2017

Copy Michael Denton.* From the editors of Nature, a look at the work of D’Arcy Thompson a century ago: The 100-year-old challenge to Darwin that is still making waves in research Biological response to physical forces remains a live topic for research. In a research paper, for example, researchers report how physical stresses generated at defects in the structures of epithelial cell layers cause excess cells to be extruded. In a separate online publication (K. Kawaguchi et al. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature22321; 2017), other scientists show that topological defects have a role in cell dynamics, as a result of the balance of forces. In high-density cultures of neural progenitor cells, the direction in which cells travel around defects affects whether cells become Read More ›

From PhilSci Archive: Abstract: Despite numerous and increasing attempts to define what life is, there is no consensus on necessary and sufficient conditions for life. Accordingly, some scholars have questioned the value of definitions of life and encouraged scientists and philosophers alike to discard the project. As an alternative to this pessimistic conclusion, we argue that critically rethinking the nature and uses of definitions can provide new insights into the epistemic roles of definitions of life for different research practices. This paper examines the possible contributions of definitions of life in scientific domains where such definitions are used most (e.g., Synthetic Biology, Origins of Life, Alife, and Astrobiology). Rather than as classificatory tools for demarcation of natural kinds, we highlight Read More ›

From William Thomas at Physics Today: A major study on scientific integrity in the US advocates stricter policies for scientific authorship attribution, increased openness in scientific work, the reporting of negative findings, and establishment of an independent, nonprofit Research Integrity Advisory Board. “Fostering Integrity in Research,” released 11 April by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, is an update to their landmark 1992 study, “Responsible Science: Ensuring the Integrity of the Research Process.” In the intervening 25 years, the scientific research enterprise has become larger, more globalized, and increasingly driven by information technology, which has led to major changes in how the integrity of research can be eroded or protected. More. Unfortunately, I (O’Leary for News) have been Read More ›

Jonathan Wells’ new book, Zombie Science takes up the topics of his earlier book, Icons of Evolution (2000). Nothing has changed. Largely the same old dust-covered discredited icons. What is one to make of claims that Darwinism is a robust vision of evolution if stuff that was questionable back then is plopped into edition after edition of biology textbooks today? The conventional term for that sort of thing is cultural decline. Live systems are self-correcting. From Discovery Institute: Watch Jonathan Wells live online as he presents Zombie Science on Tues., April 18th If the icons of evolution were just innocent textbook errors, why do so many of them still persist? Find out when you tune into the live stream of Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: How nature engineered the original rotary motor The bacterial flagellum is one of nature’s smallest motors, rotating at up to 60,000 revolutions per minute. To function properly and propel the bacterium, the flagellum requires all of its components to fit together to exacting measurements. In a study published in Science, University of Utah researchers report the eludication of a mechanism that regulates the length of the flagellum’s 25 nanometer driveshaft-like rod and answers a long-standing question about how cells are held together. While the biomechanical controls that determine the dimensions of other flagellar components have already been determined, the control of the length of the rod, a rigid shaft that transfers torque from the flagellar motor in the Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Changes in a single color-vision gene demonstrate convergent evolutionary adaptations in widely separated species and across vastly different time scales, according to a study publishing on April 11 in the open access journal PLOS Biology by David Marques of the University of Victoria, British Columbia, and colleagues. The study, which combined genetic analysis with a 19-year-long selection experiment, supports the idea that the mechanisms of adaptive evolution may be more predictable than previously suspected. … “These data support the emerging view in evolutionary biology that mechanisms underlying adaptive evolution are often highly repeatable and thus may be predictable,” said Marques. “They show that evolutionary ‘tinkering’ with a limited set of tools can lead to convergent ‘solutions’ to common Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: The new specimen from the rich Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota (approximately 131 to 120 million years old) is referred to as Eoconfuciusornis, the oldest and most primitive member of the Confuciusornithiformes, a group of early birds characterized by the first occurrence of an avian beak. Its younger relative Confuciusornis is known from thousands of specimens but this is only the second specimen of Eoconfuciusornis found. This species comes only from the 130.7 Ma Huajiying Formation deposits in Hebei, which preserves the second oldest known fossil birds. Birds from this layer are very rare. This new specimen of Eoconfuciusornis, housed in the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature, in Eastern China, is a female. The ovary reveals developing yolks that Read More ›

