Texas governor picks home-schooler to lead state Board of Education

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks at his inauguration ceremony, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2015, in Austin. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

by Valerie Strauss

When it comes to education, Texas is the state that keeps on giving — and not in a good way.

In 2010, there was tumult over proposed changes to social studies standards by religious conservatives on the State Board of Education, including one that referred to the United States’s slave trade as the “Atlantic triangular trade.” In 2014, the board majority approved new social studies textbooks, some of which were criticized as being inaccurate and biased. And now, Gov. Greg Abbott,  has sparked controversy — even among fellow Republicans — with his appointment of a new chair of the Texas Board of Education, which is charged with setting policy and standards for the state’s public schools.

Abbott tapped Donna Bahorich, a Republican from Houston who has been on the board for two years and who home-schooled her three sons before sending them to private schools. They never went to Texas public schools.

Bahorich, a former communications director for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick who will succeed outgoing chair Barbara Cargil, was quoted by Texas Public Radio as saying that “my research and my work and my desire and interests have all been in education.” But her appointment is drawing criticism not just from Abbott critics but also from some of Bahorich’s Republican colleagues. Texas Public Radio quoted Thomas Ratliff, a Republican member of the state Board of Education, as saying:

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International groups highlight global persecution of non-religious and religious minorities

by National Secular Society

Secular human rights organisations have called on the United Nations Human Rights Council to promote “genuine respect for freedom of religion and belief and freedom of expression”.

At the 29th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva, Roy Brown, representing the Centre for Inquiry, called for action to combat persecution, oppression and discrimination against non-believers.

Mr Brown drew specific attention to murder of bloggers in Bangladesh, the arrest and lashing of Raif Badawi and others in Saudi Arabia and the imprisonment of freethinkers in Egypt.

Mr Brown challenged Saudi Arabia, which has a seat on the Human Rights Council, over its “fear of atheism and freethought”.

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Next Fight for Gay Rights: Bias in Jobs and Housing

Lauren Horbal, left, and Tiffany Cannon at their home in Nashville. They applied to rent a house together with a friend, and they say the landlord refused to process their application when he realized they were a lesbian couple. Credit: Joe Buglewicz for The New York Times

by Erik Eckholm

Exhilarated by the Supreme Court’s endorsement of same-sex marriage, gay rights leaders have turned their sights to what they see as the next big battle: obtaining federal, state and local legal protections in employment, housing, commerce and other arenas, just like those barring discrimination based on race, religion, sex and national origin.

The proposals pit advocates against many of the same religious conservatives who opposed legalizing same-sex marriage, and who now see the protection of what they call religious liberty as their most urgent task. These opponents argue that antidiscrimination laws will inevitably be used to force religious people and institutions to violate their beliefs, whether by providing services for same-sex weddings or by employing gay men and lesbians in church-related jobs.

Nationally, antidiscrimination laws for gay people are a patchwork with major geographic inequities, said Brad Sears, executive director of the Williams Institute at the School of Law of the University of California, Los Angeles. “Those who don’t live on the two coasts or in the Northeast have been left behind in terms of legal protection,” he said.

At least 22 states bar discrimination based on sexual orientation, and most of them also offer protections to transgender people.

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Atheists Remind People of Death

New research shows that atheists trigger death-related thoughts

(Samantha Mitchell/Corbis)

by Erin Blakemore

Though the number of people who identify as atheists has risen in recent years, atheists still are viewed as untrustworthy or frightening by many Americans. Now, new research might offer an explanation, writes LiveScience’s Stephanie Pappas — atheists can trigger death-related thoughts, which can cause people to cling even more tightly to their religious values.

Pappas reports on a new study that shows atheists are seen as an “existential threat,” a threat that fuels anti-atheist sentiment. Researchers interviewed a group of 202 students from diverse religious backgrounds. One group was given questions about death like “Please describe the emotions that the thought of your own death arouses in you” and “Write down, as specifically as you can, what you think will happen physically when you die,” while the other was asked about extreme pain.

Then, the researchers asked all participants about their attitudes towards both Quakers and atheists. While people seemed to distrust atheists across the board, the group who had been reminded of their own mortality was much more negative.

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California Assembly approves one of the toughest mandatory vaccination laws in the nation

Rhett Krawitt, 7, who could not be vaccinated while he was being treated for leukemia, speaks to lawmakers in April in support of a bill requiring more children to be vaccinated. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

by Patrick McGreevy and Rong-Gong Lin II

California lawmakers on Thursday approved one of the toughest mandatory vaccination requirements in the nation, moving to end exemptions from state immunization laws based on religious or other personal beliefs.

The measure, among the most controversial taken up by the Legislature this year, would require more children who enter day care and school to be vaccinated against diseases including measles and whooping cough.

Those with medical conditions such as allergies and immune-system deficiencies, confirmed by a physician, would be excused from immunization. And parents could still decline to vaccinate children who attend private home-based schools or public independent studies off campus.

It is unclear whether Gov. Jerry Brown will sign the measure, which grew out of concern about low vaccination rates in some communities and an outbreak of measles at Disneyland that ultimately infected more than 150 people.

“The governor believes that vaccinations are profoundly important and a major public health benefit, and any bill that reaches his desk will be closely considered,” Evan Westrup, the governor’s spokesman, said Thursday.

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New optics technology opens door to high-resolution atomic-level hard X-ray studies

Photo: Brad Plummer

by Science Daily

An international collaboration involving two U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories has demonstrated a way to reach dramatically smaller focal sizes for hard X-rays, opening the door to research with hard X-rays at atomic-scale.

For the first time, the full performance at wavelength of a wedged MLL has been characterized and was found to agree well with calculations. An improved efficiency due to wedging was verified together with a measured focus of 26 nm. Verification of the expected improvement in efficiency arising from the wedging constitutes proof of principle that wedging is a viable technology, thereby constituting a significant advancement toward a new frontier in X-ray nanofocusing.

The ability to study materials, environmental, and biological systems at the atomic level with high efficiency is a current roadblock to solving many of today’s greatest scientific challenges in energy, health, security and the environment. Currently, optical efficiency drops dramatically for studies on areas smaller than 10 nm.

This new lens design will make small spot sizes of below 10 nm routine. Coupled with the unique properties of hard x-rays, namely penetration of complex environments and operation in electric and magnetic fields, such optics will enable highest-resolution imaging of systems under in-situ and in-operando conditions, such as operating batteries and catalysts. It could enable the manipulation of the inner workings of matter to understand, engineer, or eliminate defects, improve manufacturing and help develop therapies for disease.The need for this optics technology will grow with the construction of the next-generation of light sources, including the proposed upgraded Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory. New synchrotron light sources using multi-bend achromat technology and X-ray Free Electron Lasers create much brighter X-rays with higher fluxes. Wedged MLLs are expected to enable the maximization of this technology at the atomic scale.

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Trying to Impose Religion on Medicine

by Steven Novella

One of the major themes of science-based medicine (unsurprisingly) is that medicine should be based on science. We consider ourselves specialists in a larger movement defending science in general from mysticism, superstition, and spiritualism. We are not against anyone’s personal belief, and are officially agnostic toward any faith (as is science itself), but will vigorously defend science from any intrusion into its proper realm.

