From David Grinspoon at Nautilus: the truth is, despite its widespread moniker, Gaia is not really a hypothesis. It’s a perspective, an approach from within which to pursue the science of life on a planet, a living planet, which is not the same as a planet with life on it—that’s really the point, simple but profound. Because life is not a minor afterthought on an already functioning Earth, but an integral part of the planet’s evolution and behavior. Over the last few decades, the Gaians have pretty much won the battle. The opposition never actually surrendered or admitted defeat, but mainstream earth science has dropped its disciplinary shields and joined forces with chemistry, climatology, theoretical biology, and several other “ Read More ›

Hmmm. From Maria Gallucci at Mashable: The researchers said they can’t really explain what happened. Perhaps there was a human or equipment error that falsely simulated brain activity at the time of recording — though there’s no sign that either a person or machine messed up. “It is difficult to posit a physiological basis for this EEG [electroencephalographic] activity, given that it occurs after a prolonged loss of circulation,” Norton and her team wrote. The study is the latest effort by doctors to better understand what happens to our bodies after life support is withdrawn, which is an important question for organ donation. Without a firm explanation, and given the tiny sample size — one patient — the doctors couldn’t Read More ›

From Jerry Kaplan at Technology Review: Artificial intelligence, it seems, has a PR problem. While it’s true that today’s machines can credibly perform many tasks (playing chess, driving cars) that were once reserved for humans, that doesn’t mean that the machines are growing more intelligent and ambitious. It just means they’re doing what we built them to do. The robots may be coming, but they are not coming for us—because there is no “they.” Machines are not people, and there’s no persuasive evidence that they are on a path toward sentience. We’ve been replacing skilled and knowledgeable workers for centuries, but the machines don’t aspire to better jobs and higher employment. Jacquard looms replaced expert needleworkers in the 19th century, Read More ›

From Melinda Baldwin at Physics Today (where she is Books editor) The imprimatur bestowed by peer review has a history that is both shorter and more complex than many scientists realize. … At the end of the 19th century, an important shift began to take place in the scientific community’s view of referees. With concerns growing about the overall quality of the scientific literature, the referee was no longer simply helping protect the reputation of a scientific society or journal. Instead, the referee was increasingly seen as someone whose work was to protect the reputation and trustworthiness of the entire scientific literature, to staunch a flood of “veritable sewage thrown into the pure stream of science,” as physiologist and Member Read More ›

A paper at Nature from Karen Adelman & Emily Egan (Nature 543, 183–185 (09 March 2017) doi:10.1038/543183a) It emerges that nascent non-coding RNAs transcribed from regulatory DNA sequences called enhancers bind to the enzyme CBP to promote its activity locally. In turn, the activities of CBP stimulate further enhancer transcription. (paywall) More. See also: Cod gene puzzle: At least no one is claiming it is “junk RNA” Follow UD News at Twitter!

From Geoffrey E. Hill at The Scientist: What defines a species? Because the boundaries between species can appear so fluid, pursuing such a question seems, at times, like academic esoterica—little different than discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. But accurate species definitions lie at the heart of biological investigations and management of natural resources (e.g., the US Endangered Species Act). It is troublesome, therefore, that new information on the genetic structure of long-recognized species of birds could jeopardize their status as full species. The problem, in a nutshell, is that the DNA of many familiar species of birds holds signatures of substantial exchange of nuclear genes with other bird species. Such gene exchange matters Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Marauding across the tropical forest floor, aggressive army ant colonies harbor hidden enemies within their ranks. The impostors look and smell like army ants, march with the ants, and even groom the ants. But far from being altruistic nest-mates, these creatures are parasitic beetles, engaged in a game of deception. Through dramatic changes in body shape, behavior, and pheromone chemistry, the beetles gain their hostile hosts’ acceptance, duping the ants so they can feast on the colony brood. This phenomenon did not evolve just once. Instead, these beetles arose at least a dozen separate times from non-ant-like ancestors. This discovery, published March 9 in Current Biology, provides evidence that evolution has the capacity to repeat itself in an Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Dolphins and crocodiles now live in rivers and oceans, but each evolved from land-based animals. Feeding in water has many new challenges. This new study shows that despite being separated by 300 million years, dolphins and crocodiles found comparable solutions to these problems, and evolved skull shapes that are remarkably similar. “Our results suggest the remarkable similarity between some crocodilians and toothed whales is driven by what they eat rather than where they live,” said lead author Mr Matthew McCurry from the Monash School of Biological Sciences. Previously no rigorous attempt had been made to show how similar the head shapes of dolphins and crocodiles really are. It had been thought that aspects such shallow seas or rivers Read More ›

