From ScienceDaily: As a rule, soft parts do not withstand the ravages of time; hence, the majority of vertebrate fossils consist only of bones. Under these circumstances, a new discovery from the UNESCO World Heritage Site “Messel Pit” near Darmstadt in Germany comes as an even bigger surprise: a 48-million-year old skin gland from a bird, containing lipids of the same age. The oldest lipids ever recorded in a fossil vertebrate were used by the bird to preen its plumage. … “As shown by our detailed chemical analysis, the lipids have kept their original chemical composition, at least in part, over a span of 48 million years. The long-chain hydrocarbon compounds from the fossil remains of the uropygial gland can Read More ›

In North America, we think mainly in terms of toxic snowflakes, of the sort that made it dangerous for their biology prof to be on campus. But elsewhere, it can be worse. From Maria Burke at Chemistry World: Thousands of people in the higher education sector have been targeted in Turkey where state and university authorities continue to take sweeping measures in retaliation for alleged political links or content of research, publications or teaching. Punitive actions by the Turkish state have included imprisonment and prosecution; dismissal and expulsion of scholars and students; and restrictions on travel and institutional autonomy. … There have been many reports of widespread restrictions on academics’ travel. Over the past year, for example, Turkey has issued Read More ›

From philosopher of science Adrian Currie at Aeon: There’s a scarcity of jobs compared with the number of applicants, and very few high-ranking and ‘big impact’ journals. This means that the research decisions that scientists make, particularly early on, are high-risk wagers about what will be fruitful and lead to a decent career. The road to academic stardom (and, for that matter, academic mediocrity) is littered with brilliant, passionate people who simply made bad bets. In such an environment, researchers are bound to be conservative – with the stakes set so high, taking a punt on something outlandish, and that you know is likely to hurt your career, is not a winning move. The resulting mediocrity shows. The biologist Barbara Read More ›

Using “cutting edge DNA technology.” From ScienceDaily: Meladema coriacea is among Europe’s largest water beetles and has been considered common across the south of the continent and in North Africa since the early 19th century. But academics from the University of Plymouth and the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona have now shown what was long thought to be one common species is actually two. Using DNA sequence data and detailed analysis of morphology, they have described a new species — Meladema lepidoptera — which appears virtually identical to Meladema coriacea at first glance, but is very divergent genetically. Meladema lepidoptera is restricted to Corsica, Sardinia, adjacent small islands and some areas of the Italian mainland, where it apparently occurs Read More ›

From Jake Buehler at Gizmodo: Imagine an animal with the body of a chameleon, the feet and claws of an anteater, the humped back of a camel, and a tail that is both flattened like a beaver’s, but also like that of a scorpion. If you’re thinking this sounds like someone just threw your local zoo into a blender—or that it’s not far off from mythical creatures like the chimera or manticore—this would be understandable. But this bonkers description fits a real, long-extinct group of tree-dwelling reptiles that lived more than 200 million years ago. Now, a new species of these freaky little critters has been identified, and its fossilized remains pile onto the anatomical strangeness, showing that this ancient Read More ›

As Breitbart (as a handy source) reports: >>“Historically, no god has survived science. Gods evolved,” the best-selling American novelist said at the Frankfurt Book Fair, where he unveiled his newest book, “Origin”. The fifth instalment in the wildly popular series that started with “The Da Vinci Code” tracks Harvard professor Robert Langdon’s latest code-cracking adventure to uncover the mysteries of the universe, this time exploring the battle between religion and science. “I happen to believe in looking at advances through technology,” Brown told reporters. “Over the next decade our species will become enormously interconnected at a level we are not used to, and we will start to find our spiritual experiences through our interconnections with each other. “Our need for Read More ›

  From Denyse O’Leary at Evolution News & Views: Naturalists (who say nature is all there is) have recently sought to jimmy the rules around evidence to accommodate their strong belief that a multiverse really exists. Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel offers a glimpse of the future they propose, in a piece at Forbes titled “The multiverse is inevitable and we’re living in it”: “What is the Multiverse, then? It may go well beyond physics, and be the first physically motivated “metaphysics” we’ve ever encountered. For the first time, we’re understanding the limits of what our Universe can teach us. There is information we need, but that we’ll never obtain, in order to elevate this into the realm of testable science. Until Read More ›

