New computer program first to recognize sketches more accurately than a human

The program could successfully identify a seagull, pigeon, flying bird and standing bird better than humans. Credit: QMUL, Mathias Eitz, James Hays and Marc Alexa

by Science Daily

Researchers from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) have built the first computer program that can recognise hand-drawn sketches better than humans.

Known as Sketch-a-Net, the program is capable of correctly identifying the subject of sketches 74.9 per cent of the time compared to humans that only managed a success rate of 73.1 per cent.

As sketching becomes more relevant with the increase in the use of touchscreens, the development could provide a foundation for new ways to interact with computers.

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Pharmacists can’t claim religion to deny emergency contraception, appeals court rules

A pharmacist filling a perscription.

by Reuters

The state of Washington can require a pharmacy to deliver medicine even if the pharmacy’s owner has a religious objection, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday, the latest in a series of judgments on whether religious believers can opt out of providing services.

The ruling, from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, came in a case filed by pharmacists who objected to delivering emergency contraceptives. The 9th Circuit overturned a lower court that had said the rules were unconstitutional.

The U.S. Supreme Court last year allowed closely held corporations to seek exemptions from the Obamacare health law’s contraception requirement.

In Washington, the state permits a religiously objecting individual pharmacist to deny medicine, as long as another pharmacist working at the location provides timely delivery. The rules require a pharmacy to deliver all medicine, even if the owner objects.

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Earth 2.0: Nasa says scientists have found ‘closest twin’ outside solar system

Image: NASA

by Alan Yuhas

Scientists on the hunt for extraterrestrial life have discovered “the closest twin to Earth” outside the solar system, Nasa announced on Thursday.

Working off four years’ worth of data from the Kepler space telescope, researchers from Nasa, the Seti Institute and several universities announced the new exoplanet along with 12 possible “habitable” other exoplanets and 500 new candidates in total.

The new planet, named Kepler 452b, is “the closest twin to Earth, or the Earth 2.0 that we’ve found so far in the dataset”, said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for Nasa’s mission directorate.

“This is the first possibly rocky, habitable planet around a solar-type star,” said Jeff Coughlin, a Seti scientist. All 11 previously discovered exoplanets of a similar size and orbit travel around stars that are smaller and cooler than the sun.

“It is the closest thing that we have to another place that somebody might call home,” said Jon Jenkins, a Nasa scientist. The planet is like Earth’s “older, bigger first cousin”, he said.

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New computer program first to recognize sketches more accurately than a human

The program could successfully identify a seagull, pigeon, flying bird and standing bird better than humans. Credit: QMUL, Mathias Eitz, James Hays and Marc Alexa

by Science Daily

Researchers from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) have built the first computer program that can recognise hand-drawn sketches better than humans.

Known as Sketch-a-Net, the program is capable of correctly identifying the subject of sketches 74.9 per cent of the time compared to humans that only managed a success rate of 73.1 per cent.

As sketching becomes more relevant with the increase in the use of touchscreens, the development could provide a foundation for new ways to interact with computers.

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Pharmacists can’t claim religion to deny emergency contraception, appeals court rules

A pharmacist filling a perscription.

by Reuters

The state of Washington can require a pharmacy to deliver medicine even if the pharmacy’s owner has a religious objection, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday, the latest in a series of judgments on whether religious believers can opt out of providing services.

The ruling, from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, came in a case filed by pharmacists who objected to delivering emergency contraceptives. The 9th Circuit overturned a lower court that had said the rules were unconstitutional.

The U.S. Supreme Court last year allowed closely held corporations to seek exemptions from the Obamacare health law’s contraception requirement.

In Washington, the state permits a religiously objecting individual pharmacist to deny medicine, as long as another pharmacist working at the location provides timely delivery. The rules require a pharmacy to deliver all medicine, even if the owner objects.

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Earth 2.0: Nasa says scientists have found ‘closest twin’ outside solar system

Image: NASA

by Alan Yuhas

Scientists on the hunt for extraterrestrial life have discovered “the closest twin to Earth” outside the solar system, Nasa announced on Thursday.

Working off four years’ worth of data from the Kepler space telescope, researchers from Nasa, the Seti Institute and several universities announced the new exoplanet along with 12 possible “habitable” other exoplanets and 500 new candidates in total.

The new planet, named Kepler 452b, is “the closest twin to Earth, or the Earth 2.0 that we’ve found so far in the dataset”, said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for Nasa’s mission directorate.

“This is the first possibly rocky, habitable planet around a solar-type star,” said Jeff Coughlin, a Seti scientist. All 11 previously discovered exoplanets of a similar size and orbit travel around stars that are smaller and cooler than the sun.

“It is the closest thing that we have to another place that somebody might call home,” said Jon Jenkins, a Nasa scientist. The planet is like Earth’s “older, bigger first cousin”, he said.

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Link Between Religiosity, Good Health Debunked

Photo: Arthimedes/Shutterstock

by Tom Jacobs

Religious devotion, as news reports constantly remind us, can inspire everything from empathy for the poor to horrific violence. But whatever its impact on society, divine belief has widely been seen as beneficial to individuals, as it has also consistently been linked with better-than-average mental and physical health.

Newly published research from Germany strongly challenges that latter contention. After examining data from 59 countries, University of Cologne psychologist Olga Stavrova concludes that “the health and longevity benefits of religiosity are restricted to highly religious regions.”

In the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, she adds this is also true within the United States, with previously reported links between health, faith, and churchgoing confined to areas where religious belief and attendance are the norm.

The results suggest any protective effect of religion is the result of fitting in comfortably with one’s surroundings—not the religious preference of those surroundings per se—and the reduced stress levels this alignment produces. For those who live in more secular societies, the impact of religion on health appears to be small to none.

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Genetic Evidence Could Rewrite History of First Americans

The Surui people of Brazil are related to indigenous Australians, a new genetic study shows. The research suggests that the prehistoric settlers of the New World could have arrived in two separate waves. PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL NICHOLS, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

by Mark Strauss

Since the 1930s, it’s been a generally accepted theory that indigenous Americans are descendants of Siberians who came to the New World by crossing a land bridge into Alaska around 15,000 years ago.

