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Rosetta’s most surprising discovery so far. From Phys.org: Stunned scientists announced Wednesday the unexpected discovery of large quantities of oxygen on a comet which streaked past the Sun in August with a European spacecraft in tow. The find came as a “big surprise”, and challenges mainstream theories on the formation of our Solar System, said scientist Andre Bieler of the University of Michigan. The oxygen is believed to be older than our solar system. As O2 mixes easily with other elements, “we never thought that oxygen could ‘survive’ for billions of years” in a pristine state, said Kathrin Altwegg of the University of Bern, who co-authored a study in the journal Nature. More. We are advised not to jump to Read More ›

So most neuroscientists are wrong about the brain? From Nautilus: Here’s Why Most Neuroscientists Are Wrong About the Brain From a computational point of view, directions and distances are just numbers. And numbers, rendered in binary form, are just bit strings. It’s a profound truth of computer science that there is no such thing as information that is not in a deep sense numerical. Claude Shannon’s famous 1948 paper, which founded the field of information theory, used a symphony concert as an example of an information-transmission problem that could be treated numerically. A consequence is that it does not make sense to say that something stores information but cannot store numbers. Neuroscientists have not come to terms with this truth. Read More ›

In case you wondered what would happen when postmodernism gets science by the throat: Myth? Yes, as in here. Discover Magazine thought they should make it clear: Now for the good news. The scientific method is nothing but a piece of rhetoric. Granted, that may not appear to be good news at first, but it actually is. No, it isn’t good news, unless we believe that evidence is whatever the Party says it is. But, in fairness, many science writers are not far off that. The scientific method as rhetoric is far more complex, interesting, and revealing than it is as a direct reflection of the ways scientists work. Science fiction functions that way too, but then it claims no authority Read More ›

Here: Major scientists from a dozen countries present evidence that a paradigm shift is underway or has already taken place, replacing neo-Darwinism (the standard model of evolution based on natural selection following the accumulation of random genetic mutations) with a vastly richer evolutionary synthesis than previously thought possible. About The Author Suzan Mazur is the author of two previous books, The Altenberg 16: An Exposé of the Evolution Industry and The Origin of Life Circus: A How To Make Life Extravaganza. Her reports have appeared in the Financial Times, The Economist, Forbes, Newsday, Philadelphia Inquirer, Archaeology, Astrobiology, Connoisseur, Omni, Huffington Post, Progressive Review, CounterPunch, Scoop Media and other publications, as well as on PBS, CBC and MBC. She has been Read More ›

Here: When performing the autopsy on the mummy, the team got a few hints as to what might have caused her untimely death. … Chagas disease, apparently. But When the researchers got to the gut of the body, they took every precaution to prevent contamination. Here they found that the gut was dominated by Clostridium species, while the paleofeces mainly consised of Turicibacter. In addition to this, they also found evidence of some strains of human papillomaviruses. But what surprised the researchers the most was the discovery of putative antibiotic resistant genes, like penicillin-binding proteins and multi-drug transporters that help shuttle compounds out of the cell. These findings suggest that the genes necessary for bacteria to resist antibiotics were already Read More ›

Darwinians must technically say no, as life is not about anything and does not progress to any purpose. But here are some predictions offered by Michael Ruse, Joseph Graves, Briana Pobiner, Stephen Stearns, and Chris Stringer: The scientists we spoke to uniformly withheld from making specific predictions, but they were all agreed that evolution hasn’t stopped. “It’s definitely happening,” asserts Professor Graves, “but as human beings, we’re not in a lab setting. There are just too many complexities to make a scientifically meaningful prediction.” So evolution is happening, they say. They also say there is no way to know. Follow UD News at Twitter!

From ScienceDaily: Ancient wild ox genome reveals complex cow ancestry The ancestry of domesticated cattle proves more complex than previously thought, reports a paper published in the open access journal Genome Biology. … The team of researchers discovered clear evidence of breeding between wild British aurochs and early domesticated cattle. David MacHugh, senior author on the study from the School of Agriculture and Food Science at University College Dublin, said: “Our results show the ancestors of modern British and Irish breeds share more genetic similarities with this ancient specimen than other European cattle. This suggests that early British farmers may have restocked their domesticated herds with wild aurochs.” More. Rob Sheldon writes, What is being done in this paper is Read More ›

From Business Insider: The 15 most compelling scientific findings that suggest aliens are real Beyond Europa is Saturn’s moon Enceladus, which scientists confirmed this month houses a giant, global ocean beneath its icy outer shell. Like Europa, Enceladus’ ocean is an ideal place where life beyond Earth could live. … The condos are going fast, we hear. Free central air. Aw shuddup. This is your own fault. You wouldn’t pay to download a good film and you are too lazy to scrummage around YouTube. Oh well, there is always this: But surely we can’t conjure an entire advanced civilization? and How do we grapple with the idea that ET might not be out there? to pick apart. See you tomorrow. Read More ›