Jeremy England. From John Ellis at PJ Media: In his new novel Origin, Brown includes a character named Jeremy England who is a physics professor. This fictional character based on the real-life Jeremy England has “identified the underlying physical principle driving the origin and evolution of life.” Furthermore, according to the book, Professor England has disproven all other theories of creation, including the Biblical account recorded in Genesis. The real Jeremy England scoffs at Dan Brown’s fictional creation that hijacks England’s actual research. England takes umbrage at Brown’s use of his name and research to suggest that the Book of Genesis has been refuted. England points out that his namesake in Dan Brown’s book offers no real science to interact Read More ›

Denyse was kind enough to post a link to the first part of my article on why Algebra is an important subject for high-school and college students. Part 2 of my article is now available as well.
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From ScienceDaily: Early humans seem to have recognised the dangers of inbreeding at least 34,000 years ago, and developed surprisingly sophisticated social and mating networks to avoid it, new research has found. The study, reported in the journal Science, examined genetic information from the remains of anatomically modern humans who lived during the Upper Palaeolithic, a period when modern humans from Africa first colonised western Eurasia. The results suggest that people deliberately sought partners beyond their immediate family, and that they were probably connected to a wider network of groups from within which mates were chosen, in order to avoid becoming inbred. This suggests that our distant ancestors are likely to have been aware of the dangers of inbreeding, and Read More ›

  From Stephen Sawchuk at Education Week: A standard dealing with the process of evolution deletes that word entirely, replacing it with a standard that asks students to construct an explanation based on evidence that biological diversity is “influenced by” things like competition for limited resources, the proliferation of organisms that are better equipped to survive, and genetic variations in species. … The proposed changes have brought a groundswell of criticism, both locally and throughout the country. Over 60 scientists associated with the Los Alamos National Laboratory took out a full-page ad in the Santa Fe paper of record, the New Mexican. “There is absolutely no scientific rationale for weakening the treatment of these subjects in New Mexico K-12 education,” Read More ›

In response to Jumpin’ Genes!: A quarter of cow DNA came from reptiles, our physics color commentator writes, This whole business of parasites transmitting retrotransposons from reptiles to cows is just so zoo-centric. What about plants? What about viruses? Don’t they get to originate DNA too? When are they going to admit that this whole business of descent-with-modification really disrespects half the tree of life? Zoo-racist, that’s what they are. Most human beings must confess to a lack of genuine empathy with bugs, worms, and germs. Seriously, although no one talks about it much, these types of finds can’t be good news for the End of Science rent-a-riot (Darwin-in-the-schools lobby). See also: Jumpin’ Genes!: A quarter of cow DNA came from Read More ›

From Ed Yong at The Atlantic: This jumping gene seems to have entered the cow genome from the unlikeliest of sources: snakes and lizards. Retrotransposons typically jump around within a single genome, but sometimes they can travel further afield. Through means that scientists still don’t fully understand, they can leave the DNA of one species and enter that of another. And so it is with BovB. No one knows the animal in which it originated. But from that mystery source, it has jumped into the DNA of snakes and cows, elephants and butterflies, ants and rhinos. … No one knows how BovB travels between species, but Ivancevic and Adelson suspect that it might spread via blood-sucking parasites. They have found Read More ›

From Ari N. Shulman at Big Questions Online: Is human perception a controlled hallucination? That was the claim advanced in a pair of talks at the Human Mind Conference in Cambridge, England in June, one by Anil Seth, a neuroscientist at the University of Sussex, the other by Andy Clark, a philosopher at the University of Edinburgh. They were not advancing the radical thesis, made by some overeager neuro-philosophers, that all experience is an illusion. Rather, Seth and Clark made the case that there is no bright dividing line between hallucination and ordinary perception. … The terms “controlled hallucination,” and related ones like “inferred fantasy” and “virtual reality,” are useful rhetorical devices for illustrating what is distinctive about the theory Read More ›

From Matteo Rini at Physics: Life is hectic inside a living cell. To keep a cell functioning, myriad processes such as protein synthesis, power generation, waste disposal, and DNA replication are constantly and simultaneously running. These processes all rely on the precise and coordinated transport of organelles, proteins, and other biomolecules to the places where the cell needs them. George Shubeita, a professor of physics at New York University Abu Dhabi, studies the mechanisms by which tiny molecular motors move these cargoes. He observes the motors with superresolution microscopes and uses optical traps, commonly known as optical tweezers, to engage the motors in a “tug-of-war” game that allows him to measure their strength. In a conversation with Physics, Shubeita explains Read More ›