From University of Utah at EurekAlert: The shores of Lake Turkana, in Kenya, are dry and inhospitable, with grasses as the dominant plant type. It hasn’t always been that way. Over the last four million years, the Omo-Turkana basin has seen a range of climates and ecosystems, and has also seen significant steps in human […]
Month: June 2017
At Aeon: Quantum mechanics explains human intuition
From Philip Ball at Aeon: It’s a strange idea that measurement needs explaining at all. Usually what we mean by a measurement seems so trivial that we don’t even ask the question. A ball has a position, or a speed, or a mass. I can measure those things, and the things I measure are the […]
Is OOL Part of Darwinian Evolution?
Recently I had a lengthy discussion with an acquaintance about evolution and the various concepts and claims that we find under the heading of the word “evolution.” At one point I brought up the origin of life and he promptly insisted: “that’s not part of evolution.” “Perhaps,” I offered, “but consider that the origin of […]
Claim: Human brains evolved to need exercise
From ScienceDaily: UA anthropologist David Raichlen and UA psychologist Gene Alexander, who together run a research program on exercise and the brain, propose an “adaptive capacity model” for understanding, from an evolutionary neuroscience perspective, how physical activity impacts brain structure and function. Their argument: As humans transitioned from a relatively sedentary apelike existence to a […]
Animals’ social experience modifies genes?
So genes don’t rule? From ScienceDaily: Mice have a reputation for timidity. Yet when confronted with an unfamiliar peer, a mouse may respond by rearing, chasing, grappling, and biting — and come away with altered sensitivity toward future potential threats. What changes in the brain of an animal when its behavior is altered by experience? […]
Breaking, breaking NASA has not found ET
From Mike Wall at Space.com: NASA is not preparing to drop an alien-life bombshell, despite what you may have heard. Last week, the hacking group Anonymous posted a video on YouTube suggesting that the space agency is about to announce the discovery of life beyond Earth. The video has made a big splash online — […]
The universe may be “conscious?”
From Philip Perry at BigThink: What consciousness is and where it emanates from has stymied great minds in societies across the globe since the dawn of speculation. In today’s world, it’s a realm tackled more and more by physicists, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists. There are a few prevailing theories. The first is materialism. This is […]
Yes, teach evolution—but cut out the nonsense
From David Klinghoffer at Evolution News & Views: Color us just a bit skeptical about news reports that Turkey will eliminate evolution from its official 9th grade curriculum. If true, though, it is of course a terrible idea. … News like this filtered through the Western media can’t necessarily be taken at face value. That […]
Fish invaded land suddenly, not slowly
From ScienceDaily: Their findings have just been published in the research journal Nature. “It forces a radical rethink of what evolution was capable of among the first tetrapods,” said project lead Jason Anderson, a paleontologist and Professor at the University of Calgary Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (UCVM). Before this study, ancient tetrapods — the ancestors […]
Richard Dawkins: Religious ed is a key school subject
Bad news for Separation of Church and State lawyers. From Laura Geggel at LiveScience: Despite his criticism of intelligent design and creationism, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins told people at a science festival this past the weekend that he believes religious education is a key subject for schoolchildren. Dawkins, who is open about his atheism, said […]
Why are so many Americans young Earth creationists?
Asks BioLogos’s Jim Stump at at Christian Today, sneering: But after this initial good news, what strikes many people in the UK and elsewhere in the world is that there are still almost 40 per cent of Americans who are young earth creationists, holding beliefs that are contradicted by the overwhelming majority of scientists (in a […]
Aw, come out of the closet, prof
ID is not absurd, unless, of course, thinking is absurd From Raymond Bergner at Academia: Let me say from the outset that this is not an essay arguing for intelligent design. Rather, it is a protest against a certain attitude. Everywhere I turn today, I hear voices, with varying degrees of smugness and contempt, telling […]
Do giant viruses obviate many claims about genetics?
From ScienceDaily: as their name suggests, giant viruses are larger than many bacterial and eukaryotic cells. They were first discovered in 2003, and the true breadth of their diversity remains unknown. In a study led by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI), a DOE Office of Science user facility, […]
Forrest Mims: Skepticism now gone from science
At at Watt’s Up with That: Traditional science required a skeptical view of one’s own findings until they could be replicated, especially by others. Unfortunately, skepticism has been deleted from the latest edition of “On Being a Scientist,” a widely-read booklet published by the National Academies of Science. When I asked the NAS about this […]
Will the most mysterious amphibian force a rethink?
From ScienceDaily: Researchers have determined that the fossils of an extinct species from the Triassic Period are the long-missing link that connects Kermit the Frog’s amphibian brethren to wormlike creatures with a backbone and two rows of sharp teeth. Named Chinlestegophis jenkinsi, the newfound fossil is the oldest relative of the most mysterious group of […]