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From BioTechniques: A molecular motor that transports damaged DNA is also necessary for its repair. Double-strand breaks in DNA are a source of stress and sometimes death for cells. But the breaks can be fixed if they find their way to repair sites within the cell. In yeast, one of the main repair sites resides on the nuclear envelope where a set of proteins, including nuclear pore subcomplex Nup84, serves as a molecular hospital of sorts. The kinesin-14 motor protein complex, a “DNA ambulance,” moves the breaks to repair sites, according to a new study in Nature Communications (1). “To think of motor proteins moving DNA inside cells-it was very surprising,” said corresponding author Karim Mekhail at the University of Read More ›

The BBC, having announced that chimps have “entered the Stone Age” (because they smash stuff with rocks, as do birds), has also announced that humans are unique super-predators. Actually, the point made is mostly a sensible one (for once): The analysis of global data details the ruthlessness of our hunting practices and the impacts we have on prey. It shows how humans typically take out adult fish populations at 14 times the rate that marine animals do themselves. And on land, we kill top carnivores, such as bears, wolves and lions, at nine times their own self-predation rate. But perhaps the most striking observation, say authors Chris Darimont and colleagues, is the way human beings focus so heavily on taking Read More ›

From Nature: Quantum ‘spookiness’ passes toughest test yet It’s a bad day both for Albert Einstein and for hackers. The most rigorous test of quantum theory ever carried out has confirmed that the ‘spooky action at a distance’ that the German physicist famously hated — in which manipulating one object instantaneously seems to affect another, far away one — is an inherent part of the quantum world. … In quantum mechanics, objects can be in multiple states simultaneously: for example, an atom can be in two places, or spin in opposite directions, at once. Measuring an object forces it to snap into a well-defined state. Furthermore, the properties of different objects can become ‘entangled’, meaning that their states are linked: Read More ›

Provided you don’t ask for much: Today, we often hear that these non-random mechanisms of evolution are consistent with Darwinian evolution (the Modern Synthesis). So, nothing has really changed after all! Not so fast. Darwinian evolution (Darwinism) had better be consistent with all demonstrated mechanisms of change. Unlike horizontal gene transfer, it has proven difficult to witness, and proponents have relied largely on the assumption that it is “the only known theory that is in principle capable of explaining certain aspects of life.” What’s changed is that it can no longer be considered equivalent to “evolution.” It must compete with other known mechanisms. Most of the time, when we think of evolution, we mean mechanisms for the growth of complex Read More ›

From the Economist: In the fourth of our series of articles on scientific mysteries we ask why, a mere 542m years ago, animal life suddenly took off Oh, we mean Steve Meyer, author of Darwin’s Doubt, about the Cambrian explosion of life forms over half a billion years ago. Just look at how Darwin’s Econo followers handle the question: There is, however, one other thought—that the Cambrian explosion is not the fundamental mystery it seems to be. The true mystery, rather, is the Ediacaran, whose animals really did appear out of nowhere, and then vanished for reasons unknown before the Cambrian got going. The fossil record is full of sudden cast changes like this. They are known as mass extinctions. … Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: “We don’t know whether the crows have cumulative technological culture, and one of the reasons is that we don’t know how they learn,” said Logan. “There’s a hypothesis that says in order for cumulative technological culture to occur you need to copy the actions of another individual. And we don’t know whether the crows are paying attention to the actions of others when they learn from someone else.” … Logan and colleagues found that the crows don’t imitate or copy actions at all. “So there goes that theory,” she said. “Assuming how they learn in a non-tool context carries over to a tool context, they wouldn’t copy the actions of individuals they see cutting up Pandanus leaves to Read More ›

As usual, we close off our religion coverage for the week with inspirational messages from the new atheists. As many new atheists appear to have gone to relationship counselling (possibly why they are no longer threatening to sue each other or creating scenes in elevators for a global public?),  we are once again proud to serve our house product (; ) Richard Dawkins. We understand that the lost messiah portrait of Dawkins has been found: Hallelujah, the lost painting is found! I am so delighted. https://t.co/9aHaASQuNA — Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) August 7, 2015 Meanwhile, the second Volume of his autobiography is virtually in hand, https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/635868366679359493 Today arrived my first advance copy of the 2nd volume of my autobiography, UK Edition. Read More ›