The so-called alternative medicine movement (CAM) is largely an attempt to insert religious beliefs into the practice and profession of medicine. CAM is also an attempt to create a double standard or even eliminate the standard of care so that any nonsense can flourish and con-artists and charlatans can practice their craft freely without being hounded by pesky regulations designed to protect the public. These are both insidious aspects of CAM that need to be exposed and vigorously opposed.

A recent article by Dr. Michel Accad demonstrates how brazenly some are trying to insert faith healing and spiritualism back into medicine. He does so by couching his arguments in philosophy and marketing terms, but in the end he is essentially saying that doctors should practice his faith. He doesn’t really make any arguments for this position, but rather simply gives a history of progress in Western thought as if that is sufficient.

Why medicine needs to be science-based

Before I deconstruct Accad’s article let me explore the arguments for SBM. As a profession, medicine enjoys a special privilege in our society. Practitioners are licensed, which is a contract giving them exclusive rights to practice their trade in exchange for requirements to ensure quality control and ethical behavior. The health professions also benefit from public funding to pay for research, education, institutions, and patient care.

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Nigeria court in Kano sentences nine people to death for blasphemy

by BBC

An Islamic court has sentenced nine people to death for insulting the Prophet Muhammad in the northern Nigerian city of Kano.

The accused, who were all Muslims, had pleaded guilty, the head of Kano’s religious police, Aminu Ibrahim Daurawa, told the BBC.

The trial was speedily done in secret after a section of the court was burnt down by angry protesters last month.

It is not known if they will appeal against the sentence.

The alleged offence was committed last month at a religious gathering in honour of Sheikh Ibrahim Niasse, the Senegalese founder of the Tijaniya sect, which has a large following across West Africa.

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Supreme Court rules gay couples nationwide have a right to marry

Gay rights supporters celebrate outside the Supreme Court in Washington after justices ruled that same-sex couples have the right to marry, no matter where they live. (Jim Bourg/Reuters)

by Robert Barnes

The Supreme Court on Friday delivered a historic victory for gay rights, ruling 5 to 4 that the Constitution requires that same-sex couples be allowed to marry no matter where they live and that states may no longer reserve the right only for heterosexual couples.

The court’s action marks the culmination of an unprecedented upheaval in public opinion and the nation’s jurisprudence. Advocates called it the most pressing civil rights issue of modern times, while critics said the courts had sent the country into uncharted territory by changing the traditional definition of marriage.

“Under the Constitution, same-sex couples seek in marriage the same legal treatment as opposite-sex couples, and it would disparage their choices and diminish their personhood to deny them this right,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion. He was joined in the ruling by the court’s liberal justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

All four of the court’s most conservative members — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. — dissented and each wrote a separate opinion, saying the court had usurped a power that belongs to the people.

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NHS to give volunteers ‘synthetic blood’ made in laboratory within two years

by Steve Connor

The first attempt at giving human volunteers “synthetic blood” made in a laboratory for the first time will take place within the next two years, the NHS has announced.

A long-awaited clinical trial of artificial red blood cells will occur before 2017, NHS scientists said. The blood is made from stem cells extracted from either the umbilical cord blood of newborn babies or the blood of adult donors.

The trial, thought to be a world first, will involve small transfusions of a few teaspoons of synthetic blood to test for any adverse reactions. It will allow scientists to study the time the manufactured red blood cells can survive within human recipients.

Eventually, it is hoped that the NHS will be able to make unlimited quantities of red blood cells for emergency transfusions. However, the immediate goal is to manufacture specialised donations for patients suffering from blood conditions such as sickle-cell anaemia and thalassemia, who need regular transfusions.

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Origin-of-Life Story May Have Found Its Missing Link

A field of geysers called El Tatio located in northern Chile's Andes Mountains. Credit: Gerald Prins

by Jesse Emspak

How did life on Earth begin? It’s been one of modern biology’s greatest mysteries: How did the chemical soup that existed on the early Earth lead to the complex molecules needed to create living, breathing organisms? Now, researchers say they’ve found the missing link.

Between 4.6 billion and 4.0 billion years ago, there was probably no life on Earth. The planet’s surface was at first molten and even as it cooled, it was getting pulverized by asteroids and comets. All that existed were simple chemicals. But about 3.8 billion years ago, the bombardment stopped, and life arose. Most scientists think the “last universal common ancestor” — the creature from which everything on the planet descends — appeared about 3.6 billion years ago.

But exactly how that creature arose has long puzzled scientists. For instance, how did the chemistry of simple carbon-based molecules lead to the information storage of ribonucleic acid, or RNA? The RNA molecule must store information to code for proteins. (Proteins in biology do more than build muscle — they also regulate a host of processes in the body.)

The new research — which involves two studies, one led by Charles Carter and one led by Richard Wolfenden, both of the University of North Carolina — suggests a way for RNA to control the production of proteins by working with simple amino acids that does not require the more complex enzymes that exist today.

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Poll: We like our red-white-and-blue patriotism — mostly

A man waves an American flag as he watches a July Fourth parade in the village of Barnstable, Massachusetts on July 4, 2014. Photo couretsy of REUTERS/Mike Segar

by Cathy Lynn Grossman

We’re gung-ho for the idea that the U.S.A. has a special status with God, and we’re almost always proud of our nation.

But a new survey finds our flag-waving, All-American Fourth of July celebrations are also tempered by concerns that the nation isn’t the moral leader it once was, that Christians face discrimination here at home and that some folks aren’t “truly American.”

And although overall views shine bright red, white and blue, the level of our enthusiasm varies according to factors such as religion, age and race, according to the Public Religion Research Institute.

A PRRI survey released Tuesday (June 23) finds that nearly 2 in 3 Americans (62 percent) say God has granted America an exceptional role in human history. Not surprisingly, since the question presupposes a God, only 39 percent of people who don’t identify with any particular religion (the so-called “nones”) agree with that statement.

Still, “American exceptionalism is a deep and abiding belief that’s fundamental to the American DNA,” said Daniel Cox, PRRI research director.

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Navy lawyers defend rejection of atheist chaplain

A Navy chaplain leads Marines in a moment for prayer before they head out on missions. A federal judge is deciding whether the Navy discriminated against a man who sought to become a Navy chaplain but also intended to affiliate with the Humanist Society and the American Humanist Association. (Photo: Sgt. Rome Lazarus/Marine Corps)

by Andrew Tilghman

Jason Heap was a 38-year-old former youth minister with a master’s degree in divinity from Texas Christian University when he applied to become a Navy chaplain.

But the sea service rejected his application last year after he revealed plans to affiliate with the Humanist Society and the American Humanist Association, which espouses a “progressive philosophy of life that, without theism and other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives,” according to the group’s website.

The Navy’s decision to reject an “atheist chaplain” is under scrutiny by a federal judge overseeing Heap’s lawsuit, in which he claims the Navy violated his constitutional rights through discrimination and denial of his right to religious freedom.

The matter was argued in detail for the first time in a federal courtroom in Alexandria, Virginia, on Thursday, as a team of attorneys representing the Navy sought a summary judgment and urged District Judge James Chacheris to declare the lawsuit without merit.

