2016

From Salk Institute: LA JOLLA—By adolescence, your brain already contains most of the neurons that you’ll have for the rest of your life. But a few regions continue to grow new nerve cells—and require the services of cellular sentinels, specialized immune cells that keep the brain safe by getting rid of dead or dysfunctional cells. Now, Salk scientists have uncovered the surprising extent to which both dying and dead neurons are cleared away, and have identified specific cellular switches that are key to this process. … “It appears as though a significant fraction of cell death in neurogenic regions is not due to intrinsic death of the cells but rather is a result of the microglia themselves, which are killing Read More ›

Here is the second preview session for the Alternatives to Methodological Naturalism 2016 Online Conference. The actual conference will be held online on April 16th.

Evolutionists are going to need a bigger rug as Yale professor Andrew Xiao now has a new pile of stuff he is absurdly trying to ascribe to evolution. Xiao’s team has confirmed that in mammals the fundamental epigenetic signal—the methyl group—is sometimes attached to a second type of DNA base. DNA is made up of four types of bases (cytosine [C], guanine [G], adenine [A] and thymine [T]) and, as in the lower species, methyl groups are sometimes attached to adenine in mammals as well.  Read more

From PNAS: Significance: A central debate in cognitive science concerns the nativist hypothesis: the proposal that universal human behaviors are underpinned by strong, domain-specific, innate constraints on cognition. We use a general model of the processes that shape human behavior—learning, culture, and biological evolution—to test the evolutionary plausibility of this hypothesis. A series of analyses shows that culture radically alters the relationship between natural selection and cognition. Culture facilitates rapid biological adaptation yet rules out nativism: Behavioral universals arise that are underpinned by weak biases rather than strong innate constraints. We therefore expect culture to have dramatically shaped the evolution of the human mind, giving us innate predispositions that only weakly constrain our behavior. (public access) More. It’s sometimes hard Read More ›

Happens: From Amy Ellis Nutt at the Washington Post: While criminal cases against scientists are rare, they are increasing. Jail time is even rarer, but not unheard of. Last July, Dong-Pyou Han, a former biomedical scientist at Iowa State University, pleaded guilty to two felony charges of making false statements to obtain NIH research grants and was sentenced to more than four years in prison.More. The situation was pretty serious; he was claiming hopeful findings from AIDS research. Since 2000, the number of U.S. academic fraud cases in science has risen dramatically. Five years ago, the journal Nature tallied the number of retractions in the previous decade and revealed they had shot up 10-fold. About half of the retractions were Read More ›

Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler and Hitler’s Ethic. has a new book out, The Death of Humanity. Here’s some info from Evolution News & Views: Although Weikart points out the many sources at work in diminishing the centrality humanity in our social and moral relations, one that recurs is Darwinism. This is for good reason. Darwin himself expressed the two foundational sources of the attack on anthropocentrism, an assault that unfortunately “is becoming mainstream in our ‘culture of death’” (4). First is the notion that regard for our special mental attributes is little more than self-centered arrogance. The second, related to the first, is that human beings are really not unique and are, in fact, just another Read More ›

Asks Andreas von Bubnoff at Nautilus: Susan M. Rosenberg, a molecular biologist at Baylor College of Medicine, quotes Adams’ “(deliciously) askew” story in a research paper on mutations in evolution as an example of how, according to standard neo-Darwinian theory, evolution does not work. Organisms, all good students know, do not generate rapid genetic mutations in response to their environment. There are exceptions, such as mutations spurred by certain chemicals or radiation. In general, though, mutations, the raw material for natural selection, accumulate slowly in dividing cells, as the result of accidental errors in the way cells copy or repair their genetic material. The environment plays a role only later, selecting the most viable mutants. But after more than two Read More ›

From The Scientist: A longtime consultant to NASA and a member of the scientific advisory committee for Biosphere 2 (the largest-ever enclosed ecosystem), Morowitz was a strong advocate for a theory of emergence of life from chemical and physical principles. In the 1983 McLean v. Arkansas case over teaching creationism in schools, he provided an expert opinion, testifying in front of the court that the creationist view of life’s origins has no basis in science. More. Also: New York Times: Once, when he received a birthday card that assessed a human body’s raw materials at only 97 cents, he recalculated the cost based on synthesized ingredients from a biochemical company catalog and re-evaluated his worth at more than $6 million. Read More ›

