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From Ohio State University: A study in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides the strongest evidence yet that proteins—the large and complex molecules that fold into particular shapes to enable biological reactions—can’t fold themselves. Rather, the work of folding is done by much smaller water molecules, which surround proteins and push and pull at them to make them fold a certain way in fractions of a second, like scores of tiny origami artists folding a giant sheet of paper at blazingly fast speeds. Dongping Zhong, leader of the research group at The Ohio State University that made the discovery, called the study a “major step forward” in the understanding of water-protein interactions and said it answers Read More ›

Did you even wonder? You need “help”. From Motherboard: Recently Elon Musk made internet headlines by claiming that the probability we live in “base reality” is one in billions. Instead, we are much more likely to be living in a historical ancestor simulation created by an advanced future civilization some 10,000 years from now. Internet headlines. If a simulated waterfall is not wet, why should a simulated mind think or feel? A mind, unless one believes in disembodied souls, requires a brain, a body, and a world. A mind without a physical world is a myth. And a simulated world is a myth too. The fact is that all minds we know of, human minds and possibly animal minds, are Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Cats understand the principle of cause and effect as well as some elements of physics. Combining these abilities with their keen sense of hearing, they can predict where possible prey hides. These are the findings of researchers from Kyoto University in Japan, led by Saho Takagi and published in Springer’s journal Animal Cognition. Of course cats understand cause and effect. The cat who jumped onto the hot stove does not do it again, as Mark Twain observed. That has nothing to do with understanding the elements of physics, which are a pure abstraction. Which is why, as Twain observed, the cat never jumps up on any stove again, and learns nothing further from the experience. Researchers suggest that Read More ›

From a 2015 journal paper, Engines of creationism? Intelligent design, machine metaphors and visual rhetoric: Machine metaphors are ubiquitous in the molecular sciences. In addition to their use by scientists, educators and popularizers of science, they have been promoted intensively by the Intelligent Design (ID) movement in arguments for the necessity of a god-like designer to account for the complexities of life at the molecular level. We have investigated the visual rhetoric employed in a movie by ID proponents, with particular emphasis on machine metaphors. After presenting examples, we argue that science communicators could reduce the persuasive impact of ID visual rhetoric based on machine metaphors by emphasizing that selfassembly is fundamental to molecular complexes. Paper. (public access) – Gunnar Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Although scientists generally agree that eukaryotes can trace their ancestry to a merger between archaea and bacteria, there’s been considerable disagreement about what the first eukaryote and its immediate ancestors must have looked like. As Thattai and his colleagues Buzz Baum and Gautam Dey of University College London explain in their paper, that uncertainty has stemmed in large part from the lack of known intermediates that bridge the gap in size and complexity between prokaryotic precursors and eukaryotes. As a result, they say, the origin of the first eukaryotic cell has remained “one of the most enduring mysteries in modern biology.” That began to change last year with the discovery of DNA sequences for an organism that no Read More ›

From the Guardian: Jerome Ravetz has been one of the UK’s foremost philosophers of science for more than 50 years. Here, he reflects on the troubles facing contemporary science. He argues that the roots of science’s crisis have been ignored for too long. Quality control has failed to keep pace with the growth of science. Excuse us. That is not growing pains. That is systemic rot. Under these harsh conditions, quality becomes instrumentalised. To strive for ‘excellence’ may be impractical; ‘impact’ is the name of the game. The self-sacrificing quest for scientific rigour is displaced by the need to jockey among journals, and perhaps also engage in p-hacking to obtain interesting results. Such conditions can go far to explain the Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Thinking of gene loss as an evolution force is a counterintuitive idea, for it is easier to think that only when we gain something -genes in this case- can we evolve. However the new work by these authors, who are members of the Research Group on Evolution and Development (EVO-DEVO) of the UB, paints the vision of gene loss as a great potential process of genetic change and evolutionary adaption. … According to Professor Ricard Albalat, “it has been shown that the possibility of losing genes is linked to the lifestyle of the species. Parasites, for instance, show a greater tendency of gene loss because since they re-use their host’s resources, lots of their genes become dispensable and Read More ›

