2017

This is certainly the day for “earlier than thoughts.” Look on the bright side; it is way more interesting than Tales of the Tone Deaf, which predominated some short while back, about the prof-led move to Stamp Out Doubt. From Rachael Lallensack at Nature: The results, published on 18 July in Nature Communications1, push back against a controversial 2016 study2 that suggested dogs were domesticated twice. The latest analysis also add weight to previous research that moves the timing of domestication back as far as 40,000 years ago. … The researchers estimate that dogs and wolves diverged genetically between 36,900 and 41,500 years ago, and that eastern and western dogs split 17,500–23,900 years ago. Because domestication had to have happened Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: While it is accepted that humans appeared in Africa some 200,000 years ago, scientists in recent years have placed the approximate date of human settlement in Australia further and further back in time, as part of ongoing questions about the timing, the routes and the means of migration out of Africa. Now, a team of researchers, including a faculty member and seven students from the University of Washington, has found and dated artifacts in northern Australia that indicate humans arrived there about 65,000 years ago — more than 10,000 years earlier than previously thought. A paper published July 20 in the journal Nature describes dating techniques and artifact finds at Madjedbebe, a longtime site of archaeological research, that Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Stromatolites are round, multilayered mineral structures that range from the size of golf balls to weather balloons and represent the oldest evidence that there were living organisms on Earth 3.5 billion years ago. Scientists who believed life began in the ocean thought these mineral formations had formed in shallow, salty seawater, just like living stromatolites in the World Heritage-listed area of Shark Bay, which is a two-day drive from the Pilbara. But what Djokic discovered amid the strangling heat and blood-red rocks of the region was evidence that the stromatolites had not formed in salt water but instead in conditions more like the hot springs of Yellowstone. The discovery pushed back the time for the emergence of microbial Read More ›

Maybe Darwin and Steve Meyer aren’t the only ones who claim the right to honest doubt. Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #25,107 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #6 in Books > Science & Math > Evolution > Organic #6 in Books > Science & Math > Biological Sciences > Paleontology #8 in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Theology > Creationism

No, not Atlantis, which has contributed so much to world fantasy literature. There is, in fact, a sort of lost continent, Zealandia. From Tia Ghose at LiveScience: The lost continent, which is mostly submerged, with all of New Zealand and a few islands peeking out from the water, is about half the size of Australia. By drilling deep into its crust or upper layer, the new scientific expedition could provide clues about how the diving of one of Earth’s plates beneath another, a process called subduction, fueled the growth of a volcano chain and this lost continent in the Pacific Ocean 50 million years ago. The new expedition could also reveal how that Earth-altering event changed ocean currents and the Read More ›

Graur’s latest claim that 75% of the human genome is non-functional has attracted a lot of digital ink. Pop science loves that sort of thing. From Kerry Grens at the Scientist: Up to 25 percent of the human genome is critical, while the rest has no function, according to a study published July 11 in Genome Biology and Evolution. The estimate, generated by looking at fertility rates and the expected frequency of deleterious mutations, contradicts a 2012 claim from a large international group called ENCODE, which estimated that 80 percent of the genome is functional. “For 80% of the human genome to be functional, each couple in the world would have to beget on average 15 children and all but Read More ›

From Denyse O’Leary at Evolution News & Views: String theory, which took root in the 1970s, proposes that “all objects in our universe are composed of vibrating filaments (strings) and membranes (branes) of energy.” That’s the ultimate Cool. It unites general relativity (the physics of the very big) with quantum mechanics (the physics of the very small) in one grand unified Theory of Everything, turning current conflicts into harmony. But string theory offers more. It can undergird the concept of a multiverse: There are more universes than particles in our known universe. Which mean that the theory must be true or we must act as if it is true irrespective of evidence—or at least people must be made to believe Read More ›

News recently brought to our attention an article by Tom Rudelius in which he asserts that Occam’s razor does not militate against the existence of the multiverse.  Rudelius writes: The other argument against the multiverse that I find unconvincing is an appeal to Occam’s razor: it is absurd, some would argue, to hypothesize an infinite number of other universes just to explain our own. It is simplest to assume that only one universe exists. Incidentally, atheists will often say the same thing about God, claiming that it is simpler to assume that just the natural universe exists rather than postulate a complicated entity like God to explain fine-tuning. The problem with both of these arguments is that Occam’s razor does Read More ›

