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From ScienceDaily: A new study published in Nature by a team of Tel Aviv University, Sheba Medical Center, and University of Chicago scientists finds that RNA, considered the DNA template for protein translation, often appears with an extra letter — and this letter is the regulatory key for control of gene expression. The discovery of a novel letter marking thousands of mRNA transcripts will offer insight into different RNA functions in cellular processes and contributions to the development of disease. “Epigenetics, the regulation of gene expression beyond the primary information encoded by DNA, was thought until recently to be mediated by modifications of proteins and DNA,” said Prof. Gidi Rechavi, Djerassi Chair in Oncology at TAU’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine Read More ›

From Scientific American: More than 400 years ago Renaissance scientist Nicolaus Copernicus reduced us to near nothingness by showing that our planet is not the center of the solar system. With every subsequent scientific revolution, most other privileged positions in the universe humans might have held dear have been further degraded, revealing the cold truth that our species is the smallest of specks on a speck of a planet, cosmologically speaking. A new calculation of exoplanets suggests that Earth is just one out of a likely 700 million trillion terrestrial planets in the entire observable universe. But the average age of these planets—well above Earth’s age—and their typical locations—in galaxies vastly unlike the Milky Way—just might turn the Copernican principle Read More ›

From New Scientist: We may have a complex, scientific take on the unconscious mind, but as Eliexer Sternberg’s new book shows, explanations demand a nuance befitting the subject Actually, we don’t know very much about the mind at all, and there has been legitimate doubt whether the “unconscious mind” exists. The “unconscious mind” uually means an inner consciousness of which we are unaware: “Schmeazle unconsciously wanted to avoid marrying GerdyLou. That’s why he fell down the back stairs and broke his hip the night before the wedding.” Everyone but Schmeazle is apparently conscious of the reasoning powers of his unconscious. That sort of thing did fall into disrepute, for good reasons and bad ones. We oughtn’t to confuse such a Read More ›

Salt deniers. Who knew? From Science Daily: In the debate over salt’s health effects, scientists have effectively split into two camps and are talking past each other, according to a new study. … … you might’ve started hearing some skepticism recently about whether salt is really that bad for you. The critics say health recommendations for cutting salt intake in half are lacking solid evidence. “Either it’s useless, which means it’s an expensive strategy, or it could well be harmful, which is worse,” cardiovascular disease expert Salim Yusuf told the European Heart Journal. There’s been a sharp response from salt-averse health organizations like the American Heart Association, which says sodium skeptics rely on flawed data and poorly-designed studies. The AHA Read More ›

Nature and Scientific American think we are beginning to find out: Biologists have argued for decades over what ignited this evolutionary burst. Some think that a steep rise in oxygen sparked the change, whereas others say that it sprang from the development of some key evolutionary innovation, such as vision. The precise cause has remained elusive, in part because so little is known about the physical and chemical environment at that time. But over the past several years, discoveries have begun to yield some tantalizing clues about the end of the Ediacaran. Evidence gathered from the Namibian reefs and other sites suggests that earlier theories were overly simplistic — that the Cambrian explosion actually emerged out of a complex interplay Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Most living vertebrate species have jaws, a development thought to have occurred sometime in the Paleozoic era. Jawed vertebrates–including humans–share many developmental characteristics that have remained unchanged for millennia. The brain’s basic developmental plan was thought by many scientists to have reached completion in jawed vertebrates because the brains of lampreys and hagfish–the only jawless fish that remain alive today–seem to lack two key domains. However, it turned out that hagfish [jawless fish] do have the required equipment. “The problem was that lampreys had not yet been shown to have a similar patterning,” explains Kuratani. “The shared pattern of brain development between hagfish and jawed vertebrates raised the possibility that the apparently primitive brain of the lamprey is Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Fossil analysis pushes back human split from other primates by two million years A paper in the latest issue of the journal Nature suggests a common ancestor of apes and humans, Chororapithecus abyssinicus, evolved in Africa, not Eurasia, two million years earlier than previously thought. “Our new research supports early divergence: 10 million years ago for the human-gorilla split and 8 million years ago for our split from chimpanzees,” said Los Alamos National Laboratory geologist and senior team member Giday WoldeGabriel. “That’s at least 2 million years earlier than previous estimates, which were based on genetic science that lacked fossil evidence.” “Our analysis of C. abyssinicus fossils reveals the ape to be only 8 million years old, younger Read More ›

