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Erik Larson at the Atlantic (May 2015): Questioning the Hype About Artificial Intelligence … Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, has openly speculated that humans could be reduced to “pets” by the coming superintelligent machines. Musk has donated $10 million to the Future of Life Institute, in a self-described bid to help stave off the development of “killer robots.” At Berkeley, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) is dedicated to addressing what Bostrom and many others describe as an “existential threat” to humanity, eclipsing previous (and ongoing) concerns about the climate, a nuclear holocaust, and other major denizens of our modern life. Luminaries like Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates have also commented on the scariness of artificial intelligence. Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: … dinosaurs and their close relatives had much more variation in growth patterns then ever expected, and this variation does not appear to be related to differences between males and females. Given how little we really know about dinosaurs and their ilk, it’s surprising we expect anything. Asilisaurus lived during the Triassic Period, roughly 240 million years ago in present-day Africa. With four legs and a long tail, the animal was about the size of a Labrador retriever, and likely maxed at 65 pounds, according to previous studies of the animal. Its exterior skin appearance remains unknown. Fossils of Asilisaurus kongwe — a combination of Swahili and Greek works meaning “ancient ancestor reptile” — are vital because a Read More ›

From Neuroskeptic at the Daily Dot: Why is there so much neurobullshit around today? I think the answer is that neuroscience really has made great advances in the past few decades, and these advances have been very visible. Methods such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), introduced in 1990, have made it possible to measure and picture brain activity in real time. FMRI really is an amazing technology that has revolutionized neuroscience; it has also made neuroscience more accessible to the public. The trouble is that the colorful images produced by fMRI and other neuroimaging techniques are immensely compelling but often misinterpreted. Such images have led to the impression that now, for the first time, we can understand the brain, Read More ›

Got that? You’re sure to graduate in evolutionary psychology: From a computer model from the University of Waterloo: The study, by Professor Bauch and Richard McElreath from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, found that when population sizes become large, the presence of STIs decreases fertility rates more among males with multiple partners, therefore changing which mating behaviour proves to be most beneficial to individuals and groups. Reality: The only consistent enforcer of monogamy has been the relatively equal number of boys and girls born. In early hunter-gatherer populations, it was common for a few males to monopolize mating with multiple females in order to increase their number of offspring. In these small societies where there is a maximum Read More ›

Remember when neurohype was supposed to replace thinking about thinking? Neuroskeptic offers a spring cleaning tip: … take this sentence about stress and the benefits of meditation. “Stress activates your amygdala, creates a red alert, activates your flight-or-fight symptoms, and heats up your system. Your thinking brain gets totally frozen and completely hijacked by your emotional brain.” Impressive – but what happens if we take out the word “brain”, and the other neuroscientific terms like “amygdala”? Then we’re left with “Stress creates a red alert, activates your flight-or-fight symptoms, and heats up your system. Your thoughts get totally frozen and completely hijacked by your emotions.” More. A normal sentence in English. If technical terms don’t tell us anything new, they’re Read More ›

Flying Spaghetti Monster not a religion. (pick self up off floor) From Newsweek: Worshippers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster call their faith FSMism or Pastafarianism, a portmanteau of pasta and Rastafarianism. One such worshipper, Stephen Cavanaugh, a prisoner in a Nebraska state penitentiary, sued the state in 2014 over the right to practice his faith. Cavanaugh argued that his religion requires him to wear special religious clothing in the form of “full pirate regalia,” but that prison officials refused to allow him to do so, despite allowing members of other, recognized religions to purchase and wear special clothing and other items. Cavanaugh also argued that prison officials kept him from meeting and holding religious services with other members of his Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Key gene in development of celiac disease has been found in ‘junk’ DNA 40% of the population carry the main risk factor for celiac disease but only 1% develop the disease. A newly found gene that influences its development has been found in what until recently has been known as ‘junk’ DNA. Celiac disease is a chronic, immunological disease that is manifested as intolerance to gluten proteins present in wheats to an inflammatory reaction in the small intestine that hampers the absorption of nutrients. The only treatment is a strict, life-long, gluten-free diet. … This study confirms the importance of the regions of the genome previously regarded as ‘junk’ in the development of common complaints such as celiac Read More ›

From ScienceNordic: There may be a whole invisible galaxy in the middle of the Milky Way, with dark suns and planets, and maybe even dark life. … Perhaps galaxies are full of a substance that is invisible, but that still has gravity? This, in fact, is what the majority of today’s physicists believe. They believe 80 per cent of the fabric of the universe is made of dark matter. If galaxies are located inside spherical clouds of invisible dark matter, this explains why they can spin as fast as they do without sending all their stars flying off into the universe. And in recent years, observations have confirmed the existence of dark matter. For example, we can see traces of Read More ›