From Adam Shapiro at Religion Dispatches: Did Richard Dawkins hand creationists their next school strategy? It’s not just ID and antievolution that has historically found itself entangled with religious advocacy. According to Luskin, evolution’s history is also rife with supporters making religious or irreligious claims. When a New Atheist figurehead like Richard Dawkins claims that Darwin made it possible to be “an intellectually fulfilled atheist,” he substantiates the claim that evolution itself is not neutral when it comes to promoting or inhibiting religion. As Luskin argues, “If the public is aware of the close historical association between the advocacy of evolution and anti-religious activism, then the teaching of evolution may make religious Americans feel like political outsiders.” (For legal context, Read More ›

From Pradeep Mutalik here: Three puzzles test whether the concept of infinity has purchase in the physical world. Editor’s note: The reader who submits the most interesting, creative or insightful solution (as judged by the columnist) in the comments section will receive a Quanta Magazine T-shirt. More. Readers can always submit here if they wish. T-shirt only by arrangement. See also: New Scientist vs. William Lane Craig on infinity explanations Follow UD News at Twitter!

From Ross Andersen at Atlantic: We can’t extrapolate from our experience on this planet, because it’s only one data point. We could be the only intelligent beings in the universe, or we could be one among trillions, and either way Earth’s natural history would look the exact same. … We certainly don’t have grounds to say that the “odds are high” that some civilization preceded ours, or enough evidence to suggest that skepticism about the possibility “borders on the irrational.” More. That’s the trouble. 1 is not a good number to work with when assessing probability. See also: NASA “shameful” in not looking harder for alien life? Are these people willing to grasp the possibility that we might BE alone? Read More ›

From Sarah Knapton at Telegraph: In January, astronomers Professor Konstantin Batygin and Professor Mike Brown from California Institute of Technology predicted the existence of a ninth planet after discovering that 13 objects in the Kuiper Belt – an area beyond Neptune – were all moving together as if ‘lassooed’ by the gravity of a huge object. Now scientists from Cambridge University and Spain have discovered that the paths of the dwarf planets are not as stable as they thought, meaning they could be falling under the influence of more planets further out.More. See also: Planet better than Earth claimed within reach Follow UD News at Twitter!

By mathematician (and string theory skeptic) Peter Woit at Not Even Wrong: It seems that Carroll was arguing that the multiverse shows that we need to change our thinking about what science is, adopting his favored “abduction” and “Bayesian reasoning” framework, getting rid of falsifiability. Using this method he arrives at a probability of the multiverse as “about 50%” (funny, but that’s the same number I’d use, as for any binary option where you know nothing). So, from the Bayesians we now have the following for multiverse probability estimates: 1. Carroll: “About 50%” 2. Polchinski: “94%” 3. Rees: “Kill my dog if it’s not true” 4. Linde: “Kill me if it’s not true” 5. Weinberg: “Kill Linde and Rees’s dog if Read More ›

From Yahoo: WASHINGTON, June 15, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — “Allowing the FCC to rule the Internet like a public utility under Title II of the 1934 Communications Act will do nothing but produce a broadband shortage,” said George Gilder, bestselling technology author and Discovery Institute senior fellow. “This just creates new incentives for broadband providers to divert investment into advertising and content platforms or other countries,” Gilder added. By a 2-1 vote the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has upheld the net neutrality rules adopted by the Federal Communications Commission in 2015. More. This much I know is true: Bureaucrats can administer a shortage of goods and services just as easily as a surplus but businesses in free Read More ›

From Globe and Mail: While fertilization is the crucial first step to all human life, it has not been easy for scientists to determine precisely what happens when egg and sperm meet. In addition to the technical challenges, experiments that require human fertilization immediately raise ethical issues. To sidestep these dilemmas, researchers in both groups found ways to separately generate two proteins that are known to be crucial for fertilization and studied their interaction. The teams were then able to deduce the three-dimensional structures of the proteins and show precisely how they fit together, atom to atom. Their complementary findings were published Wednesday in the journal Nature. … One intriguing detail is that the Izumo1 protein, which is long and Read More ›

From Emily Singer at Quanta: According to the new findings, published in Genetics this month, Neanderthal genomes were rife with harmful DNA that significantly reduced the species’ fitness. The researchers conclude that Neanderthals were roughly 40 percent less fit than modern humans, meaning they were less likely to produce offspring. More. Okay, so it turns out we didn’t murder them, like everyone said we had. That’s the trouble when you’re supposed to be extinct. People can insist that Neanderthals are the Bad Seed and they can’t launch a grievance. Fortunately, even if it’s nonsense, no one gets hurt. Far cry from eugenics. See also: There’s a gene for that… or is there? and Neanderthal Man: The long-lost relative turns up Read More ›