Hope springs eternal: Are new particles hiding “in plain sight?”
What does it mean to say, in physics, that something like the Higgs boson “exists”?
Sit down. Cells have signaling circuit boards. Only much more advanced than ours
Remember junk RNA? Cell division requires a balanced level of it
Astronomer: Seeing dead space aliens would teach us a lesson
Remember the astronomer who thought that space detritus Oumuamua might be an extraterrestrial lightsail? He’s back: Harvard professor Avi Loeb thinks humans should be on the hunt for signs of alien life and alien death. During a recent presentation at the The Humans to Mars Summit, Loeb argued that the discovery of a dead alien civilization could serve as a sort of cautionary tale for humanity, letting us know what not to do if we want to survive. “The idea is we may learn something in the process,” he said. “We may learn to better behave with each other, not to initiate a nuclear war, or to monitor our planet and make sure that it’s habitable for as long as Read More ›
When did the folk at Skeptical Inquirer become creationists?
Genes are more like a river than a string of beads…
The immune cells, it turns out, have secret police
“Natural killer cells” roam the body, demanding that other cells produce evidence of good faith—otherwise, they kill them: In general, two things must happen before an NK cell attacks a target cell: (1) It must receive an activating signal from a body cell that says, “Kill me!” (2) It must not receive an inhibitory signal that says, “Wait, don’t kill me!” This inhibitory signal is essentially a proper “ID card” known as a major histocompatibility complex I (MHC I) protein. When a body cell shows the NK cell this identification, the NK cell is temporarily satisfied and moves on to the next cell. If the next cell is not able to provide an MHC I molecule (or provides one that Read More ›
Researchers: Recently found fungus pushes complex life back a half billion years
Philosopher eliminates human exceptionality by ejecting reason
Is science “broken” or has it just accumulated a lot of baggage?
The National Academies of Science is wading into the longstanding mess over the validity of research findings. It doesn’t, of course, agree that there is a “crisis.” That said, the report also notes that the American public’s confidence in science hasn’t wavered at all in recent years, despite major news articles discussing the “crisis” in psychology and elsewhere. And it found that even scientists who have criticized the current state of things aren’t completely on-board with calling science broken. “How extensive is the lack of reproducibility in research results in science and engineering in general? The easy answer is that we don’t know,” Brain Nosek, co-founder and director of the Center for Open Science, told the report committee during a Read More ›