But, the details of that migration remain a source of contention. Did the Asians who trekked across the Bering Strait arrive in one or several waves? Were some of them isolated from the rest, settling on the land bridge until it submerged beneath the water of melting glaciers?

Two new studies—relying on genetic data from living individuals and ancient skeletons—offer possible answers, albeit with different interpretations.

The first research paper, published this week in Nature, suggests that there were two founding populations. The investigating scientists, led by Harvard University geneticist David Reich, discovered that present-day Amazonian peoples in South America can trace at least part of their ancestry to indigenous Australasian populations in New Guinea, Australia, and the Andaman Islands.

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Malaysian activists question role of Muslim ‘fashion police’

A transgender model introduces herself during the SEED-organized Fashion International Extravaganza pageant in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on May 26, 2015. Religion News Service photo by Alexandra Radu

by Reuters

Women in Malaysia, long seen as a moderate Islamic nation, have been denied entry to government buildings on the grounds their skirts were too revealing, fanning fears of growing conservatism in a country with large non-Muslim minorities.

Prime Minister Najib Razak’s reluctance to intervene on the sudden enforcement of a dress code, analysts say, shows the liberal-minded leader is unwilling to stand up to conservatives at a time when he is battling allegations of corruption.

Ethnic sensitivities can often trigger dispute in Malaysia, particularly as none of those criticized for their clothes was from the Muslim Malay community that forms two-thirds of a population of about 30 million. Ethnic Chinese number 25 percent, and Indians about 7 percent.

The dress code, which bars revealing clothes for women in government buildings, had not been strictly followed, so the tougher enforcement over garments seen as showing too much leg came as a shock to many Malaysians.

The incidents went viral on social media, with activists saying they highlighted an expansion of powers for minor officials, who can now judge, and correct, women’s attire.

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India and Israel Start to See Enemies Within

PHOTOGRAPHER: NARINDER NANU/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

By Pankaj Mishra

Cultural revolutions are underway in two nation-states — India and Israel — founded by secular nationalists in the late 1940s. Right-wing demagogues, emerging in both countries from among previously unrepresented masses, seek to forge a new national identity by stigmatizing particular religious and secular groups.

There are eerie similarities between the Hindu thugs who assault Muslim males marrying Hindu women and followers of the far-right Israeli group Lehava (Flame), who try to break up weddings between Muslims and Jews.

More importantly, religious-political chauvinism is now amplified by figures in power as well. Last week, Israel’s minister of religious services claimed that Reform Jews were not Jews. A minister in Narendra Modi’s government has described Indian Muslims and Christians in India as “bastards.”

The new ruling classes seem obsessed with moral and patriotic education, reverence for national symbols and icons (mostly right-wing), and the uniqueness of national culture and history.

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New Horizons Sharpens Our View of Pluto’s Icy Heart

By Jonathan Corum

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is sending back images of Pluto taken during its flyby on July 14. The images reveal a varied surface with frozen plains and ice mountains. The piano-size spacecraft traveled nine years and three billion miles to study the dwarf planet and its five moons.

THE WESTERN EDGE OF PLUTO’S HEART New images released on Tuesday expand the visible area between Sputnik Planum, an icy plain crisscrossed with shallow troughs, and the mountain range called Norgay Montes. Many craters are visible in the dark area that forms the left edge of Pluto’s heart shape.

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Read the full article and see all additional pictures by clicking the name of the source located below.

Physicists find surprising ‘liquid-like’ particle interactions in Large Hadron Collider

Rice undergraduate student Benjamin Tran, graduate student Michael Northup, postdoctoral student Maxime Guilbaud and graduate students Zhenyu Chen and Zhoudunming Tu were part of the Rice team of physicists on the Large Hadron Collider’s Compact Muon Solenoid experiment that co-authored a paper describing the unexpected particle interactions from proton and lead-nuclei collisions. Credit: Zhoudunming Tu

by Don Lincoln

Three years ago, Rice physicists and their colleagues on the Large Hadron Collider’s (LHC’s) Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment stumbled on an unexpected phenomenon. Physicists smashed protons into lead nuclei at nearly the speed of light, which caused hundreds of particles to erupt from these collisions. But that wasn’t the surprise. What was surprising is where these particles went: Rather than spreading out evenly in all directions, the particles coming out of the collisions preferentially lined up in a specific direction.

Now, the Rice team has co-authored a paper that describes the unexpected particle interactions from these proton and lead-nuclei collisions.

Particle detectors are shaped a little like a soup can. In these kinds of collisions, there is a tendency for particles to amass in a line along the axis of the can known as a “ridge.” Up until now, physicists understood a lot about what happens when a pair of protons or a pair of lead nuclei collide, but not a lot about what happens when a proton hits a lead nucleus: Would the hot nuclear matter coming out of the collision act like protons colliding, in which the post-collision particles coast along without feeling the effect of their neighbors? Or would the particles coming out of proton and lead collisions act in a more collective, liquid-like way as in lead-nuclei collisions?

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Rare system of five stars discovered

by Paul Rincon

Astronomers have discovered a very rare system of five connected stars.

The quintuplet consists of a pair of closely linked stars – binaries – one of which has a lone companion; it is the first known system of its kind.

The pair of stars orbit around a mutual centre of gravity, but are separated by more than the distance of Pluto’s orbit around the Sun.

The findings have been presented at the UK National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno.

The unusual system lies 250 light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. It was discovered in data gathered by the SuperWASP (Wide Angle Search for Planets) project.

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Pope Francis’ approval ratings slump sharply in US, led by conservative dismay

by David Gibson

Growing conservative disaffection with Pope Francis appears to be taking a toll on his once Teflon-grade popularity in the U.S., with a new Gallup poll showing the pontiff’s favorability rating among all Americans dropping to 59 percent from a 76 percent peak early last year.

Among conservatives the dropoff has been especially sharp: just 45 percent view Francis favorably today as opposed to 72 percent a year ago.

“This decline may be attributable to the pope’s denouncing of ‘the idolatry of money’ and attributing climate change partially to human activity, along with his passionate focus on income inequality — all issues that are at odds with many conservatives’ beliefs,” Gallup analyst Art Swift wrote Wednesday (July 22) when the survey was published.

But liberal fervor for the Argentine pope, who was elected to great acclaim in March 2013, has also cooled, dropping an average of 14 points.

