Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 76
May 5, 2022
Well, this is good news for criminal defense lawyers: Psychopathy is an “evolutionary adaptation”
It might seem obvious that psychopathy is harmful. But there is some reason to believe psychopathy, at least in moderation, might be a reasonable evolutionary adaptation. To evaluate whether something is a mental disorder, it helps to understand what causes disorders in the first place. A recent study explored whether psychopathy is associated with physical telltale signs such as handedness. The results were not conclusive, but they do add to a growing body of research supporting the possibility that psychopathy is not a mental disorder.
Elizabeth Gilbert, “How psychopathy might be an evolutionary adaptation” at BigThink (May 3, 2022)
With respect, Your Honour, Counsel for the Prosecution rests.
The paper is open access.
Copyright © 2022 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.Plugin by Taragana
May 4, 2022
Unexpectedly? Multiple brain regions control speech
“More evolved” brains, not “better muscles”:
Neurobiologists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine give new meaning to the term “motor mouth” in a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. By carefully mapping neural networks in marmoset and macaque monkeys, they determined that multiple areas in the brain’s frontal lobe control the muscles of vocalization and could provide a foundation for complex speech…
“This kind of parallel processing in our neural wiring might explain why humans are capable of highly sophisticated language that allows us to share information, express and perceive emotion, and tell memorable stories,” said Strick, who also is scientific director of Pitt’s Brain Institute. “Our remarkable speech skills are due to more evolved brains, not better muscles.” University of Pittsburgh, “Neuroscientists find multiple brain regions control speech, challenging common assumption” at Medical Xpress (May 4, 2022)
Sure. It has nothing to do with ideas.
The paper is open access.
You may also wish to read: Another layer of complexity in the human brain. Researchers: Investigators led by a team at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) that previously discovered tiny channels in the skull have now found that cerebrospinal fluid (also known as “brain water”) can exit the brain into the skull’s bone marrow through these channels.
Copyright © 2022 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.Plugin by Taragana
If traits can jump between the branches of the tree of life, classical Darwinism is dead
And yet that’s what they are saying:
We all must play the game of life with the cards we’re dealt, so the common aphorism goes. In biology, this means organisms must compete through natural selection with the genes and anatomy they were born with. But the saying is a lie. Okay, it’s not exactly a lie, but modern research suggests that the game of life is far more complicated than we had anticipated. There are opportunities to swap cards and even steal other players’ hands. …
Examples of acquired metabolisms abound in nature. Some are familiar, like the microbes in a cow’s gut that enable it to digest cellulose. Others are more common but less well-known. For instance, consider the symbiotic fungi that help plants source minerals from the soil. And then there are truly unusual acquired metabolisms, like sea slugs that steal chloroplasts from their food so they can photosynthesize.
University of California – Santa Barbara, “What happens when traits jump between branches of the tree of life” at ScienceDaily (May 3, 2022)
It’s called horizontal gene transfer.
The paper requires a fee or subscription.
Copyright © 2022 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.Plugin by Taragana
When universities no longer think intellectual freedom is important
It must thrive somewhere else:
The conference featured one compelling presentation after another, all of which are now posted online. It was a rich opportunity for students to hear viewpoints outside of the academic mainstream so dominated by the groupthink Left. Scott Atlas, Jeffrey Tucker, Wilfred Reilly, and I all gave presentations on the ill-advised response to Covid, during which scientific knowledge and centuries of Western norms were often abandoned in favor of costly and coercive lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine requirements. Allison Stanger talked about Big Tech and the threat it poses to our republic. David Azerrad discussed the tension between racial preferences and colorblind justice. Keith Whitaker gave an interesting and nuanced account of the history of financial panics and what they tell us about human nature. Johnny Burtka offered students helpful advice gleaned from great books. And Jacob Howland capped things off by talking about how our “crisis of logos”—our decreasing willingness, or ability, to engage in meaningful discussions about the great questions of our day, or any day—requires our full attention and commitment to reverse.
As if on cue, St. Vincent’s administration promptly confirmed this crisis of logos. After a few of the many students who had attended Azerrad’s talk complained about it, President Taylor and his administration initially censored the publication not only of the video of Azerrad’s presentation but also of the videos of the other eight conference presentations as well, as Howland recounted for City Journal. After being pressured by national organizations that fight for freedom of speech, the administration subsequently relented on posting the videos. But then it promptly took aim at the Center that Watson has built, giving every indication that the administration is determined to make this the final such free-flowing Culture and Policy Conference that St. Vincent College will ever allow.
Jeffrey H. Anderson, “A Tyranny of the Minority” at City Journal (May 2, 2022)
It always thrives somewhere. Universities are securing their own demise as important cultural institutions.
You may also wish to read: We are not your lab rats any more.
Copyright © 2022 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.Plugin by Taragana
Another layer of complexity in the human brain
Investigators led by a team at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) that previously discovered tiny channels in the skull have now found that cerebrospinal fluid (also known as “brain water”) can exit the brain into the skull’s bone marrow through these channels. The discovery, which is published in Nature Neuroscience, is important because immune cells produced in the spongy tissue of the skull’s bone marrow can screen the cerebrospinal fluid for signs of infection and other threats to the brain…
Nahrendorf and his colleagues, including lead author and MGH research fellow Fadi E. Pulous, PhD, also found that bacteria that cause meningitis (inflammation in the meninges) travel through the channels and enter the skull’s bone marrow. This causes cells in the bone marrow to produce more immune cells to combat the invasion. A better understanding of these processes may lead to new strategies to treat meningitis.
