From ScienceDaily: Music must first be defined and distinguished from speech, and from animal and bird cries. We discuss the stages of hominid anatomy that permit music to be perceived and created, with the likelihood of both Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens both being capable. The earlier hominid ability to emit sounds of variable pitch with some meaning shows that music at its simplest level must have predated speech. The possibilities of anthropoid motor impulse suggest that rhythm may have preceded melody, though full control of rhythm may well not have come any earlier than the perception of music above. There are four evident purposes for music: dance, ritual, entertainment personal, and communal, and above all social cohesion, again on Read More ›

From Noson F. Yanofsky at Nautilus: The universe is so structured and orderly that we compare it to the most complicated and exact contraptions of the age. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the universe was compared to a perfectly working clock or watch. Philosophers then discussed the Watchmaker. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the most complicated object is a computer. The universe is compared to a perfectly working supercomputer. Researchers ask how this computer got its programming. How does one explain all this structure? Why do the laws seem so perfect for producing life and why are they expressed in such exact mathematical language? Is the universe really as structured as it seems? More. Not if you want to Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Humans possess many cognitive abilities not seen in other animals, such as a full-blown language capacity as well as reasoning and planning abilities. Despite these differences, however, it has been difficult to identify specific mental capacities that distinguish humans from other animals. Researchers have now discovered that humans have a much better memory to recognize and remember sequential information. The natural number system comes to mind. “We found that the limited capacities of non-human animals can be explained by a simpler kind of memory that does not faithfully represent sequential information. Using a mathematical model, we show that this simpler memory explains the results from animal experiments,” says Stefano Ghirlanda, lead author of the study and Professor of Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: A core assumption in the study of disease-causing genes has been that they are clustered in molecular pathways directly connected to the disease. But work by a group of researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine suggests otherwise. The gene activity of cells is so broadly networked that virtually any gene can influence disease, the researchers found. As a result, most of the heritability of diseases is due not to a handful of core genes, but to tiny contributions from vast numbers of peripheral genes that function outside disease pathways. Any given trait, it seems, is not controlled by a small set of genes. Instead, nearly every gene in the genome influences everything about us. The effects Read More ›

Peter Woit discusses the question at Physics World (May 2017), considering a new book by Frank Close, Theories of Everything: Ideas in Profile: The great success of the Standard Model has left particle physicists in a difficult position; with not just the Higgs, but all other results from the LHC and other particle-physics experiments so far agreeing perfectly with the theory. This has crushed hopes that something unexpected might be found, which would ultimately indicate a way forward to a better, more complete theory. A major goal of Close’s latest book is to put this situation in historical context, describing earlier “theories of everything” and the theoretical advances that gave new, fundamental insight into the nature of physical reality. A Read More ›

A sponsored and funded mess, due to the Darwinian obsession with speciation. From ScienceDaily: New research from Dartmouth College raises questions over how scientists should interpret observed groupings of bacteria. The study advises caution with the assumption that bacterial clusters are always a result of ecological and genetic forces. The research, appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, says random diversification and extinction of cells could organize bacteria into taxonomic units just as effectively as classification based on selection-driven ecological forces. “A reliable classification system is the key to understanding microbial biodiversity,” said Olga Zhaxybayeva, assistant professor of biological sciences at Dartmouth College. “Through our research, we found that organizing microorganisms is even trickier than previously thought.” Read More ›

From Brian Miller at Evolution News & Views: Nearly all researchers recognize that the first cell could not have come about by chance. They instead believe that some physical processes helped to beat the odds. As an analogy, one could never role one thousand sixes in a row with fair dice. However, if the dice were loaded, that outcome could be quite likely or even close to guaranteed. Analogously, some systems do, in fact, naturally move from states of higher entropy to those of lower entropy (i.e., seemingly low probability) if the lower-entropy states are highly biased to occur. Such a bias is created by a second driving tendency. Namely, nature tends to move from states of higher energy to Read More ›