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Philae comet lander falls silent

by BBC

The Philae comet lander has fallen silent, according to scientists working on the European Rosetta mission.

The fridge-sized spacecraft, which landed on Comet 67P in November, last made contact on 9 July.

But efforts to contact it again since then have failed, scientists have said.

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Cats ‘control mice’ with chemicals in their urine

by Victoria Gill

Cat v mouse: it is probably the most famous predator-prey pairing, enshrined in idioms and a well-known cartoon.

And cats, it turns out, even have chemical warfare in their anti-mouse arsenal – contained in their urine.

Researchers found that when very young mice were exposed to a chemical in cat urine, they were less likely to avoid the scent of cats later in life.

The findings were presented at the Society for Experimental Biology’s annual meeting in Prague.

The researchers, from the AN Severtov Institute of Ecology and Evolution in Moscow, had previously found that the compound – aptly named felinine – causes pregnant mice to abort.

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Why have I never taught a Jewish child?

Is this the way to unite society – with faith schools teaching the supremacy of their ideology and how wrong the rest of us are, asks Dennis O'Sullivan, a headteacher with thirty-five years of experience in education.

by Dennis O’Sullivan

Teaching British Values is now compulsory in our schools and we are drawing in on ourselves, into Little Britain, because of a fear of the actions of a tiny, tiny minority of so-called radicalised British Muslim youth.

As we clamour for restrictions on immigration, alongside a liberal’s fear of talking about race, we label some communities as dangerous and not very British. Fear of Islam is irrational but encouraging Muslims to retreat as some sort of alien breed is counter to our democracy and the values we claim as our national identity. And it alienates Muslims.

Faith schools are marching towards segregation and the creation and strengthening of racial barriers between communities. The government adores free schools and plans to open another 500, many of them single faith schools.

In 2014 there were 6,848 state funded faith schools – about a third of the total and around a 3% increase in the last decade. Jewish and Muslim faith schools, a tiny minority of these, increased from 37 to 48 and from 7 to 18 respectively over the last 7 years. 1.8 million students are in faith schools. Most of these are Catholic or Church of England primary schools.

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How Textbooks Can Teach Different Versions Of History

LA Johnson/NPR

by Laura Isensee

This summer there’s been an intense debate surrounding the Confederate flag and the legacy of slavery in this country.

In Texas that debate revolves around new textbooks that 5 million students will use when the school year begins next month.

The question is, are students getting a full and accurate picture of the past?

Eleventh-grade U.S. history teacher Samantha Manchac is concerned about the new materials and is already drawing up her lesson plans for the coming year. She teaches at The High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, a public school in Houston.

The first lesson she says she’ll give her kids is how textbooks can tell different versions of history. “We are going to utilize these textbooks to some extent, but I also want you to be critical of the textbooks and not take this as the be-all and end-all of American history,” she imagines telling her new students.

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Religion declining in U.S., but more cities, like Irvine, seek to add ‘In God We Trust’ motto to city halls

San Juan Capistrano is one of the Orange County cities that's added the motto, "In God We Trust," to its civic buildings. FILE: THE REGISTER

by Sarah de Crescenzo

As the percentage of Americans who consider themselves unaffiliated with a religion grows, the number of Orange County cities using municipal facilities and time to recognize religion also is on the upswing.

Orange County is home to countless churches, including Saddleback Church, one of the nation’s largest. Irvine Mayor Steven Choi has said the city encompasses more than 80 places of worship.

Members of that religious community cheered in recent years as city after city approved proposals to acknowledge faith inside the walls of City Hall by displaying the nation’s motto “In God We Trust” at the dais and beginning council meetings with prayer.

Tonight, the Irvine council considers adding the phrase to its halls – mirroring a move made by many Orange County cities, starting in 2007 with Westminster.

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Taj Mahal suicide bid: Hindu and Muslim forbidden to marry

by BBC

A young couple have attempted to commit suicide in the grounds of the Taj Mahal, India’s famed monument to love.

Police say the pair – a Hindu and a Muslim – slit their own throats after their parents had refused to let them marry because of different religions.

They were found in a pool of blood, and are now said to be in a stable condition.

Marriage outside religion or caste still attracts censure, and even honour killings, in parts of India.

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Human color vision gives people the ability to see nanoscale differences

Wiki Commons

by Phys.org

The human eye is an amazing instrument and can accurately distinguish between the tiniest, most subtle differences in color. Where human vision excels in one area, it seems to fall short in others, such as perceiving minuscule details because of the natural limitations of human optics.

In a paper published today in The Optical Society’s new, high-impact journal Optica, a research team from the University of Stuttgart, Germany and the University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland, has harnessed the human eye‘s color-sensing strengths to give the eye the ability to distinguish between objects that differ in thickness by no more than a few nanometers—about the thickness of a cell membrane or an individual virus.

This ability to go beyond the diffraction limit of the human eye was demonstrated by teaching a small group of volunteers to identify the remarkably subtle color differences in light that has passed through thin films of titanium dioxide under highly controlled and precise lighting conditions. The result was a remarkably consistent series of tests that revealed a hitherto untapped potential, one that rivals sophisticated optics tools that can measure such minute thicknesses, such as ellipsometry.

“We were able to demonstrate that the unaided human eye is able to determine the thickness of a thin film—materials only a few nanometers thick—by simply observing the color it presents under specific lighting conditions,” said Sandy Peterhänsel, University of Stuttgart, Germany and principal author on the paper. The actual testing was conducted at the University of Eastern Finland.

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Scientists Demonstrate Animal Mind-Melds

Credit: Jonathon Rosen

by Carl Zimmer

A single neuron can’t do much on its own, but link billions of them together into a network and you’ve got a brain.

But why stop there?

In recent years, scientists have wondered what brains could do if they were linked together into even bigger networks. Miguel A. Nicolelis, director of the Center for Neuroengineering at Duke University, and his colleagues have now made the idea a bit more tangible by linking together animal brains with electrodes.

In a pair of studies published on Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers report that rats and monkeys can coordinate their brains to carry out such tasks as moving a simulated arm or recognizing simple patterns. In many of the trials, the networked animals performed better than individuals.

“At least some times, more brains are better than one,” said Karen S. Rommelfanger, director of the Neuroethics Program at the Center for Ethics at Emory University, who was not involved in the study.

