From Tracy Staedler at LiveScience: Renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson urges Americans to become more scientifically literate in a short video he posted yesterday (April 19) on his Facebook page. In the video he titled “Science in America,” Tyson comments on 21st-century attitudes toward science, explaining the importance of the scientific method and making the case that science denial could erode democracy. “Dear Facebook Universe,” he wrote. “I offer this four-minute video on ‘Science in America’ containing what may be the most important words I have ever spoken. As always, but especially these days, keep looking up.” Poseur. Democracy gets dismantled mainly when not believing the government of the day becomes a crime. In about 30 seconds, Tyson explains how Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Now, the first genetic study of the diversity of clinging jellyfish populations around the globe has discovered some surprising links among distant communities of jellies and also revealed there may be more than one species of the infamous stinger. … The new study shows that the story is much more complex than previously thought. The researchers uncovered a genetic match between populations of clinging jellyfish in the Vladivostok, Russia-area — specifically the area well known to cause severe sting reactions — and those found along the U.S. East Coast in the Northwest Atlantic. “We know the two regions share one genetic variant or haplotype,” Govindarajan says. “In the Northwest Atlantic, this variant was actually most frequently found in Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Deprived of oxygen, naked mole-rats can survive by metabolizing fructose just as plants do, researchers report this week in the journal Science. … “This is just the latest remarkable discovery about the naked mole-rat — a cold-blooded mammal that lives decades longer than other rodents, rarely gets cancer, and doesn’t feel many types of pain,” says Thomas Park, professor of biological sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who led an international team of researchers from UIC, the Max Delbrück Institute in Berlin and the University of Pretoria in South Africa on the study. … In humans, laboratory mice, and all other known mammals, when brain cells are starved of oxygen they run out of energy and Read More ›

Baylor computer science prof Robert Marks comments on Texas science standards at Dallas Morning News: There’s a battle over evolution education in Texas right now. The latest round is coming up soon in Austin, with the State Board of Education hearing testimony on both sides of the controversy. There is a tug-of-war between those who want to teach only their corner on truth and those who would prefer to include critical analysis and discuss developments that challenge neo-Darwinian dogma. This is unfortunate, because at least in areas of my specialization, using computers and mathematics to model evolution, the problems are fascinating and would be both fun and instructive to teach. Gregory Chaitin, arguably the greatest and most creative mathematician of Read More ›

According to Mark Titus at Nautilus: The Greek philosopher Democritus might have said something like that 2,500 years ago. Although his books are lost, we know from the fragments that remain and what others said about him, that he believed everything in the universe was made of atoms in perpetual motion, whirling in space. Large, small, smooth, and slippery, or jagged and hooked, they combine to form the universe—its stars and planets, and the earth and all it contains, including our bodies and our minds. All that is required to understand this is “just a little imagination and thinking”—what physics, chemistry, and biology have provided since the 17th century. In spite of this success, science (as we now call the Read More ›

From Steve Meyer, author of Darwin’s Doubt, at the Stream: Bill Nye may not be a scientist. But he used to play one on TV. Now he is an honorary co-chair and speaker for the “March for Science” in Washington D.C. and elsewhere on April 22. The choice of Nye as one of the faces of the March is revealing. March organizers have paid lip service to critical thinking and “diverse perspectives” in science. However, Nye is a good example of someone who promotes science as a close-minded ideology, not an open search for truth. He attacks those who disagree with him on climate change or evolution as science “deniers.” He wouldn’t even rule out criminal prosecution as a tool. Read More ›

From Denyse O’Leary (O’Leary for News) at MercatorNet: … In short, violent outbreaks on campus are not the outcome of kids acting out! Quite the contrary, they are the outcome of kids acting out the values that they have been absorbing over the past fifty years from increasingly illiberal teachers. … Take note that the new approach to intellectual freedom does not permit anyone to just mind their own business. Even silence can be violence… …One of two things will happen if universities continue to make themselves enemies of intellectual freedom and free speech. Either our intellectual life will rot or it will find a home other than the university. In the age of the internet, many are now exploring Read More ›

From Ari N. Schulman at New Atlantis: The question then is how mere mechanisms could be in the business of interpreting anything. To say that concepts can reside in physical things in the way we encounter them is only to raise more urgently the question of how concepts can reside in physical things as they actually are — of how matter can be such that certain bits of it come to know about each other. To say that experience inherently bears meaning, that perception already interprets the world to us before we ever reflect on it, is not to find a curious circumstance in which nature and reason are reconciled but to challenge how we find them set apart to Read More ›

