Understanding Science, Embracing Religion

A study by Timothy L. O'Brien at the University of Evansville finds that deeply religious people understand and even accept the practical applications of science and technology but rejects the scientific explanations of creation and evolution.

Professor O'Brien find that people who view both science and religion in a positive light are well educated and financially secure.

Although they accept scientific theories and explanations that covers geology, radioactivity, planetary motion, genetics, and probability, they reject the concept of evolution and the how the universe was formed; the Big Bang.

They even find that almost half of these people, known as post-seculars, believe that the Bible is the literal word of God. Post-seculars also report the greatest strength of religious affiliation as compared to traditionals and moderns.

The study does reveal that people's belief in science and religion is not a product of education or understanding since post-seculars are scientifically literate yet does not accept the concept of evolution as the origin of life or that the big bang created the universe.

The study is published in the American Sociological Review.

Studying the Actual Size of Undersea Giants

A group of scientists have decided to study and analyze the body size of 25 marine species. These species include the Great White Shark, the Giant Octopus, and walrus as well as lesser known creatures such as the Giant Tubes Worm and the Colossal Squid.

Their aim is to arrive at a more realistic data when it comes to establishing sizes of undersea giants and overcoming the human bias regarding this.

The scientists also wants to establish the relationship between size and varied factors such as lifespan, environment, and nourishment. Unlike mammals that have the same diet throughout their lifespan, marine species eat different foods as they grow. Another factor is metabolism which is the amount of energy required by the species on a daily basis.

Environmental factors were also considered that could give rise to bigger species, as well as situations in which a larger size would be beneficial. An example would be the Giant Clam. The additional nourishment from symbiotic photosynthetic bacteria allows it to reach sizes of up to 1.37 meters (4.5 feet). Another example would be Whale Sharks and Blue Whales which has the ability to support a migration and subsequent fasting to reach more plankton-rich waters when its habitat is low on food.

They gathered data by contacting fisheries, marine centers, and other scientists. "It's one part a databasing effort and one part historical research: double-checking museum specimens; talking with other scientists and collectors; and even checking eBay for specimens for sale," says Craig McClain, the assistant director of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, N.C. and the primary author of the paper.

Walking Fish Polypterus Senegalus Offers Glimpse At Evolution

Scientists are studying Polypterus Senegalus, a fish that can move in land, to understand how ancient organisms managed to jump from swimming in the waters to walking into land.

Polypterus Senegalus is a fish from Africa that is able to breathe air, move in land (with their fins) and resembles prehistoric fishes that managed to evolve into tetrapods - amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. The scientists studied the fish to learn how these fish move to learn the evolutionary processes that occurred 400 million years ago.

By raising the fish on land for nearly a year, they noted significant anatomical and behavioural changes. The fish walked more effectively and its biological behavior adapted to the process. The researchers hypothesized that the behavioural changes also reflect what may have occurred when fossil fish first walked with their fins on land.

Dinosaurs Survived By Shrinking

A study by scientists from Oxford University and the Royal Ontario Museum suggest that dinosaurs survived by shrinking their bodies eventually evolving into birds.

The study suggests that the dinosaurs went through a huge range of shapes and sizes over these years. And those species that decreased their body mass, survived and became birds. This evolution helped the dinosaurs maintain their presence, albeit in another much smaller form, and allowed them to continue exploiting new ecological niches throughout their evolution.

It has been only more than two decades that the idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs have entered mainstream acceptance. This can be largely attributed to the movie "Jurassic Park" which broached the theory to the public and garnered massive acceptance. Although some of the facts in the movie turned out to be wrong, the dinosaur to bird evolution theory still remains.

There have also been fossils discovered that suggests that some dinosaurs have feathers just like their current cousins. And there are also some, like the Microraptor had wings.

375 Million Year Old Fossil Show Evolution Of Hind Legs Started As Enhanced Fish Fins

The discovery of new fossil samples of a 375 million year old fish show that the development of hind legs happened before vertebrates transitioned to land and not after. The fossils show that legs started off as enhanced fish fins.

