From ScienceDaily: How nature engineered the original rotary motor The bacterial flagellum is one of nature’s smallest motors, rotating at up to 60,000 revolutions per minute. To function properly and propel the bacterium, the flagellum requires all of its components to fit together to exacting measurements. In a study published in Science, University of Utah researchers report the eludication of a mechanism that regulates the length of the flagellum’s 25 nanometer driveshaft-like rod and answers a long-standing question about how cells are held together. While the biomechanical controls that determine the dimensions of other flagellar components have already been determined, the control of the length of the rod, a rigid shaft that transfers torque from the flagellar motor in the Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Changes in a single color-vision gene demonstrate convergent evolutionary adaptations in widely separated species and across vastly different time scales, according to a study publishing on April 11 in the open access journal PLOS Biology by David Marques of the University of Victoria, British Columbia, and colleagues. The study, which combined genetic analysis with a 19-year-long selection experiment, supports the idea that the mechanisms of adaptive evolution may be more predictable than previously suspected. … “These data support the emerging view in evolutionary biology that mechanisms underlying adaptive evolution are often highly repeatable and thus may be predictable,” said Marques. “They show that evolutionary ‘tinkering’ with a limited set of tools can lead to convergent ‘solutions’ to common Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: The new specimen from the rich Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota (approximately 131 to 120 million years old) is referred to as Eoconfuciusornis, the oldest and most primitive member of the Confuciusornithiformes, a group of early birds characterized by the first occurrence of an avian beak. Its younger relative Confuciusornis is known from thousands of specimens but this is only the second specimen of Eoconfuciusornis found. This species comes only from the 130.7 Ma Huajiying Formation deposits in Hebei, which preserves the second oldest known fossil birds. Birds from this layer are very rare. This new specimen of Eoconfuciusornis, housed in the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature, in Eastern China, is a female. The ovary reveals developing yolks that Read More ›

There has been quite a controversy over the past few years over whether the extended evolutionary synthesis is a replacement of the modern synthesis or a refinement of it.
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Armand Jacks says he has a knock down show stopping argument to rebut ID’s claim that intelligent agency is the only known cause of specified complexity. Get ready. Hold on to your hat. Here it is: Using the same argument, the only known causes of everything we have ever seen in the entire universe are material causes. Are blind unguided material forces capable of typing the post you just posted AJ?  If you say “no” your argument is refuted.  If you say “yes” you look like a fool or a liar or both.  Talk about the Scylla and Charybdis. AJ, you really should stop and think for 10 seconds before you write something like that down.  I know, I know.  Thinking Read More ›

Well, consider: Our physics colour commentator Rob Sheldon offers some thoughts on the problem of theoretical physics starting to seem like a fly repeatedly hitting the window pane (Sabine Hossenfelder’s term): Peter Woit sees the same thing and blames it on data-free speculation. Another physics blogger (and graduate of my alma mater), Chad Orzel blames it on underemployed theorists. Sabine Hossenfelder thinks the social aspects of the scientific method have deeply infected the matter. Let me toss my hat in the ring and blame it on the Enlightenment. It was Christianity that birthed science and the scientific method, and atheism that killed it. If you permit me to be politically incorrect, Stanley Jaki argued that neither Hinduism nor Islam could Read More ›

A reader writes to recommend Chapter 3 of C.S. Lewis’s Miracles: Every event which might claim to be a miracle is, in the last resort, something presented to our senses, something seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted. And our senses are not infallible. If anything extraordinary seems to have happened, we can always say that we have been the victims of an illusion. If we hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural, this is what we always shall say. What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience. It is therefore useless to appeal to experience before we have settled, as well as we can, the philosophical question. … Nothing can seem extraordinary until Read More ›

For our own good. Or anyway, seriously consider that option, in the age of marchin’, marchin’. From Sara Mojtehedzadeh at Toronto Star: It was a human experiment on an unprecedented scale. Its target: 10,000 Ontario miners. Its tool: a mysterious black powder they were forced to inhale in a sealed room before plunging underground to work. From 1943 to roughly 1980, an aluminum-based prophylaxis called McIntyre Powder was sold as an apparent miracle antidote to lung disease. It was designed, historical documents suggest, by industry-sponsored Canadian scientists bent on slashing compensation costs in gold and uranium mines across the north. The problem: experts say aluminum is now known to be neurotoxic if significant doses get into the blood. And victims’ families Read More ›

