August 2018

And we are not sure which ones they are. From ScienceDaily: Research Centre (CNIO) reveals that up to 20% of genes classified as coding (those that produce the proteins that are the building blocks of all living things) may not be coding after all because they have characteristics that are typical of non-coding or pseudogenes (obsolete coding genes). They don’t mean “junk DNA,” do they? Not this again. The work once again highlights doubts about the number of real genes present in human cells 15 years after the sequencing the human genome. Although the most recent data indicates that the number of genes encoding human proteins could exceed 20,000, Federico Abascal, of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the United Read More ›

They may be a shortcut for the immune system. From ScienceDaily: “We always thought that immune cells from our arms and legs traveled via blood to damaged brain tissue. These findings suggest that immune cells may instead be taking a shortcut to rapidly arrive at areas of inflammation,” said Francesca Bosetti, Ph.D., program director at the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), which provided funding for the study. “Inflammation plays a critical role in many brain disorders and it is possible that the newly described channels may be important in a number of conditions. The discovery of these channels opens up many new avenues of research.” Paper. (paywall) – Fanny Herisson, Vanessa Frodermann, Gabriel Courties, David Rohde, Yuan Read More ›

At least, it hasn’t been seen in other life forms. From ScienceDaily: Tamás and University of Szeged doctoral student Eszter Boldog dubbed these new cells “rosehip neurons” — to them, the dense bundle each brain cell’s axon forms around the cell’s center looks just like a rose after it has shed its petals, he said. The newly discovered cells belong to a class of neurons known as inhibitory neurons, which put the brakes on the activity of other neurons in the brain. The study hasn’t proven that this special brain cell is unique to humans. But the fact that the special neuron doesn’t exist in rodents is intriguing, adding these cells to a very short list of specialized neurons that Read More ›

But could the psychotic computer ever be conscious? That’s another story. Marks, an author of Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics, weighs in, on the 50th anniversary of 2001: A Space Odyssey. At one point on the trip from Earth to Jupiter, HAL becomes suspicious that the crew might be sabotaging the mission. HAL then purposely tries to kill all the crew. The most logical explanation for this act is a coding error. HAL was programmed to operate on the basis that the mission took priority over human life. By contrast, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov did not allow his AI to kill. … More. See also: Screenwriters’ jobs are not threatened by AI (Robert J.Marks) AI That Can Read Minds? Deconstructing AI Read More ›

The staff of a national newspaper is shocked and appalled: Biology classes in kindergarten and elementary school do not mention Charles Darwin’s theory that all life evolved from common ancestors, and in middle school it is only alluded to as part of general discussions, the TV report said. Four years ago, the high school curriculum was revised, the report said. Previously there had been one unit on evolution in the matriculation exams. In the new curriculum, the religiously sensitive theory of common descent has been omitted, and replaced with classes on species survival and genetic modifications and adaptations based on environmental factors. If Israel is reasonably up-to-date on science matters (check the Nobel Prize stats), many biology teachers may know Read More ›

Same ”Mathematx” prof, same bilge, more publicity, but no action: A U.S. professor who teaches future public school teachers will “argue for a movement against objects, truths, and knowledge” in a keynote to the Mathematics Education and Society conference this coming January, says her talk description. “The relationship between humans, mathematics, and the planet has been one steeped too long in domination and destruction,” the talk summary says. “What are appropriate responses to reverse such a relationship?” We can already guess University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor Rochelle Gutierrez’s answer, from reviewing her published writings and comments. Her plans for “an insurgency by the people” to subvert public institutions and American self-rule through “ethnomathematics” will knock your eyebrows off your Read More ›

We are told: “Wherever you look in the cosmos, things don’t seem to add up.” And now physicists like Sabine Hossenfelder are accused of cheating: Ethan Siegel, astrophysicist-blogger behind Forbes’ Starts With a Bang! blog, responded with a post titled “There’s A Debate Raging Over Whether Dark Matter Is Real, But One Side Is Cheating.” He wrote that, in order to win favor from the public, Hossenfelder and McGaugh were setting up a false narrative by treating the fight as an even one, even though the support for a dark matter particle far outweighs the opposing side. Naturally, McGaugh and Hossenfelder were not happy to be called cheaters. McGaugh argued that he’s published far more scientific papers than Siegel has. Read More ›

Says biologist Peter Ward, because epigenetics changes can account for life forms that have been classified as different species: More and more, biologists are discovering that organisms thought to be different species are, in fact, but one. A recent example is that the formerly accepted two species of giant North American mammoths (the Columbian mammoth and the woolly mammoth) were genetically the same but the two had phenotypes determined by environment. Epigenetics (or heritable epigenetics, or neo-Lamarckism) is a series of different processes that can cause evolutionary changes as well as dictate how organisms develop from a single fertilized egg (in the case of sexually reproducing organisms, at least) to what we look like as adults. Some say it’s just Read More ›

Fr. Robert Verrill, OP, takes different view: In his paper “Real Patterns,” Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett writes the following: In my opinion, every philosophy student should be held responsible for an intimate acquaintance with the Game of Life. It should be considered an essential tool in every thought-experimenter’s kit, a prodigiously versatile generator of philosophically important examples and thought experiments of admirable clarity and vividness. One of the reasons why Dennett likes the Game of Life is because he thinks it can help us understand how computers could be genuinely intelligent. Now I do think the Game of Life provides us with some interesting thought experiments, but precisely for the opposite reason to Dennett: the Game of Life simulation Read More ›

Science writer John Horgan well remembers going to interview Popper, who had strong views on subjectivism in physics: Words poured from him so rapidly and with so much momentum that I began to lose hope that I could ask my prepared questions. “I am over 90, and I can still think,” he declared, as if I doubted it. Popper emphasized that he had known all the titans of twentieth-century science: Einstein, Schrodinger, Heisenberg. Popper blamed Bohr, whom he knew “very well,” for having introduced subjectivism into physics. Bohr was “a marvelous physicist, one of the greatest of all time, but he was a miserable philosopher, and one couldn’t talk to him. He was talking all the time, allowing practically only Read More ›

Let us soberly ponder, reading between the lines: Food for thought. END PS: By way of sharpest contrast:

Many times we hear about the “argument from evil” as a knock-down argument for the non-existence of God.  For those of you who are not familiar with the argument, I will explain it.  It goes like this: All good arguments depend on the precise, clear and unambiguous use of language.  The argument from evil is no exception.  It obviously demands an exacting definition of the word “evil.”  Richard Dawkins, the world’s most famous atheist, says the universe has “no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”  If he is right and there is no evil, that might seem like a problem for an argument from, well, evil.  But it is not.  Dawkins means there is no objective transcendent morality.  Stuff Read More ›