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The Confederate Flag and the 10 Commandments

by Herb Silverman

South Carolina finally did the right thing by removing the Confederate battle flag from capitol grounds. The state had been bitterly divided about whether the flag represents heritage or hate, while I believe it represents heritage and hate. There is nothing in the South Carolina or U.S. Constitutions that prohibits flying the Confederate flag on public property, but the court of public opinion changed after a Confederate flag-promoting racist murdered nine African Americans recently in a Charleston church.

I applaud Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) who called for the removal of the Confederate flag from South Carolina Statehouse grounds in an attempt to unify citizens who have diverse views on the flag, but Senator Scott and I part company over whether South Carolina should endorse the Ten Commandments. As a member of Charleston County Council in 1997, Scott insisted on posting the Ten Commandments on the wall of council chambers, despite being told that he would lose any legal challenge to the action. In response, Scott argued that the display was needed to remind citizens of moral absolutes. Scott, normally a fiscal conservative, then added, “Whatever it costs in the pursuit of this goal (of displaying the Commandments) is worth it.” The court, as expected, declared the display unconstitutional and handed taxpayers a substantial bill for legal costs.

Even worse was Alabama Judge Roy Moore, who in 2001 placed a 5000-pound block of granite inscribed with the Ten Commandments in the Judicial Building in Montgomery. After courts ruled that this violated the constitutional prohibition against religious endorsement, Moore refused to remove the monument so he was removed from office in 2003. However, he’s now back as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court and ignoring federal law that allows for gay marriage.

Government officials continue to promote the Ten Commandments while disregarding secular laws they swear to uphold. The most recent example is from Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin (R), who defied a state Supreme Court ruling that a monument to the Ten Commandments be removed from the grounds of her state capitol.

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Researchers develop basic computing elements for bacteria

The illustration depicts Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron (white) living on mammalian cells in the gut (large pink cells coated in microvilli) and being activated by exogenously added chemical signals (small green dots) to express specific genes, such as those encoding light-generating luciferase proteins (glowing bacteria). Image by: Janet Iwasa

by Helen Knight

The “friendly” bacteria inside our digestive systems are being given an upgrade, which may one day allow them to be programmed to detect and ultimately treat diseases such as colon cancer and immune disorders.

In a paper published today in the journal Cell Systems, researchers at MIT unveil a series of sensors, memory switches, and circuits that can be encoded in the common human gut bacterium Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron.

These basic computing elements will allow the bacteria to sense, memorize, and respond to signals in the gut, with future applications that might include the early detection and treatment of inflammatory bowel disease or colon cancer.

Researchers have previously built genetic circuits inside model organisms such as E. coli. However, such strains are only found at low levels within the human gut, according to Timothy Lu, an associate professor of biological engineering and of electrical engineering and computer science, who led the research alongside Christopher Voigt, a professor of biological engineering at MIT.

“We wanted to work with strains like B. thetaiotaomicron that are present in many people in abundant levels, and can stably colonize the gut for long periods of time,” Lu says.

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Judge: Rankin school district in contempt over prayer

by Jeff Amy

A federal judge has found the Rankin County school district in contempt of court for continuing to promote Christianity during school hours after it agreed to stop.

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves ordered the district Friday to pay $7,500 to the plaintiff as punishment for violating a 2013 order and again ordered it to stop sponsoring prayers at graduations, assemblies, athletic competitions and other school events.

The district first got into trouble when a Northwest Rankin High School student represented by the American Humanist Association sued over having to attend a school assembly that promoted Christianity. The district settled the suit in 2013, agreeing that activities during school hours would not advance, endorse or inhibit any religion.

But six months later, the same student attended a district-wide honors assembly at Brandon High School. The program, honoring students who scored above 22 on the ACT college test, was opened with a prayer by the Rev. Rob Gill, pastor of St. Mark’s United Methodist Church.

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Touchpad Breathalyzers Could Soon be Standard in Cars

by Robert Montenegro

Many people in the United States convicted of a DUI are required to install breathalyzer equipment, also known as Ignition Interlock Devices, in their vehicles. Upon entering the car, the driver is required to blow into the device, which then detects whether the driver has too much alcohol in their blood. If so, it’ll do exactly what its name suggests and prevent the car from starting. Then, at random times on the road, the device will require a retest to make sure the driver isn’t up to any funny business behind the wheel. Failure to take the retest results in the car transforming into a rolling noise violation — alarms hollering, horns blaring — until the driver pulls over and turns off the ignition.

While this system tends to work well in preventing repeat offenses, an IID isn’t always appealing to those who want to voluntarily install one to be extra safe. They’re not exactly discreet, cost at least $50/month, and are specifically designed to be kind of inconvenient. Luckily, we’re about to enter a new era of DUI prevention built upon a bevy of smart new technologies.

Becca Smouse of USA Today has the scoop:

“A new generation of technology is taking shape around systems that prevent cars from operating if the driver is drunk. Researchers say the new technology is so promising that they compare it to the advent of the seat belt in terms of its potential.

‘This is the single best opportunity we have to save lives,’ says Bud Zaouk, director of the Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety (DADSS), a government-funded research organization.”

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Health Law’s Contraceptive Rule Eased for Businesses With Religious Objections

Demonstrators protested outside the Supreme Court after its decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores in June 2014. Credit: Doug Mills/The New York Times

by Robert Pear

The Obama administration issued new rules on Friday that allow closely held for-profit corporations like Hobby Lobby Stores to opt out of providing women with insurance coverage for contraceptives if the companies have religious objections.

 Women enrolled in such health plans would still be able to get birth control at no cost, the administration said. Insurers would pay for contraceptive services, but the payments would be separate from the employer’s health plan.

The rules came in response to a decision by the Supreme Court in June 2014. In that case, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, the court said that requiring family-owned corporations to pay for coverage of contraception under the Affordable Care Act violated a federal law protecting religious freedom.

The administration had argued against that conclusion, saying there was no precedent for granting “a religious exemption” to commercial enterprises like the Hobby Lobby craft stores.

But under the rules issued by the administration on Friday, certain for-profit businesses will be able to obtain an accommodation like the one already available to nonprofit religious groups, including Roman Catholic universities, hospitals and charities that object to covering the costs of contraceptives.