Massachusetts General Hospital, “New insights on the importance of skull channels for brain health” at ScienceDaily (May 2, 2022)
The paper requires a fee or subscription.
Copyright © 2022 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.Plugin by Taragana
May 3, 2022
Could cosmic expansion be coming to an end?
So a recent paper argues:
After nearly 13.8 billion years of nonstop expansion, the universe could soon grind to a standstill, then slowly start to contract, new research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests.
In the new paper, three scientists attempt to model the nature of dark energy — a mysterious force that seems to be causing the universe to expand ever faster — based on past observations of cosmic expansion. In the team’s model, dark energy is not a constant force of nature, but an entity called quintessence, which can decay over time.
Brandon Specktor, “The universe could stop expanding ‘remarkably soon’, study suggests” at LiveScience (May 2, 2022)
What would a contracting universe change?
The paper is open access.
Copyright © 2022 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.Plugin by Taragana
Wealth inequality… in animals?
Wealth inequality is a research topic typically reserved for humans. Now, research from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln suggests that studying wealth inequality in animals can help shed light on social evolution. Adapting approaches from the study of wealth inequality in humans, the researchers show how wealth—in the form of material goods, individual attributes, or social connections—occurs broadly across animal species and can be distributed equally or unequally. This framework offers the opportunity to unite different corners of evolutionary biology under the umbrella of wealth inequality, exploring the idea that the unequal distribution of value, whatever form that value may take, has important consequences for animal societies.
Max Planck Society, “Studying wealth inequality in animals can reveal clues about how their societies evolved” at Phys.org (May 3, 2022)
Dare we even ask?
Note: At present, we can’t find a link to the page and it may be a hoax. But these days, who knows? It’s not April 1 though…
Copyright © 2022 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.Plugin by Taragana
BREAKING: Leaked US Supreme Court Draft that would overturn the rulings that have led to 63+ million abortion deaths in the US since 1973
This, seems worth pondering on the state of the US’s ongoing 4th generation civil war as a civilisation level issue:
A draft Supreme Court opinion overruling Roe v. Wade has been leaked to the press in one of the greatest scandals to ever hit the nation’s highest court and a possible attempt to intimidate one or more justices to reverse their vote or to ignite a liberal brushfire to pack the Supreme Court before Democrats lose Congress in November.
“It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives,” the possible draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito reads, making the case that where the Constitution is silent, the American people govern themselves through elections and elected leaders, not federal judges. It quotes the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who said, “The permissibility of abortion, and the limitations upon it, are to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting.” It then adds, “That is what the Constitution and the rule of law demand.”
The document published by Politico that claims to be a draft opinion appears to be authentic, but it is not a binding decision of the court unless at least five justices sign it, and this looks like a transparent and unprecedented betrayal by one of the 45 or so people with access to a draft Supreme Court opinion to prevent this decision from becoming law by scaring off moderate justices and attempting to whip the political left into a frenzy.
Of course, the global pattern, with the US as a trend setter, has seen 800+ million [statistically 1.4+ billion] deliberately inflicted deaths on our living posterity in the womb. An associated picture is that in certain asian countries, devaluation of girls has led to widespread sex selection abortions and a preponderance of boys and now young men in population statistics.
To all of this, I make two self-evident assertions. 1: A human child is precisely that, human. 2: The first right is life, without which there are no rights.
Let’s add, 3: there can be no right to take innocent life at will.
Our civilisation is in the dock. END
U/D, Blaze TV discussion:
Copyright © 2022 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.Plugin by Taragana
May 2, 2022
Following the science seen as “impossible and stupid”
The COVID crazy should be seen as a wakeup call:
During the pandemic, Germany closed schools on a wider scale and for a longer duration than most other places in the civilised world. I was recently reminded of how our government came to embrace these extreme policies. The story is very revealing:
It began with the strange decision of state media to elevate Christian Drosten at Berlin Charité to national prominence, by granting him the Coronavirus Update podcast on 26 February 2020. The WHO had just endorsed lockdowns two days before, and various countries were acquiring new Corona tsars – random virus wizards who would become the face of containment policy to panicking domestic audiences. Every day, Drosten’s banal podcast interviews were reported breathlessly across the German media, as if they meant anything.
Eugyippus, “Following the Science is Impossible and Stupid” at Eugyippus: A plague chronicle (April 30, 2022)
You may also wish to read: We are not your lab rats any more.
Copyright © 2022 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.Plugin by Taragana
Did the dinosaurs’ departure change plants?
Here is an interesting claim: “The 25 million years of large herbivore absence slowed down the evolution of new plant species.”
Defensive features such as spines regressed and fruit sizes increased. The research has demonstrated this using palm trees as a model system…
With their work, the researchers shed new light on evolution and adaptation during one of the most enigmatic and unique periods in the history of plant evolution, during and after megaherbivore extinctions. Understanding how megaherbivore extinctions affected plant evolution in the past can also help predict future ecological developments. For example, the authors have noted the loss of traits during the megaherbivore gap. This loss can affect important ecosystem functions and processes, such as seed dispersal or herbivory. The ongoing extinction of large animals due to human hunting and climate change may thus also affect trait variation in plant communities and ecosystems today and in the foreseeable future.
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, “Dinosaur extinction changed plant evolution” at ScienceDaily (May 2, 2022)
It’s a reasonable idea compared to much that we hear.
The paper is open access.
Copyright © 2022 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.Plugin by Taragana
Michael J. Behe's Blog
- Michael J. Behe's profile
- 219 followers
