From ScienceDaily: A British enthusiasm for feeding birds may have caused UK great tits to have evolved longer beaks than their European counterparts, according to new research. … The specific gene sequences which had evolved in the British birds were found to closely match human genes known to determine face shape. There were also strong similarities with genes identified with beak shape in Darwin’s study of finches — one of the best-known examples of how physical traits have adapted to different environments in the wild. This led the researchers to think that great tit beaks were evolving by natural selection in British great tits, perhaps in response to the widespread use of bird feeders.Paper. (paywall) – Mirte Bosse, Lewis G. Read More ›

From Michael Greshko at National Geographic: Despite claims of a new origin story for humans, the fossils more likely belonged to a very distant branch on the primate family tree. … Study leader Herbert Lutz, the deputy museum director at the Mainz Natural History Museum, says that he and his colleagues have been dumbfounded by the teeth for the last year. Their paper, posted online Friday on the article-sharing platform ResearchGate, claims that the teeth bear a close resemblance to some extinct African relatives of modern humans. … The canine tooth described in the paper has an unusual, intriguing shape, says University of Toronto paleoanthropologist Bence Viola, an expert on the teeth of humans’ extinct relatives. However, the molar—which he Read More ›

From Shannon Palus at New Scientist: THERE is a hole in the sun. Right in the middle, a mass the size of 1500 Earths has simply disappeared. Much of what we know about the sun’s behaviour says it should be there – but when we interpret the data encoded in sunlight, that chunk of stuff is nowhere to be seen. That has shaken up our understanding of how the sun works, and physicists are struggling to figure out what fills that hole. It could be a thing, like dark matter. It could be a concept, with elements such as carbon and nitrogen simply behaving in a way we didn’t expect under crushing pressure. Or perhaps we’re looking at the sun Read More ›

From Mikhail Tikhonov at The Scientist: More profoundly, microbial ecosystems are a strange world where many familiar concepts start to break down, including “species,” “fitness,” and maybe even “organism.” In our everyday experience, we are rarely in doubt whether a given creature is a fox or a rabbit. Further, it seems very easy to delineate where an “individual” ends, and its “environment” begins. Our ability to do so is often taken for granted, and underlies how we think about both ecology and evolution. Whether these assumptions remain adequate for microbes is, however, increasingly doubtful. … The issue of microbial species being ill-defined is a hot topic in the biological literature. In a recent paper in Physical Review E, I try Read More ›

From Cathay O’Connell at at Cosmos: Like me, physicists around the world are in the midst of an important search that has so far proven fruitless. Their quarry is nothing less than most of the matter in the universe, so-called “dark matter”. So far their most sensitive detectors have found – to be pithy – nada. Despite the lack of results, scientists aren’t giving up. “The frequency with which articles show up in the popular press saying ‘maybe dark matter isn’t real’ massively exceeds the frequency with which physicists or astronomers find any reason to re-examine that question,” says Katie Mack, a theoretical astrophysicist at the University of Melbourne. In many respects, the quest for dark matter has only just Read More ›

Yes. From Peter Dockrill at Science Alert: Of the 451 cell lines known to be compromised, the most famous contaminating source is what’s known as HeLa cells, named after their source, Henrietta Lacks. In 1951, this 31-year-old mother of five from Virginia died from cervical cancer. But during treatment before her death, cells were taken from Lacks’ cervix in a biopsy without her consent. Later, cell biologist George Otto Gey discovered these cells could be kept alive and grow indefinitely in a lab – as such, HeLa cells became the first immortalised cell line, meaning they didn’t eventually die due to cellular senescence. That everlasting quality made them a valuable research specimen that was distributed across the world, ultimately contributing Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: The spark of life, the authors say, was the creation of RNA polymers: the essential components of nucleotides, delivered by meteorites, reaching sufficient concentrations in pond water and bonding together as water levels fell and rose through cycles of precipitation, evaporation and drainage. The combination of wet and dry conditions was necessary for bonding, the paper says. In some cases, the researchers believe, favorable conditions saw some of those chains fold over and spontaneously replicate themselves by drawing other nucleotides from their environment, fulfilling one condition for the definition of life. Those polymers were imperfect, capable of improving through Darwinian evolution, fulfilling the other condition. “That’s the Holy Grail of experimental origins-of-life chemistry,” says Pearce. That rudimentary form Read More ›