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New Hybrid Robot Has Soft ‘Skin’ But Hard ‘Guts’

Roboticists created this hybrid robot that has a soft exterior but a hard interior. Credit: Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and the Harvard John A. Paulson School of E ngineering and Applied Sciences

by Charles Q. Choi

It may seem soft and squishy to the touch, but a new robot is tough on the inside and ready to pounce, researchers say.

The 3D-printed bot has hard insides but a soft exterior, and this blend of materials makes it much better at explosion-powered jumps than droids that are either completely hard or completely soft, according to a new study.

Such leaping robots could one day come in handy in harsh environments too dangerous for humans, particularly because the bots are capable of surviving hard falls and other unforeseen circumstances, scientists added.

“One wild potential application would be in space — on the moon or Mars or other planets,” said study co-lead author Nicholas Bartlett, a roboticist at Harvard University. “These are unpredictable environments, and a soft robot that can bend and adapt to such environments and put up with a lot of punishment could be really useful. You could also think of more practical applications, such as search-and-rescue missions in disaster scenarios such as collapsed buildings, where a soft robot could go where no wheeled robot could navigate.”

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Childhood adversities, including witnessing parental domestic violence, linked to later migraines

by Science Daily

Adults who were exposed to childhood adversity, including witnessing parental domestic violence, childhood physical and sexual abuse have higher odds of experiencing migraine headaches in adulthood, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Toronto.

“We found the more types of violence the individual had been exposed to during their childhood, the greater the odds of migraine. For those who reported all three types of adversities–parental domestic violence, childhood physical and sexual abuse–the odds of migraine were a little over three times higher for men and just under three times higher for women” said Sarah Brennenstuhl, PhD, first author of the study.

Investigators examined a nationally representative sample of 12,638 women and 10,358 men aged 18 and over from the 2012 Canadian Community Health Survey-Mental Health.

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Yousef Muhammad Ali faces trial tomorrow for criticising Islam

A picture taken on July 3, 2014 shows the building of Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region's parliament in Arbil, Kurdistan's capital in northern Iraq. The president of Kurdistan, Massud Barzani asked its parliament to start organising a referendum on independence. AFP PHOTO / SAFIN HAMED

by Maryam Namazie

Yousef Muhammad Ali, born in 1987, faces trial on 13 July in Iraqi Kurdistan for criticising Islam. Please take urgent action right away and write to the Kurdish regional authorities to drop charges and to arrest those who have threatened him instead.

BACKGROUND

Yousef Muhammad Ali who spent many years studying Islam and Sharia law made a presentation in school on the Big Bang Theory. Islamists in his class instigated a fatwa against him. Also he faced threats when he criticised Islam on Facebook. Upon receiving a number of death threats, he contacted the police and filed a grievance against a perpetrator. His case was sent to a public tribunal in Darbandikhan, which rather than address the threats to Yousef Muhammad Ali’s life, had him arrested. He was then transferred to Sulaymaniyah jail. On 15th December 2014, his sentence was renewed until the 22nd December 2014. After campaigning by rights activists and journalists in Kurdistan and abroad he was released on bail on 17 December 2014. His hearing date is on 13 July 2015.

PLEASE SUPPORT HIM BY WRITING TO THE KURDISH AUTHORITIES AND URGING THEM TO RELEASE HIM.

You can write to the below:

Kurdistan Parliament Email & Contact number:
[email protected]
00964662230242

Ministry of Justice Email & Contact number:
[email protected]
00964662551983

Kurdistan Regional Government Email:
[email protected]
[email protected]

Please also copy me in the emails so I can forward it to his solicitor: [email protected]

The Courage to Venture Beyond: Of Polymaths and Multidisciplinarians

Goethe’s symmetric colour wheel with associated symbolic qualities (1809): – Public Domain Image

by Jalees Rehman

“Focus! Focus! Focus! Create a narrow area of scientific expertise in which you excel and develop a national or international reputation for excellence!”

Established scientists often share this sort of advice with their younger peers who are about to embark on their academic career. It isn’t a bad advice and I have known many scientists who have succeeded in academia by following it. Every day, more than a thousand original scientific papers are published. A major aspect of scientific research is placing your own findings into context of already existing knowledge. How is your work different from what is already known? What impact will your work have in your scientific field? Have you developed a new tool or concept that will be of significant value to your peers? To engage in cutting-edge research therefore requires that one stays abreast of the amassing scientific literature, carefully curating which of the numerous published findings are most relevant to one’s own work.

A scientist with too broad of an area of scientific expertise or too many distinct scientific interests may drown in the ocean of newly generated knowledge. Keeping up with the scientific literature and actively conducting experiments in multiple scientific disciplines may  take up so much effort that it leaves little time and resources to dig deeply and unearth high-impact knowledge in any one area.

Some scientists devote decades of research to studying a single protein in a cell. Considering the complexity of biological phenomena, a single protein X can supply a seemingly inexhaustible reservoir of research questions. How is the synthesis of the protein regulated? Which molecular pathways lead to the degradation of the protein? Which are the proteins that interact with X? Are there specific environmental signals which control the expression of the gene which is transcribed and translated into protein X? How does a transgenic mouse behave when protein X levels are over-expressed in selected organs or tissues? Answering each one of these questions by carefully interrogating all the detailed molecular mechanisms involved can take several years. A scientist who uses her creativity and perseverance in order to develop unique molecular tools and animal models to address these questions will likely receive national or international recognition and a steady stream of research funding for her expertise in all matters relating to protein X.

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Islamism prevails even as we suppress free speech

Murdered blogger Avijit Roy, pictured with his wife, Rafida Bonya Ahmed, on a tribute Facebook page.

by Nick Cohen

No one could have predicted that the Bangladeshi writer Rafida Bonya Ahmed would make it to London last week. That she is alive at all is a miracle – to use a word of which she would thoroughly disapprove. As I watched her deliver the British Humanist Association’s annual Voltaire lecture , I saw a dignified and principled intellectual it was our duty to emulate and defend. I could not understand why anyone would want to harm, let alone kill, her

But many do. In February, Islamist fanatics hacked her husband, Avijit Roy, to death with meat cleavers as the couple left a book fair in Dhaka. They nearly killed Ahmed too: slicing off her thumb and covering her body with wounds. To hear her talk about her murdered husband made me long to have met him. He was a typical intellectual – hopeless with anything practical but in love with literature, science and free debate.

