From Melanie Schefft at University of Cincinnati Magazine: UC geologist uncovers 2.5 billion-year-old fossils of bacteria that predate the formation of oxygen. They are sulfur-oxidizing bacteria. The 2.52 billion-year-old sulfur-oxidizing bacteria are described by Czaja as exceptionally large, spherical-shaped, smooth-walled microscopic structures much larger than most modern bacteria, but similar to some modern single-celled organisms that live in deepwater sulfur-rich ocean settings today, where even now there are almost no traces of oxygen. In his research published in the December issue of the journal Geology of the Geological Society of America, Czaja and his colleagues Nicolas Beukes from the University of Johannesburg and Jeffrey Osterhout, a recently graduated master’s student from UC’s department of geology, reveal samples of bacteria that Read More ›

No, that’s not the way the ScienceDaily media release puts it, of course: Why do some animals have extravagant, showy ornaments — think elk and deer antlers, peacock feathers and horns on dung beetles — that can be a liability to survival? Charles Darwin couldn’t figure it out, but now a Northwestern University research team has a possible explanation for this puzzling phenomenon of evolution. Just think: The team get to be minor saints in the calendar, for helping the Great One. The researchers developed a mathematical model that made a surprising prediction: In animals with ornamentation, males will evolve out of the tension between natural selection and sexual selection into two distinct subspecies, one with flashy, “costly” ornaments for Read More ›

From Juliet Lamb at J-Stor: Take the Giant Panda, for example. Watch a panda eat, and you’ll notice the thumb-like appendage that helps it hold onto bamboo stalks. The panda’s thumb isn’t actually a thumb; it’s an elongated wrist bone that opposes the five true fingers of the panda’s hand, allowing it to grip and manipulate the delicate bamboo stalks that form the majority of its diet. For an enormous organism like a panda to survive on an energy-poor resource like bamboo, most of which is composed of indigestible fiber, maximizing eating efficiency is key. Without gripping abilities, pandas would require more effort to consume less bamboo, compromising their ability to meet their energy needs. The misleadingly named Red Panda Read More ›

A few days back, I headlined a clip from Crick’s letter to his son Michael, March 19, 1953: The main text is accessible here (with page scans). Sans diagrams: >>My Dear Michael, Jim Watson and I have probably made a most important discovery. We have built a model for the structure of des-oxy-ribose-nucleic-acid (read it carefully) called D.N.A. for short. You may remember that the genes of the chromosomes — which carry the hereditary factors — are made up of protein and D.N.A. Our structure is very beautiful. D.N.A. can be thought of roughly as a very long chain with flat bits sticking out. The flat bits are called the “bases”. […] Now we have two of these chains winding Read More ›

From Ross Pomeroy at RealClearScience: Sixteen years ago, road workers detonated a controlled explosive to remove a large limestone boulder blocking a planned roadway outside of Tel Aviv in Israel. Soon after the dust settled, it became clear that the road would need to be rerouted. The workers had stumbled upon a vast cave, one that had been sealed off for more than 200,000 years! For the researchers who soon began exploring the cave’s expansive interior, it was the find of a lifetime. Now called Qesem Cave, the site has delivered a number of discoveries that live up to its explosive origin. Archaeologists found a 300,000-year-old fireplace, along with tortoise shells that showed signs of burning. Apparently, whoever live there Read More ›

Larry Sanger is the co-founder of Wikipedia and the author of its “neutrality policy.”  Mr. Sanger posted an article today about media bias in which he alluded to the neutrality policy he drafted. I replied (see the combox of the article): “Wikipedia’s neutrality policy.” I’ve been reading Wikipedia articles for years, and from the evidence I would not have thought such a thing exists, or, if it does, the name is somewhat misleading, because the policy would read something like: “On all matters cultural and political, Wikipedia will endeavor to crush conservative viewpoints. Neutrality will not be tolerated.” Just read the post on, for example, intelligent design theory. It is written by the theory’s antagonists, and all efforts to correct Read More ›

Peter Burfeind contemplates the Fermi Paradox and atheists’ obsession with aliens in this post. In a sense, Christian presumptions and its claim of historicity for biblical miracles is more consistent with what should be happening given the premises of evolutionary science. A complex and powerful Godhead with anthropomorphic habits, dimension-jumping beings doing God’s bidding or working against it, frequent interventions in history accompanied by bizarre occurrences in nature—isn’t this what we’d expect in a universe given all the oddities of physics in the context of evolutionary randomness? Meanwhile, the aliens arising from the imagination of modern science fiction, because they have no affiliation whatsoever with the evidence at hand, have a little more than the whiff of blind faith associated Read More ›