From Michael Denton’s new book, Wonder of Water: This wonder fluid is fit for life on Earth in an absolutely stunning number of ways. It is fit for the formation of proto-planetary discs, for the formation of the planets, for the formation of the oceans, and for their subsequent preservation. Water is uniquely fit for the hydrological cycle, the tectonic cycle, and the temperature regulation of the human body. The properties of water play a critical part in the formation of the great oceanic currents, which circulate crucial nutrients throughout the world ocean. Those currents play a key role in global temperature regulation and moderation and in controlling the CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Water is superbly and uniquely fit Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Travis Hagey, Michigan State University evolutionary biologist, shows how different groups of lizards — geckos and anoles — took two completely different evolutionary paths to developing the beneficial trait of sticky toe pads. In a paper published in the journal Evolution, Hagey showed that anoles seemed to commit to a single type of toe pad, one that generates lots of friction. As a group, they were able to develop sticky toe pads early. Geckos, meanwhile, opted for an evolutionary “drunken stumble,” and seemingly didn’t commit to a single approach, instead evolving toe pads that generate plenty of friction in some species and others that excel at sticking directly to a surface. … “We’re trying to explain how evolution Read More ›

From Sabine Hossenfelder at her blog Backreaction: I’ve had many interesting reactions to my recent post about inflation, this idea that the early universe expanded exponentially and thereby flattened and smoothed itself. The maybe most interesting response to my pointing out that inflation doesn’t solve the problems it was invented to solve is a flabbergasted: “But everyone else says it does.” … I’m not sure why that is so. Those who I personally speak with pretty quickly agree that what I say is correct. The math isn’t all that difficult and the situation pretty clar. The puzzle is, why then do so many of them tell a story that is nonsense? And why do they keep teaching it to students, Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Whales and dolphins (Cetaceans) live in tightly-knit social groups, have complex relationships, talk to each other and even have regional dialects — much like human societies. A major new study, published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution (Monday 16th October), has linked the complexity of Cetacean culture and behaviour to the size of their brains. Rich yes, “human-like” no. But the authors know they won’t be challenged by peers wondering where the dolphin universities are. Things get interesting here: Dr Kieran Fox, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, added: “Cetaceans have many complex social behaviours that are similar to humans and other primates. They, however, have different brain structures from us, leading some researchers to argue that whales and Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: As a rule, soft parts do not withstand the ravages of time; hence, the majority of vertebrate fossils consist only of bones. Under these circumstances, a new discovery from the UNESCO World Heritage Site “Messel Pit” near Darmstadt in Germany comes as an even bigger surprise: a 48-million-year old skin gland from a bird, containing lipids of the same age. The oldest lipids ever recorded in a fossil vertebrate were used by the bird to preen its plumage. … “As shown by our detailed chemical analysis, the lipids have kept their original chemical composition, at least in part, over a span of 48 million years. The long-chain hydrocarbon compounds from the fossil remains of the uropygial gland can Read More ›

In North America, we think mainly in terms of toxic snowflakes, of the sort that made it dangerous for their biology prof to be on campus. But elsewhere, it can be worse. From Maria Burke at Chemistry World: Thousands of people in the higher education sector have been targeted in Turkey where state and university authorities continue to take sweeping measures in retaliation for alleged political links or content of research, publications or teaching. Punitive actions by the Turkish state have included imprisonment and prosecution; dismissal and expulsion of scholars and students; and restrictions on travel and institutional autonomy. … There have been many reports of widespread restrictions on academics’ travel. Over the past year, for example, Turkey has issued Read More ›

From philosopher of science Adrian Currie at Aeon: There’s a scarcity of jobs compared with the number of applicants, and very few high-ranking and ‘big impact’ journals. This means that the research decisions that scientists make, particularly early on, are high-risk wagers about what will be fruitful and lead to a decent career. The road to academic stardom (and, for that matter, academic mediocrity) is littered with brilliant, passionate people who simply made bad bets. In such an environment, researchers are bound to be conservative – with the stakes set so high, taking a punt on something outlandish, and that you know is likely to hurt your career, is not a winning move. The resulting mediocrity shows. The biologist Barbara Read More ›

Using “cutting edge DNA technology.” From ScienceDaily: Meladema coriacea is among Europe’s largest water beetles and has been considered common across the south of the continent and in North Africa since the early 19th century. But academics from the University of Plymouth and the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona have now shown what was long thought to be one common species is actually two. Using DNA sequence data and detailed analysis of morphology, they have described a new species — Meladema lepidoptera — which appears virtually identical to Meladema coriacea at first glance, but is very divergent genetically. Meladema lepidoptera is restricted to Corsica, Sardinia, adjacent small islands and some areas of the Italian mainland, where it apparently occurs Read More ›