Together, Ahmed and Roy ran a secular blog that promoted the writings of young liberal Bangladeshis They wrote on evolution and humanism; they condemned extremism fearlessly, as the title of Roy’s 2014 book The Virus of Faith makes clear. Seeing and fearing a courageous opponent, the enemies of free thought killed him for his ideas.

Ahmed talked about how compromised the Bangladeshi state had become, and you could easily make the mistake of thinking her story had nothing to do with us. Yet there were guards at the doors of her lecture room, searching bags for bombs and guns. A widow, still recovering from the slash of meat cleavers, with no weapon to threaten anyone beyond the power of her thought, is as much a target in London as Dhaka.

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Tiny sponge fossil upsets evolutionary model

The tiny fossil sponge was just 1.2 millimeters in width, seen here in a high-resolution scanning electron microscope image. Credit: Zongjun Yin/Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology

by Phys.org

Researchers have unearthed a fossil of a sponge, no bigger than a grain of sand, that existed 60 million years earlier than many expected.

This is the first time paleontologists have found a convincing fossil sponge specimen that predates the Cambrian explosion—a 20-million-year phenomenon, beginning about 542 million years ago, when most major types of animal life appear.

New tools could allow scientists to discover other fossils that significantly predate the start of the Cambrian explosion, according to David Bottjer, professor of earth sciences, biological sciences and environmental studies and co-author of a study announcing the finding of the sponge in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“It’s easier to look at large fossils that don’t require high-tech instruments,” Bottjer said. “We’re analyzing very tiny things that require sophisticated microscopy, and we’re really just starting to look at this kind of evidence.”

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Ancient Man Had Neanderthal Great-Great Grandfather

A reconstruction shows a Neanderthal woman holding a spear. Scientists know that modern humans and Neanderthals lived together in Europe and occasionally mated. PHOTOGRAPH BY JOE MCNALLY, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

by Michael D. Lemonick

A modern human who lived in what is now Romania between 37,000 and 42,000 years ago had at least one Neanderthal ancestor as little as four generations back—which is to say, a great-great-grandparent.

Scientists have known for at least half a decade that living humans bear traces of Neanderthal blood—or more specifically, Neanderthal DNA. Just when and where our ancestors bred with their now-extinct cousins, however, has been tricky to pin down until now. A new study published Monday in the journal Nature has the highest percentage of Neanderthal DNA of any modern human ever studied.

“I could hardly believe that we were lucky enough to hit upon an individual like this,” says study co-author Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig.

The specimen, known as Oase 1, consists only of a male jawbone, and from the moment it was discovered in 2002 its shape suggested that it might belong to a hybrid between Homo sapiens and Neanderthal. Those claims have remained controversial, but the new analysis lays the controversy to rest. “It’s really stunning,” says Oxford’s Tom Higham, an expert on the Neanderthal-human transition who was not involved in this research.

Part of what stuns Higham is the genomic artistry it took to tease useful genetic information out of the tiny DNA samples lead author Qiaomei Fu of Harvard Medical School and her team were able to extract from the jawbone. “We tried to do this in 2009 and failed,” says Pääbo. His lab has been working since then to improve their techniques, with resounding success.

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10 Questions About Hell From an Atheist

by Herb Silverman

When it comes to discussions about heaven and hell, I prefer Mark Twain’s quip: “Go to heaven for the climate, hell for the company.” Since OnFaith has published a few pieces lately from evangelicals on their theologies of hell (see here and here), I figured I’d throw my 10 cents into the ring and ask: What the hell is going on?

There are probably as many ways to think about hell as there are believers in hell. And as an atheist, I think the right way to think about hell is also the right way to think about heaven — both are nonexistent.

All this afterlife theology raises a lot of questions. Here are just 10 of them I’ve wondered about:

1. Why is faith not only important, but perhaps the deciding factor about who winds up in heaven or hell?

Whenever I’m asked what I’d do if I meet Jesus when I die, I say I would then have enough evidence to become a believer. Apparently, though, that would be too late. If a creator god exists, why would she create so many evidence-based humans if she wants us to make faith-based decisions?

2. Why do the last 30 seconds of life matter so much?

If an Adolph Hitler repented on his deathbed for his role in the Holocaust and accepted Jesus, some say he would go to heaven. I think it would be more reasonable (though what’s reason got to do with it?) for a person to be judged on his or her lifetime actions rather than on an end-of-life belief.

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Religious Trauma Syndrome: How some organized religion leads to mental health problems

Young depressed woman taking advice from her psychologist (Shutterstock)

by Valeria Tarico

At age sixteen I began what would be a four year struggle with bulimia.  When the symptoms started, I turned in desperation to adults who knew more than I did about how to stop shameful behavior—my Bible study leader and a visiting youth minister.  “If you ask anything in faith, believing,” they said.  “It will be done.” I knew they were quoting the Word of God. We prayed together, and I went home confident that God had heard my prayers.

But my horrible compulsions didn’t go away. By the fall of my sophomore year in college, I was desperate and depressed enough that I made a suicide attempt. The problem wasn’t just the bulimia.  I was convinced by then that I was a complete spiritual failure. My college counseling department had offered to get me real help (which they later did). But to my mind, at that point, such help couldn’t fix the core problem: I was a failure in the eyes of God. It would be years before I understood that my inability to heal bulimia through the mechanisms offered by biblical Christianity was not a function of my own spiritual deficiency but deficiencies in Evangelical religion itself.

Dr. Marlene Winell is a human development consultant in the San Francisco Area. She is also the daughter of Pentecostal missionaries. This combination has given her work an unusual focus. For the past twenty years she has counseled men and women in recovery from various forms of fundamentalist religion including the Assemblies of God denomination in which she was raised. Winell is the author of Leaving the Fold – A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving their Religion, written during her years of private practice in psychology. Over the years, Winell has provided assistance to clients whose religious experiences were even more damaging than mine. Some of them are people whose psychological symptoms weren’t just exacerbated by their religion, but actually caused by it.