The fossils were of the prehistoric fish, Tiktaalik roseae, which is known as a transitional species between fish and land animals. The discovery of a well-preserved pelvis and a partial pelvic fin of the fish suggest that the development of hind legs started in fishes and not in land dwelling animals.

The pelvis had features comaprable to early tetrapods. It had a ball and socket hip joint and a highly mobile femur. Crests on the hip for muscle attachment indicated strength and advanced fin function. And although no femur bone was found, pelvic fin material, including long fin rays, indicated the hind fin was at least as long and as complex as its forefin.

The Tiktaalik roseae has a broad flat head and sharp teeth. Looking like a cross between a fish and a crocodile, the lobe finned fish can grow up to nine feet in length. Aside from having gills, scales, and fins, the prehistoric fish also had features found in land animals such as a mobile neck, robust ribcage and primitive lungs.

Tiktaalik roseae also had shoulders, elbows and partial wrists in its large forefins to provide support when it hunted in shallow freshwater environments. The researchers believe that aside from using the fins to swim like a paddle, the fish can also use it to walk with them as well.

Fossilized Pollen Suggests Flowering Plants Evolved 250 Million Years Ago

Fossilized pollen from the Triassic Period 250 million years ago
Credit: University of Zürich

Using Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy, scientists have imaged fossilized pollen grains from Northern Switzerland that dates the evolution of flowering plants to the early Triassic Period around 252 to 247 million years ago. The three dimensional high resolution images of six different types of pollen also suggest that the plants were pollinated by insects.

The Triassic period extends to about 250 to 200 million years ago and is the first period of the Mesozoic Era. This period lies between the Permian and Jurassic periods.

During the Triassic period, the Earth's climate was generally hot and dry and that there are no evidence of glaciers at or near the north and south pole. During this time, the polar regions were moist and temperate. It would have a climate that is suitable for forests and vertebrarates.

The Earth's continents would not have existed then. The land mass of the planet then was one gigantic continent called Pangea. The climate on Pangea was seasonal having hot summers and cold winters.

Plant life during this time was believed to include lycophytes, cycads, ginkgophyta (represented in modern times by Ginkgo biloba) and glossopterids. Seed plants such as spermatophytes are abundant in the north while Glossopteris (a seed fern) was the dominant tree in the southern hemisphere.

The discovery of the pollen would place the appearance of flowering plants during this period, 100 million years earlier than previously believed.

Darwin's Evolution Through Natural Selection Consistent With Cambrian Explosion

This image shows marine life during the Cambrian explosion (~520 million years ago). A giant Anomalocaris investigates a trilobite, while Opabinia looks on from the right and the "walking cactus" Diania crawls underneath. All of these creatures are related to living arthropods.
Credit: Katrina Kenny & Nobumichi Tamura

Scientists report that Charles Darwin's evolution through natural selection theory is consistent with the sudden diversity of life during the Cambrian explosion. Their study shows that a sustained accelerated rate of evolution over millions of years would have resulted in an increased rate of over five times; 100 million years of evolutionary change would have only took about 20 million years.

580 million years ago, living organisms were mostly simple cells that occasionally organized into colonies. The following 70 to 80 million years suddenly showed a diverse amount of life that included animals, phytoplankton, and calcimicrobes.

This period of the Earth's history is called the Cambrian explosion. During this period, the evolutionary rate of living organisms accelerated and the diversity of living organisms began to resemble that of organisms today.

Fossil records have shown the results and aftermath of the Cambrian explosion but the reason for it to happen and why it has not repeated again is still a mystery.

Presence of Atmosphere and Water on Saturn Moon Titan Provides Deeper Understanding on Evolution of Life on Earth

At a symposium presented by the American Chemical Society, "Chemical Frontiers in Solar System Exploration", scientists have gathered to discuss the possibility and the circumstances that could lead to the evolution of life in one of the moons of Saturn, Titan.

