Month: March 2019

After the success of the Standard Model, experiments have stopped answering to grand theories. Is particle physics in crisis?

Source: Has the quest for top-down unification of physics stalled? | Aeon Essays

The beginning of the end started with violent shaking that raised giant waves in the waters of an inland sea in what is now North Dakota. Then, tiny glass beads began to fall like birdshot from the heavens. The rain of glass was so heavy it may have set fire to much of the vegetation on land. In the water, fish struggled to breathe as the beads clogged their gills. 

Source: Fossils Document the Hour After the Meteor Hit | Portside

Many scientists face abuse and threats from an outraged minority who want there to be a biological basis for chronic fatigue syndrome.

Source: To Intimidate Scientists, No Stalin Is Required | Evolution News

Despite their seemingly simple appearance, jellyfish might help us understand how complex animal life evolved over hundreds of millions of years. In this blog, the authors of a new paper in BMC Biology explain what they found from the genome of the giant Nomura’s jellyfish.

Source: The giant jellyfish genome and the evolution of hunting – On Biology

ROBOTS will soon be evolving to be able to reproduce and evolve similar to any biological species on Earth, one top researcher believes.

Source: Robot EVOLUTION: Machines will be able to BREED and birth more adept agents | Science | News | Express.co.uk

Teeth covered in pits were common in the 2m-year-old species Paranthropus robustus.

Source: Discovered: the earliest known common genetic condition in human evolution

Seeds remain in a dormant state as long as environmental conditions are not ideal for germination. The depth of this sleep is inherited from their mother. Researchers reveal how this maternal imprint is transmitted through fragments of ‘interfering’ RNAs, which inactivate genes, and that a similar mechanism enables to transmit another imprint, that of the temperatures present during the development of the seed. This mechanism allows the seed to optimize the timing of its germination.

Source: Seeds inherit memories from their mother: Maternal and environmental control of seed dormancy is carried out through novel epigenetic mechanisms — ScienceDaily

A young paleontologist may have discovered a record of the most significant event in the history of life on Earth.

Source: The Day the Dinosaurs Died | The New Yorker

“Climate change is going to kill a lot of people. Mosquito-borne diseases are going to be a big way that happens.”

Source: Climate Crisis Could Expose Half a Billion More People to Tropical Mosquito-Borne Diseases by 2050

Sexual conflict, and sexual selection in general could conceivably turn out to be so “complicated” that, while it usually makes a difference when it occurs, it does not point in any particular direction for evolution.

Source: Study challenges theory that sexual conflict is a driver of speciation | Uncommon Descent