Jonathan McLatchie In this webinar, biologist Dr. Matti Leisola talks about his journey as a scientist from Darwin to design. See also: Jonathan McLatchie And Gunter Bechly On Conflicting Evidence Re Common Ancestry Matti Leisola: Another gifted scientist poised over the memory hole? and Matti Leisola On Evolution And The Recent Nobel Chemistry Prize Follow UD News at Twitter! Hat tip: Philip Cunningham

It’s now thought that honey bees “shimmer” in order to protect themselves from hornets: What this essentially does it make is extremely difficult for hornets to swoop in and land on their massive huddle to prey on individual bees. Kastberger and his colleagues noted in their research that shimmering can create what they described as a “shelter zone” of over a foot and a half of space between the bees and hornets or wasps. Catie Keck, “Honey Bees’ Oddly Hypnotizing ‘Shimmering’ Is Actually a Clever Defense” at Gizmodo Shimmering beats defending themselves by stinging because the bee that stings dies. Odd that bees could teach themselves this alternative purely by accident… See also: J. Scott Turner and the giant crawling Read More ›

Yesterday, here’s a vid report — I add a timelapse that blows up the typical minimisation (HT BA77): UD’s man on the spot has pictures, so let undeniable truth speak to us. He comments: Often, the only way to get to the top of a hill is a twisty trail that goes here and there, sometimes sideways, sometimes seemingly the wrong way. The reason for this is that there are obstacles in front of you that cannot be overcome directly. That huge rock is not moving anytime soon, and you can’t go through it. Such is the daily experience of the Pro-Lifer. Our opponents, who regard the killing of a child in the womb as a kind of sacrament, have Read More ›

The hermit crabs learned to move into the shells of dead crustaceans, and their well-being depends on that movable property. Recent research suggests that they have made some unusual efforts, as species, to hang onto the desirable shells: Over the course of evolution, penis size has been subject to female choice and competition with male rivals. In a study published today (January 16) in Royal Society Open Science, Mark Laidre, a biologist at Dartmouth College, introduces a new idea: that larger penises help animals keep hold of precious resources. He compared hundreds of specimens of nine related species of hermit crab and showed that crustaceans that have more valuable shells have longer sexual tubes, helping them keep a grip on Read More ›

He argues that we may need new institutions, such as insurance against job obsolescence: I believe that humans are creative enough to come with the new institutions necessary to adapt to a changing world. What I fear is that we will not be allowed to do so. We do not live in an ideal free market, where we can choose whether or not to belong to any particular institution. Instead, we live in a mixed society where we are free to choose whether to belong to some institutions but other institutions are either mandated or forbidden. We are not always free to experiment with new institutions to identify the best ways to organize society. If humans are free to experiment Read More ›

Some researchers wondered whether all that junk DNA supposedly left over from Darwinian evolution actually did something after all so they tested the idea: Patches of seemingly meaningless DNA dotted throughout the genome might actually have a function: helping cells to survive starvation. Two studies published in Nature on 16 January suggest that these stretches of non-coding DNA called introns help to control the rate at which cells grow, conserving energy when food becomes scarce. Michael Marshall, “Cryptic DNA sequences may help cells survive starvation” at Nature Not just “junk DNA” any moreat The Scientist either, it would seem: Two studies contest the idea that the noncoding sequences are just “junk DNA,” demonstrating that they play important roles in the regulation of Read More ›

They spent a lot of time ridiculing what they should have been studying. They ridiculed the now commonly accepted idea that a lichen was algae and fungi living as if they were one organism: The very notion of different organisms living so closely with—or within—each other was unheard of. That they should coexist to their mutual benefit was more ludicrous still. This was a mere decade after Charles Darwin had published his masterpiece, On the Origin of Species, and many biologists were gripped by the idea of nature as a gladiatorial arena, shaped by conflict. Against this zeitgeist, the concept of cohabiting, cooperative organisms found little purchase. Lichenologists spent decades rejecting and ridiculing Schwendener’s “dual hypothesis.” And he himself wrongly Read More ›

Four hundred and thirty million years ago, according to ScienceDaily: The discovery made by FAU palaeontologists Dr. Sebastian Teichert, Prof. Dr. Axel Munnecke and their Australian colleague Dr. William Woelkerling has far-reaching consequences. ‘Our finds mean that we must now look at the fossil record in a completely new way’, explains Dr. Sebastian Teichert. Up to now, a higher age for coralline red algae was thought to be so unlikely that fossils found in layers of rock older than the Cretaceous Period were not even considered as coralline red algae simply due to their age. The fossil record comprises all documented occurrences of fossils and is the essential source of information about how life on Earth developed. A re-evaluation of Read More ›

Teeth from the upper jaw of a child (the Xujiayao child) of about 6 and a half, who died between 100,000-200,000 years ago were examined by X-ray: But the ancient child’s overall dental growth and development falls within the range observed among kids today, paleoanthropologist Song Xing of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and her colleagues report online January 16 in Science Advances. That humanlike rate of dental development suggests that the youngster belonged to an East Asian Homo population with a relatively long life span and an extended period of child care, the researchers speculate. Those characteristics are associated with present-day humans’ lengthy period of tooth growth.Bruce Bower, “An ancient child from East Asia grew teeth like Read More ›