The Navy claims Heap was turned away in part because of his limited experience as a religious leader, which raised questions about his ability to handle the role of providing spiritual care for thousands of sailors aboard ships at sea.

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‘Choice’ Charade: N.Y. Governor Slams ‘Manhattan Liberals’ For Supporting Church-State Separation In Neo-Voucher Battle

by Simon Brown

What does rent control in New York City have to do with tax credits that would be used to support religious schools? Quite a bit, at least as far as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is concerned.

In a move that can best be described as desperate, Cuomo initially tied together a piece of legislation that would renew expiring rent control laws with the creation of a new tuition tax credit program.

Even with rent controls, New York City is one expensive place to live. In May, the average rental cost $3,432 per month. That’s up more than $1,000 from July 2009. Clearly, rent control is important to a lot of people. Cuomo is well aware of this, which is why he’s trying to force the passage of his controversial tax credit by affixing it to something a lot more people favor.

As for the tuition tax credits that Cuomo has backed, they are awful from a church-state perspective. Individuals and businesses that donate money to non-profit “scholarship” organizations, which offer tuition assistance for students attending private and religious schools, would receive a tax credit of 75 percent. The maximum credit would be $1 million per individual or business and the program would be capped at $150 million for 2016. That means up to $150 million could flow directly to sectarian schools instead of into state coffers.

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‘Our country could become like Afghanistan': Bangladesh’s bloggers are living in fear

Murdered Bangladeshi blogger Ananta Bijoy Das

by David Bergman

The Bangladeshi blogger who goes by the name of Euklid fears, unsurprisingly, for his safety. But in the face of a spree of attacks on his online colleagues, what frightens him even more is the future of his country, he says. “The government should act quickly and neutralize these militant groups, otherwise Bangladesh could become like Afghanistan or Iraq.”

Euklid, a 24-year-old engineering student who describes himself as an “atheist” blogger, was speaking a week after the murder of his fellow writer Ananta Bijoy Das in Bangladesh’s northern city of Sylhet, which has brought to three the number of secular citizen journalists hacked to death in the last three months. A fourth blogger was also killed in similar circumstances just over two years ago.

On Monday, Unesco director-general Irina Bokova condemned the murder of Das, and called on the Bangladesh authorities to bring those responsible to justice.

Expressing fear for safety of citizen journalists in Bangladesh, Bokova added: “Punishing such attacks is indispensable to maintain free public debate and free expression by media professionals and committed citizens alike.”

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DNA Confirms Kennewick Man’s Genetic Ties To Native Americans

This clay facial reconstruction of Kennewick Man, who died about 8,500 years ago in what's now southeast Washington, was based on forensic scientists' study of the morphological features of his skull. Credit: Brittney Tatchell/Smithsonian Institution

by Christopher Joyce

New genetic evidence suggests that Kennewick Man, an 8,500-year-old skeleton found in Washington state, is related to members of a nearby Native American tribe.

The DNA may help resolve a long-running scientific mystery, while at the same time reigniting a debate over who should have custody of the remains.

Kennewick Man was discovered accidentally in the mud flat along the Columbia River in 1996. He’s caused a ruckus ever since.

Physical anthropologists said his facial features and cranium didn’t look Native American. Researchers suspected he might have come from Asia or Polynesia.

But Native American groups insisted he was their ancestor and deserved a proper burial. The federal government agreed and locked up the skeleton. Scientists then sued to “release” it. And they won. Kennewick Man has been studied since then, and his remains are kept in a museum in Washington.

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This single-celled bug has the world’s most extraordinary eye

Image: Fernando Gómez/Laboratory of Plankton Systems, Oceanographic Institute, University of São Paulo

by Michael Le Page

It is perhaps the most extraordinary eye in the living world – so extraordinary that no one believed the biologist who first described it more than a century ago.

Now it appears that the tiny owner of this eye uses it to catch invisible prey by detecting polarised light. This suggestion is also likely to be greeted with disbelief, for the eye belongs to a single-celled organism calledErythropsidinium. It has no nerves, let alone a brain. So how could it “see” its prey?

Fernando Gómez of the University of São Paulo, Brazil, thinks it can. “Erythropsidinium is a sniper,” he told New Scientist. “It is waiting to see the prey, and it shoots in that direction.”

Erythropsidinium belongs to a group of single-celled planktonic organisms known as dinoflagellates. They can swim using a tail, or flagellum, and many possess chloroplasts, allowing them to get their food by photosynthesis just as plants do.

Others hunt by shooting out stinging darts similar to the nematocysts of jellyfish. They sense vibrations when prey comes near, but they often have to fire off several darts before they manage to hit it, Gómez says.

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The American Medical Association is finally taking a stand on quacks like Dr. Oz

Dr. Mehmet Oz. Credit: Mike Coppola/Getty Images

by Julia Belluz

Medical students and residents frustrated with bogus advice from doctors on TV have, for more than a year, been asking the American Medical Association to clamp down and “defend the integrity of the profession.”

Now the AMA is finally taking a stand on quack MDs who spread pseudoscience in the media.

“This is a turning point where the AMA is willing to go out in public and actively defend the profession,” Benjamin Mazer, a medical student at the University of Rochester who was involved in crafting the resolution, said. “This is one of the most proactive steps that the AMA has taken [on mass media issues].”

The AMA will look at creating ethical guidelines for physicians in the media, write a report on how doctors may be disciplined for violating medical ethics through their press involvement, and release a public statement denouncing the dissemination of dubious medical information through the radio, TV, newspapers, or websites.

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The Backfire Effect: Why Facts Don’t Win Arguments

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

by BigThink

Let’s say you’re having an argument with a friend about oh, let’s say, Obamacare, or even who the best quarterback in the NFL is. You present your friend with a set of facts that you would think would clinch your argument. And yet, while the facts you present clearly contradict your friend’s position, you discover that presenting your friend with these facts does nothing to correct his or her false or unsubstantiated belief. In fact, your friend is even more emboldened in his or her belief after being exposed to corrective information.

A group of Dartmouth researchers have studied the problem of the so-called “backfire effect,” which is defined as the effect in which “corrections actually increase misperceptions among the group in question.”

The problem here may be the way your friend is receiving these facts. Since your friend knows you and your opinions well, he or she does not view you as an “omniscient” source of information. When it comes to receiving corrective information about a public policy issue, the authors of the Dartmouth study note

people typically receive corrective information within “objective” news reports pitting two sides of an argument against each other, which is significantly more ambiguous than receiving a correct answer from an omniscient source. In such cases, citizens are likely to resist or reject arguments and evidence contradicting their opinions – a view that is consistent with a wide array of research.

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3-D printing with metals achieved

A copper micro-pillar with a height of 0.86 millimetres and a width of 0.005 millimetres. The pillar is formed from drops that had a diameter of 0.001 millimetres. With this technique, more complex shapes can also be printed. Image courtesy of University of Twente

by Science Daily

A team of researchers from the University of Twente has found a way to 3D print structures of copper and gold, by stacking microscopically small metal droplets. These droplets are made by melting a thin metal film using a pulsed laser. Their work is published on Advanced Materials.

