News

From Frank Wilczek, How Physics Will Change-and Change the World -in 100 Years: Unification VI: Mind and Matter Although many details remain to be elucidated, it seems fair to say that metabolism and reproduction, two of the most characteristic features of life, are now broadly understood at the molecular level as physical processes. Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA’s structure, put forward the “astonishing hypothesis” that it will be possible to bring understanding of basic psychology, including biological cognitive processing, memory, motivation, and emotion, to a comparable level. One might call that “reduction” of mind to matter. But mind is what it is, and what it is will not be diminished for being physically understood. I’d be thrilled to understand how Read More ›

From: Evolution: The Fossils Speak, but Hardly with One Voice 5. Far too much attention may be given to genes and DNA. So much current evolution thinking, including questionable fields like evolutionary psychology, depends on the alleged power of the gene. Does anyone remember that fellow who said in the early 90s that a CD of your genome is “you”? Not even close. From the New Statesman: “According to a growing number of researchers, the standard story of the influence of genes is overblown. So many other factors influence how we turn out as individuals and how we evolve as a species that the fundamentals of biology need a rewrite.” “This is no storm in an academic tearoom,” a group Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Those who are born to parents from diverse genetic backgrounds tend to be taller and have sharper thinking skills than others, the major international study has found. But can we unharness the cart from the horse here? Wouldn’t smarter people be more likely to look to genuine advantage as opposed to narrow bigotry, when picking mates? Researchers analysed health and genetic information from more than 100 studies carried out around the world. These included details on more than 350,000 people from urban and rural communities. The team found that greater genetic diversity is linked to increased height. It is also associated with better cognitive skills, as well as higher levels of education. It’s at least worth noting that Read More ›

we should care much about climate change (paywalled!) One serious non-paywalled reason would have been enough. Non-paywalled excerpt: Most of us have taken some steps in the right direction. However, we continue to produce greenhouse gases. Sometimes, we truly cannot do better. Not everyone can afford to buy solar panels, rural residents cannot commute by subway, and people who live in cold climates cannot go without heating. These are structural barriers, beyond an individual’s control. The biggest problem is that we live and breath and want to, like, DO stuff. Maybe better our lives or something. Sorry, our bad. Follow UD News at Twitter!

He talks about his findings here (public access): In February 1988, Richard Lenski set up 12 replicate populations of a single genotype of Escherichia coli in a simple nutrient medium. He has been following their evolution ever since. Here, Lenski answers provocative questions from Jeremy Fox about his iconic “Long-Term Evolution Experiment” (LTEE). The LTEE is a remarkable case study of the interplay of determinism and chance in evolution—and in the conduct of science. More. A reader writes, “Sounds like Lenski admits that there is no experiment or hypothesis in the traditional sense. I wonder if he would admit that to a popular audience.” Was the reader thinking of this? JF: Ok, so let me ask you that. Is the Read More ›

Suzan Mazur interviews biologists who take the information nature of life seriously: I thought it might be time to ring up Kalevi Kull, a theoretical biologist in Estonia at the University of Tartu’s Institute of Philosophy and Semiotics to talk about developments. Kull is known for his contributions to the field of biosemiotics and currently serves as president of the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies. His most recent book is Towards a Semiotic Biology: Life is the Action of Signs Suzan Mazur: Is biosemiotics an exact enough science at this point to be poking holes in the Modern Synthesis? Are the operational concepts developed enough? Kalevi Kull: I would say they are developed as much as linguistics can be called Read More ›

From the series: Evolution: The Fossils Speak, but Hardly with One Voice 8. Evolution is often spoken of as if it were a deliberating intelligence, though the idea is considered a heresy. “Evolution,” we are told by one respected source, has been “experimenting” with different types of early humans, based on the fact that skeletons show more diverse features than expected. That prompts two questions: If all the passengers in a subway car in a large, multicultural city met a mishap and were fossilized, how many “different species” would be identified today, using current methods? Second, is evolution (Evolution?) an intelligent agent? If it is not possible to speak of evolution’s course without resort to the language of agency, is Read More ›

After fifteen years of news coverage on issues of interest to the ID community, I finally got to say what seems evident to a news writer (who doesn’t wave pom poms for Darwin’s followers): First, the fossils speak, but hardly with one voice: University of Chicago biochemist James Shapiro, not a design theorist, offers in one of his lectures four kinds of rapid, evolutionary change that Darwin “could not have imagined”: horizontal DNA transfer, symbiogenesis, genome doubling, and built-in mechanisms of genome restructuring. His approach is in sharp contrast to the “defend Darwin” strategy usually championed in the academy. So it is no surprise that he is a controversial figure. But is he right in saying that many possible mechanisms Read More ›

