The Evolution of Religion 

Prof. Diamond argues that religion has encompassed at least four independent components that have arisen or disappeared at different stages of development of human societies over the last 10,000 years.

Diamond is a supremely talented theorist and gifted story teller. Give this 82 minute long lecture your undivided attention and you won’t be disappointed. 

cwnl:

The Majestic Circumzenithal Arcs

The circumzenithal arc, CZA, is the most beautiful of all the halos. The first sighting is always a surprise, an ethereal rainbow fled from its watery origins and wrapped improbably about the zenith. It is often described as an “upside down rainbow” by first timers. Someone also charmingly likened it to “a grin in the sky”.

Look straight up near to the zenith when the sun if fairly low and especially if sundogs are visible. The centre of the bow always sunwards and red is on the outside.

cwnl:

So I got to wondering after the whole #occupywallstreet took place and people finally began protesting against the banks and the rich and wallstreet, what’s to happen to that system? What would come after it? Then I remembered the concept of bitcoins which was brought to me before. Below are excerpts from an npr transcript all about bitcoins, their usage, and how they will be able to run side by side the dollar and euro in terms of currency. Check the full transcript as well, it’s a very interesting concept.

If the traders on Mt Gox understand the future, we all may soon see prices online quoted in dollars, euros and bitcoins. Robert Siegel talks about virtual currency “bitcoins” with Annie Lowrey, economy and business reporter for Slate.

Bitcoin is the first de-centralized digital currency. Bitcoins are digital coins you can send through the Internet. Compared to other alternatives, bitcoins have a number of advantages.

Basically, in order to possess a bitcoin, you have to have a program on your computer that can help trade the bitcoins. And then it’s stored on your computer in what’s called a digital wallet. And bitcoins have a value. One bitcoin, according to what it says on Mount Gox today, one bitcoin is a little bit over $7. You can take dollars and purchase bitcoins. Or you can simply purchase bitcoins from anybody who has a bitcoin.

There’s no central banking authority. There really is no banking system that supports this. It’s entirely peer to peer.

– Richard Feynman, American physicist (1918-1988),  in 1985, cited in G. Laurence Nickard, Phenomenal surfaces and noumenal depths: Philosophy and quantum theory, ProQuest, 2006, p. 5. (via amiquote)

Science After-hours: Female Orgasm Remains an Evolutionary Mystery

After baffling biologists for decades, the female orgasm has resisted yet another attempt to explain its elusive evolutionary origins.

A survey of orgasmic function in thousands of twins found none of the statistical patterns expected if female orgasm is just a coincidental byproduct of natural selection on its male counterpart, as has been suggested.

“The evolutionary basis of human female orgasm has been subject to furious scientific debate, which has recently intensified,” wrote University of Queensland geneticist Brendan Zietsch and Pekka Santtila of Finland’s Abo Akedemi University in a Sept. 3 Animal Behavior article. “These results challenge the byproduct theory of female orgasm.”

While the male orgasm is, in evolutionary and practical terms, a fairly straightforward thing — it makes men want to have sex more often, thus continuing their lineage, and is achieved with ease — the female orgasm is a far trickier beast.

Unlike male orgasm, which is found across the primate spectrum, female orgasm has skipped some species. (Lady gibbons, for example, are out of luck.) In humans, men are far more likely to experience orgasm than women, of whom one in 10 don’t ever experience it.

Read More

Stellar Demons of the Carina Nebula

A large bright nebula that surrounds several open clusters of stars. Eta Carinae and HD 93129A, two of the most massive and luminous stars in our Milky Way galaxy, are among them. The nebula lies at an estimated distance between 6,500 and 10,000 light years from Earth. It is located in the constellation of Carina. The nebula contains multiple O-type stars.