3D printing is a rapidly advancing field, that is sometimes referred to as the ‘new cornerstone of the manufacturing industry’. However, at present, 3D printing is mostly limited to plastics. If metals could be used for 3D printing as well, this would open a wide new range of possibilities. Metals conduct electricity and heat very well, and they’re very robust. Therefore, 3D printing in metals would allow manufacturing of entirely new devices and components, such as small cooling elements or connections between stacked chips in smartphones.

However, metals melt at a high temperature. This makes controlled deposition of metal droplets highly challenging. Thermally robust nozzles are required to process liquid metals, but these are hardly available. For small structures in particular (from 100 nanometres to 10 micrometres) no good solutions for this problem existed yet.

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Louisville programmer collaborates with controversial scientist Richard Dawkins

Alan Canon, left, Richard Dawkins, and Robyn Blumner, CEO of the Richard Dawkins Foundation. Photo by Cynthia Norton.

by David Serchuk

Louisville computer programmer Alan Canon has partnered with controversial scientist and outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins to resuscitate a suite of long-dormant computer programs Dawkins wrote decades ago. Canon’s goal is for these programs to help teach how evolution and genetic selection work, and to fight back against the evolution deniers dotting the American landscape.

The programs, called “The Blind Watchmaker,” illustrate how genetic mutations and variances create new varieties of life.

Canon tells IL he is working with Dawkins because even now, decades after the Scopes Monkey Trial, the theory of evolution remains under attack from creationists. He wants to help Dawkins — his intellectual hero — further the cause of rational, science-based thinking. For him, it means helping Dawkins revive long-dormant computer programs that illustrate how evolution and genetic selection work.

“We need every tool we can muster in the arsenal of demonstrating the truth of these ideas,” Canon said. “Evolution explains why we’re here … evolution has produced human brains capable of understanding how they came to be. There’s poetry there.”

The programs, in a nutshell, demonstrate the principles of evolution, including: heredity, mutation, and artificial selection. They allow users to essentially “breed” different kinds of life-forms, to illustrate how offspring, over time, differ from their ancestors. In short, the programs show a souped-up version of evolution.

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Vulnerability made us human: how our early ancestors turned disability into advantage

Reconstruction of Rhodesian Men. Credit: Public Domain

by David Garner

A new evolutionary theory explains how critically small populations of early humans survived, despite an increased chance of hereditary disabilities being passed to offspring.

Anthropologists at the University of York and Newcastle University have studied how our earliest ancestors coped during periods when the population dwindled, and have developed a model of early hominins as ‘Vulnerable Apes’.

Small numbers of individuals in the distant past would sometimes be driven to landscapes that allowed them to avoid predators and competitors, or exploit emergency resources. They would have become isolated, creating genetic ‘bottlenecks’ which brought disabling genes to the surface.

The researchers argue that these groups would have experienced a new type of selection pressure – not selection in favour of individuals with the ‘best’ genes but selection that favoured those who were able to cope with the challenges that their genes threw at them.

They speculate that our need to socialise and ability to experiment and learn new behaviours, as well as our compassion and communication skills, arose as coping strategies that allowed our ancestors to get through these bottlenecks. In so doing, they turned ‘disabilities’ such as weak jaws, hairless bodies, short, weak arms and straight feet that can’t climb trees, into opportunities that formed the platform for future human evolution.

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DNA Deciphers Roots of Modern Europeans

A male skeleton associated with the Yamnaya culture near Samara, Russia. Credit Pavel Kuznetsov

by Carl Zimmer

For centuries, archaeologists have reconstructed the early history of Europe by digging up ancient settlements and examining the items that their inhabitants left behind. More recently, researchers have been scrutinizing something even more revealing than pots, chariots and swords: DNA.

On Wednesday in the journal Nature, two teams of scientists — one based at the University of Copenhagen and one based at Harvard University — presented the largest studies to date of ancient European DNA, extracted from 170 skeletons found in countries from Spain to Russia. Both studies indicate that today’s Europeans descend from three groups who moved into Europe at different stages of history.

The first were hunter-gatherers who arrived some 45,000 years ago in Europe. Then came farmers who arrived from the Near East about 8,000 years ago.

Finally, a group of nomadic sheepherders from western Russia called the Yamnaya arrived about 4,500 years ago. The authors of the new studies also suggest that the Yamnaya language may have given rise to many of the languages spoken in Europe today.

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Tim Hunt: ‘I’ve been hung out to dry. They haven’t even bothered to ask for my side of affairs’

Tim Hunt with his wife Mary Collins at their home in Hertfordshire. Photograph: Antonio Olmos for the Observer

by Robin McKie

As jokes go, Sir Tim Hunt’s brief standup routine about women in science last week must rank as one of the worst acts of academic self-harm in history. As he reveals to the Observer, reaction to his remarks about the alleged lachrymose tendencies of female researchers has virtually finished off the 72-year-old Nobel laureate’s career as a senior scientific adviser.

What he said was wrong, he acknowledges, but the price he and his wife have had to pay for his mistakes has been extreme and unfair. “I have been hung out to dry,” says Hunt.

His wife, Professor Mary Collins, one of Britain’s most senior immunologists, is similarly indignant. She believes that University College London – where both scientists had posts – has acted in “an utterly unacceptable” way in pressuring both researchers and in failing to support their causes.

Certainly the speed of the dispatch of Hunt – who won the 2001 Nobel prize in physiology for his work on cell division – from his various academic posts is startling. In many cases this was done without him even being asked for his version of events, he says. The story shows, if nothing else, that the world of science can be every bit as brutal as that of politics.

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Indian gang rape victim faces ‘purification ritual’

by BBC

A woman who was gang raped for eight months in Gujarat, western India, is now not only pregnant as a result, but has been ordered to face “purification tests” by her community’s local courts. The BBC’s Ankur Jain reports on what this gruelling ritual will entail and why it is still endured.

The shy, softly spoken 23-year-old – who cannot be named for legal reasons – was living happily with her husband and two children in Surat when she was abducted last July and repeatedly gang raped by more than five men over several months.

She is now heavily pregnant and her petition for abortion was turned down by the Gujarat High Court because she was too advanced in her pregnancy.

Now, staying in a two-room house in Devaliya village, Ranpur Taluka, Gujarat, she spends her time with her two children. Her in-laws refuse to take her back and her husband has left his parents to be with her. But she spends all her time with the children, snuggling them and holding them tight.

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Child died from complication from ear infection; parents face criminal charges

by Doubtful News

Profound ignorance kills children.

An 18 month old child is dead because the parents did not get her medical attention, instead treating her with homeopathy and herbal meds. Ebed S. Delozier, 29, and Christine E. Delozier, 34, both of Wyalusing, Pennsylvania, are charged with involuntary manslaughter and endangering the welfare of children this week after an investigation showed they neglected her illness. When the father brought the sick child to the hospital back in March, it was too late to save her. The coroner’s contact to police prompted an investigation.

Criminal investigators were told by a registered nurse on staff that the victim’s mother, Christine Delozier, and aunt, Rebecca Delozier, arrived at the hospital shortly after the victim. The nurse said that the victim’s parents made it clear they were against antibiotics and other chemicals associated with modern medicine.

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Military technology: Laser weapons get real

Credit: Lucasfilm/20th Century Fox/The Kobal Collection

by Andy Extance

Silently, the drone aircraft glides above the arid terrain of New Mexico — until it suddenly pivots out of control and plummets to the ground.