I (O’Leary for News) happened to be looking up a concept connected with Easter: On Holy Saturday, many hold that  Jesus ushered the just people from former ages into Heaven. I came across this page: The Resurrection Icon and the World Without Charles Darwin It offers information for the “objective” student of Russian, Greek, and Balkan icons. Where we learn, unpacking the meaning of the icon: At the bottom is an elaborated version of the “old” image, with Christ standing on the gates of Hades and grasping Adam by the hand, as Eve and other Old Testament women kneel before him. John the Forerunner and King David are already in the crowd that is moving up toward Paradise in a Read More ›

Wilder Penfield was a pioneering neurosurgeon in Montreal. A friend writes to draw our attention to his approach to the mind, in The Mystery of the Mind: “The challenge that comes to every neurophysiologist is to explain in terms of brain mechanisms all that men have come to consider the work of the mind, if he can. And this he must undertake freely, without philosophical or religious bias. If he does not succeed in his explanation, using proven facts and reasonable hypotheses, the time should come, as it has to me, to consider other possible explanations. He must consider how the evidence can be made to fit the hypothesis of two elements as well as that of one only.” – Wilder Read More ›

At Jonathan McLatchie’s Apologetics Academy at 8pm GMT / 3pm EST here. David Snoke is president of the Christian Scientific Society. See also: As if the multiverse wasn’t bizarre enough …meet Many Worlds and Webinar: Paul Nelson on evolution as theory of transformation Follow UD News at Twitter!

From Mehmet Elgin and Elliott Sober at History of the Philosophy of Science: Abstract: Karl Popper argued in 1974 that evolutionary theory contains no testable laws and is therefore a metaphysical research program. Four years later, he said that he had changed his mind. Here we seek to understand Popper’s initial position and his subsequent retraction. We argue, contrary to Popper’s own assessment, that he did not change his mind at all about the substance of his original claim. We also explore how Popper’s views have ramifications for contemporary discussion of the nature of laws and the structure of evolutionary theory. – Popper’s Shifting Appraisal of Evolutionary Theory, Mehmet Elgin and Elliott Sober HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society Read More ›

As ‘Marginalized People’ From Alex Berezow at American Council for Science and Health: Today, the official March for Science Twitter account criticized the Trump Administration for bombing ISIS, claiming that the gigantic bomb we dropped on the terrorists is an “example of how science is weaponized against marginalized people.” After being mocked on Twitter, they deleted it. Unfortunately for them, Todd Myers of the Washington Policy Center screen capped it. And just like a latent herpes infection, screen caps live forever. … ISIS terrorists brutally murder anyone, including other Muslims, who do not share their perverted worldview. They behead “infidels” and oppress women. Actually, “oppression” isn’t even close to the right word for it. According to The Independent, ISIS extremists Read More ›

From the editors of Nature: Nature is delighted to offer its own endorsement of the march and, more importantly, of the movement that the marchers will represent. We encourage readers to get involved, to show solidarity and to speak out about the importance of research and evidence — not just next weekend, but more often and more forcefully. Some serious and important criticisms have been made of the science march, its methods and its possible implications. But a sense of the bigger picture is essential here. Yes, there is a risk, as critics claim, that the march and the wider protest it hopes to symbolize could be diluted or even sidetracked by any number of special interests. Yet there is Read More ›

From Denyse O’Leary at MercatorNet: Mick Hume’s analysis converges closely with traditionalist/conservative streams of thought, especially in criticising claims that fake news determined election outcomes such as Brexit and Trump. The underlying assumption of many pundits is that the public cannot be trusted to make reasonable judgments in the face of fake news, and that a government/corporate crackdown is therefore in order. The problem is, from time immemorial, we have been inundated by fake news in the form of hype, rumour mills, tabloids, cost-free predictions, trendspotting claims, and many other artifacts of the human imagination. If democracy works at all, it works despite the constant and inevitable presence of all these factors all the time. Many predate the printing press Read More ›