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  From Nautilus, #1: Our spines are a mess. It’s a wonder we can even walk, says Bruce Latimer, director of the Center for Human Origins at Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland. When our ancestors walked on all fours, their spines arched, like a bow, to withstand the weight of the organs suspended below. But then we stood up. That threw the system out of whack by 90 degrees, and the spine was forced to become a column. Next, to allow for bipedalism, it curved forward at the lower back. And to keep the head in balance—so that we didn’t all walk around as if doing the limbo—the upper spine curved in the opposite direction. This change put tremendous Read More ›

From Eurekalert: Behind the apparent randomness of a basketball game, a process of self-organisation is actually taking place amid the teams. The interactions between team mates and opponents are constantly influencing each other while the game itself allows for creative behaviours to emerge. This phenomenon, detected by Spanish researchers after analysing over 6,000 NBA games, resembles the way in which living things must continually evolve in order to survive in nature. More. Hmmm. If the basketball players are evolving as a result of their strategies, they are keeping it a secret. In a predator-prey system, for instance, or in a natural changing environment with limited resources, species evolve in their arms race by adapting. They continuously fight and give it Read More ›

From Robert Lawrence Kuhn at Space: On the other hand, when asked his view of the anthropic principle, physicist David Gross at the University of California at Santa Barbara said, “I hate it.” “Anthropic considerations acquire real physical meaning only if one has many potential options,” Linde explained to me, “but only if some of them are compatible with the existence of observers. “The multiverse provides these options”, he asserted. “The most famous problem addressed by anthropic considerations is the size of the cosmological constant.” In other words, in studying the energy density of empty space, the vacuum, why is the cosmological constant so astonishingly small but still not zero? Linde said there are multiple problems in physics and cosmology, Read More ›

From Phys.org: The teams’ study consisted of analyzing the remains of approximately 2,500 people that lived in Japan during the Jomon period [(from 13,000 – 800 BC)], looking for examples of violence, e.g. broken or damaged bones. The team reports that they found evidence of violence in just 1.8 percent of all the adult bones represented and in just 0.89 percent of the population as a whole. A very low number compared to the 12 to 14 percent seen in other hunter-gatherer populations of around the same time period (which strongly suggested a violent existence). This, the researchers claim, suggests that the people of that time lived peacefully among themselves and did not conduct war against others that might have Read More ›

From Neuroskeptic at Discover: In a long and interesting article over at Edge, social neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman discusses (amongst other things) the ‘replication crisis’ in his field. … Lieberman wants replictors to be chosen from among those who have done successful work in that area previously — because if they haven’t shown that they can successfully get other priming effects, or other embodied cognition effects, how do I know that they can do this? Neuroskeptic responds, … there’s something odd about the idea that ones qualifications should include a track record in finding positive results in the field in question. That seems to be putting the cart before the horse. I agree that replicators should have the necessary technical skills, Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Homo sapiens, the ancestor of modern humans, shared the planet with Neanderthals, a close, heavy-set relative that dwelled almost exclusively in Ice-Age Europe, until some 40,000 years ago. Neanderthals were similar to Homo sapiens, with whom they sometimes mated — but they were different, too. Among these many differences, Neanderthals were shorter and stockier, with wider pelvises and rib-cages than their modern human counterparts. “Relative?” What do the researchers mean? D they mean “dfferent species?” Yes or no? “We found that, in the case of the Neanderthals, an acute shortage of carbohydrates and a limited availability of fat caused their biological adaptation to a high-protein diet.” … Numerous animal experiments have already demonstrated that a high-protein diet is Read More ›

From John Hawks (U Madison-Wisconsin) at Aeon: In the 1970s, geneticists noticed that humans are surprisingly inbred for a worldwide species. Other great apes – the chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans – each have much more variation, so much that today’s primatologists recognise two species of orangutans, and up to four species of chimpanzees and gorillas. These apes have deep histories, with populations separated for hundreds of thousands of years. By contrast, humans throughout the world look like refugees from a single small part of Africa. Some scientists even wondered if a massive volcanic eruption might have decimated our numbers. But deeper gene sequencing and broader samples of people changed the picture. Our population did not originate in a catastrophe. When Read More ›

Who will win? On behalf of gaming culture, the Guardian asks who would win: Gameplay is pretty basic, but there are some nice little surprises in the game – not least the end boss in tournament mode. According to the website, the game is also going to be ported to mobile platforms – so there’s still an opportunity for the roster to be rounded out a little more. But all in all, it’s well worth a few minutes of your time, especially if you’ve ever wondered who would win in a fight between Einstein and Darwin. For what it’s worth, my money’s on Chuck. More. Of course the science writer’s money is on Darwin. Darwin’s the Bernie Madoff of science. Read More ›

