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Hezekiah (741–686 BC) , king of Judah, was known for reform and strengthening national defenses. From ScienceDaily: The impression bears an inscription in ancient Hebrew script: “Belonging to Hezekiah [son of] Ahaz king of Judah,” and a two-winged sun, with wings turned downward, flanked by two ankh symbols symbolizing life. … Dr. Eilat Mazar said: “Although seal impressions bearing King Hezekiah’s name have already been known from the antiquities market since the middle of the 1990s, some with a winged scarab (dung beetle) symbol and others with a winged sun, this is the first time that a seal impression of an Israelite or Judean king has ever come to light in a scientific archaeological excavation.”More. There’s probably a lot of Read More ›

Further to early humans preferred the Golden Ratio (1.618) too?: Repeated use of the numbers 2, Pi and Phi and the relationship between them could not have been chance. I, O’Leary for News, wish to thank bornagain for consistently helpful notes in the comments over the years, and to draw attention to his notes on the Golden Ratio in particular: The golden ratio is found throughout nature and has often been referred to as ‘the fingerprint of God’ (vid ): From the shape of some galaxies to quantum mechanics, the golden ratio is found throughout nature. Do We Live in a “Golden Ratio” Universe? (Evolution News & Views December 2, 2014) *The curl of an elephant tusk *The shape of Read More ›

In fact, it’s unlikely that people at New Scientist are going to do much of that themselves; it sounds more like a message intended for Everyone Else. Reviewing two new books for the Christmas trade, CultureLab: WITH the year drawing to a close, it’s time to throw out old ideas and bring in the new. Two mind-stretching books, The Secret of our Success by anthropologist Joseph Henrich, and The Crucible of Language by cognitive linguist Vyvyan Evans, will help you do just that. Both contain powerful ideas. The first forces a rethink of what makes humans special: the answer is not that we are terribly clever or able to do much with our big brains on our own. The second Read More ›

Pos-Darwinista draws attention to this paywalled item: at Cell by evolution boffins Richard A. Watson and Eörs Szathmáry: How Can Evolution Learn? Summary: The theory of evolution links random variation and selection to incremental adaptation. In a different intellectual domain, learning theory links incremental adaptation (e.g., from positive and/or negative reinforcement) to intelligent behaviour. Specifically, learning theory explains how incremental adaptation can acquire knowledge from past experience and use it to direct future behaviours toward favourable outcomes. Until recently such cognitive learning seemed irrelevant to the ‘uninformed’ process of evolution. In our opinion, however, new results formally linking evolutionary processes to the principles of learning might provide solutions to several evolutionary puzzles – the evolution of evolvability, the evolution of Read More ›

Golden ratio? 1.618 From 1.5 million to 200,000 years ago, called the Acheulian period From Lithic Studies: Pattern Recognition of Universal Mathematical Constants in Acheulean Biface Formats by Alan Edward Cannell See also:What we know about human evolution What we know about the human mind Follow UD News at Twitter! Here’s the abstract: The similar design formats of many Acheulean bifaces has prompted several studies into the use of ‘mental templates’, leading to controversial claims that there may be a relation between length and width equal to the Golden Ratio. To avoid subjectivity, these studies have used aggregate data from assemblages that, by definition, mask the individuality of each tool, its material, any retouching and the original imposed design. Visual pattern Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Plants crawled onto land earlier than we give them credit, genetic evidence suggests Plant biologists agree that it all began with green algae. At some point in our planet’s history, the common ancestor of trees, ferns, and flowers developed an alternating life cycle–presumably allowing their offspring to float inland and conquer Earth. But on December 16 in Trends in Plant Science, Danish scientists argue that some green algae had been hanging out on land hundreds of millions of years before this adaptation and that land plants actually evolved from terrestrial, not aquatic, algae. Botanists have suspected this possibility since 1980, but supporters have lacked proof. Now, Carlsberg Laboratory’s Jesper Harholt and University of Copenhagen’s Øjvind Moestrup and Peter Read More ›

From New Scientist: Parrots use pebble tools to grind up own mineral supplements … They were filmed using pebbles for grinding, thought to be a uniquely human activity – one that allowed our civilisations to extract more nutrition from cereal-based foods. … But the purpose of the behaviour is not yet settled. Although females need the calcium, it was usually males who were caught grinding. Perhaps, they regurgitate the mineral and pass it on to their mate: they are known to do so with food. But why use a tool and not just the beak, anyway? The team suspects that using their beak alone for grinding may be uncomfortable. … “It adds to the rich assortment of tool-related skills in Read More ›