Copyright: Nikolaus Sulzenauer

Sex — As We Know It — Works Thanks to Ever-Evolving Host-Parasite Relationships, Biologists Find

It seems we may have parasites to thank for the existence of sex as we know it. Indiana University biologists have found that, although sexual reproduction between two individuals is costly from an evolutionary perspective, it is favored over self-fertilization in the presence of coevolving parasites. Sex allows parents to produce offspring that are more resistant to the parasites, while self-fertilization dooms populations to extinction at the hands of their biological enemies.

The July 8 report in Science, “Running with the Red Queen: Host-Parasite Coevolution Selects for Biparental Sex,” affirms the Red Queen hypothesis, an evolutionary theory who’s name comes from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland text: “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.” The idea is that sexual reproduction via cross-fertilization keeps host populations one evolutionary step ahead of the parasites, which are coevolving to infect them. It is within this coevolutionary context that both hosts and parasites are running (evolving) as fast as they can just to stay in the same place.

“The widespread existence of sex has been a major problem for evolutionary biology since the time of Charles Darwin,” said lead author Levi T. Morran. Sex does not make evolutionary sense, because it often involves the production of males. This is very inefficient, because males don’t directly produce any offspring. Self-fertilization is a far more efficient means of reproduction, and as such, evolutionary theory predicts that self-fertilization should be widespread in nature and sex should be rare. However, as we all know, this is not the case.

The Red Queen Hypothesis provides one possible explanation for the existence of sex.

“The Red Queen Hypothesis predicts that sex should allow hosts to evade infection from their parasites, whereas self-fertilization may increase the risk of infection,” said co-author Curtis M. Lively.

By combining the DNA of two parents, sex allows parents to produce offspring that are genetically diverse and different from their parents. Parasites that have adapted to infect one generation may have difficulty infecting the next generation. However, offspring produced through self-fertilization inherit the DNA of their single parent, thus any parasites adapted to infect the parent should also be capable of infecting the offspring.

Morran, a post-doctoral researcher, and Lively, a distinguished professor of biology, both in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Science’s Department of Biology, authored the report with biology undergraduates Olivia G. Schmidt, Ian A. Gelarden and Raymond C. Parrish II.

The team used the microscopic roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans as a host and the pathogenic bacteria Serratia marcescens to generate a host-parasite coevolutionary system in a controlled environment, allowing them to conduct more than 70 evolution experiments testing the Red Queen Hypothesis. They genetically manipulated the mating system of C. elegans, causing populations to mate either sexually, by self-fertilization, or a mixture of both within the same population. Then they exposed those populations to the S. marcescens parasite. The parasites were either allowed to coevolve with C. elegans or were prevented from evolving. The researchers then determined which mating system gave populations an evolutionary advantage.

“We found that the self-fertilizing populations of C. eleganswere rapidly driven extinct by the coevolving parasites, a result consistent with the Red Queen Hypothesis,” Morran said. On the other hand, sex allowed populations to keep pace with their parasites. “Sex helped populations adapt to their coevolving parasites, allowing parents to produce offspring that were resistant to infection and ultimately avoid extinction,” he noted.

In host populations where either sex or self-fertilization were possible, the evolutionary state of the parasite determined the most effective reproductive strategy. When the parasite did not coevolve, self-fertilization evolved as the dominant form of host reproduction. However, when the parasite was allowed to coevolve with the hosts, then sex became the favored reproductive strategy.

“Coevolution with the pathogen not only favored sex over self-fertilization, but also allowed sex to be maintained throughout the experiment,” Morran said.

These results are consistent with the Red Queen Hypothesis and may go a long way toward explaining the widespread existence of sex.

“Coevolving parasites seem to be very common in nature,” said Lively. “The experiment shows that coevolution with parasites, but not the presence of parasites per se, selects for higher levels of outcrossing. Thus the coevolutionary struggle between hosts and their parasites could explain the existence of males.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110707141158.htm

cognizingconsciousness:

Drug May Help Overwrite Bad Memories

Recalling painful memories while under the influence of the drug metyrapone reduces the brain’s ability to re-record the negative emotions associated with them, according to University of Montreal researchers at the Centre for Studies on Human Stress of Louis-H. Lafontaine Hospital. The team’s study challenges the theory that memories cannot be modified once they are stored in the brain.