Then a mortar round rises from its launcher, arcs high and begins to descend towards its target — only to flare and explode in mid-flight.

On the desert floor, on top of a big, sand-coloured truck, a cubic mechanism pivots and fires an invisible infrared beam to zap one target after another. This High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator (HEL MD) is a prototype laser weapon developed for the US Army by aerospace giant Boeing of Chicago, Illinois. Inside the truck, Boeing electrophysics engineer Stephanie Blount stares at the targets on her laptop’s screen and directs the laser using a handheld game controller. “It has a very game-like feel,” she says.

That seems only natural: laser weapons are a staple of modern video games, and ray-guns of various sorts were common in science fiction for decades before the first real-life laser was demonstrated in 1960. But they are not a fantasy anymore. The Boeing prototype is just one of several such weapons developed in recent years in both the United States and Europe, largely thanks to the advent of relatively cheap, portable and robust lasers that generate their beams using optical fibres.

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From ‘Dropout Crisis’ To Record High, Dissecting The Graduation Rate

The U.S. high school graduation rate was 81 percent in 2013, the most recent year in which federal data are available. Credit: LA Johnson/NPR

by Anya Kamenetz

In his State of the Union address in January, President Obama had some sure-fire applause lines: “More of our kids are graduating than ever before” and “Our high school graduation rate has hit an all-time high.”

Which raised some interesting questions: “Is that really true?” and “Why?” and “How do we know?” and “So what?”

A seed was planted that grew into our project this week examining that number. Our reporting shows many of the individual stories behind a single statistic: 81 percent, the current U.S. graduation rate.

But in the course of pulling this project together, our team fell into a rabbit hole over something that doesn’t often get attention: the origin of the statistic itself. It turns out to be a fascinating story, and not just for data wonks. It’s a story of collaboration across the political aisle, heroic efforts and millions of dollars spent by state governments, and dogged researchers uncovering new insights that arguably changed the lives of tens of thousands of young people.

Many individuals worked hard, and worked together, to make the nation do a better job counting high school graduates. The effort had complex — sometimes contradictory — results.

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Humanist Groups Educate Congress about International Religious Freedom

U.S. Capitol

by American Humanist Association

On June 9, the American Humanist Association, with the Center for Inquiry and the Secular Coalition for America, will be hosting congressional briefings to educate legislators about the state of international religious freedom. The briefings come in the wake of the deaths of humanist Bangladeshi bloggers, who were brutally murdered by religious extremists.

“Humanists, atheists and religious minorities should not have to live in fear for their lives simply because their convictions differ from the majority in their country,” said Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association. “We call upon our legislators to globally promote the freedom of speech and condemn persecution and intolerance.”

The briefings will draw attention to the threat to the human rights of atheists, humanists and other religious groups around the world. In addition to the three Bangladeshi bloggers murdered just this past year for their atheism, religious minority groups such as Ahmadiyya Muslims in Pakistan, Christians in Syria, and Jews in France also face serious persecution.

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Sleep study raises hope for clinical treatment of racism, sexism and other biases

Sleep before you speak. Credit: Angel Arcones/Flickr, CC BY-SA

by Gareth Gaskell

Imagine being able to erase the innermost prejudices you are most ashamed of by simply turning on a sound machine before going to bed. It may sound fantastical, but a new study has shown that our biases can indeed be counteracted while we sleep.

Of course, most of us would contend that we are not racist or sexist. But many studies have shown that our actions suggest otherwise. For example, when evaluating applications for a science laboratory position, male applicants were viewed by university science faculty members as more hireable, competent and deserving of a high salary than identically qualified female applicants.

These biases are not surprising. We are often overwhelmed with information that can reinforce race and gender stereotypes.

Implicit association

In a new study, researchers built on our rapidly developing understanding of the way recent memories become ingrained in our mind during sleep. This “consolidation” process takes an unstable new memory and makes it stronger, and more resistant to forgetting, possibly changing its nature in the process.

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Chaplain violated Army rule in promoting Christian book

Book cover of ‘Jesus Was an Airborne Ranger,’ by Army chaplain John McDougall. Photo courtesy of Penguin Random House books.

by Tom Vanden Brook

An active-duty Army chaplain with the elite 75th Ranger Regiment has published a book titled “Jesus Was an Airborne Ranger” and appeared in a promotional video in uniform to promote it, raising questions about the service endorsing Christianity as the Pentagon wages wars in Muslim countries.

Chaplain John McDougall recently returned from Afghanistan where he served as chaplain for the 75th Ranger Regiment. He wrote the book, he told the Army in a story published on its website, because “the Jesus of many churches is a weakling — someone our Rangers cannot relate to.”

The video was taken down Thursday by the book’s publisher, said Charlene Guzman, senior publicist for WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group. McDougall regrets having appeared in uniform and was not speaking on behalf of the military, she said. He had cleared writing the book with military lawyers but not the video. McDougall, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, could not be reached immediately for comment.

“It’s a regrettable action and we were happy to take it down,” Guzman said.

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British Humanist Association sends The Young Atheist’s Handbook to every prison and young offender institution in the UK

The memoir by Alom Shaha will now be available in prisons and young offender institutions, a well as secondary schools throughout the UK.

by British Humanist Association

Today the British Humanist Association (BHA) is sending free copies of The Young Atheist’s Handbook: Lessons for Living a Good Life without God to every prison and young offender institutions in the United Kingdom.

Funded entirely by public donations, the initiative is part of the BHA’s charitable educational work to ensure that young people have access to resources which enable them to come to their own decisions about their beliefs and values. This initiative has already seen the book distributed to every secondary school library in the UK.

The Young Atheist’s Handbook is a critically acclaimed memoir from science teacher Alom Shaha. Alom’s book tells the story of his upbringing in a Bangladeshi Muslim community in London, and how he later discovered he was an atheist and learned to live a good life according to humanist principles, emphasising values like empathy and reason.

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Graduation Rates: Chicago Says It Will Keep Better Track of At-Risk Students

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel focused on disadvantaged youth in Chicago in his inaugural speech after being sworn in to a second term as mayor. Credit: Phil Velasquez/Chicago Tribune/Getty Images

by Becky Vevea

The NPR Ed Team’s investigation into high school graduation rates found that many states and school districts are using questionable, quick fixes to improve their grad rates.

At the top of that list was Chicago.

Over the last four years, thousands of dropouts across at least two dozen Chicago high schools never counted against the city’s graduation rate: Because the schools mislabeled them as having left the public system.

In response to the story, the city now says it’s going to crack down.

Officials don’t dispute the fact that the database is riddled with errors. Still, they say, they will not go back and revise the graduation rates.

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Massive tank reveals hurricanes’ inner workings

A hurricane simulator at the University of Miami can produce winds of more than 250 kilometres per hour. Credit: Gort Photography

by Alexandra Witze

On a palm-lined island off the coast of Florida, oceanographers have built a giant indoor tank to simulate the howling winds and crashing waves of the most severe hurricanes — those labelled category 5. It is the world’s largest experiment to understand the physics of devastating tropical storms.