From Nature: Beall told Nature that he stands by his decision and that he has received dozens of e-mails from the scientific community outlining bad practices at Frontiers. Beall names some controversies that he says helped raise concerns about the Frontiers journals. These include a Frontiers in Psychology paper suggesting that conspiracy theorists do not believe in climate change and a Frontiers in Public Health paper raising questions about the link between HIV and AIDS. Both ignited Internet firestorms on publication. More. Real concerns? Backlash against open access publishing? Floor’s open. Re conspiracy theorists: It’s what they do believe in that—one would think—would be of more interest.

The last time we heard from evolutionary psychologist David Barash, he was fronting an anti-ID theory. You’d think he’d have enough trouble at home. In a world where social sciences are racing to the bottom, evolutionary psychology is leading the race. Look, there is a world of science out there, and if these guys would rather spin Tales from the Savannah, what are we supposed to do about it? Too bad if the Large Hadron Collider and the Pluto flyby got in their way. Now we learn from Barash at Aeon: Many scientific findings run counter to common sense and challenge our deepest assumptions about reality: the fact that even the most solid objects are composed at the subatomic level of mostly Read More ›

From The Scientist : Stressed male mice can pass on an abnormal stress response to their offspring via microRNAs found in sperm, a study shows. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania led by Tracy Bale have now demonstrated that an increase in a group of microRNAs (miRNAs) in sperm from stressed mice can lead to altered stress response in adult offspring. The work, published today (October 19) in PNAS, shows that simultaneously injecting nine miRNAs into mouse zygotes recapitulates the changes found in the offspring of stressed mice. “I think it’s a fine paper [and a] well-designed study,” said Michael Skinner, who studies epigenetic inheritance at Washington State University and was not involved in the study. “It shows a very Read More ›

At least, translated from Newspeak, that’s what this science PR seems to be saying: From ScienceDaily: Advances in genetic studies of birds are changing ornithology research Because high-throughput sequencing data looks at many genes instead of just a few, it makes it easier to identify very subtle genetic differences between populations, such as the genetics underlying small differences in plumage patterns between different subspecies of Wilson’s Warbler. It can also provide a fresh look at the genetic changes that occur in “hybrid zones,” where the ranges of closely related species overlap and members of the species breed freely with each other, such as where Black-capped and Carolina Chickadees meet in Pennsylvania. The process of one species splitting into two, such Read More ›

Nothing to do with the state of the evidence. Still, Ridley’s new evolution book maddens the reviewer: From a New Scientist review of science writer Matt Ridley’s new book, The Evolution of Everything: How a creationist instinct stops us seeing evolution everywhere FOR most of history, humans were instinctive creationists. Faced with the intricate perfection of an eye or a wing, they jumped to the conclusion that it was designed by an intelligent creator, aka God. Then along came Darwin and proved the obvious wrong. The appearance of design is an illusion; biological order arises by slow, undirected trial-and-error coupled with natural selection, aka evolution. Bu the evidence simply isn’t showing that Darwin’s mechanism Darwinism (natural selection acting on random Read More ›

From Reason: Epidemiology Makes Astrology Look Respectable Earlier this year, a review article in the Annals of Internal Medicine reported that among other bad outcomes found in a bunch of mostly case-control studies that sitting all day at a desk job increased your risk of dying with a hazard ratio of 1.22 and 95 percent confidence interval of 1.090 to 1.410. Time to get a desk with an attached treadmill. Well, maybe not. Last week, a new study in the International Journal of Epidemiology that took into account the sitting habits of a cohort of British subjects for 16 years reported: Sitting time was not associated with all-cause mortality risk. The results of this study suggest that policy makers and Read More ›

Here’s a discussion between theologian Michael Chaberek, O.P. and Joseph E. Gorra at the Evangelical Philosophical Society site, on Chaberek’s new book  Catholicism and Evolution (2015): What do you find to be the leading historical and historiographical challenges regarding the ‘story of evolution’ among Catholic leadership and theology? Immediately after Darwin presented his theory, the vast majority of Catholic scholars opposed Darwinian ideas. Today, those scholars who accept “some form of macroevolution” and think that this is theology’s way to go try to diminish that initial opposition. Moreover the private documents of the Church from that period remained virtually unknown until 1997 when the Archives of the Holy Office where opened to researchers. What was learned? We have only recently learned how Read More ›