“Metyrapone is a drug that significantly decreases the levels of cortisol, a stress hormone that is involved in memory recall,” explained lead author Marie-France Marin. Manipulating cortisol close to the time of forming new memories can decrease the negative emotions that may be associated with them. “The results show that when we decrease stress hormone levels at the time of recall of a negative event, we can impair the memory for this negative event with a long-lasting effect,” said Dr. Sonia Lupien, who directed the research.

Thirty-three men participated in the study, which involved learning a story composed of neutral and negative events. Three days later, they were divided into three groups — participants in the first group received a single dose of metyrapone, the second received double, while the third were given placebo. They were then asked to remember the story. Their memory performance was then evaluated again four days later, once the drug had cleared out.. “We found that the men in the group who received two doses of metyrapone were impaired when retrieving the negative events of the story, while they showed no impairment recalling the neutral parts of the story,” Marin explained. “We were surprised that the decreased memory of negative information was still present once cortisol levels had returned to normal.”

The research offers hope to people suffering from syndromes such as post-traumatic stress disorder. “Our findings may help people deal with traumatic events by offering them the opportunity to ‘write-over’ the emotional part of their memories during therapy,” Marin said. One major hurdle, however, is the fact that metyrapone is no longer commercially produced. Nevertheless, the findings are very promising in terms of future clinical treatments. “Other drugs also decrease cortisol levels, and further studies with these compounds will enable us to gain a better understanding of the brain mechanisms involved in the modulation of negative memories.”

(SD)

geneticist:

Australian performance artist, Stelarc, had an artificial ear surgically implanted into his arm to bring attention to the ways in which technology is blurring what is morally acceptable in terms of life. Stelarc plans to install a microphone into the prosthetic ear, thereby allowing it to “hear.” Read the full article here

I think this kind of sensationalist art is pious and ill-informed. “Look, science can be perverted into things strange and unnatural,” it scrams seemingly resolutely yet without any real purpose or direction. Well no fucking shit. Everything that can be misused to serve an unsavory end, is eventually misused to serve an unsavory end by some profiteering bastard. Stelarc’s prosthetic art could be transplanted onto a burn victim who lost an ear. Get off your soapbox and do something useful. 

New research involving the University of York explores the interplay between genes and environment when determining whether a mother is at high or low risk for post-natal depression.

As part of the continuing Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, launched in 1997, researchers, including Professor John Hobcraft, of York’s Department of Social Policy and Social Work and academics from Princeton, Penn State and Columbia Universities in the USA, examined the DNA of more than 1,200 mothers.

The authors examined two genetic markers- 5-HTTLPR and Stin2 -that have been linked to risk of depression. These data were then examined against whether or not the mother was depressed in the first year of her child’s life and her level of education — with low levels of education being a proxy for a negative environment and higher levels for a positive one.

The research is published inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

While post-natal depression affected less than a quarter (17 per cent) of those sampled, the rates varied depending on whether the mother carried specific variants of a gene associated with biological sensitivity to her environment and her level of education.

• Not surprisingly, mothers with genetic markers that made them more sensitive to their environment were more likely than other new mothers to become depressed if they were in a negative environment (i.e. low level of education).
• Mothers without these markers looked the same across the education spectrum, with rates of depression the same regardless of environment. For these mothers, environment did not seem to have much of an impact.
• However, when a mother with the ‘sensitive’ markers was in a positive environment (i.e. high level of education) she was actually less likely to become depressed than all other mothers, including those without the environmentally sensitive genetic markers.
• Thus, the term “depression gene” is not quite right. In fact, the genetic markers previously linked with depression are actually signaling a more environmentally sensitive genetic makeup. This results in mothers with the sensitive genetic make-up actually being better off than other mothers in a positive environment, but worse off than others in harsher environments.

