2017

From Ana Lopes at Physics: Electronic tags in the form of radio-frequency identification (RFID) devices are everywhere. They show up in key cards, e-passports, toll passes, you name it. H.-S. Philip Wong, Ada Poon, and colleagues at Stanford University, California, have now made an RFID tag that is small enough to be placed inside a cell. Such tags might one day be used to track and monitor individual cells wirelessly. Paper. (paywall) More. Tracking cells should help us understand more of the specified complexity of life. See also: Tiny molecular machines that keep chromosome numbers correct have been identified

From ScienceDaily:“During cell division, a mother cell divides into two daughter cells, and during this process the DNA in the mother cell, wrapped up in the form of chromosomes, is divided into two equal sets. To achieve this, rope-like structures called microtubules capture the chromosomes at a special site called the kinetochore, and pull the DNA apart,” said Dr Viji Draviam, senior lecturer in structural cell and molecular biology from QMUL’s School of Biological and Chemical Sciences. “We have identified two proteins — tiny molecular machines — that enable the correct attachment between the chromosomes and microtubules. When these proteins don’t function properly, the cells can lose or gain a chromosome. This finding gives us a glimpse of an important Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Scientists examining the multiple eyes found on the tentacles of fan worms have discovered they evolved independently from their other visual systems, specifically to support the needs of their lifestyle. Fan worms live in tubes on the seafloor. From their heads, the worms extend feather-like tentacles up out of their tubes to sift the water for food particles and aid in respiration. To protect themselves from predators, fan worms have evolved a variety of unusual compound eyes on their tentacles that act like shadow or motion detectors, alerting the worm to danger and triggering a rapid hiding response to encroaching objects in the water. Superficially, some of these eyes resemble those of crustaceans or insects, but their photoreceptor Read More ›

And thrives anyway. From Denyse O’Leary (O’Leary for News) at Evolution News & Views: Two features of our universe puzzle cosmologists: One is the horizon problem: The universe looks the same in all directions and the cosmic microwave background radiation is about the same temperature everywhere. As String Theory for Dummies puts it, “This really shouldn’t be the case, if you think about it more carefully.” Assuming that current measurements are correct, the radiation must have exceeded the speed of light if it really communicated in this way, but that is forbidden by the standard Big Bang model of the universe. Then there is the “flatness problem”: “The matter density and expansion rate of the universe appear to be nearly Read More ›

A bold claim from Pam Weintraub at Aeon: The ctenophore’s brain suggests that, if evolution began again, intelligence would re-emerge because nature repeats itself The ctenophore was already known for having a relatively advanced nervous system; but these first experiments by Moroz showed that its nerves were constructed from a different set of molecular building blocks – different from any other animal – using ‘a different chemical language’, says Moroz: these animals are ‘aliens of the sea’. If Moroz is right, then the ctenophore represents an evolutionary experiment of stunning proportions, one that has been running for more than half a billion years. This separate pathway of evolution – a sort of Evolution 2.0 – has invented neurons, muscles and Read More ›

Just trying to get it is more than some might expect. From Peter Wood, Geoffrey Clarfield, Gwyneth Custred, and Carol Iannone at National Association of Scholars (NAS),  The The Kingdom of Speech is an extraordinary display of intellectual independence.[1] This is a book that treats Charles Darwin as a toplofty prig and Noam Chomsky as a haughty fake—which is to say it aims to harpoon two of the biggest whales of modern secular thought. Tom Wolfe, writing at age eighty-five with the deftness and assurance of Queequeg on the prow of Starbuck’s boat, undertakes these perilous ventures with his accustomed nonchalance. Having dispatched modern art in one book and modern architecture in another, why not aim a spear or two at Read More ›

From David Klinghoffer at Evolution News & Views: The science story itself is fascinating and to all appearances solid. Human remains dating to some 3,700 year ago from ancient Canaanites yielded DNA revealing a startling overlap with modern-day Lebanese. The latter thus appear to harbor descendants of the long-ago population (“Continuity and Admixture in the Last Five Millennia of Levantine History from Ancient Canaanite and Present-Day Lebanese Genome Sequences,” American Journal of Human Genetics). He quotes a dozen instances of deadweights claiming that the find “disproves the Bible’s suggestion” that the Canaanites were wiped out. Only one problem: The Bible is detailed and unambiguous in relating that the Canaanites survived Joshua’s invasion. So it’s no wonder they have living descendants. Read More ›

