ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 685

This Week in Science: September 20th, 2015

Stories compiled by Mario Gruber

Scientists Uncover The Earliest Known Animal To Have Walked Upright On All Fours

Plants and Animals





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What Bunostegos might have looked like when alive 260-million-years ago. Morgan Turner/Brown University

With a weird knobbly face and looking like a cross between a lizard and a hippo, this pre-reptile is now thought to be the earliest known animal to have walked upright on all fours. Know as Bunostegos akokanensis, it lived about 260-million-years ago, plodding around what is now the African country of Niger. Belonging to a group of animals called pareiasaurs, some argue that they eventually gave rise to turtles, though this is debated.

Asthmatic Sea Otter Learns To Use An Inhaler

Plants and Animals





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Seattle Aquarium

A wheezy otter has made breezy work of learning how to use an inhaler. Aaaw.

Named Mishka, the 1-year-old Seattle Aquarium resident is reportedly the first sea otter to be diagnosed with the respiratory disease asthma. So needless to say, it’s an understudied area, and there doesn’t seem to be a great amount of literature on the condition in non-human, non-domesticated animals (cats, dogs and horses can all get asthma).  

Teenage Clockmaker Upholds Long Scientific Tradition

“It was destined to be the mother of machines.” The “it” Daniel Boorstin talks about in his 1983 book The Discoverers is the clock. Boorstin, who served as the director of the National Museum of History and Technology of the Smithsonian Institution went on to write, “The clock broke down the walls between kinds of knowledge, ingenuity, and skill, and clockmakers were the first consciously to apply the theories of mechanics and physics to the making of machines…clockmakers became the pioneer scientific-instrument makers.”

It’s therefore particularly ironic that 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed got yanked out of his Texas 9th grade classroom September 14th, handcuffed, interrogated, and eventually suspended, for having brought to school a clock he’d built himself. Because the adults present thought it could be a bomb. Hey, it was ticking, wasn’t it, this recapitulation of the work that helped make the modern, science-driven world?

Of course, things have worked out okay. Mohamed is going to transfer to a less easily startled school, the President invited him to the White House and he’s been asked to attend the Google Science Fair taking place during the next few days in California. Scientific American is one of the sponsors.

Back to Boorstin. He concludes his 1973 book The Americans: the Democratic Experience, with these lines: “The atomic bomb along with the space adventure and a thousand lesser daily demonstrations—the automobile and the airplane, radio and television, computer technology and automation, and the myriad products of Research and Development—were showing that the ‘advance’ of science and technology…would control the daily lives of Americans.” Unless, that is, they give way to fear. Tick tock.

—Steve Mirsky

(The above text is a transcript of this podcast)

Earth’s Gravity Gives The Moon A Massage

Space





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Cooling of the Moon's interior is producing these long low cliffs, but the Earth's tidal influence is shaping the direction in which they run. Credit: NASA/LRO/Arizona State University/Smithsonian Institution

More than 40 years since humans last walked on the Moon we are still learning about our nearest neighbor. The latest discovery is that the Earth's gravity is shaping the moonquakes that form cliffs on the lunar surface, causing a pattern in their orientation.

Why Haven’t We Met Any Aliens Yet?

Space





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Seriously, where is everyone? Albert Ziganshin/Shutterstock.

It is estimated there are 100 billion planets in the Milky Way, itself one of hundreds of billions of galaxies. On one planet, Earth, we know life arose, but there should be millions of Earth-like habitable planets in our galaxy alone with the capability to support life. This begs the question: Where is everyone else?

The Weird And Wonderful Ways That Different Animals Find A Mating Partner

Plants and Animals





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Oregon State University

This is the first in a three-part guest series by Dr Carin Bondar, author of The Nature of Sex.

Why Homeopathy Must Not Gain A Foothold In The UK

Health and Medicine





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‘Traditional’ homeopathic medicine bottles. Flickr/Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, CC BY-ND

Despite the NHS stating that “homeopathy performs no better than placebos”, support for the practice still prevails. The reason why may be that two small, but important, subgroups in the UK support it: the Royal family and some members of the political establishment.

From Rockets To Space Toilets: Unique Exhibition Celebrates Soviet Cosmonauts

Space





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A selection of spacesuits and the TM Soyuz descent module are among the objects at the Cosmonauts exhibition. The Science Museum

“Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever,” said the Russian aviation pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1911. The quote, displayed at a new exhibition celebrating Soviet space success, still seems relevant today. After a few missions to planets near and far, there is now talk about manned missions to Mars – and perhaps even colonisation.

Will Samsung Reveal The First Foldable Smartphone In 2016?

Technology





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The image is a conceptual representation of what the bendable smartphone, dubbed Foldable Valley, may look like. YouTube screenshot from "Ad campaign for Samsung's Flexible OLED Display Phone and Tab" posted by the Daily Mail.

A so called tipster with "in-depth knowledge regarding Samsung’s plans and the industry, in general" has caused a stir by claiming that the company is going to release a foldable smartphone in January 2016.