Titan is one of the 62 satellites orbiting the planet Saturn. Located around one billion miles away from Earth, it is the only satellite in the solar system that is observed to have an atmosphere. The atmosphere consists of nitrogen and methane and also includes organic compounds such as ethane, acetylene, hydrogen cyanide, and cyanoacetylene.

The circumstances around Titan and its atmosphere closely resembles that of the Earth more than 3.5 billion years ago.

Data about Titan was gathered using the Huygens probe that landed on its surface on January 2005. For 90 minutes after touchdown, the probe transmitted its findings as well as images back to the Earth. The Huygens probe is the farthest landing for any craft launched from the Earth.

Based on the findings, Titan is the only object in the solar system apart from the Earth that contains large amounts of organic substances on the surface.

Study Shows Proof That Moon Was Formed From Early Earth Collision With Planetary Body

Scientists believe that the moon was formed when a Mars sized planet called Theia (in Greek mythology the mother of the moon Selene) collided with the Earth 4.5 billion years ago. The resulting debris from the impact coalesced and formed the moon. This hypothesis is called the Great Impact Theory.

Prior to the Great Impact Theory, the predominant explanation theorized by George Darwin in 1898 for the formation of the moon was that the moon spun off from the Earth because of centrifugal forces (known as the Fission Theory). In 1946, this was challenged by Canadian geologist Reginald Daly of Harvard. He proposed that it wasn't centrifugal force but an impact that formed the moon.

Intelligence of Certain Species Linked To Evolution of Body Size Not Brain Size

Conventional scientific belief is that the evolution of intelligence is directly linked to the size of the brain relative to the size of the body of an organism. Simplified, it means that the brain evolves and gets bigger giving the species more intelligence.

Scientists from the University College London, the University of Konstanz, and the Max Planck Institute of Ornithology has found that this belief may not hold true at all. They published their study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

They find that sometimes it is not the brain that gets bigger but it is the body that gets smaller. They note that a species of bats decreased their body mass over time which allowed their brain to perform more duties such as increased dexterity, flight maneuverability, and heightened foraging skills.

Japan Space Agency JAXA To Launch Spacecraft Hayabusa 2 To Rendezvous With Asteroid

Artist rendition of Hayabusa 2 departing from Earth
Credit: Hayabusa 2 project

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is Japan's national aerospace agency. It was formed on October 01, 2003 and administered by the country's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC).

The responsibility of the agency is the research, development, and launch of satellites into orbit. Not confined to those projects, they are also actively involved in other missions such as asteroid exploration and possible manned exploration of the Moon.

JAXA's Hayabusa mission (launched 2003, returned 2010) was the first spacecraft ever to collect samples from an asteroid and return to Earth successfully. The target of the asteroid probe was Itokawa, an asteroid with a diameter of 500 meters. Using Earth's gravitational field and ion engines, Hayabusa reached the asteroid and provided scientists a first close look of a Near Earth Object(NEO).

Japanese spacecraft to search for clues of Earth's first life

Physics World's Dennis Normile reports that Japanese space agency, JAXA, plans to land a spacecraft on an asteroid in 2018. Its goal is to look for clues on how life began on Earth.

The spacecraft, named Hayabusa 2, is the second mission of JAXA at investigating and collecting data from an asteroid. The first mission, Hayabusa, returned to Earth in June 2010. Hayabusa 2 will be launched in 2014 with a view to settling on the targeted asteroid, named 1999 JU3, in mid-2018 before arriving back on Earth in 2020.

Hayabusa 2 will fire fingertip-sized bullets into the surface of the asteroid and the fragments from the impact will be collected. It will also detonate an impactor module, which will fire a 2 kg projectile into the asteroid to create a 2 m crater.

