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Readers, do you remember: What great physicists have said about immateriality and consciousness? And Being as Communion? Here’s a new one: It From Bit or Bit From It?: On Physics and Information (The Frontiers Collection) The essays in this book look at the question of whether physics can be based on information, or – as John Wheeler phrased it – whether we can get “It from Bit”. They are based on the prize-winning essays submitted to the FQXi essay competition of the same name, which drew over 180 entries. The eighteen contributions address topics as diverse as quantum foundations, entropy conservation, nonlinear logic and countable spacetime. Together they provide stimulating reading for all physics aficionados interested in the possible role(s) Read More ›

Possibly in advance of a political victory in 2016 that will provide unlimited public purse power, a Darwin follower muses thus: I can name one large museum (but I won’t) that totally avoids human evolution (but not necessarily evolution in general) because there are private donors who don’t think humans evolved. The aforementioned human evolution exhibit funded by Koch is probably a mild example of bias. I’ve seen a lot of human evolution exhibits, and so far the few that are quite willing to challenge visitors’ religious or other anti-science beliefs were entirely state funded, as far as I know. I think it is appropriate to ask the Smithsonian to dump the Kochs and their ilk as donors and board Read More ›

Hey, not much religion news today, as the new atheists must be on vacay or something. But our old fave Peter Woit is back, and offers this re discovering the parallel universe: The plan has been to inject a beam into the LHC this week, leading to a news item in the UK Daily Express about how Scientists at Large Hadron Collider hope to make contact with PARALLEL UNIVERSE in days. This nonsense comes to us courtesy ofthis paper published in Physics Letters B. Unfortunately the machine checkout going on at the LHC has identified a problem that may delay contact with the PARALLEL UNIVERSE for a little while. Looks like no beam this week, for details see this from Read More ›

In a review of Wallace, Darwin, and the Origin of Species, from the Weekly Standard, we read: In this deeply absorbing book, James T. Costa seeks to establish Alfred Russel Wallace as the fully vested co-creator of what he feels we should once again call the “Darwin-Wallace Theory” of evolution by natural selection. That Wallace had a part in the history of evolutionary theory is, of course, well known. While he was collecting in Malaysia, the basic facts of natural selection occurred to him with the kind of beautiful clarity most of us experience only in dreams (and Wallace was indeed suffering from malaria at the time). He sent his account to Charles Darwin, catapulting the more senior naturalist into a Read More ›

From New Scientist: Do neonicotinoid pesticides kill bumblebees? We still don’t know, but the latest research is alarming – and casts doubt on the integrity of science. … “This is a scandal,” said Matt Shardlow of the charity Buglife, which has campaigned on the issue. “The scientific process appears to have been deliberately manipulated to agree with the environment secretary’s views.” A novel development, to be sure. 😉 What is “science” anyway, as opposed to what people choose to do with certain methods of enquiry? Follow UD News at Twitter!

From ScienceDaily: The study presents evidence that Yawunik was capable of moving its frontal appendages backward and forward, spreading them out during an attack and then retracting them under its body when swimming. Coupled with the long, sensing whip-like flagella extending from the tip of the claws, this makes the frontal appendages of the animal some of the most versatile and complex in all known arthropods. “Unlike insects or crustaceans, Yawunik did not possess additional appendages in the head that were specifically modified to process food,” said Aria. “Evolution resulted here in a combination of adaptations onto the frontal-most appendage of this creature, maybe because such modifications were easier to acquire. “We know that the larvae of certain crustaceans can Read More ›

In case you didn’t know it was free, here’s Denis Noble: The ‘Modern Synthesis’ (Neo-Darwinism) is a mid-20th century gene-centric view of evolution, based on random mutations accumulating to produce gradual change through natural selection. Any role of physiological function in influencing genetic inheritance was excluded. The organism became a mere carrier of the real objects of selection, its genes. We now know that genetic change is far from random and often not gradual. Molecular genetics and genome sequencing have deconstructed this unnecessarily restrictive view of evolution in a way that reintroduces physiological function and interactions with the environment as factors influencing the speed and nature of inherited change. Acquired characteristics can be inherited, and in a few but growing Read More ›

