From ScienceDaily: Queensland University of Technology (QUT) researcher Dr Robyn Araujo has developed new mathematics to solve a longstanding mystery of how the incredibly complex biological networks within cells can adapt and reset themselves after exposure to a new stimulus. … “Proteins form unfathomably complex networks of chemical reactions that allow cells to communicate and to ‘think’ — essentially giving the cell a ‘cognitive’ ability, or a ‘brain’,” she said. “It has been a longstanding mystery in science how this cellular ‘brain’ works. “We could never hope to measure the full complexity of cellular networks — the networks are simply too large and interconnected and their component proteins are too variable. “But mathematics provides a tool that allows us to Read More ›

Thirty-five thousand kya. From ScienceDaily: A flint flake from the Middle Paleolithic of Crimea was likely engraved symbolically by a skilled Neanderthal hand, according to a study published May 2, 2018 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Ana Majkic from the University of Bordeaux, France and colleagues. The authors developed a detailed framework for interpreting engravings on stone artifacts. … Following microscopic examination of the grooved lines on the flint cortex, the researchers concluded that the incisions represent deliberate engravings that would have required fine motor skills and attention to detail. These engravings appear to have been made with symbolic or communicative intent. If this interpretation is correct, this engraved flake would join a growing list of signs that Read More ›

From science historian Michael Flannery at ENST, a review of Brown University’s Ken Miller’s The Human Instinct: How We Evolved to Have Reason, Consciousness, and Free Will Miller is one of those “settled science” bullies. Here he sets his sights on essayist Marilynne Robinson’s 1998 collection, The Death of Adam. According to Miller, Robinson is wrong in asserting the demeaning and destructive influence of Darwinism. For Robinson, the reductionist materialism of the Darwinian paradigm has left humanity bereft of meaning and value, corroding the moral and ethical foundations on which Western civilization was built. Miller, a Darwinian theist, insists that Robinson is completely mistaken: Let me be clear that I do not believe that the scientific core of [Darwinian] evolution Read More ›

Asking, what is more prone to error: Science or scientists? See also: Known iconoclast physicist Freeman Dyson can talk about scientists’ blunders, including Darwin’s

From Suzan Mazur at Oscillations, an interview with Iranian-born astrophysicist Niayesh Afshordi: Niayesh Afshordi on Holographic Universe Media Spin & the Iranian Brain Drain Suzan Mazur: How close is the goal of combining Einstein’s theory of relativity and quantum physics? Something Kostas Skenderis at the University of Southampton has described as a new paradigm for physical reality. Niayesh Afshordi: We don’t know. Physicists have been chasing this goal for the past 80 years. We’d like to think that we’re closer than before. There have been new insights, theoretical and observational insights. But whether those are real, it’s difficult to say. Suzan Mazur: Your holographic universe research has been widely touted as “the first observational evidence that our universe could be Read More ›

From Michael Greshko at National Geographic: Someone butchered a rhinoceros in the Philippines hundreds of thousands of years before modern humans arrived—but who? But the age of the remains makes them especially remarkable: The carved bones are most likely between 631,000 and 777,000 years old, with researchers’ best estimate coming in around 709,000 years old. The research—partially funded by the National Geographic Society—pushes back occupation of the Philippines to before the known origin of our species, Homo sapiens. The next-earliest evidence of Philippine hominins comes from Luzon’s Callao Cave, in the form of a 67,000-year-old foot bone. … “It’s really, really exciting—it’s now becoming increasingly clear that ancient forms of hominins were able to make significant deep-sea crossings,” says Adam Read More ›

From Brian Langerhans and Mick Kulikowski at NC State University: A North Carolina State University study examining the effects of urbanization on the evolution of fish body shape produced both expected and surprising results: One fish species became more sleek in response to urbanization, while another species became deeper bodied in urban areas. Generally, urbanization produces conditions that make water in streams flow more variably and more quickly during rain storms. So NC State biologists hypothesized that fish would quickly evolve a body shape that improves swimming efficiency in response to changes in stream water velocity caused by urbanization. “We wanted to test rapid body shape evolution in western and central North Carolina stream fish in response to urbanization,” said Read More ›