… it turns out that he mainly means the ones from religious families: TPP’s basic philosophy was that while you are entitled to your beliefs you are not entitled to avoid discomforting or contradictory ideas, you are not entitled to a free-pass when it comes to a critical analysis of beliefs like yours (individuals were never picked on). After all this is about education. These days parents and students still want the higher education passport, a degree, to jobs and careers, but the current attitude is that when parents present you with a narrow-minded, anti-science, parochial, self-satisified, entitled little twerp, the twerp is to be returned in the same condition, which seems totally antithetic to higher education. Apparently though business Read More ›

From Science: Feature: Why big societies need big gods, by Lizzie Wade, Science’s Latin American correspondent: Although much of Egyptian cosmology is alien today, some is strikingly familiar: The gods of today’s major religions are also moralizing gods, who encourage virtue and punish selfish and cruel people after death. But for most of human history, moralizing gods have been the exception. If today’s hunter-gatherers are any guide, for thousands of years our ancestors conceived of deities as utterly indifferent to the human realm, and to whether we behaved well or badly. The theory introduced (and contested by other researchers) is that the idea of powerful and moral gods tracked the growth of large societies: Norenzayan thinks this connection between moralizing deities and Read More ›

First, only one-third of published psychology research is reliable. How do we respond? We sort of knew that but, from the Conversation: What does it mean if the majority of what’s published in journals can’t be reproduced? Publishing together as the Open Science Collaboration and coordinated by social psychologist Brian Nosek from the Center for Open Science, research teams from around the world each ran a replication of a study published in three top psychology journals – Psychological Science; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology; and Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. To ensure the replication was as exact as possible, research teams obtained study materials from the original authors, and worked closely with these authors whenever they Read More ›

From Aeon: Curiosity about trivial things might have evolved. Not because it’s likely to be adaptive, but maybe as a necessary by-product of a drive to understand the world, which is itself useful. … But even if the truth is valuable in itself, that doesn’t mean it’s always better to know. There might still be situations where we should choose ignorance. Indeed, it’s important to distinguish here between intrinsic value and overriding value. Saying that truth has intrinsic value means that something being true is a reason in favour of believing it, and that it might sometimes be good to pursue the truth even when it’s not useful for anything else. It doesn’t mean that the truth is so valuable Read More ›

In customer service: 7 Ways to Engage Your Customer’s Reptilian Brain According to SalesBrain and the Triune Brain theory, the reptilian region is the brain’s attention gatekeeper and decision maker. If you can grab the attention of a consumer’s reptilian brain with your landing page, advertisement, or commercial, you’ve got a much better chance of guiding them to conversion. Fortunately, there are specific techniques you can use to make your value proposition communicate directly to this region and give you the edge in engaging your audience from the start. Although the Triune Brain theory is sometimes controversial as experts argue about it’s accuracy – see this earlier Neuromarketing post, the theory provides a helpful, simplified view of how the brain Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Pygmies show growth plasticity is key to human evolution While the stature of pygmies is well-suited to tropical rainforests, the mechanisms underlying their growth remain poorly understood. In order to decipher these mechanisms, a team of scientists from the CNRS, IRD and UPMC studied a group of Baka pygmies in Cameroon. Their findings revealed that their growth rate differed completely from that of another pygmy cluster, despite a similar adult height, which implies that small stature appeared independently in the two clusters. This work is published on 28 July 2015 in Nature Communications. More. Sure, but so…? The scientists were thus able to show that although the body size at birth of the Baka was within normal limits, Read More ›

From RealClearScience: The pebble accretion model, as the idea is called, suggests that tiny objects first coalesce together due to drag then gravitationally collapse and form larger objects one hundred to one thousand kilometers in size. These larger objects, now referred to as planetesimals, than draw in all the remaining pebbles and become the cores of larger planets. Simulations completed last year cast doubt on this interesting theory. They suggested that — in the context of our solar system — too many planetesimals would form — as many as one hundred objects the size of Earth! Since our Solar System only contains eight planets and five recognized dwarf planets, this theory was mostly ruled out. However, a new simulation carried Read More ›

From Texas Observer: The beast was a mammal relative with a heavy skull, a mouth full of fangs, and a tall dorsal sail made of skin stretched over long struts of bone. Sinuous as a crocodile, leathery scales shining in the hot sun, it padded along black-mud swamps and highlands shaded by swaying tree ferns. Sixty million years before the first dinosaur, it slept, basked, chased and killed. It breathed. It was alive. That would be about 280 million years ago (Early Permian). So the mystery is: Paleontologists studying the red beds puzzled over Dimetrodon’s ubiquity for years. No modern land ecosystems support that many apex predators. “If you go on a wildlife-watching tour in Africa,” Bakker said, “you will Read More ›