Moshe Averick, author of Nonsense of a High Order , writing at Algemeiner, asks us to picture scientists receiving a Morse code message from outer space, purportedly sent by aliens offering a cure for cancer. Will they respond by claiming that there must be some explanation for the message other than an intelligence?: Imagine further that the following exchange then takes place between two SETI scientists: – “Hold on, stop the party! How do you know the source is an intelligent alien life form, maybe there is some naturalistic unguided process that is the source of these transmissions?” – (Incredulously) “What unguided, naturalistic process do you know of that can produce intelligible Morse code messages?!” – “Aha! The Argument from Read More ›

From biologist and computer scientist Arend Hintze at LiveScience: We have some time – somewhere between 50 and 250 years, depending on how fast AI develops. As a species we can come together and come up with a good answer for why a superintelligence shouldn’t just wipe us out. But that will be hard: Saying we embrace diversity and actually doing it are two different things – as are saying we want to save the planet and successfully doing so. We all, individually and as a society, need to prepare for that nightmare scenario, using the time we have left to demonstrate why our creations should let us continue to exist. Or we can decide to believe that it will Read More ›

For whatever reason, I have been receiving a spate of journal articles written by high-maintenance academic welfare recipients on how to Really Fix the people who doubt Darwin. David Klinghoffer, editor at Evolution News and Views, noticed something I wrote here at UD and offers: Skeptics are now social deviants. The journal Sociological Perspectives offers this from Joshua C. Tom of the University of Virginia: Scientific communities maintain respected authority on matters related to the natural world; however, there are instances where significant portions of the population hold beliefs contrary to the scientific consensus. These beliefs have generally been studied as the product of scientific illiteracy. This project reframes the issue as one of social deviance from the consensus of scientific Read More ›

It ought to be so simple, right? Planet of the Apes and all that. From Colin Barras at BBC: It is true that, today, some researchers have a well-thought-through idea of what the LCA looked like and how it behaved. The trouble is that other researchers have equally well-reasoned models that suggest an LCA that looked and behaved in a completely different way. And that puts the research community in a bit of a quandary. In principle, fossilised remains of the LCA might come to light any time. They might even be discovered this very year. But because there is so little agreement on what the LCA should look like, researchers will interpret the fossils differently. “It’s a problem that Read More ›

As asked by Don Lincoln, Senior Scientist, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory at Space.com, acknowledging the difficulties: However, in a paper released in June, scientists have given dark matter models a significant boost. Not only does the new work reproduce the successes of earlier predictions of the dark matter model, it also reproduces the Tully-Fisher relation. The new paper is a “semi-analytic” model, which means that it is a combination of analytic equations and simulation. It simulates the clumping of dark matter in the early universe that may have seeded galaxy formation but also includes the interaction of ordinary matter, including such things as the infall of ordinary matter into another celestial body due to its gravitational pull, star formation and Read More ›

The paper discusses epigenetics. Of course it’s true that we are more than the sum of our genes but you know things are changing when researchers dare say so. From ScienceDaily: Epigenetics between the generations He and his team at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg, Germany used fruit flies to explore how epigenetic modifications are transmitted from the mother to the embryo. The team focused on a particular modification called H3K27me3 that can also be found in humans. It alters the so-called chromatin, the packaging of the DNA in the cell nucleus, and is mainly associated with repressing gene expression. The Max Planck researchers found that H3K27me3 modifications labeling chromatin DNA in the mother’s egg Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Japanese researchers from Osaka University have uncovered a way in which our cells regulate the repair of broken DNA. Their results, published in the journal “Cell Reports,” show a common molecule regulates multiple repair mechanisms and help shed light on how the cell maintains the integrity of the human genome when it is damaged. The human body consists of trillions of cells, and within each are billions of DNA molecules. Strict maintenance of the molecules is essential to maintain a healthy cell and thus a healthy body. This maintenance is challenged by the daily bombardment of chemicals, UV light, radical oxgen and radiation that can damage the DNA molecules. If left unrepaired, the damage could lead to genomic Read More ›