University of Miami researchers began working with the new tank this month. What they learn could help to improve predictions of hurricane strength, as well as which buildings are likely to survive the most powerful waves.

“We wanted to go to the extreme, category-5-equivalent so we can understand what really happens when things start to get interesting,” says Brian Haus, an oceanographer at the University of Miami and director of the new tank, called SUSTAIN (for Surge–Structure–Atmosphere Interaction Facility).

Hurricane season for the Atlantic and central Pacific oceans begins on 1 June. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts an above-average number of storms for the central Pacific and below average for the Atlantic, thanks to the ongoing El Niño weather phenomenon, which affects wind patterns.

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Can you be a scientist and have religious faith?

Mark Lorch struggles to understand how some of his colleagues hold religious beliefs alongside a dedication to the scientific method.

Image source: Shutterstock.com

by Mark Lorch

I’ve been a scientist for as long as I can remember. Children are born scientists; they experiment with everything, are naturally inquisitive and through this exploration they learn about how the world works. And I’ve never grown out of it. Of course, for many people, their modes of thought change as they find or are brought up with faith. Some manage, somehow, to hold religious beliefs alongside a dedication to the rationality of science.

I had a brief flirtation with Christianity in my teens, probably as a form of rebellion against my nuclear physicist father. But ultimately I could never reconcile what I saw as a contradiction between the principles of the scientific method and faith in a supernatural god. And ever since then, it has puzzled me how anyone could be religious whilst also being a scientist. How can one hold what I saw as diametrically opposed belief systems? How, on the one hand, could someone devote themselves to the scientific methods where, through repeated experimentation, one builds up a self-consistent representation of the rules that govern the universe, whilst on the other hand believing in a force that existed outside the rules and that, indeed, could change those rules.

Working in a university, I’m surrounded by scientists, and many of the best of them have religious faith. I’ve discussed these apparent contradictions of faith and science with some of these colleagues. I fully expected to hear arguments such as deism, where a god started the universe off but hasn’t intervened since then. Or maybe theistic evolution, with their god directing the evolution of the Universe and life within it. And indeed some did have these stances. But many of those I spoke to also took a literal interpretation of miracles from their holy texts. Which took me back to square one. If a god can change the rules of life, then how can you believe the rules governing your experiments won’t change from one day to the next? And it always came down to the fact that they just had faith in the scriptures, which left me feeling rather dissatisfied.

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1 in 20 People Has Hallucinated

Credit: Bruce Rolff/Shutterstock.com

by Rachael Rettner

About 1 in 20 people in the general population has experienced at least one hallucination in their lifetime that wasn’t connected to drugs, alcohol or dreaming, according to a new study.

Researchers analyzed information from more than 31,000 people in 18 countries who were interviewed as part of a mental health survey from the World Health Organization. Participants were asked whether they had ever heard voices or seen things that didn’t exist, or if they had experienced a delusion (a false belief), such as the thought that their mind was being controlled or that they were being followed.

The study excluded people who possibly had a psychotic disorder, such as schizophrenia or manic depression, which can cause hallucinations and delusions. Therefore, the findings show that hallucinations and delusions are not always connected to serious mental illness, the researchers said.

“We used to think that only people with psychosis heard voices or had delusions, but now we know that otherwise healthy, high-functioning people also report these experiences,” study co-author Dr. John McGrath, a professor at the Queensland Brain Institute in Australia, said in a statement.

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Spinning a new version of spider silk

Microscope images of lab-produced fibers confirm the results of the MIT researchers' simulations of spider silk. At top are optical microscope images, and, at bottom, are scanning electron microscope images. At left are fibers 8 micrometers across, and, at right, are thinner, 3 micrometer fibers. Credit: Courtesy of the researchers

by Science Daily

After years of research decoding the complex structure and production of spider silk, researchers have now succeeded in producing samples of this exceptionally strong and resilient material in the laboratory. The new development could lead to a variety of biomedical materials — from sutures to scaffolding for organ replacements — made from synthesized silk with properties specifically tuned for their intended uses.

The findings are published this week in the journal Nature Communicationsby MIT professor of civil and environmental engineering (CEE) Markus Buehler, postdocs Shangchao Lin and Seunghwa Ryu, and others at MIT, Tufts University, Boston University, and in Germany, Italy, and the U.K.

The research, which involved a combination of simulations and experiments, paves the way for “creating new fibers with improved characteristics” beyond those of natural silk, says Buehler, who is also the department head in CEE. The work, he says, should make it possible to design fibers with specific characteristics of strength, elasticity, and toughness.

The new synthetic fibers’ proteins — the basic building blocks of the material — were created by genetically modifying bacteria to make the proteins normally produced by spiders. These proteins were then extruded through microfluidic channels designed to mimic the effect of an organ, called a spinneret, that spiders use to produce natural silk fibers.

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Please Think Of The Children: Mont. Public School Had No Business Sending Kids To Creationist Attraction

Otis E. Kline, Jr., director of the Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum, leads a tour in 2009 of the $1.5 million, 20,000 square foot facility. The museum is the largest dinosaur museum in the country that presents fossils in the context of biblical creation. LARRY MAYER/Gazette Staff

by Rob Boston

You might have read yesterday about Americans United’s latest victory. It’s one I’m especially pleased to see: Officials at a public school in Glendive, Mont., were going to send third-graders on a field trip to a local spot run by creationists. AU’s attorneys put a stop to that.

The facility in question is called the Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum, but I have too much respect for real museums to use that term for it. In this post, I will refer to it as the “Creationism Indoctrination Center” (CIC).

The CIC is run by an entity called the Foundation Advancing Creation Truth. On its website, one  reads the following: “The mission of the Foundation Advancing Creation Truth (FACT) and its related ministries is to glorify God as Creator and Sustainer, emphasize man’s accountability to Him, to affirm God’s revealed and inspired Word as the preeminent source of truth and authority, and to challenge mankind to think through the assumptions and consequences of the humanistic concept of evolution and its underlying premise that the earth is billions of years old.”

Also check out “What We Believe,” which is essentially the CIC’s statement of faith. It’s all here: six-day creation, the Book of Genesis is literally true, there was a worldwide flood, etc. See, that’s how you know you’re not dealing with a real science museum here. Real science museums don’t have statements of faith.

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The strange ‘virgin births’ of the smalltooth sawfish

A juvenile smalltooth sawfish in the Charlotte Harbor estuarine system in Florida. (Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC))

by Deborah Netburn

Desperate times call for desperate measures, which may explain why some critically endangered smalltooth sawfish are reproducing asexually in the wild.

The smalltooth sawfish is a member of the ray family, and under normal circumstances it reproduces sexually like most other vertebrates. However, in a study published in Current Biology, scientists report seven instances of juvenile sawfish that appear to be the product of a virgin birth — no dad involved.

The researchers were able to tell that these fish were produced asexually because routine DNA tests showed there was little to no variability in the genetic material of the seven specimens.

Asexual reproduction in a sexually reproducing species is called facultatitve parthenogenesis. Scientists think it occurs when an unfertilized egg absorbs a genetically identical sister cell called a polar body.

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Saudi Arabia hosts UN-backed human rights summit ‘on combating religious discrimination’

by Adam Withnall

Saudi Arabia has hosted an international conference on human rights, attended by the president of the UN Human Rights Council, and resolved to combat intolerance and violence based on religious belief.

