMC), whose motto is “Open Minds, Open Hearts, Open Doors” has barred Discovery Institute from having an information table in the exhibit hall at their upcoming quadrennial General Conference this May. After submitting an application to be in the exhibit hall per the established process, Discovery Institute was informed that they would not allowed to be present as the Institute’s position on ID was at odds with the UMC’s Statement on Evolution and Intelligent Design which says in part that the UMC opposes “…the introduction of any faith-based theories such as Creationism or Intelligent Design into the science curriculum of our public schools.” It should be readily clear that when this language was drafted back in Read More ›

The recent finding that the DNA packaging technology and structure, known as chromatin, is not limited to eukaryotes but is also present in archaea, and so from an evolutionary perspective must have “evolved before archaea and eukaryotes split apart—more than 2 billion years ago,” is merely the latest in a string of misadventures evolutionists have incurred ever since they stole the histones.  Read more

Start the day right with something lite: From New Scientist: The signal – known as the “Wow! signal” after a note scribbled by astronomer Jerry Ehman, who detected it – came through at 1420 megahertz, corresponding to a wavelength of 21 centimetres. Searchers for extraterrestrial transmissions have long considered it an auspicious place to look, as it is one of the main frequencies at which atoms of hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, absorb and emit energy. What’s more, this frequency easily penetrates the atmosphere. But in the 40 years since, we’ve never heard anything like it again. Analysis of the signal ruled out a satellite, and a reflected signal from the Earth’s surface is unlikely because regulations Read More ›

That’s a good question to ponder overnight. From science writer George Musser: Let’s Rethink Space … And in the past 20 years, I’ve witnessed a remarkable evolution in attitudes among physicists toward locality. In my career as a science writer and editor, I have had the privilege of talking to scientists from a wide range of communities—people who study everything from subatomic particles to black holes to the grand structure of the cosmos. Over and over, I heard some variant of: “Well, it’s weird, and I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen if for myself, but it looks like the world has just got to be nonlocal.” To make sense of nonlocality, the first step is to invert Read More ›

From New Scientist: Impulsive people may have less free will than the rest of us … A person who kills someone while driving drunk might tell the jury this: People who were deemed impulsive did indeed have shorter time intervals between their conscious awareness of the intention to act and the moment of action. The more impulsive they were, the shorter the interval. “It might suggest that maybe impulsive individuals have less time to inhibit or control their actions,” says Caspar. Maybe skip this: Aaron Schurger at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, who has worked on understanding the implications of the Libet experiment, cautions that any conclusions depend on how you interpret the various signals. His own Read More ›