A few years ago, Winell made waves by formally labeling what she calls “Religious Trauma Syndrome” (RTS) and beginning to write and speak on the subject for professional audiences. When the British Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Psychologists published a series of articles on the topic, members of a Christian counseling association protested what they called excessive attention to a “relatively niche topic.” One commenter said, “A religion, faith or book cannot be abuse but the people interpreting can make anything abusive.”

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Catherine Dunphy & The Clergy Project

by Drew Bekius

Wednesday afternoon, I locked the door to my Uptown apartment, and slid down the elevator on my way to a quick shift at the steakhouse. On my way out the front door, I stopped to check my mailbox, and that’s the moment I saw it. Right there waiting for me in my little mail slot was my Amazon preordered copy of Catherine Dunphy’s From Apostle to Apostate: The Story of the Clergy Project (Pitchstone, 2015).

All the way to the steakhouse I was wishing I wasn’t on my way to the steakhouse. All I wanted to do was dive into Dunphy’s book, which serves as her own personal deconversion story and leads into a chronicling of the earliest days of The Clergy Project and her work as the Acting Executive Director through the spring of 2014. Myself a TCP Board Member and the current Communications Chair, I was familiar with the general outline of those early days that she recounts (Much of it is here on the TCP website), but I was certainly excited to gain the full picture through Dunphy’s eyes.

And the word excited might be a bit of an understatement. Anticipation was full.

So the moment I finished my shift customer-servicing guests at the steakhouse, I was home on my couch and devouring every word. I finished early the next day, and loved each moment of the journey. A quick and effortless read, Apostle to Apostate comes in at just under 150 pages. But don’t let its brevity or ease mislead you. There’s a lot packed in this little book. Positioned through the eyes of her Roman Catholic upbringing, Dunphy shares from her heart about the passion-flowing faith that brought her to seminary, intent on a life of service, before ultimately moving beyond that faith in an embrace of something greater. She shares gripping, tear-inducing stories such as one attending Bible camp as a young adolescent in the wake of a local sex abuse scandal. But she also discourses with feminist and liberationist theologies and even waxes philosophy at times. Seriously, there’s a lot here.

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California Gov. Jerry Brown signs new vaccination law, one of nation’s toughest

Protesters rally earlier this month in Sacramento against a California measure eliminating personal belief exemptions for vaccinations. Gov. Jerry Brown signed the legislation Tuesday. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

by Phil Willon and Melanie Mason

Adopting one of the most far-reaching vaccination laws in the nation, California on Tuesday barred religious and other personal-belief exemptions for schoolchildren, a move that could affect tens of thousands of students and sets up a potential court battle with opponents of immunization.

California’s weakened public health defenses against measles and other preventable diseases led to the adoption of the measure, signed Tuesday by Gov. Jerry Brown, intended to stem the rising number of parents who opt not to inoculate their children.

Public health officials said a proliferation of waivers, many sought because of unfounded concerns about the safety of vaccines, helped fuel a measles outbreak that started at Disneyland in December and quickly spread across the West, infecting 150 people.

“I think it’s a great day for California’s children. You’re living in a state that just got a little safer,” said Dr. Paul Offit, chief of the division of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and an advocate of immunization.

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Remembering James Dunn: Baptist Champion Of Religious Freedom

Wake Forest Divinity School professor Rev. Dr. James Dunn. 2004 Wake Forest University Office of Creative Services. Photo by Ken Bennett.

by Rob Boston

When I began working for Americans United in 1987, one thing confused me: Why were there so many Southern Baptists hanging around?

Southern Baptists were the enemy – or so I thought. After all, they were extremely conservative and always advocating things like school prayer amendments and anti-LGBT legislation.

Then, a diminutive man in a bow tie named James M. Dunn set me straight. Sure, some Southern Baptists – the fundamentalists – do those things, he explained, but lots of other Baptists are much more moderate and hew to a proud Baptist tradition of religious liberty for all undergirded by the separation of church and state.

James introduced me to great Baptist heroes like John Leland, Isaac Backus and Thomas Helwys. My work at Americans United was enriched because I had the privilege of knowing James Dunn.

Dr. Dunn, who died July 4 at age 83, served as executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJC) from 1981-99. During that period, he was in the thick of several church-state battles.

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Robot controlled remotely with thoughts

From his hospital bed, a disabled patient is capable of controlling a telepresence robot and interacting with people he meets over Skype. Credit: Alain Herzog / EPFL

by Science Daily

For someone suffering from paralysis or limited mobility, visiting with other people is extremely difficult. A team of researchers at the Defitech Foundation Chair in Brain-Machine Interface (CNBI), headed by José del R. Millán, has however been working on a revolutionary brain-machine approach in order to restore a sense of independence to the disabled. The idea is to remotely control a robot from home with one’s thoughts. The research, involving numerous subjects located in different countries, produced excellent results in both human and technical terms. The conclusions are discussed in the June special edition of Proceedings of the IEEE, dedicated to brain-machine interfaces.

19 people tested, 100% success rate

Nine disabled people and ten healthy people in Italy, Germany and Switzerland took part in the task of piloting a robot with their thoughts. For several weeks, each of the subjects put on an electrode-studded hat capable of analysing their brain signals. They then instructed the robot to move, transmitting their instructions in real time via internet from their home country. By virtue of its video camera, screen and wheels, the robot, located in a laboratory of Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland), was able to film as it moved while displaying the face of the remote pilot via Skype. The person at the controls, as if moving in place of the robot, was able to interact with whoever the robot crossed paths with. “Each of the 9 subjects with disabilities managed to remotely control the robot with ease after less than 10 days of training,” said Professor Millán.

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Charles Darwin Movie in the Works at Disney

Naturalist Charles Darwin was born on February 12, 1809, in Shrewsbury, England. The originator of the theory of evolution by natural selection, Darwin served as naturalist on the H.M.S. Beagle from 1831-1836 during its scientific survey of South America and the South Pacific, using information gained from the voyage to fuel his numerous investigations. His best known work remains the 1859 book 'Origin of the Species', one of the most contentious scientific theories of the 19th century and beyond. (Credit Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

by Dave McNary

Disney has launched development on a Charles Darwin movie with Stephen Gaghan on board to direct from his own screenplay.