Sources here. See also: Ribosome precisely structured for cell growth

From Adam Rogers at Wired: ADAM RUSSELL, AN anthropologist and program manager at the Department of Defense’s mad-science division Darpa, laughs at the suggestion that he is trying to build a real, live, bullshit detector. But he doesn’t really seem to think it’s funny. The quite serious call for proposals Russell just sent out on Darpa stationery asks people—anyone! Even you!—for ways to determine what findings from the social and behavioral sciences are actually, you know, true. Or in his construction: “credible.” Even for Darpa, that’s a big ask. The DoD has plenty of good reasons to want to know what social science to believe. But plenty more is at stake here. Darpa’s asking for a system that can solve Read More ›

From science prof Darrin Durant at The Conversation: Florida recently passed a law which “authorizes county residents to challenge use or adoption of instructional materials” in schools. It’s been described as “anti-science” by individual scientists and USA’s National Center for Science Education. The National Center for Science Education is, among other things, the Darwin-in-the-schools lobby. For what that tends to mean, see Zombie Science. In his book How to be Antiscientific, Steven Shapin argues that descriptions of science, and what ought to be done in science, vary tremendously among scientists themselves. So you’re not anti-science if you have a preference for or against things like a preferred method, or some particular philosophy of science, or some supposed “character” of science. Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Optimization for self-production may explain key features of ribosomes, the protein production factories of the cell, reported researchers from Harvard Medical School in Nature on July 20. In a new study, a team led by Johan Paulsson, professor of systems biology at Harvard Medical School, mathematically demonstrated that ribosomes are precisely structured to produce additional ribosomes as quickly as possible, in order to support efficient cell growth and division. … Ribosomes are composed of a puzzlingly large number of different structural proteins — anywhere from 55 to 80, depending on organism type. These proteins are not just more numerous than expected, they are unusually short and uniform in length. Ribosomes are also composed of two to three strands Read More ›

The kalaam argument: The Cosmological Argument or First Cause Argument is a philosophical argument for the existence of God which explains that everything has a cause, that there must have been a first cause, and that this first cause was itself uncaused. The Kalam Cosmological Argument is one of the variants of the argument which has been especially useful in defending the philosophical position of theistic worldviews. The word “kalam” is Arabic for “speaking” but more generally the word can be interpreted as “theological philosophy.” (All About Philosophy) David Snoke, president of Christian Scientific Society, co-authored a paper with Michael Behe (2004). From his article, “Why Christians should not use the Kalaam argument,” The Kalaam argument is essentially as follows, although Read More ›

The people who thought up the question probably didn’t realize that the concept could be used to argue for design in nature. After all, a mortal world cannot by definition be perfect, so if this is the best one, well … From Oliver Burkeman at the Guardian: “Once upon a time, it was of great survival value to be worried about everything that could go wrong,” says Johan Norberg, a Swedish historian and self-declared New Optimist whose book Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future was published just before Trump won the presidency last year. This is what makes bad news especially compelling: in our evolutionary past, it was a very good thing that your attention could be Read More ›

From medievalist Tim O’Neill (an atheist) at History for Atheists: The Church had always accepted that the Bible could be interpreted in a non-literal manner and that it should be if Biblical exegesis and rational analysis of the world conflicted. That’s why all those Biblical references that talk about a flat earth had long since been regarded as poetic rather than literal. So in 1615 Cardinal Bellarmine made it clear in his letter to Paolo Foscarini that the same could potentially happen with passages that were traditionally interpreted as saying the earth was fixed and unmoving: “[I]f there were a true demonstration that the sun is at the centre of the world and the earth in the third heaven, and Read More ›

From Daniel Mallock at New English Review, a review of The Little Book of God, Mind, Cosmos and Truth by Kenneth Francis: The problem of meaning and values is a central issue. Regarding the philosopher Nietzsche and his famous assertion that “God is dead,” Mr. Francis writes that this concept “… gave great comfort to psychopaths and those seeking moral autonomy. In other words, everything is permitted if God does not exist.” The issue of meaning is one of the central issues of religion and of philosophy, too. If there is no God, then humanity itself and everything that we do is an accident—a galactic happenstance—that shatters human attempts to ascribe meaning and value to thoughts, actions, feelings, and to Read More ›