Further to South Africans used milk-based paint 49,000 years ago, in a paywalled article at Nature:, we learn, I reach the Cradle of Humankind after half an hour’s drive from Johannesburg, through the Gauteng Highveld of South Africa. Sort of like going to a private Mass in Vatican City, celebrated by the Pope. But developments there are spurring questions over which part of the nation they serve. Palaeontologists will rejoice over the launch, on 21 July, of a state-of-the-art vault to house star local finds, an adjunct to Wits’s Centre of Excellence for Palaeosciences. The vault will allow specimens to be compared with other finds, both hominin and non-hominin, from around Africa. … But it is strictly for researchers’ use. What Read More ›

The claim in the title of the science PR is How our sense of smell evolved, including in early humans Most receptors can detect more than one smell, but one, called OR7D4, enables us to detect a very specific smell called androstenone, which is produced by pigs and is found in boar meat. People with different DNA sequences in the gene producing the OR7D4 receptor respond differently to this smell — some people find it foul, some sweet, and others cannot smell it at all. People’s responses to androstenone can be predicted by their OR7D4 DNA sequence, and vice versa. Professor Cobb from The University of Manchester’s Faculty of Life Sciences and the other researchers studied the DNA that codes Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: A Milk and Ochre Paint Mixture Used 49,000 Years Ago at Sibudu, South Africa An international research team led by the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa has discovered a milk-and ochre-based paint dating to 49,000 years ago that inhabitants may have used to adorn themselves with or to decorate stone or wooden slabs. Milk-based paints are still used today. While the use of ochre by early humans dates to at least 250,000 years ago in Europe and Africa, this is the first time a paint containing ochre and milk has ever been found in association with early humans in South Africa, said Paola Villa, a curator at the University of Colorado Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Research conducted in Okinawa, Japan, by graduate student Yu Miyazaki and associate professor James Davis Reimer from the University of the Ryukyus has found a very unusual new species of octocoral from a shallow coral reef in Okinawa, Japan. The new species can be considered a “living fossil,” and is related in many ways to the unusual blue coral. More. The blue coral apparently dates from the Cretaceous period. Note: Some of us think that the term “living fossil” should be replaced by durable species: We human beings aren’t “living fossils” just because someone can dig up the bones of our ancestors and find out that they looked and lived a lot like us! So what is the Read More ›

From physicist Jon Butterworth at The Guardian: Jan Conrad, an astroparticle physicist, claims that “The field has cried wolf too many times and lost credibility” and he worries that false discoveries are undermining public trust in science. He lists some dubious results which have caused a stir amongst physicists and the general public over the past couple of years, including the faster-than-light-neutrinos that weren’t, the primordial gravitational waves that are probably just dust, and several Dark Matter candidates which remain shrouded in uncertainty and contradiction. His argument has some merit; in some cases there is an apparent rush to release, and especially to over-interpret, provisional and sometimes incorrect data. This is sometimes done because because of rivalries and competition, the Read More ›

From Ars Technica: Sometimes, scientists announce things that are breathtakingly stupid. The Guardian, which generally has pretty good science coverage, has an article up reporting that some top scientists believe that the comet 67P may harbor lots and lots of life. The purported evidence for life is the presence of complex hydrocarbons on the comet’s crust. Of course, this article is just based on a press release, and the data won’t be available until it’s presented later today at a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society. But The Guardian could at least have done some background reading on the person behind the claim, Chandra Wickramasinghe. It would have found that he has a long history of making claims about extraterrestrial Read More ›

Further to how cats get the rodents they will eat to lose their fear of them, we are now beginning to understand how parrots become excellent voice imitators. From Duke University, An international team of scientists led by Duke University researchers has uncovered key structural differences in the brains of parrots that may explain the birds’ unparalleled ability to imitate sounds and human speech. Parrots are one of the few animals considered ‘vocal learners,’ meaning they can imitate sounds. Researchers have been trying to figure out why some bird species are better imitators than others. Besides differences in the sizes of particular brain regions, however, no other potential explanations have surfaced. By examining gene expression patterns, the new study found Read More ›