From the Guardian: Humans are evolving more rapidly than previously thought, according to the largest ever genetics study of a single population. Scientists reached the conclusion after showing that almost every man alive can trace his origins to one common male ancestor who lived about 250,000 years ago. The discovery that so-called “genetic Adam”, lived about 100,000 years more recently than previously understood suggests that humans must have been genetically diverging at a more rapid rate than thought. Kári Stefánsson, of the company deCODE Genetics and senior author of the study, said: “It means we have evolved faster than we thought.” The study also shows that the most recent common male ancestor was alive at around the same time as Read More ›

Spread the news. From News’ compatriot Mark Steyn: Free speech shouldn’t need “defending”. It’s the shut-uppers who should be on the defensive, who should be made to explain why only their side of the argument can be heard. Before Mann launched his suit, I was broadly familiar with the corruption of the scientific process that Climategate et al had revealed. But I was still shocked to discover just how deep it goes. Over the last three years, I’ve had the opportunity to meet with scientists who occupy different positions on the climate spectrum: Some are out-and-out “skeptics”; some broadly agree with the so-called “consensus” but dislike its intolerance; others define themselves as “lukewarmers” or have only relatively modest disagreements with Read More ›

… can’t resist this first – evolution of metabolizing booze: From The Scientist: How we are able to metabolize booze: A mutation in an ethanol-metabolizing enzyme arose around the time that arboreal primates shifted to a more terrestrial lifestyle, perhaps as an adaptation to eating fermented fruit. Why are humans so attracted to alcohol, and why do so many struggle with its abuse? These are questions that science still can’t answer. The “drunken monkey” hypothesis proposed by University of California, Berkeley, biologist Robert Dudley posits that, unlike our attraction to other addictive drugs, our use and sometimes dependence on alcohol stems from the millions of years our ancient primate ancestors spent consuming ripe, fermented fruits. Perhaps these predecessors evolved some Read More ›

Not much “junk DNA.” From him: Dan Graur has snarled at the authors of a paper defending ENCODE. How could I then resist? I read the offending paper, and I have to say something that will weaken my own reputation as a snarling attack dog myself: it does make a few good points. But it’s mostly using some valid criticisms to defend an indefensible position. The world yawns and marches on. Friends point out that we do not know anywhere near enough to know what is or is not junk in the geonme, but that under those circumstances, it is wise to assume that any given component is doing something useful. One friend kindly writes to say that the term Read More ›

Well, that’s way better than fronting design in nature, right? Remember the conference on the source of biological information at Cornell? Where the papers couldn’t be published at first , due to a publisher’s disgraceful retreat in the face of a campaign by Darwin’s rags and tatters? The Cornell conference was most enlightening. And so is this: The university has decided to support Islamic terror. That makes sense, actually. The way a news writer friend once explained the attitude to O’Leary for News, progressives hate other people so much that they do not care what happens, as long as those others are killed, maimed, jailed, censored, or just plain shut down. They do not even think about what is going to Read More ›

From the Economist: Alastair Crisp and Chiara Boschetti of Cambridge University, and their colleagues, have been investigating the matter. Their results, just published in Genome Biology, suggest human beings have at least 145 genes picked up from other species by their forebears. Admittedly, that is less than 1% of the 20,000 or so humans have in total. But it might surprise many people that they are even to a small degree part bacterium, part fungus and part alga. Dr Crisp and Dr Boschetti came to this conclusion by looking at the ever-growing public databases of genetic information now available. They did not study humans alone. They looked at nine other primate species, and also 12 types of fruit fly and Read More ›

 Except in this case?: Philosopher of science Massimo Pigliucci (defender of falsifiability*) offers a thoughtful review of The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time by by Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin: Before we get to what the authors set out to accomplish, it is worth discussing a more basic premise of the book: they see it as an exercise in what they call (a revived form of) “natural philosophy.” Of course, natural philosophy was the name by which science went before it became a field of inquiry independent of philosophy itself. Descartes, Galileo, Newton and even Darwin thought of themselves as natural philosophers (the word scientist, in fact, was invented by Darwin’s mentor, William Whewell, in 1833 [2]). Read More ›

How does a life form that is still around get to be called a fossil at all? On what terms exactly? 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 term really doing in science anyway? Well, anyway, at Nautilus: The idea that some species are relics that have stopped evolving is finally going extinct. … Charles Darwin coined the term “living fossil” in The Origin of Species to describe some of the planet’s more ambiguous creatures—such as the lungfish and platypus—that evolved relatively early and “endured to the present day.” He saw these animals as Read More ›