Here. Well over a hundred research talks from the joint 2017 conference of the American Society of Naturalists, the Society for the Study of Evolution, and the Society of Systematic Biologists mid-June in Portland, Oregon. Never mow the lawn again. For example: See also: What the fossils told us in their own words

From David Sloan Wilson at This View of Life: Anything and Everything from an Evolutionary Perspective: ERS [Evolutionary Religious Studies] has made rapid progress during the last 20 years, in part by organizing the vast amount of empirical information on religion that has accumulated, much as Darwin was able to organize the vast amount of information on plants and animals during his day. More. It has made rapid progress if churning out a vast amount of idle naturalist speculation is progress. But remember, many of these people, deep down in their hearts, really do believe in that stuff. It would be easier to feel sympathy for them if it were not so ridiculous. See also: “The evolutionary psychologist knows why Read More ›

From Beth Singler of the Faraday Institute at Aeon: The most avid believers in artificial intelligence are aggressively secular – yet their language is eerily religious. Why? Taking a blind stab in the dark: Both grasp the significance of death? The odd thing about the anti-clericalism in the AI community is that religious language runs wild in its ranks, and in how the media reports on it. There are AI ‘oracles’ and technology ‘evangelists’ of a future that’s yet to come, plus plenty of loose talk about angels, gods and the apocalypse. Ray Kurzweil, an executive at Google, is regularly anointed a ‘prophet’ by the media – sometimes as a prophet of a coming wave of ‘superintelligence’ (a sapience surpassing Read More ›

From Daniel Cossins at New Scientist: The ethics issue: Should we impose population controls? Future generations risk inheriting an overcrowded, suffocating planet. Taking action may mean what was taboo is now common sense Um, er, just a minute here. Who are the “we”? One sensse that the “we” are childless-by-choice types like most of Europe’s top leaders. So there must be a “they” somewhere out there. Who are the “they”? Africa? Fears that we are too many are nothing new. As long ago as 1798, the English writer Thomas Malthus warned that a growing population would eat its way through the planet’s finite resources, condemning millions to die of starvation. Fast forward. Thanks to visionary scientists like John “gene gun” Read More ›

Rob Sheldon’s book is The Long Ascent: Genesis 1–11 in Science & Myth, Volume 1 (Wipf & Stock). The book tries to probe the minds of early biblical characters struggling to understand nature in the absence of any formal body of science knowledge. Order here. As “Part I” suggests, he is working on another installment in the series.

Various foolish explanations are on offer: the adaptationist hypothesis, the byproduct hypothesis, and the sexual selection hypothesis. From Bill Dembski and Jonathan Wells at Evolution News & Views: Leaving aside whether mathematical ability really is a form of sexual display (most mathematicians would be surprised to learn as much), there is a fundamental problem with these hypotheses. To be sure, they presuppose that the traits in question evolved, which in itself is problematic. The main problem, however, is that none of them provides a detailed, testable model for assessing its validity. If spectacular mathematical ability is adaptive, as the adaptationist hypothesis claims, how do we determine that? What precise evolutionary steps would be needed to achieve that ability? If it Read More ›

From Mark Buchanan at Nature Physics: The origin of life is among the deepest unexplained mysteries. How did the first self-replicating entities emerge, providing the material on which the selective mechanism of evolution could then operate? The most primitive known self-replicating forms of life are far too complex to have sprung from the pre-evolutionary environment through… More. You’d have to pay to read more. Not recommended. If they had any workable naturalist idea, the world would deafen at the sound. If they thought it required intelligence, their careers would be ruined. See also: What we know and don’t know about the origin of life

A comparatively sensible article from at the Genetic Literacy Project: Systemic rape used to go hand in hand with war as women, resources and lands were assimilated into the victors’ communities. The victorious men had more children, more land and more power. Some researchers have argued that this is proof of the ‘deep roots theory of war:’ Human males fight each other for reproductive advantage, proving that war is an evolutionary advantageous behavior. But this theory has been hard to prove. In fact, studies of human groups and other primates have added to the evidence both for and against the controversial idea that humans were made for war, evolutionarily speaking. A January 2015 study indicates that societies don’t actually benefit Read More ›

From Will Sullivan at PBS Nova Next: While the single-celled organisms that dominated early Earth’s oceans didn’t have much need for teeth, they did find some evolutionary advantage in making their own minerals. According to research published last week, life has been making its own hard parts for at least 810 million years, about 200 million years longer than previously thought. It’s the first occurrence of what scientists call biomineralization, and it could give us deeper insight into both the evolution of living things and Earth’s early climate. More. It also reduces the time for purely Darwinian evolution to work. See also: Stasis: Life goes on but evolution does not happen

From Uri Harris at Quillette: What is particularly striking about this shift is that the number of moderates has dropped sharply among professors. … From Bankston’s description, it seems clear that any non-leftist would find working in sociology almost unbearable. The research in the original paper suggests that the leftward shift in social science is likely due to a combination of self-selection, hostile climate, and discrimination. More. We all knew this but why persist with the pretense that these disciplines are any kind of sciences at all? And why should they be publicly funded? See also: All sides agree: progressive politics is strangling social sciences

From ScienceDaily: Contrary to expectations, this latest study reveals that each gene doesn’t have an ideal location in the cell nucleus. Instead, genes are always on the move. Published in the journal Nature, researchers examined the organisation of genes in stem cells from mice. They revealed that these cells continually remix their genes, changing their positions as they progress though different stages. This work, which has also inspired a musical collaboration, suggests that moving genes about in this way could help cells to fine-tune the volume of each gene to suit the cell’s needs. Scientists had believed that the location of genes in cells are relatively fixed with each gene having it’s rightful place. Different types of cells could organise Read More ›

From Jesse Emspak at LiveScience: The world’s largest atom smasher has revealed a new kind of particle, and so far, it leads a charmed existence. The discovery of the particle, which is made up of two so-called charm quarks, validates the predictions of the Standard Model, the current reigning model of particle physics. The world’s largest atom smasher has revealed a new kind of particle, and so far, it leads a charmed existence. The discovery of the particle, which is made up of two so-called charm quarks, validates the predictions of the Standard Model, the current reigning model of particle physics. … The Xi joins a menagerie of other particles that form the world of the very small. The Xi Read More ›

From Fritz Burnett at National Geographic: I’ll never forget this nodosaur fossil discovery for a few reasons. To start, it’s one of the best preserved armored dinosaur fossils ever found. I have to admit that seeing bones alone has never fully satisfied my curiosity about the creatures that walked the earth millions of years ago. However, seeing a fossilized foot, scales, and even a bit of skin is amazing. It gives a more complex picture of how this type of dinosaur once looked and lived. More. Here. See also: Dinosaur found with preserved tail feathers, skin

Down Graur, a critic of the ENCODE project, has doubled down on his statement that the genome is mostly non-functional. Graur has gone further to state that not only does he think that most of the genome is non-functional, he thinks that he has proven it to be a mathematical certainty.
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From ScienceDaily: The researchers discovered that wtf genes poison their prey. “The strategy that wtf selfish genes employ is to poison all the developing gametes, but then keep the antidote for themselves,” says Zanders, a Stowers assistant investigator. “The gametes that inherit the selfish genes are also exposed to the poison, but they don’t succumb to it because they have the antidote. And the gametes that don’t inherit the selfish gene are destroyed.” Zanders likens the mechanism to a dinner party in a murder mystery novel, in which everyone, including the host, is poisoned, but the host has the antidote. … The findings are particularly interesting from an evolutionary perspective, Zanders says. “The wtf genes make a poison that has Read More ›