Sometimes, it is important to go back to key sources, if we are to break through deep misconceptions.  This is particularly relevant for the design view of science, including on cosmological fine tuning. So, first Sir Fred (a key discoverer of the phenomenon): >>[Sir Fred Hoyle, In a talk at Caltech c 1981 (nb. this longstanding UD post):] From 1953 onward, Willy Fowler and I have always been intrigued by the remarkable relation of the 7.65 MeV energy level in the nucleus of 12 C to the 7.12 MeV level in 16 O. If you wanted to produce carbon and oxygen in roughly equal quantities by stellar nucleosynthesis, these are the two levels you would have to fix, and your Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: A groundbreaking study of the virosphere of the most populous animals — those without backbones such as insects, spiders and worms and that live around our houses — has uncovered 1445 viruses, revealing people have only scratched the surface of the world of viruses — but it is likely that only a few cause disease. … “This groundbreaking study re-writes the virology text book by showing that invertebrates carry an extraordinary number of viruses — far more than we ever thought,” Professor Holmes said. “We have discovered that most groups of viruses that infect vertebrates — including humans, such as those that cause well-known diseases like influenza — are in fact derived from those present in invertebrates,” said Read More ›

And guess why? From David Klinghoffer at Evolution News & Views: Writing in the Washington Post, Harvard astronomer Howard Smith forcefully blunts Stephen Hawking’s assertion that “The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet.” Of course, it’s not only Dr. Hawking who says as much — denying human exceptionalism is close to universal orthodoxy among the socio-academic demographic he occupies. Carl Sagan put the same view a little more mildly: “We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star.” Smith points out, however, that science considered objectively is much closer to the exceptionalist conclusion. Sure, but… Atheists aren’t having any of it. At Why Evolution Is True, biologist Jerry Coyne hits back, Read More ›

I have often noticed something of a confusion on one of the major points of the Intelligent Design movement – whether or not the design inference is primarily based on the failure of Darwinism and/or mechanism.
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Whether anyone admits it or not. From Jef Akst at The Scientist on the recent appearance of many papers on epigenetics: Last week (November 17), the International Human Epigenome Consortium (IHEC) published 41 papers in Cell Press journals and other high-impact publications. IHEC aims to provide researchers with a comprehensive epigenomic analysis of healthy and abnormal cells, and the new studies constitute major strides toward that goal. … “The number of papers and variety of topics addressed by this creative team of scientists from around the globe not only reflects the dynamic nature of this consortium, but is also evidence of the great strength that comes from bringing together complementary expertise, with the potential for far greater impact than an Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Amphibians which have a toxic defense against predators — such as the iconic poison dart frogs — have a much higher risk of extinction than species which use other types of defense mechanisms, research shows. The key finding of this study is that poisonous species are 60% more likely to be threatened than species without chemical defenses. … That might seem counterintuitive. Dr Arbuckle previously suggested three main possibilities to explain higher extinction rates in toxic amphibians, and figuring out which of these have been important are the focus of another study. The different ideas are: Costly chemical hypothesis: Chemical defense is energetically costly; Marginal habitats hypothesis: Chemical defense allows shifts to ‘marginal’ (low carrying capacity) habitats, which Read More ›

Science writer Charles Wohlforth and planetary scientist Amanda R. Hendrix argue at Scientific American that it’s pretty much the only place off Earth that humans could live. The idea of a human colony on Titan, a moon of Saturn, might sound crazy. Its temperature hovers at nearly 300° below zero Fahrenheit, and its skies rain methane and ethane that flow into hydrocarbon seas. Just needs a bit of staging, as a real estate agent friend would say. Anyway, here’s the theory: It’s cold on Titan, at -180°C (-291°F), but thanks to its thick atmosphere, residents wouldn’t need pressure suits—just warm clothing and respirators. Housing could be made of plastic produced from the unlimited resources harvested on the surface, and could Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Deemed as one species spread across different continents, scientists confirm that the Eurasian Hen Harrier and the American Northern Harrier are in fact two distinct species. … “Before the advent of sequencing technology, species were categorised by shared and divergent morphological features. However, new technology allows us to quantify the amount of genetic change between populations and identify divergent lineages.” Paper. (public access) – Graham J. Etherington, Jason A. Mobley. Molecular phylogeny, morphology and life-history comparisons within Circus cyaneus reveal the presence of two distinct evolutionary lineages. Avian Research, 2016; 7 (1) DOI: 10.1186/s40657-016-0052-3 More. On wonders how many other speciation claims will be blown out of the water using such techniques. Nothing says “Darwin snob” like indifference Read More ›