In a review of Void: The Strange Physics of Nothing by James Owen Weatherall, Steven Poole writes at Spectator (UK): In an action-packed epilogue, the author describes how the contested field of string theory posits a bogglingly large number of possible kinds of nothingness, and impresses upon the reader how much of physics still depends on intuition and battling ‘interpretations’. The book is not an exhaustive typology of scientific nothings: not directly addressed, for example, is the nothingness that supposedly obtained before the Big Bang. But to regret this is just to emphasise the success of this stylishly written and admirably concise book, at the end of which you will be inclined to agree, along with the author and Freddie Read More ›

From Colin Barras at New Scientist: One of the two El Sidrón individuals – a teenage boy – is known to have had a large dental abscess. The new DNA analysis shows he had a diarrhoea-causing gut parasite in his system, too. “It’s likely he wasn’t a very happy individual,” says Weyrich. Previous studies have suggested the teenager was eating plants with anti-inflammatory properties. The new study also finds DNA sequences of poplar plants, which are known to contain the natural pain killer salicylic acid (closely related to the active ingredient in aspirin). That may not have been the only medication or self-medication he did: there was DNA from Penicillium fungus – the source of penicillin – in his dental Read More ›

From Aatif Sulleyman at Independent: “Since civilisation began, aggression has been useful inasmuch as it has definite survival advantages,” he told The Times. “It is hard-wired into our genes by Darwinian evolution. Now, however, technology has advanced at such a pace that this aggression may destroy us all by nuclear or biological war. We need to control this inherited instinct by our logic and reason.” He suggests that “some form of world government” could be ideal for the job, but would itself create more problems. “But that might become a tyranny,” he added. “All this may sound a bit doom-laden but I am an optimist. I think the human race will rise to meet these challenges.” More. We didn’t realize Read More ›

From computer science prof Noson S. Yanofsky at Nautilus: Rather than jumping headfirst into the limitations of reason, let us start by just getting our toes wet and examining the limitations of language. Language is a tool used to describe the world in which we live. However, don’t confuse the map with the territory! There is one major difference between the world we live in and language: Whereas the real world is free of contradictions, the man-made linguistic descriptions of that world can have contradictions. More. And yet, despite the paradoxes, language has enabled us to make sense of the world, more or less. See also: Can we talk? Language as the business end of consciousness and Evolution bred a Read More ›

From Stuart Clark at : Particles can become entangled when they interact, and once they do, no matter how far apart they are, measuring the properties of one automatically fixes the properties of the other – changes its socks, as it were. Einstein decried this “spooky action at a distance”, yet many experiments have shown it is an essential ingredient of our world. “Without quantum entanglement, we could not have quantum theory as we know it, and quantum theory is the basis of chemistry, our semiconductor industry, even life,” says Caslav Brukner of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information in Vienna, Austria. But here’s the really weird thing. There’s nothing stopping the quantum world having different levels of Read More ›

From David Klinghoffer, noting Tom Bethell’s objection to one self-defeating complaint about “human exceptionalism,” that it involves the sin of hubris, or pride, at Evolution News and Views: The accusation of arrogance is self-defeating on its face. Only humans are capable of arrogance or of seeing themselves as superior to other animals. Animals cannot rise to that level of abstraction. Do cats or dogs think themselves superior to humans? (Well, dogs don’t, but I’m not so sure about cats.) The criticism of arrogance itself rests on human exceptionalism. Yes. The remark about cats is a joke, obviously. Some cats appear haughty to us because we read our own feelings into their way of carrying themselves. This is the error of Read More ›

Including our own? From Darren Curnoe at the Conversation: It’s well known among biologists that commercial fishing has had a profound impact on wild fish species. By targeting large animals, as commercial fisheries have typically done, some species have become smaller and an increasing proportion have reached maturity at a younger age and smaller size. In urban areas, where human impact is most obvious, many studies have shown that plants and animals, native and introduced, are evolving in response to human transformation of the environment. A famous example is so-called ‘industrial melanism’. It led to a dramatic drop in the numbers of light-coloured peppered moths in England during the 1800s when industrialisation led to pollution covering tree trunks, camouflaging dark-coloured Read More ›