It is almost — almost — amusing but then quite sad to see how objectors to design theory play with logic and worldviews issues, then run away when the substantial issues are taken up. Let me clip from the FFT, AJ vs Charles thread to pick up these matters, but to avoid making this utterly too long, let me point here on for the underlying questions of worldviews, first plausibles and self-evident plumb-line truths such as the first principles of right reason. While we are at it, let us observe from the diagram on the right, how worldviews issues influence everything we do as a civilisation, and how the issue arises, on whether business as usual is a march of Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: The University of Virginia School of Medicine has again shown that a part of the body thought to be disconnected from the immune system actually interacts with it, and that discovery helps explain cases of male infertility, certain autoimmune diseases and even the failure of cancer vaccines. Scientists developing such vaccines may need to reconsider their work in light of the new findings or risk unintentionally sabotaging their own efforts. UVA’s Kenneth Tung, MD, said that many vaccines likely are failing simply because researchers are picking the wrong targets — targets that aren’t actually foreign to the immune system and thus won’t provoke the desired immune responses. Overturning Orthodoxy Tung, of UVA’s Beirne B. Carter Center for Immunology Read More ›

From Megan Gannon at LiveScience: Archaeologists unearthed the skeletal remains of a person who lived about 13,000 years ago at Riparo Fredian, near Lucca in northern Italy. The person’s two front teeth (or upper central incisors) both had big holes in the surface that reach down to the tooth’s pulp chamber. Not only was the infection cleaned with a handheld stone tool but it was disinfected. But the dental work didn’t end there. Inside the tooth cavities, there were traces of bitumen, a tar-like substance that might have been used as an antiseptic or a filling to protect the tooth from getting infected, the researchers said. More. Our ancestors are getting smarter with each passing decade. A reverse Flynn effect? Read More ›

From Leah Crane at New Scientist: NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Emission) spacecraft found layers of atmospheric metal ions that defy models based loosely on Earth’s atmosphere. … The space between planets is full of metallic dust and rocks. As they are drawn into a planet’s atmosphere, they burn up, leaving behind metal particles like iron and magnesium. On Earth, the behaviour of those particles is mostly controlled by the planet’s strong magnetic field. They use magnetic fields as a sort of highway, and stream along the magnetic field lines to form thin layers throughout the atmosphere. But Mars has no such field. The planet does have small regions with weak magnetic fields in its southern hemisphere, but without Read More ›

It’s always a pleasure to host Dr Selensky’s thoughtful contributions. Here, he tackles the subject of artificial life simulations and the implications of modelling environments, assumptions, algorithms etc: ____________________________ On Modelling Spontaneous Emergence of Programs and Their Evolutionary Self-Improvement Evgeny Selensky Some time ago, I left a comment on Jeffrey Shallit’s blog. We exchanged a couple of phrases. In particular, I referred Jeffrey to the requirement for computational halting in models of artificial life. I praised David Abel’s work, which put him off. In response, Jeffrey recommended that I should “read and understand” the following article. I have done my homework now. However I’d like to post here at UD rather than visit Jeffrey’s blog again. Jeffrey of course is Read More ›

Copy Michael Denton.* From the editors of Nature, a look at the work of D’Arcy Thompson a century ago: The 100-year-old challenge to Darwin that is still making waves in research Biological response to physical forces remains a live topic for research. In a research paper, for example, researchers report how physical stresses generated at defects in the structures of epithelial cell layers cause excess cells to be extruded. In a separate online publication (K. Kawaguchi et al. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature22321; 2017), other scientists show that topological defects have a role in cell dynamics, as a result of the balance of forces. In high-density cultures of neural progenitor cells, the direction in which cells travel around defects affects whether cells become Read More ›

From PhilSci Archive: Abstract: Despite numerous and increasing attempts to define what life is, there is no consensus on necessary and sufficient conditions for life. Accordingly, some scholars have questioned the value of definitions of life and encouraged scientists and philosophers alike to discard the project. As an alternative to this pessimistic conclusion, we argue that critically rethinking the nature and uses of definitions can provide new insights into the epistemic roles of definitions of life for different research practices. This paper examines the possible contributions of definitions of life in scientific domains where such definitions are used most (e.g., Synthetic Biology, Origins of Life, Alife, and Astrobiology). Rather than as classificatory tools for demarcation of natural kinds, we highlight Read More ›