This is just to illustrate a point in further reply to MT: To put things into perspective, let us put in Jesus and Mohammed: As further context, and bearing in mind that the band Google trusts the most is 1800 – 2000, broad-brush trends since 1500 may be seen by adding God and the Bible: There is a live thread as linked, comment there please. END

This just in from David Snoke: University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Philosophy of Science is also running a conference on design themes in biology April 15-16: If you are coming to the Annual meeting April 15-16, consider extending your stay to come a little earlier and depart a little later. The world-renowned Pittsburgh Center for Philosophy of Science is having a meeting that runs through the day on Friday and in the afternoon on Saturday. Details here. Some relevant ideas unpacked here. From David Snoke at the Christian Scientific Society: Annual Meeting is in two weeks; late registration fees apply starting next week The annual meeting is coming up soon, in less than two weeks! This year we are applying Read More ›

When intelligent design is nuts From Phys.org: Lead researcher, Kendy Teng, from the University of Sydney, Australia, said, “Australians are favouring brachycephalic breeds, dogs with shorter and wider heads, such as the Pug and the French bulldog, more than those with longer and thinner heads. Looking at data spanning 28 years, we found that the demand for smaller dogs has increased every year from 1986.” “Veterinarians are concerned about brachycephalic dogs’ welfare, as these breeds commonly suffer from breathing difficulties, skin and eye conditions, and digestive disorders. In New Zealand, brachycephalic breeds are number four of the top five dog breeds considered by veterinarians to be unsuitable for continued breeding due to compromised health and welfare. We expect to see Read More ›

From Daily Mail: Ecologists, historians and geneticists from the TaurOs Programme hope to recreate the auroch by crossbreeding, or ‘back breeding’ modern cattle. Unlike in the work to resurrect the woolly mammoth, there is no need to use ancient DNA from well-preserved remains. Instead, the scientists identified ‘primitive’ breeds of cattle that share characteristics with their auroch ancestors, such as a tall and athletic build, long legs and forward curling horns to recapture the animal’s original purpose- to graze large areas of wilderness. They began the back breeding programme using seven varieties of cattle in 2009 and progress is being made. More. Interestingly, writer Sarah Griffiths is not throwing the word “species” around wildly. Good thing, because the best interpretation Read More ›

From Thony Christie at Aeon: Galileo’s vast reputation, and the hyperbolic accolades that go with it, are not justified by the real history. With a corrected perspective on the man comes a rich and compelling pair of questions: what did Galileo actually achieve, and where does the science superhero image come from? Ah! At last! A question we can answer. The Galileo of pop science is the science teacher people wish they had, instead of the fourth-rate union dweeb they did have, and were ordered to be grateful to the public school system for. Having parlayed his discoveries into a new position as court philosopher and mathematician to the Medici in Florence, Galileo’s fame rested largely on those telescopic discoveries Read More ›

From New Scientist: The ballistics of galactic shrapnel show that the Milky Way has already crashed into its giant neighbour, Andromeda – but if that’s right, physics is wrong Well, if we don’t exist anymore, it doesn’t matter much if physics is wrong, but … A monstrous Milkomeda galaxy? It’s a well-established picture of our galaxy’s cataclysmic future. More controversially, it might also be a vision of its past. More. You have to pay to read the rest. And, aw, we dunno. Predicting the end of all things is by its nature a risky business. The nice thing about New Scientist is that it makes the religious fantasies of some of my neighbours seem normal. See also: The bill arrives Read More ›

From ScienceNordic: “We have found a mathematical rule that can objectively evaluate the evolution of different parts of the body,” says lead-author Professor Jukka Jernvall University of Helsinki, Finland. More. But wait! Don’t evolutionary biologists also say that evolution has no goal, and can’t be used to make predictions? Isn’t that “no goal” thing precisely what Brit psychs want to cram down kiddies’ throats? “In this context, the new study also explains why we are now losing our wisdom teeth–it’s simply a pattern that was already established at the beginning of our family tree,” says Jernvall. So long as you know the species, the model can precisely describe tooth development and predict the size of teeth in the dental arch Read More ›