The kingdom convened the fifth annual meeting of the Istanbul Process as its Supreme Court prepared to rule on the case of blogger Raif Badawi, sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for “insulting Islam through religious channels”. It later upheld the sentence.

The UN HRC recently faced criticism over Saudi plans to head up the council from 2016, in what critics said would be the “final nail in the coffin” for the international body.

And the Geneva-based human rights campaign group UN Watch accused HRC president Joachim Rücker of giving “false international legitimacy” to the two-day conference on religious freedoms held in Jeddah on 3 and 4 June.

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Were You There?

As a creationist kid, I was determined not to learn about evolution.

Photo illustration by Juliana Jiménez. Images courtesy of Phillip Medhurst/Creative Commons and Thinkstock

by Vanessa Wamsley

A 10^th-grader perches on the edge of her chair as her biology teacher lectures on evolution. She listens intently. The years she’s spent in Sunday school and church services have prepared her for this very moment. Her hand shoots up, and the teacher calls her name. Breathless, she asks a question.

“How do you know evolution really happened? Were you there?”

I was that student, and I remember the knot that formed in my stomach whenever my high school science teacher directed class discussion toward that dreaded E-word. I remember the day I asked him if he was there when an ape evolved into a human. Some of my classmates rolled their eyes. I wasn’t even trying to make a joke about his age. For me it was a serious question, almost sacred.

Terry Wortman was my science teacher from my sophomore through senior years, and he is still teaching in my hometown, at Hayes Center Public High School in Hayes Center, Nebraska. He still occasionally hears the question I asked 16 years ago, and he has a standard response. “I don’t want to interfere with a kid’s belief system,” he says. “But I tell them, ‘I’m going to teach you the science. I’m going to tell you what all respected science says.’ ”

That’s pretty close to what he told me all those years ago. He said that he didn’t need to witness evolution to know it occurred; fossil evidence shows us that humans evolved from a common ancestor with apes. But the evidence he described in class couldn’t get past the religious block in my mind.

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Humans Trekked Out of Africa Via Egypt, Study Suggests

A reconstruction of a human skull discovered in Laos (and described in 2012). New research suggests modern humans exited Africa through Egypt. Credit: F. Demeter

by Charles Q. Choi

The major gateway for modern humans out of Africa may have been Egypt, a new genetic analysis suggests.

This finding may help scientists reconstruct how humans evolved as they wandered across the globe, the researchers added.

Modern humans first arose about 200,000 years ago in Africa south of the Sahara. When and how the modern human lineage crossed the Sahara and dispersed from Africa has long been controversial.

Previous research suggested the exodus from Africa started between 70,000 and 40,000 years ago. However, a recent study hinted that modern humans might have begun their march across the globe as early as 130,000 years ago, and continued their expansion out of Africa in multiple waves.

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Project Jacquard to weave interactivity into textiles

by Nancy Owano

“Wearables” represents a broad-category of how we will interact with the digital world away from our laptop screens. It embraces arm bands, socks, bracelets, rings and watches. Google is now enhancing that spectrum, having done some serious playtime exploring fabric. Welcome to Project Jacquard, which Google announced at this year’s I/O developer conference in California.

Under Project Jacquard, touch sensor technology is being woven into fabrics. Project Jacquard makes it possible to weave touch and gesture interactivity into any textile, using standard, industrial looms. Google said that everyday objects such as clothes can be transformed into interactive surfaces. To that end, new conductive yarns have been created in collaboration with industrial partners.

The key ingredient is conductive thread. With it, one can weave a mesh. Brent Rose in Gizmodo said it “looks not unlike the matrix of sensors under your touchscreen.” Rose said that while roaming around the floor of this year’s Google I/O event, he got his hands on Project Jacquard—namely, something “nice n soft,” which is a “fabric that can control your phone.” Scott Stein, a CNET senior editor, also tried it out, saying Thursday that it was an “Interactive fabric” that can be used to control lights, music or more: Stein reported that “I did turn off lights, control music and make shapes dance on a monitor by stroking my fingers over a little square grid of cloth.”

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Galaxy Crashes May Give Birth to Powerful Space Jets

This artist's impression illustrates how high-speed jets from a supermassive black hole would look. Credit: ESA/Hubble, L. Casada (ESO)

by Calla Cofield

Powerful jets of material spewing from the edge of monster black holes may be more likely to arise where two galaxies have merged together, a new study suggests.

Like a cosmic version of Old Faithful (the famous Yellowstone geyser), some black holes at the center of galaxies will spew jets of material into space that stretch for thousands of light-years. You can see an illustration of what these gushing pillars look like in a video of the galaxy crash discovery.

Using data from the Hubble Space Telescope, new research suggests these jets are more likely to be found in galaxies that are the product of galaxy mergers. However, the authors of the research say merging two galaxies isn’t always a recipe for creating galactic jets.

In the study, scientists used the Hubble Space Telescope to look for the radio waves emitted by the massive jets that spew particles into space at nearly the speed of light. These jets are thought to be created by activity taking place near the edge of a supermassive black hole (and astronomers think most, if not all, galaxies in the universe have a supermassive black hole at their center).

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A Christian Response: To What?

by Herb Silverman

When I heard that a Christian Renewal prayer rally called “The Response” would be coming to the largest auditorium in my hometown of Charleston on June 13, I mostly said to myself, “Ho-hum, here we go again with another unproductive prayerfest.” But my interest piqued when I learned that South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley endorsed the event and is heavily promoting it. She will be the only celebrity on stage as she welcome attendees and begins the prayer. While Governor Haley is inviting people of all faiths (perhaps even atheists?) to attend, I expect many would be uncomfortable at a prayer rally led only by evangelical Christians whose stated purpose is to exalt the name of Jesus (and nobody else).

Here are 5 questions about the event, along with my answers.

1. Who is behind The Response?

David Lane, president and founder of the American Renewal Project, is the leading backer of such events. Though billed as apolitical, Lane organized similar “apolitical” rallies in Texas and Louisiana. Governor Rick Perry spoke at the Texas event in 2011, just before he announced as a 2012 Republican presidential candidate. Governor Bobby Jindal spoke at the Louisiana event in January, and might soon announce as a 2016 Republican presidential candidate. Lane wants a religious right army to pick the next president. He believes homosexuality will lead to the destruction of America, and he thinks Christianity should be the official religion of the United States.

2. Is Governor Haley’s action legal?

As a private citizen, or even as governor, Nikki Haley may attend any event she wants. But it became legally problematic when Governor Haley issued an open invitation to The Response written on official letterhead with the Seal of the Governor of South Carolina. She also made a video in her office encouraging all citizens to attend and join her in prayer to Jesus. When religious events are tied to elected officials and appear to be sponsored by the government, this sends a message to those of other faiths and none that they are second-class citizens. Governor Haley is free to tell everyone she is a Christian, but she should not use her office to promote Christianity. Government must not favor one religion over another or religion over non-religion.