Adam Perkins offers a revealing example at Quillette: But why do we specifically need free speech in science? Surely we just take measurements and publish our data? No chit chat required. We need free speech in science because science is not really about microscopes, or pipettes, or test tubes, or even Large Hadron Colliders. These are merely tools that help us to accomplish a far greater mission, which is to choose between rival narratives, in the vicious, no-holds-barred battle of ideas that we call “science”. For example, stomach problems such as gastritis and ulcers were historically viewed as the products of stress. This opinion was challenged in the late 1970s by the Australian doctors Robin Warren and Barry Marshall, who Read More ›

From Cardiff University at Eurekalert: The birth of stars from dense clouds of gas and dust may be happening in a completely unexpected way in our own galaxy and beyond. This is according to an international team of researchers, including scientists from Cardiff University, who have found that long-held assumptions about the relationship between the mass of star-forming clouds of dust and gas and the eventual mass of the star itself may not be as straightforward as we think. The underlying reasons as to why a star eventually grows to a specific mass has puzzled scientists for some time. It has been assumed that a star’s mass mostly depends on the original structure – known as a star-forming core – Read More ›

A handy guide from Tasnim Elmamoun at PLOS blogs: So… how do we identify spin? As Chiu and colleagues point out, spin can take a variety of forms, including: 1) “inappropriate study given study data;” 2) “inappropriate extrapolations or recommendations for clinical practice;” 3) “selective reporting;” 4) and “more robust or favorable data presentation.” Let’s unpack these a little bit. The first of these types, “inappropriate study given study data,” occurs when findings simply are interpreted incorrectly. Specifically, Chiu et al. found that this type of spin is commonly used in conjunction with casual (or colloquial) language, which in many cases has the potential to alter interpretation of the data. So how do researchers strike a balance between using scientific Read More ›

From Rachel Nuwer at PBS Nova Next: Humans and apes share nearly 99% of the same DNA, but language is one thing that seems to irreconcilably differentiate our species. Is that by necessity of nature, though, or simply a question of nurture? “It could be that there’s something biologically different in our genome, something that’s changed since we split from apes, and that’s language,” says Catherine Hobaiter, a primatologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. “But another possibility is that they might have the cognitive capacity for language, but they’re not able to physically express it like we do.” … Scientists have been trying to teach chimps to speak for decades, with efforts ranging from misguided to tantalizingly Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Many of the “forensic science” methods commonly used in criminal cases and portrayed in popular police TV dramas have never been scientifically validated and may lead to unjust verdicts, according to an editorial in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. … “We wanted to alert people that this is a continuing and a major issue: that many of the forensic techniques used today to put people in jail have no scientific backing,” says senior author Arturo Casadevall, MD, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor and the Alfred & Jill Sommer Professor and Chair of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. … The structure of the field of forensic science inhibits vital reforms. Read More ›

Podcast with Steve Minsky:  A transcript is to be made available. Science historian Michael Flannery is, we hear, not a fan of Brown University Darwinian biochemist Ken Miller’s new book, The Human Instinct: How We Evolved to Have Reason, Consciousness, and Free Will. Re the accompanying podcast, he writes, More nonsense from Miller. Miller’s new book is largely science and theology “explained” by double talk. He argues for human uniqueness and then proceeds to argue against it. He argues for free willl and then proceeds to argue against it. He complains about the term “Darwinism” and then uses the term himself (repeatedly). He talks about design only to argue against it. He writes against what he calls the “scientific creationists” Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: The theory of eternal inflation that Hawking and Hertog put forward is based on string theory: a branch of theoretical physics that attempts to reconcile gravity and general relativity with quantum physics, in part by describing the fundamental constituents of the universe as tiny vibrating strings. Their approach uses the string theory concept of holography, which postulates that the universe is a large and complex hologram: physical reality in certain 3D spaces can be mathematically reduced to 2D projections on a surface. … Hertog and Hawking used their new theory to derive more reliable predictions about the global structure of the universe. They predicted the universe that emerges from eternal inflation on the past boundary is finite and Read More ›

And maybe they are not all female. From ScienceDaily: A new study has cast doubt on leading theory for how tiny creatures have evolved for tens of millions of years — without ever having sex. … they are all female, and their offspring are clones of their mothers. Bdelloids are microscopic animals that live in freshwater and damp habitats across the world. Despite their apparent lack of sex, we know they have evolved for tens of millions of years into more than 500 species. By studying their genomes — the set of all the genes that define an animal’s characteristics — researchers thought they had identified an explanation for how bdelloids had ‘gotten away’ with no sex for millions of Read More ›