Professor Hobcraft said: “Our findings on the interplay between genetic markers and socioeconomic disadvantage regarding post-natal maternal depression break new ground. Of key importance is the evidence that mothers with a particular combination of genetic markers do not seem to be all that affected by environmental disadvantage, but those with a different combination on the same gene are both less susceptible to maternal depression when advantaged but even more at risk of maternal depression when disadvantaged.”

Lead author, Colter Mitchell, of the Center for Research on Child Wellbeing and Office of Population Research, Princeton University, said: “The specific findings of this study are very interesting. But the paper is important because of the bigger concept it demonstrates. That is, certain genes may have a positive or negative effect depending on a person’s environment.”

(SD)

image from ‘the telegraph’

Species Extinction Rates Have Been Overreported, New Study Claims — But Global Extinction Crisis Remains Very Serious

The most widely used methods for calculating species extinction rates are “fundamentally flawed” and overestimate extinction rates by as much as 160 percent, life scientists report May 19 in the journal Nature.

[…]

However, while the problem of species extinction caused by habitat loss is not as dire as many conservationists and scientists had believed, the global extinction crisis is real, says Stephen Hubbell, a distinguished professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA and co-author of the Nature paper.

Because there are very few ways of directly estimating extinction rates, scientists and conservationists have used an indirect method called a “species-area relationship.” This method starts with the number of species found in a given area and then estimates how the number of species grows as the area expands. Using that information, scientists and conservationists have reversed the calculations and attempted to estimate how many fewer species will remain when the amount of land decreases due to habitat loss.

“There is a forward version when we add species and a backward version when we lose species,” Hubbell said. “In the Nature paper, we show that this surrogate measure is fundamentally flawed. The species-area curve has been around for more than a century, but you can’t just turn it around to calculate how many species should be left when the area is reduced; the area you need to sample to first locate a species is always less than the area you have to sample to eliminate the last member of the species.

“The overestimates can be very substantial. The way people have defined ‘extinction debt’ (species that face certain extinction) by running the species-area curve backwards is incorrect, but we are not saying an extinction debt does not exist.”

[…]

When a meteor struck Earth some 65 million years ago, killing the dinosaurs, a fireball incinerated Earth’s forests, and it took about 10 million years for the planet to recover any semblance of continuous forest cover, Hubbell said. The extinctions that humans cause may be as catastrophic, he said, but in different ways.

Humans are already using 40 percent of all the “plant biomass” produced by photosynthesis on the planet, a disturbing statistic because most life on Earth depends on plants, Hubbell noted. Some three-quarters of all species thought to reside on Earth live in rain forests, and they are being cut down at the substantial rate of about half a percent per year, he said.

Hubbell and He used data from the Center for Tropical Forest Science that covered extremely large plots in Asia, Africa, South America and Central America in which every tree is tagged, mapped and identified — some 4.5 million trees and 8,500 tree species. Many of these tree species are very rare. If they go extinct, so will the animals that depend on them.

“We need much better data on the distribution of life on Earth,” he said. “We need to rapidly increase our understanding of where species are on the planet. We need citizens to record their local biodiversity; there are not enough scientists to gather the information. We also need much deeper thought about how we can estimate the extinction rate properly to improve the science behind conservation planning. If you don’t know what you have, it is hard to conserve it.”

[…]

“When I was a kid,” he said, “I spent a lot of time doing non-macho things like collecting butterflies and turning over rocks. The only way we’re going to save nature is by making sure future generations experience nature. People who have never seen wild nature don’t miss it and don’t realize how impoverished their lives have become due to its loss. I worry about the loss of a conservation ethic among the public. Go to the tropics. Experience a rain forest — while you still can.”

Full article by SD