Over at the Skeptical Zone, Dr. Liddle has graciously responded to my post, A quick question for Dr. Liddle and other skeptics. I began by asking: “What is Dr. Liddle’s definition of “matter,” and why does Dr. Liddle believe that an intelligent being has to conform to that definition?” What is matter? In my post, I proposed seven possible definitions of matter, and in her response, Dr. Liddle gave an eclectic definition which invoked most of the criteria I had suggested. For Dr. Liddle, it is axiomatic that matter must be composed of “stuff,” although she adds that “the configuration and energy of that ‘stuff’ is also part of what I mean by ‘material.’” She also maintains that “an entity Read More ›

Here is a piece over at Phys.Org dealing with “long, intergenic non-coding” RNA. “When we removed the specific lincRNA, we looked at the mouse brain and the progenitors were reduced. As a consequence probably, the population [of neurons] that sits on top of the cerebral cortex are reduced … It’s likely that in the future we’ll see a number of studies showing that other lincRNAs are involved in specific behaviors,” Arlotta said. “The brain likes this junk RNA.” Rinn and his colleagues have generated 18 strains of mutant mice, removing from each a different piece of “junk” genome, or so-called long intergenic noncoding RNAs (lincRNAs). If the lincRNA truly had been “junk,” nothing should have happened. What the researchers found Read More ›