The studio acquired an untitled pitch from Gaghan, whose credits include writing the Oscar-winning “Traffic” and directing “Syriana” from his own script. Gaghan is in pre-production to direct Black Bear Pictures’ mining drama “Gold,” starring Matthew McConaughey.

Darwin, the English naturalist and geologist, established that all species of life have descended from common ancestors in his 1859 book “On the Origin of Species.”

Jeremy Thomas produced a Darwin movie, 2009’s “Creation,” starring real-life spouses Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany. That film, directed by Jon Amiel, focused on Darwin and his family as he struggled to finish “On the Origin of Species.”

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Single-Celled Planktonic Organisms Have Animal-Like Eyes, Scientists Say

Light micrograph of a warnowiid dinoflagellate: double arrowhead points to the ocelloid, and arrow to the posterior cell extension. Scale bar – 10 μm. Image credit: Mona Hoppenrath et al., doi: 10.1186/1471-2148-9-116.

by Sci-News.com

According to a research team headed by Prof Brian Leander of the University of British Columbia’s Departments of Botany and Zoology, single-celled organisms called warnowiid dinoflagellates evolved a tiny version of a multi-cellular eye, possibly to help see their prey better.

It’s an amazingly complex structure for a single-celled organism to have evolved. It contains a collection of sub-cellular organelles that look very much like the lens, cornea, iris and retina of multicellular eyes found in humans and other larger animals,” said Gregory Gavelis, a PhD student at the University of British Columbia and first author on the study published online in the journal Nature.

In fact, the ocelloid (eye-like structure) within the planktonic predator looks so much like a complex eye that it was originally mistaken for the eye of an animal that the plankton had eaten.

Marine biologists still don’t know exactly how warnowiid dinoflagellates use the eye. These organisms use small harpoon-like structures to hunt prey cells in the plankton, many of which are transparent.

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This time, Jerry Brown makes no mention of religion in vaccine signing

In this June 9, 2015 photo, Karman Willmer, left, and Shelby Messenger rally against SB 277, a California measure requiring schoolchildren to get vaccinated, outside the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif. Credit: Rich Pedroncelli - AP

by David Siders

Three years ago, in a relatively mild precursor to this year’s school vaccination bill, Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation requiring parents to consult a health professional before declining vaccinations for their schoolchildren.

But he made a special case for people who objected on religious grounds.

In a signing statement at the time, Brown said he wanted the law administered in such a way that “parents are not overly burdened by its implementation,” and he directed his Department of Public Health to ensure “people whose religious beliefs preclude vaccinations” were exempt.

Three years later, the vaccine bill Brown signed Tuesday undoes that allowance and more, eliminating the state’s religious and personal belief exemptions altogether.

California will now have one of the strictest schoolchild vaccination laws in the country.

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Isis ‘beheads two women in Syria for sorcery’ in first for self-styled caliphate

Getty Images

by Tom Brooks-Pollock

Two women have become the first to be beheaded by Isis after being accused of witchcraft, sorcery and working with elves by the Islamic extremist group, according to reports emerging from eastern Syria.

The executions, for a supposed breach of sharia law, were carried out on Sunday and Monday respectively, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in Britain, said.

In separate executions, both women were put to death alongside their husbands in Deir ez-Zour province – the first in Deir ez-Zour city on Sunday, the second in Mayadin on Monday – after being accused of using un-Islamic medicine by the extremist group.

The group says that this would be the first time the self-styled caliphate has killed women in this way. Previous executions of women have involved stoning or firing squads, mostly for adultery.

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Neuroscientists capture the moment a brain records an idea

This image illustrates how the study participants learned about the habitat and the diet of eight animals, such as the cytar (not its real zoological name). The set of habitat brain regions (A-green) and diet (B-red and blue) regions where the new knowledge was stored. (L refers to left hemisphere of the brain.) Image Courtesy of Carnegie Mellon University

by Daniel Culpan

Cutting-edge brain imaging technology has offered the first glimpse into how new concepts develop in the human brain.

The research, carried out at Carnegie Mellon University and published in Human Brain Mapping, involved teaching people a new concept and observing how it was coded in the same areas of the brain through neural representations.

The “olinguito” — a largely fruit-eating carnivore species that lives in rainforest treetops, newly discovered in 2013 — was initially used as a concept. Marcel Just, a professor of cognitive neuroscience in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, commented: “When people learned that the olinguito eats mainly fruit instead of meat, a region of their left inferior frontal gyrus — as well as several other areas — stored the new information according to its own code.”

The findings revealed that this new knowledge of the olinguito was encoded in exactly the same parts of the brain by everyone who learned it, indicating that the brain may operate its own kind of universal filing system.

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Self-healing aeroplane wings ‘to fix tiny cracks’

Jen Light/FlickrCC by SA 2.0

by Zoe Kleinman

Self-healing aeroplane wings could be introduced in the next five to 10 years, say UK researchers at the University of Bristol.

The team drew inspiration from the way the human body heals from a cut with blood that hardens into a scab.

They have developed tiny microspheres containing a liquid carbon-based “healing agent”, which are interspersed in the aeroplane wing itself.

The spheres burst when damaged, releasing the liquid, which hardens.

This hardening occurs when the liquid comes into contact with a catalyst substance, also present in the material of the modified wing. Temperature is an additional factor.

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Don’t Believe In Evolution? Try Thinking Harder

iStockphoto

by Tania Lombrozo

The theory of evolution by natural selection is among the best established in science, yet also among the most controversial for subsets of the American public.

For decades we’ve known that beliefs about evolution are well-predicted by demographic factors, such as religious upbringing and political affiliation. There’s also enormous variation in the acceptance of evolution across different countries, all of which suggests an important role for cultural input in driving beliefs about evolution. A child raised by Buddhists in California is much more likely to accept evolution than one raised by evangelical Protestants in Kansas.

But in the last 20 years or so, research in psychology and the cognitive science of religion has increasingly focused on another factor that contributes to evolutionary disbelief: the very cognitive mechanisms underlying human cognition.

Researchers have argued that a variety of basic human tendencies conspire to make natural selection especially aversive and difficult to understand, and to make creationism a compelling alternative. For instance, people tend to prefer explanations that offer certainty and a sense of purpose when it comes to their lives and the design of the natural world and they have an easier time wrapping their heads around theories that involve biological categories with clear boundaries — all of which are challenged by natural selection.

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