Astronomers Find Building Blocks of Life in Young Binary Star IRAS 16293-2422

This image shows an artist’s impression of glycolaldehyde molecules, showing glycolaldehyde’s molecular structure (C₂H₄O₂). Carbon atoms are shown as grey, oxygen atoms as red, and hydrogen atoms as white.
Credit:ESO/L. Calçada

Glycolaldehyde is a simplest form of sugar that can be found. The molecules of glycolaldehyde are smaller than the sugar used in food and drink (sucrose). The molecular formula for this compound is C₂H₄O₂.

Glycolaldehyde forms from many precursors, including the amino acid glycine. Glycine is a precursor to proteins which are essential to the formation of life. The NASA spacecraft Stardust confirmed the presence of glycine in comet Wild 2 which strengthened the theory that compounds required for life to flourish are present throughout the universe.

Glycolaldehyde has been detected in outer space twice; in 2000 in a gas cloud and within a star forming region in 2008.

Building Blocks of Life Found Around Young Star

A team of astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has spotted sugar molecules in the gas surrounding a young Sun-like star. This is the first time sugar been found in space around such a star, and the discovery shows that the building blocks of life are in the right place, at the right time, to be included in planets forming around the star.

The astronomers found molecules of glycolaldehyde — a simple form of sugar ^[1] — in the gas surrounding a young binary star, with similar mass to the Sun, called IRAS 16293-2422. Glycolaldehyde has been seen in interstellar space before ^[2], but this is the first time it has been found so near to a Sun-like star, at distances comparable to the distance of Uranus from the Sun in the Solar System. This discovery shows that some of the chemical compounds needed for life existed in this system at the time of planet formation ^[3].

A team of astronomers has found molecules of glycolaldehyde -- a simple form of sugar -- in the gas surrounding a young binary star, with similar mass to the Sun, called IRAS 16293-2422. This is the first time sugar been found in space around such a star, and the discovery shows that the building blocks of life are in the right place, at the right time, to be included in planets forming around the star. The astronomers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to detect the molecules.

This image shows the Rho Ophiuchi star-forming region in infrared light, as seen by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Explorer (WISE). IRAS 16293-2422 is the red object in the centre of the small square. The inset image is an artist’s impression of glycolaldehyde molecules, showing glycolaldehyde’s molecular structure (C₂H₄O₂). Carbon atoms are shown as grey, oxygen atoms as red, and hydrogen atoms as white.

In the WISE infrared image of Rho Ophiuchi, blue and cyan represent light emitted at wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6 micrometres, which is predominantly from stars. Green and red represent light from 12 and 22 micrometres, respectively, which is mostly emitted by dust.
Credit: ESO/L. Calçada & NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team

“In the disc of gas and dust surrounding this newly formed star, we found glycolaldehyde, which is a simple form of sugar, not much different to the sugar we put in coffee,” explains Jes Jørgensen (Niels Bohr Institute, Denmark), the lead author of the paper. “This molecule is one of the ingredients in the formation of RNA, which — like DNA, to which it is related — is one of the building blocks of life.”

The high sensitivity of ALMA — even at the technically challenging shortest wavelengths at which it operates — was critical for these observations, which were made with a partial array of antennas during the observatory’s Science Verification phase ^[4].

“What it is really exciting about our findings is that the ALMA observations reveal that the sugar molecules are falling in towards one of the stars of the system,” says team member Cécile Favre (Aarhus University, Denmark). “The sugar molecules are not only in the right place to find their way onto a planet, but they are also going in the right direction.”

The gas and dust clouds that collapse to form new stars are extremely cold ^[5] and many gases solidify as ice on the particles of dust where they then bond together and form more complex molecules. But once a star has been formed in the middle of a rotating cloud of gas and dust, it heats the inner parts of the cloud to around room temperature, evaporating the chemically complex molecules, and forming gases that emit their characteristic radiation as radio waves that can be mapped using powerful radio telescopes such as ALMA.

