ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 185

How Hinduism Became a Political Weapon in India

By Jonah Blank VARANASI, India—The seven pandits draped in cloth of gold are clearly competing against the five in saffron. In front of thousands of assembled pilgrims, each bevy of priests furiously recites Sanskrit chants, deftly swinging pyramids of flaming oil lamps, banging on bells and blowing on conch shells, wafting thick clouds of incense …

Billion-year-old fossils set back evolution of earliest fungi

By Heidi Ledford Minute fossils pulled from remote Arctic Canada could push back the first known appearance of fungi to about one billion years ago — more than 500 million years earlier than scientists had expected. These ur-fungi, described on 22 May in Nature1, are microscopic and surprisingly intricate, with filament-like structures. Chemical analyses suggest that …

Trump Admin Rule Would Let Taxpayer-Funded Homeless Shelters Reject Trans People

By Sarahbeth Caplin Keeping with the pattern of confusing “religious freedom” with the ability to discriminate against groups conservative Christians love to hate, the Trump administration wants to allow federally funded homeless shelters to deny services to transgender people. That means one of the most vulnerable populations couldn’t necessarily rely on taxpayer-funded shelters to get help. The Department of …

They Hoped the Catholic Church Would Reveal Their Abusers. They Are Still Waiting.

By Rick Rojas ROCKVILLE CENTRE, N.Y. — She has watched as diocese after diocese has identified Catholic priests accused of sexually abusing children. She saw the victims who, after confronting decades of church silence, could edge toward a sense of closure as bishops apologized and publicly named clergy members who abused them. Yet for Janet Cleary Klinger, …

Scientists Created Bacteria With a Synthetic Genome. Is This Artificial Life?

By Carl Zimmer Scientists have created a living organism whose DNA is entirely human-made — perhaps a new form of life, experts said, and a milestone in the field of synthetic biology. Researchers at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Britain reported on Wednesday that they had rewritten the DNA of the bacteria …

Why the Guardian is changing the language it uses about the environment

By Damian Carrington The Guardian has updated its style guide to introduce terms that more accurately describe the environmental crises facing the world. Instead of “climate change” the preferred terms are “climate emergency, crisis or breakdown” and “global heating” is favoured over “global warming”, although the original terms are not banned. “We want to ensure that we …

This may be the worst thing to come from Trump’s presidency

By David Gergen and James Piltch In the midst of World War II, Franklin Roosevelt had the foresight to see that advancements in American science were critical to Allied victories in World War II. Searching for day-to-day guidance, he named Vannevar Bush, an engineer with a joint Ph.D from MIT and Harvard, as the director …

Exclusive: Watchdog group sues Walmart for selling “nonsense” homeopathic remedies

By Rina Raphael Walmart is being sued for selling questionable alternative remedies. The Center for Inquiry (CFI), a nonprofit dedicated to ensuring that “pseudoscience is prevented from harming society,” filed a complaint Monday on behalf of residents in Washington, D.C., against the giant retailer. The organization claims the superstore deliberately “creates a false and misleading …

Why So Many Sharks Have Bird Feathers in Their Bellies

By Ed Young Marcus Drymon wasn’t expecting a baby shark to barf up a ball of feathers onto his boat. The shark’s presence wasn’t the weird bit: Drymon and his team of fisheries ecologists regularly assess fish populations along the coasts of Mississippi and Alabama, and every year, they’ll catch, weigh, tag, and release thousands of …

Scientists Think They Know How Pluto’s Hidden Ocean Stays Liquid

By Ryan F. Mandelbaum Recent results suggest that Pluto has a liquid water ocean buried beneath its icy shell. But how could such a thing be possible at the frigid outer edges of the solar system? Scientists from Japan and the United States might have an answer. In a paper published Monday in Nature Geoscience, these researchers …