Modern human dispersal into Europe came from the Levant

Phorcus turbinatus shells. Top and side views of 1) a complete specimen and 2) a shell of which the top was removed by Upper Palaeolithic people to aid flesh extraction (scale bar: 1 centimeter). Credit: M. Bosch

by Phys.org

A multinational team led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig, Germany), working in collaboration with colleagues from the Universities of Leiden, Groningen (the Netherlands), Mainz (Germany), York and Cambridge (UK), analysed shells recovered at Ksâr ‘Akil, a site in Lebanon. Ksâr ‘Akil is one of the few sites in the Near East where modern human fossils are associated with Upper Palaeolithic (UP) tools. The authors radiocarbon-dated the shell carbonates of the mollusc species Phorcus turbinatus that was eaten by prehistoric humans. Using several independent lines of evidence in a novel approach, they could show that modern humans carrying a UP toolkit occupied the Levant at least 45,900 years ago. This confirms UP modern human presence in the Levant prior to their arrival in Europe and suggests that the Levant served as a corridor for the colonization of Europe by modern humans.

The timing of the spread of modern humans out of Africa and into Eurasia is currently a topic of major debate among archaeologists, human paleontologists and geneticists. When did modern humans first arrive in Europe and what route did they take? Did the Levant serve as a corridor facilitating Upper Palaeolithic modern human dispersal? “The problem is that we have very few human remains associated with the early Upper Palaeolithic in both the Levant and Europe,” says Jean-Jacques Hublin, Professor at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

“The importance of Ksâr ‘Akil lies in the fact that we have two modern human fossils, nicknamed ‘Ethelruda’ and ‘Egbert’ by the original excavators, associated with Upper Palaeolithic toolkits from the site,” explains Marjolein Bosch from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, the lead author of the study. The authors report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA new age estimations for these two fossils. “Our analyses show that Egbert lived around 43,000 years ago and Ethelruda at least 45,900 years ago, possibly earlier. Therefore, Ethelruda pre-dates all European modern humans,” says Johannes van der Plicht from the Center for Isotopic Research of Groningen University. “Toolkits similar to those associated with Ethelruda and Egbert are also found in other sites in the Levant as well as in Europe. These similar toolkits and the earlier ages in the Near East suggest population dispersals from the Near East to Europe between 55,000 and 40,000 years ago,” explains Bosch.

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Comparison of bonobo anatomy to humans offers evolutionary clues

Percentage of muscle distribution to upper and lower limbs in Pongo pygmaeus, Gorilla gorilla, P. paniscus, and H. sapiens. Credit: (c) Adrienne L. Zihlman, PNAS

by Bob Yirka

A pair of anthropology researchers, one with the University of California, the other Modesto College has found what they believe are clues to human evolutionary development by conducting a long term study of bonobo anatomy. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Adrienne Zihlman and Debra Bolter, describe their anatomy studies and their ideas on why what they found offers new clues on why humans developed in the ways we did.

Scientists looking to understand how humans evolved have studied a lot of fossils, but such samples are of bones, which means there is little to no evidence of what organs, muscle or fat looked like in our ancestors which means there are still questions regarding things such as what percentage or proportion of fat or muscle was there, where were they located on the body, and what the organs were like. In this new study, the research pair sought to uncover clues by studying bonobos, apes that look a lot like chimpanzees and are considered to be our closest relative.

To learn more about bonobo anatomy, the researchers performed autopsies on thirteen of the apes that had died naturally over the course of three decades, carefully jotting down seldom noted information such as fat and muscle percentages. In so doing, they came to see that bonobos have considerably less fat on their bodies than do humans, even those that lived a similar sedentary life due to living in captivity. They also found that the apes had more upper body mass than humans as a rule and less leg muscle—bonobos also have a lot more skin.

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A New Play (in development) – Caught in the Pulpit

Dan Dennett, Linda LaScola, Art Siebens (husband), bearded man – Kurt Volkan (publisher), woman in blue – Beth Bernath, white haired man – Cliff Bernath. Photo by Judy Langer

by Linda LaScola

Last Thursday afternoon in mid-town Manhattan was a very exciting day – for me, Dan Dennett and the assembled guests and actors.

It was the first reading of a new play-in-development based on interviews from the study we conducted with non-believing clergy. Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with the working title, Caught in the Pulpit, which is the same as the book we wrote on the same subject.

Dan got the play idea back in 2009 then he was reading transcripts, thinking that the dialogue between me and the clergy would make great drama. It came to fruition when we found a writer, Marin Gazzaniga, who has both theatre and TV experience.  We also found a funder.  The Richard Dawkins Foundation has generously provided a grant to develop the play. To gain access to the material, Marin went through the same Tufts University Institutional Review Board process that Dan and I did. Seventeen of the study participants gave her permission to read their transcripts. The only control over the project Dan and I have is regarding confidentiality issues. Marin is the playwright.  It is her play.

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Oculus Rift hack transfers your facial expressions onto your virtual avatar

Image credit: Hao Li

by Mark Walton

When Facebook bought Oculus VR back in March of 2014, many wondered exactly what the social network was going to do with it—let’s face it, many of us are still wondering. But there are some interesting bits of tech starting to emerge from the now Facebook-owned Oculus that hint at what the future might hold for the Rift outside gaming. One such piece of tech—a “facial performance” tracking system—adds a vital element of social interaction to VR usage: facial expressions.

Researchers at University of Southern California (with help from Facebook) have devised a system that tracks a user’s facial expressions and translates them onto an avatar in the VR world. It works by using an off-the-shelf Intel RealSense 3D Camera bolted to the front of an Oculus Rift DK2 in order to capture facial movements for the lower half of the face. The really clever part, though, is how it captures movements for the top half of the face, which is obviously covered up.

The researchers mounted eight strain gauges inside the foam liner of the Rift and developed software based on the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) often used by animators to integrate the data from the depth-sensing camera, strain gauges, and the Rift itself. The result is an eerily accurate representation of the user’s facial expressions, down to the smallest of movements. Even better, latency was generally low, with the researchers measuring 3ms for facial feature detection, 5ms for blend shape optimisation, and 3ms for the mapping in software.

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Banning Philosophical Exemptions to Vaccination While Keeping Religious Ones Makes No Sense

Photograph by Joe Raedle / Getty

by Jerry Coyne

Forty-eight states in America have laws allowing children who attend public school to do so without being vaccinated—if they have religious reasons. In 19 of those states, you can also avoid vaccination if your exemption is based on philosophical reasons.

Every other kid, save those with medical exemptions—compromised immune systems and the like—must be vaccinated, and for good reason. We know what happens when vaccinations aren’t required, and we’re starting to see the expected epidemics.

West Virginia and Mississippi are the only two states that don’t allow either philosophical or religious exemptions from vaccination. California is poised to join them, as its state Senate just approved a no-exemption billby a wide margin (medical exemptions will still be allowed).

Vermont has just joined the Rationality Crowd, but they didn’t go whole hog, reports Michael Specter in a New Yorker piece, “Vermont says No to the anti-vaccine movement,” The state eliminated philosophical exemptions for vaccinations but also recently mandated labeling for GMO foods, those derived from genetically modified organisms:

Just a year after Vermont became the first state to require labels for products made with genetically modified organisms, Governor Peter Shumlin on Thursday signed an equally controversial but very different kind of legislation: the state has now become the first to remove philosophical exemptions from its vaccination law.

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