Random Darwinian processes originate a variety of different programs for getting rid of cells no longer needed. From ScienceDaily: Some cells are meant to live, and some are meant to die. The linker cell of Caenorhabditis elegans, a tiny worm that is a favored model organism for biologists, is among those destined for termination. This cell helps determine the shape of the gonad in male worms–and then it dies, after two days, just as the worms are transitioning from larvae into adults. This programmed cell death is a normal part of the animal’s development, yet the genetic and molecular mechanisms underpinning it have not been worked out. Scientists in Rockefeller University’s Laboratory of Developmental Genetics, headed by Shai Shaham, had Read More ›

Time Magazine, December 4, 1995 “Evolution’s Big Bang”: What I like to ask my biologist friends is, How fast can evolution get before they start feeling uncomfortable?” – Samuel Bowring [Geologist], M.I.T (p. 74) Over 20 years now. So long ago, one had forgotten… Too many “just keep moving, folks, nothing to see here,” moments have intervened. And then there were the Ediacaran jellyfish, who are much older but not precursors and the sophisticated Cambrian eyes. Keep moving, folks, keep moving… Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #13,744 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #1 in Books > Science & Math > Evolution > Organic #3 in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Theology > Creationism #3 in Books > Science Read More ›

Biophysicist Kirk Durston of Contemplations writes, re Tree of life morphs into … leaf?: I studied that new tree of life for a while. It leaves me wondering how much is empirical observation and how much is conjecture. I would much rather see the imaginary parts removed and only the dots plotted. As one involved in bioinformatics, I know that one must be very careful to avoid ‘fitting’ the dots into a pre-conceived pattern. Would could just as easily (perhaps even more easily) fit the dots into clusters representing the various ‘kinds’ of life. My own perspective is that life should be mapped out in clusters of dots; leave out everything else for which there is no empirical evidence for. Read More ›

From Ansel Payne at Nautilus: Why Do Taxonomists Write the Meanest Obituaries? The open nature of the science of classification virtually guarantees fights. Well, “speciation” has been a mess forever. No one can define it but it is the basis of Darwinian evolution. On the other hand, maybe that works. Still, one wouldn’t have expected this, necessarily: For starters, there’s the problem of classification itself. Ever since Darwin gave us a framework for understanding common descent, the search has been on for a natural classification, an arrangement of nested groups, or taxa, that accurately reflects evolutionary relationships. In this scheme, a classification functions as an explicit evolutionary hypothesis—to say that five species form a genus is also to say that Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Scientists have dramatically expanded the tree of life, which depicts the variety and evolution of life on Earth, to account for thousands of new microscopic life forms discovered over the past 15 years. The expanded view finally gives bacteria and Archaea their due, showing that about two-thirds of all diversity on Earth is bacterial — half bacteria that cannot be isolated and grown in the lab — while nearly one-third is Archaeal. This is great but no way is it a tree. Readers, what would you call it? One striking aspect of the new tree of life is that a group of bacteria described as the “candidate phyla radiation” forms a very major branch. Only recognized recently, and Read More ›

DNA samples show that outer Hebrides deer are not likely tro have come from the mainland, and it’s suggested that Neolithic peoples imported them. From Jonathan Webb at BBC News: Red deer, the largest of modern British land animals, were banished from most of western Europe and restricted to southern Spain during the last Ice Age. When the ice retreated about 10,000 years ago, these and other beasts – including humans – gradually repopulated northern regions. But red deer didn’t make it to these outer Scottish isles until about 5,000 years ago. Humans, which were increasingly adopting domestication during this period, are thought to be responsible for the deer’s arrival – but the new study casts doubt on the obvious idea Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Researchers have for the first time shown that ribose, a sugar that is one of the building blocks of genetic material in living organisms, may have formed in cometary ices. Origin of life is a somewhat unusual field for a science in that “may have” is equivalent to a discovery. Maybe that’s why James Tour has no time for it. As a first step, an artificial comet was produced at the Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale. By placing a representative mixture of water (H2O), methanol (CH3OH) and ammonia (NH3) in a high vacuum chamber at — 200 ̊C, the astrophysicists simulated the formation of dust grains coated with ice, the raw material of comets. … Several sugars were detected, including Read More ›