There has been quite a controversy over the past few years over whether the extended evolutionary synthesis is a replacement of the modern synthesis or a refinement of it.
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Armand Jacks says he has a knock down show stopping argument to rebut ID’s claim that intelligent agency is the only known cause of specified complexity. Get ready. Hold on to your hat. Here it is: Using the same argument, the only known causes of everything we have ever seen in the entire universe are material causes. Are blind unguided material forces capable of typing the post you just posted AJ?  If you say “no” your argument is refuted.  If you say “yes” you look like a fool or a liar or both.  Talk about the Scylla and Charybdis. AJ, you really should stop and think for 10 seconds before you write something like that down.  I know, I know.  Thinking Read More ›

Well, consider: Our physics colour commentator Rob Sheldon offers some thoughts on the problem of theoretical physics starting to seem like a fly repeatedly hitting the window pane (Sabine Hossenfelder’s term): Peter Woit sees the same thing and blames it on data-free speculation. Another physics blogger (and graduate of my alma mater), Chad Orzel blames it on underemployed theorists. Sabine Hossenfelder thinks the social aspects of the scientific method have deeply infected the matter. Let me toss my hat in the ring and blame it on the Enlightenment. It was Christianity that birthed science and the scientific method, and atheism that killed it. If you permit me to be politically incorrect, Stanley Jaki argued that neither Hinduism nor Islam could Read More ›

A reader writes to recommend Chapter 3 of C.S. Lewis’s Miracles: Every event which might claim to be a miracle is, in the last resort, something presented to our senses, something seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted. And our senses are not infallible. If anything extraordinary seems to have happened, we can always say that we have been the victims of an illusion. If we hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural, this is what we always shall say. What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience. It is therefore useless to appeal to experience before we have settled, as well as we can, the philosophical question. … Nothing can seem extraordinary until Read More ›

For our own good. Or anyway, seriously consider that option, in the age of marchin’, marchin’. From Sara Mojtehedzadeh at Toronto Star: It was a human experiment on an unprecedented scale. Its target: 10,000 Ontario miners. Its tool: a mysterious black powder they were forced to inhale in a sealed room before plunging underground to work. From 1943 to roughly 1980, an aluminum-based prophylaxis called McIntyre Powder was sold as an apparent miracle antidote to lung disease. It was designed, historical documents suggest, by industry-sponsored Canadian scientists bent on slashing compensation costs in gold and uranium mines across the north. The problem: experts say aluminum is now known to be neurotoxic if significant doses get into the blood. And victims’ families Read More ›

I (O’Leary for News) happened to be looking up a concept connected with Easter: On Holy Saturday, many hold that  Jesus ushered the just people from former ages into Heaven. I came across this page: The Resurrection Icon and the World Without Charles Darwin It offers information for the “objective” student of Russian, Greek, and Balkan icons. Where we learn, unpacking the meaning of the icon: At the bottom is an elaborated version of the “old” image, with Christ standing on the gates of Hades and grasping Adam by the hand, as Eve and other Old Testament women kneel before him. John the Forerunner and King David are already in the crowd that is moving up toward Paradise in a Read More ›

Wilder Penfield was a pioneering neurosurgeon in Montreal. A friend writes to draw our attention to his approach to the mind, in The Mystery of the Mind: “The challenge that comes to every neurophysiologist is to explain in terms of brain mechanisms all that men have come to consider the work of the mind, if he can. And this he must undertake freely, without philosophical or religious bias. If he does not succeed in his explanation, using proven facts and reasonable hypotheses, the time should come, as it has to me, to consider other possible explanations. He must consider how the evidence can be made to fit the hypothesis of two elements as well as that of one only.” – Wilder Read More ›

At Jonathan McLatchie’s Apologetics Academy at 8pm GMT / 3pm EST here. David Snoke is president of the Christian Scientific Society. See also: As if the multiverse wasn’t bizarre enough …meet Many Worlds and Webinar: Paul Nelson on evolution as theory of transformation Follow UD News at Twitter!