From the Guardian: Child psychology studies have identified a natural human bias toward the theory of intelligent design, and pose a solution: teach evolution earlier While psychologist Nathalia Gjersoe doesn’t come right out and say it, by “teach evolution,” she means teach what the U.S. Darwin-in-the-schools lobby would want: Developmental psychologists have identified two cognitive biases in very young children that help to explain the popularity of intelligent design. The first is a belief that species are defined by an internal quality that cannot be changed (psychological essentialism). The second is that all things are designed for a purpose (promiscuous teleology). These biases interact with cultural beliefs such as religion but are just as prevalent in children raised in secular Read More ›

From NPR: The main point of distinction: This newly discovered arachnid very likely could produce silk but lacked the spinnerets used by true spiders to, well, spin it, the scientists say. The researchers say it belongs to a “sister group” to the real-deal spiders. … Here’s more from National Geographic on the comparatively clumsy beginnings of spiderly silk production: “While delicately constructed webs seem synonymous with spiders, we know from the fossil record that the ability to secrete silk came before the ability to carefully control it. Spider relatives called uraraneids, which lived from 385 million years ago through the time of Idmonarachne, could produce silk but could not build webs.” University of Manchester’s Russell Garwood, who was one of Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Now, a study has found that, contrary to a previous controversial proposal, tardigrades have not acquired a significant proportion of their DNA from other organisms. Instead, new analysis from the University of Edinburgh shows that nearly all of what was proposed to be foreign DNA was simply bacterial contamination. Controversy had been prompted by a November 2015 study suggesting that one-sixth — some 17 per cent — of the DNA of freshwater tardigrades could be traced to transfers from bacteria. The scientific world was abuzz with speculation following this suggestion that tardigrades had the ability to pick up and reuse DNA from other species. More. Everything else that’s weird about them is still weird though: “Tardigrades, also known Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: A study of over 6,000 mothers and their newborn children — one of the largest studies of its kind — solidifies the evidence that smoking cigarettes while pregnant chemically modifies a fetus’ DNA, mirroring patterns seen in adult smokers. The researchers also identify new development-related genes affected by smoking. The work suggests a potential explanation for the link between smoking during pregnancy and health complications in children. More. Some SJWs have complained that all this epigenetics stuff could harm women’s rights because they will be put under pressure or expected to behave in approved ways while pregnant. Huh? It comes down to whether or not a person actually wants to know what’s going on. Women get blamed for Read More ›

From Gizmodo: The findings came from a new study out of the University of Michigan. Researchers gathered 83 people and had them read emails that either contained typos (“mkae” or “abuot”), grammar errors (to/too, it’s/its or your/you’re), or no spelling mistakes at all. At the end, the participants, who had also been asked to give information about themselves, scored the writers on “perceived intelligence, friendliness, and other attributes.” … Less agreeable people were more likely to notice grammar errors, which the researchers mused was because these types “are less tolerant of deviations from convention.” More. (language warning) U Michigan media release. Here’s the abstract. Open access Yes, that was your science dollar whistling past. 😉 Follow UD News at Twitter!

From David Klinghoffer at Evolution News & Views : In Chapter 10 of his new book Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis, Michael Denton argues for the proposition that language and the higher intellectual faculties — the gifts that uniquely make us human — arose by saltation. In other words, they are gifts — sudden ones. Denton’s view, as he makes clear, has precedents reaching from Alfred Russel Wallace to linguist Noam Chomsky. In a nice coincidence, Chomsky and MIT colleague Robert C. Berwick are just out with a book of their own, from MIT Press, provocatively titled Why Only Us: Language and Evolution. To be sure, Chomsky and Berwick are not advocates of Denton’s structuralist take on the theory Read More ›

From Science Daily: Researchers from New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) have identified unique anatomical features in a species of blind, walking cavefish in Thailand that enable the fish to walk and climb waterfalls in a manner comparable to tetrapods, or four-footed mammals and amphibians. The discovery of this capability, not seen in any other living fishes, also has implications for understanding how the anatomy that all species need to walk on land evolved after the transition from finned to limbed appendages in the Devonian period, which began some 420 million years ago. More. Actually, it won’t help us understand how the anatomy evolved because that is a historical question. What’s really interesting is that so many fish could have Read More ›