One mutation at a time. No need for simultaneous mutations (since the mathematics verges on impossibility). But, maybe, by gosh, we do need those “simultaneous mutations.” Here’s the abstract from Nature of an article where MCT (micro-computed tomography) reveals the ‘innards’ of a primary fossil. Just read it, and you’ll get the notion of how modern science is simply eviscerating Darwinism. Phylogenetic analysis of early tetrapod evolution has resulted in a consensus across diverse data sets in which the tetrapod stem group is a relatively homogenous collection of medium- to large-sized animals showing a progressive loss of ‘fish’ characters as they become increasingly terrestrial, whereas the crown group demonstrates marked morphological diversity and disparity. The oldest fossil attributed to the Read More ›

From Sarah Zhang at the Atlantic: Sometime around the invention of agriculture, the cats came crawling. It was mice and rats, probably, that attracted the wild felines. The rats came because of stores of grain, made possible by human agriculture. And so cats and humans began their millennia-long coexistence. This relationship has been good for us of course—formerly because cats caught the disease-carrying pests stealing our food and presently because cleaning up their hairballs somehow gives purpose to our modern lives. But this relationship has been great for cats as species, too. From their native home in the Middle East, the first tamed cats followed humans out on ships and expeditions to take over the world—settling on six continents with Read More ›

As in: NASA said Monday it has found new evidence of 219 planets outside our Solar System. Ten of those exoplanets appear to be similar to the size of the Earth and orbit their stars in the habitable zone. From our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon The Kepler telescope had a glitch in 2013 that prevented it from taking any more data. This press release records the final batch of data analysis and the completion of the Kepler planet-finding mission. Most of these 2000 candidates have yet to be verified by other telescopes, so they remain “candidates” or KOI (Kepler Objects of Interest). Filtering the data for Earth-sized planets circling Sun-like stars, came up with a list of about 10. Read More ›

From BEC Crew at ScienceAlert: Here’s proof of how far we’ve come in science – in a world-first, researchers have recorded up-close footage of a single DNA molecule replicating itself, and it’s raising questions about how we assumed the process played out. The real-time footage has revealed that this fundamental part of life incorporates an unexpected amount of ‘randomness’, and it could force a major rethink into how genetic replication occurs without mutations. “It’s a real paradigm shift, and undermines a great deal of what’s in the textbooks,” says one of the team, Stephen Kowalczykowski from the University of California, Davis. More. It may not be as random as they think. A subway crowd’s movements may appear random at times, but Read More ›

Despite decades of public relations. From Chase Nelson at Inference Review: Haldane, one of the founders (along with Ronald Fisher and Sewall Wright) of mathematical population genetics, was the first to quantify such a limit on the speed of adaptive evolution. He concluded that the cost of selection “defines one of the factors, perhaps the main one, determining the speed of evolution.” Cost was the main reason Motoo Kimura proposed the neutral theory of molecular evolution. Many others cite its importance. Nelson’s point is that “In general, the number of individuals combining several specific characteristics decreases exponentially with each additional requirement.” For one thing, the requirements must all work together in the same live body. For example, a beagle has Read More ›

Start your day with fun and the rest will be easier. From possible joke site, regarding Jonathan Wells and his new book Zombie Science, this item: We hope this makes it clear that there is no room in objective reality science for nutjobs, like Jonathan Wells, who refuse to March for Science. Bill Nye is the science guy – trust him. More. Funny anyone would pick Bill Nye the [content warning!] guy, a grand marshall (except he’s too white ) of the pussyhat march for science (who must have skipped civics in high school) to be some kind of stellar figure to oppose Wells. But it is after all a joke site. Unfortunately, most of Wells’s critics in this matter feature Read More ›

From Andrew Masterson at Cosmos: In 1972 the eminent palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould and his colleague Niles Eldredge proposed an idea about the way evolution worked and, in so doing, sparked a fight of almighty proportions. No, it was not really an “almighty” row. It was a vulgar, vicious row between tenured Darwinists and an early group of evidence-seekers who were soon whipped into shape to support the party line. New modelling revealed by Michael Landis and Joshua Schraiber of Temple University in Pennsylvania, US, however, adds considerable extra weight to their case. They had better watch their step if they want to remain employed. Gould and Eldredge sought to explain so-called gaps in the palaeontological record – missing fossils Read More ›

I thought that some of you might be interested in a talk I gave for a local software developer meetup on how theology can aid in building successful software products.
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