Changes To Three Sections of DNA, SOX4, SOX11, and SOX5, Led To Evolution of the Human Brain

When living cells divide, it is critical that the replicated cell be an exact copy of the original. This is what DNA does. Short for Deoxyribonucleic Acid, DNA is found in the nucleus of the cell (nuclear DNA), but a small amount of DNA can also be found in the mitochondria (mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA).

DNA stores information made up of four chemical bases: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (T). The sequence of the bases determines how a particular cell or organism is maintained. Human DNA consists of about 3 billion bases and 99% of these are common with all people.

When a piece of DNA (gene) is activated , the information based on the sequence in the gene is used by cells to manufacture proteins. Each human gene is a template for one or more proteins. This process is called DNA transcription.

Handful of genetic changes led to huge changes to human brain

Changes to just three genetic letters among billions led to evolution and development of the mammalian motor sensory network, and laid the groundwork for the defining characteristics of the human brain, Yale University researchers report.

This networks provides the direct synaptic connections between the multi-layered neocortex in the human brain responsible for emotions, perception, and cognition and the neural centers of the brain that make fine motor skills possible.

A description of how a few simple changes during the early development of mammals led to the creation of complex structures such as the human brain was published May 31 in the journal Nature.

Heliconius Butterflies Survive By Acquiring and Sharing Genetic Data From Other Species

Common Postman (Heliconius melpomene)

A species is a group of organisms that can interbreed in nature to produce a fertile offspring. It is a unit of biodiversity or the degree of variation of organic life forms within a given species, ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet.

Within a group of species, new biological species may arise. This is called speciation. It is the splitting from a main branch of species to form an altogether new line.

One such such species being studied and used as models for speciation are the Heliconius butterflies. Hybrid speciation has been hypothesized to occur in this genus and may contribute to the diverse mimicry found in Heliconius butterflies. The species Heliconius Heurippa is said to be a hybridized version of two Heliconius species; Heliconius Cydno and Heliconius Melpomene. Hybrid speciation is a form of speciation wherein hybridization between two different closely related species such as the two heliconius butterfiles leads to a novel species; the heliconius heurippa.

This form of speciation is popular among plants but is considered extremely rare outside of the plant world.

Colorful butterflies increase their odds of survival by sharing traits

Bright black-and-red butterflies that flit across the sunlit edges of Amazonian rain forests are natural hedonists, and it does them good, according to genetic data published today in the journal Nature.

An international consortium of researchers at UC Irvine and elsewhere discovered that different species of the Heliconius butterfly are crossbreeding to more quickly acquire superior wing colors. They also have a surprisingly large number of genes devoted to smell and taste.

The use of color to attract mates and fend off predators is widespread in daytime-loving butterflies, while night-flying moths are famous for having large antennae to sniff out potential mates' pheromones. Thus, researchers predicted that because they're such visual creatures, the butterflies would not be able to smell or taste very well.

Older Than Estimated - Genome Show Polar Bear Existed 600,000 Years Ago.

The polar bear is the world's largest land carnivore. It is also the largest bear. An adult male weighs around 350–680 kiloggrams (770–1,500 lb),while an adult female is about half that size.

The polar bear is native to the Arctic Circle.

Compared to its close cousin, the brown bear, the polar bear has many body characteristics adapted for cold temperatures, for moving across snow, ice, and open water, and for hunting the seals which make up most of its diet.

Polar bears are born on land but spend most of their time in the waters hunting seal. Their scientific name (Ursus maritimus) means "maritime bear", and derives from this fact. Polar bears can hunt their preferred food of seals from the edge of sea ice, often living off fat reserves when no sea ice is present.

Polar bears older than previously thought

Polar bears diverged from their closest relatives about 600,000 years ago, according to a new genetic study published in the April 20 issue of the journal Science.

The findings suggest the cold adapted species is about five times older than previously thought, and may have had more time to adapt to arctic conditions than recently assumed. Previous studies of polar bears focused mainly on mitochondrial or mtDNA, which is passed on from mother to offspring and only comprises a very small portion of the entire genome.