From Physics World: The Physics World 2015 Breakthrough of the Year goes to Jian-Wei Pan and Chaoyang Lu of the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, for being the first to achieve the simultaneous quantum teleportation of two inherent properties of a fundamental particle – the photon. Pan and Lu’s team has now simultaneously transferred a photon’s spin (polarization) and its orbital angular momentum (OAM) to another photon some distance away. … Although it is possible to extend Pan’s method to teleport more than two properties simultaneously, this becomes increasingly difficult with each added property – the likely limit is three. To do this would require the ability to experimentally control 10 photons, while the current record Read More ›

Must be. The servers may have gone down, downloading info re his grants. Readers will recall that Matzke, a long-time commenter here on behalf of the Darwin lobby, now at Australian U, was shortly afterward accused by John West at Evolution News & Views for using NSF grant money improperly, for a political purpose (to undermine academic freedom bills). Yes, well, in other news, birds fly. Undermining researchers’ and teachers’ intellectual integrity is all the Darwin lobby has got going for itself.  Isn’t the purpose of raising public money for science to compel everyone to fund whatever nonsense or malice such people dream up? Well, Pos-Darwinista (a top Portuguese-language blog) wrote this morning with the following information: Try downloading the grants Read More ›

The Mars colony should be independent why? Bloody wars have been fought over this kind of thing so we must consider. Further to “Hoping to find remains of ancient life on Mars,” we hear from BBC, The idea is simple. Instead of having the humans who land and live on Mars answer back to their home planet’s companies and institutions, they should be given total independence. To ensure this independence, Haqq-Misra outlines five provisions of liberation. Humans who land on Mars relinquish their Earthly citizenship. They are Martians now, not Earthlings First, humans who land on Mars relinquish their Earthly citizenship. They are Martians now, not Earthlings. Second, governments, companies and people on Earth cannot interfere with the politics or Read More ›

Well, “brood care,” really. The embryos were developing inside their eggs under the carapace of the female Waptia. Instead of being dropped somewhere shortly after fertilization and left to whatever fate … From Science Daily: Waptia fieldensis is an early arthropod, belonging to a group of animals that includes lobsters and crayfish. It had a two-part structure covering the front segment of its body near the head, known as a bivalved carapace. Caron and Vannier believe the carapace played a fundamental role in how the creature practised brood care. “Clusters of egg-shaped objects are evident in five of the many specimens we observed, all located on the underside of the carapace and alongside the anterior third of the body,” said Read More ›

Yes, that time of year again, and Maria Popova’s list at Brainpickings: offers few surprises and some items of at least social interest, including #3, Lisa Randall’s Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: Randall starts with a fascinating speculative theory, linking dark matter to the extinction of the dinosaurs — an event that took place in the outermost reaches of the Solar System sixty-six million years ago catalyzed an earthly catastrophe without which we wouldn’t have come to exist. … But the theory itself, original and interesting as it may be, is merely a clever excuse to do two more important things: tell an expansive and exhilarating story of how the universe as we know it came to exist, and invite Read More ›

Further to Sean Carroll and the Time with Two Heads, a friend writes to ask about a quantum equation that rolled through earlier this year, that predicts the universe has no beginning: The universe may have existed forever, according to a new model that applies quantum correction terms to complement Einstein’s theory of general relativity. The model may also account for dark matter and dark energy, resolving multiple problems at once. Although the Big Bang singularity arises directly and unavoidably from the mathematics of general relativity, some scientists see it as problematic because the math can explain only what happened immediately after—not at or before—the singularity. “The Big Bang singularity is the most serious problem of general relativity because the Read More ›

Okay, so we were just talking about a Big Bang of birds. Some speak of a Big Bang of mammals (“These new findings call for a re-evaluation of the evolutionary story of placental mammals,” says Anne Yoder, an evolutionary biologist at Duke University, who wasn’t involved in the work.”) and flowers (“Turns out, these bloomers went through an evolutionary “Big Bang” of sorts some 130 million years ago, a brief era of explosive floral diversification at a time when dinosaurs walked the Earth.”) So, we looked for a Big Bang of turtles, but … naw, not turtles. But wait! Someone suggested, no one would believe that about turtles, so they wouldn’t have used the phrase. Just for luck, try “rapid Read More ›

From Discovery.com: All Birds Descend from One Feathered Founder … The ancestry of every bird alive today can be traced back to a single “Founding Feathered Father” that lived in South America 95 million years ago, according to a new study. The common ancestor of living birds, described in the journal Science Advances, likely lived much later than previously estimated. Prior reports suggested that the founding bird lived up to 170 million years ago during the Jurassic Period. Dinosaurs (that didn’t evolve into birds) were still prevalent in South America 95 million years ago, yet the Founding Feathered Father would have been a standout. So that’s less time for bird evolution? Birds Evolved In ‘Big Bang,’ New Family Tree Reveals Read More ›