From Brendon Brewer at Quillette: I first encountered the second law as a teenager, while reading an issue of the fundamentalist Christian magazine Creation, given to me by my grandmother. Since the article’s author wanted to argue against biological evolution, it claimed that the second law of thermodynamics implies evolution is impossible. Its definition of the second law was that disorder always increases with time. At first glance, this does seem incompatible with evolution by natural selection, which can lead to more complex, “better designed” organisms over time.3 At the time, I thought it was unlikely that mainstream biology would flagrantly contradict mainstream physics, so I remained sceptical of this argument, even though I couldn’t understand the counterarguments I found Read More ›

Sound of fiftieth shoe dropping. From “skeptic” Shermer Scientific American: Although there are many proximate causes, there is but one ultimate cause—lack of political diversity to provide checks on protests going too far. … The problem is most relevant to the study of areas “related to the political concerns of the Left—areas such as race, gender, stereotyping, environmentalism, power, and inequality.” The very things these students are protesting. How does this political asymmetry corrupt social science? It begins with what subjects are studied and the descriptive language employed. Consider a 2003 paper by social psychologist John Jost, now at New York University, and his colleagues, entitled “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition.” Conservatives are described as having “uncertainty avoidance,” “needs Read More ›

On Michael Denton’s Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis (2016): Introduction The structuralist view, of course, has the advantage of being consistent with the fossil record. That record does not show, as Darwin suggested, a finely graduated organic chain between major Types. Instead, it shows abrupt appearance of various Types followed by stasis. Again, using the pentadactyl limb as an example, Denton has no doubt that the limb evolved from the fins of fish. Yet the fossil record simply does not support the view that the evolution of the limb from the fin occurred gradually over eons of time. The fossil record is instead conspicuous for the absence of transitional forms from fish fin to pentadactyl limb. This means one of Read More ›

but baby, look at you now. Science writer Chris Mooney advises that internet trolls are even worse than we thought. Internet Trolls Really Are Horrible People Narcissistic, Machiavellian, psychopathic, and sadistic. … Overall, the authors found that the relationship between sadism and trolling was the strongest, and that indeed, sadists appear to troll because they find it pleasurable. “Both trolls and sadists feel sadistic glee at the distress of others,” they wrote. “Sadists just want to have fun … and the Internet is their playground!” Hmmmm. Our local variety of troll (trollus Darwiniensis spp.) is usually not that scary. He is more of a hapless creature whose god has failed. A sort of Caliban explaining Setebos (or Darwin) to a world Read More ›

From the BBC: One thing that has consistently baffled researchers, however, is how primates arrived in South America. Unlikely though it sounds, the monkeys simply have to have crossed the Atlantic. Last year, new evidence emerged that reignited the debate and pushed this transatlantic crossing theory to the forefront. Monkey teeth that look like old world monkey teeth, found in the Peruvian Amazon. But … Given that plate tectonics cannot explain how monkeys reached South America, rafting has to have played a part. In fact, it has been suggested that rafting events are also responsible for seeding South America with the ancestors of its rodents and hoatzin birds. Clearly, the Eocene Atlantic was a veritable thoroughfare for nautical creatures. … Read More ›

Made a point of putting off the pop science Valentine’s day drivel. But here’s a piece rolling through. From the BBC: Infanticide has been the driving force for monogamy for 20 million years In many primates today, a mother with a dependent infant is unavailable to mate until her infant is weaned. To get access to her, a male would first have to kill her child. This sort of targeted infanticide goes on in many species, including gorillas, monkeys and dolphins. This led Kit Opie of University College London in the UK and his colleagues, to propose a startling idea. Almost a third of primates form monogamous male-female relationships, and in 2013 Opie suggested that this behaviour had evolved to Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: A research project has tested the hypothesis that Asian common toad populations across Southeast Asia are genetically similar owing to their commensal nature and high dispersive ability. To the researchers’ surprise, three genetically divergent groups of toads were found, each in a different geographic area (mainland Southeast Asia, coastal Myanmar and the islands of Java and Sumatra). The ranges of these three groups of toads were also found to have statistically different climates. This suggests that the toads may be adapting to local climatic conditions and evolving into separate species. Thus, toads of one group may not be able to disperse and persist within the range of another group because of climatic differences. More. Of course, we would Read More ›

Further to Gravitational waves reliably detected – Updated IV, from Sean Carroll at the Atlantic: Einstein’s gravitational waves rest on a genuinely radical idea. … Einstein’s general relativity is a theory of gravity. It says that spacetime can be curved, and we feel the effects of that curvature as the gravitational force. According to relativity, the speed of light puts an absolute limit on how fast influences can travel through space. The Andromeda galaxy is two and a half million light years away, so it would take at the very least five million years to send a signal there and get a response back. We’ve all heard about this speed-of-light barrier, which applies to gravitational waves just as much as Read More ›