A half-a-billion years old fossil species of marine animal sheds light on how the anatomies of the two main types of an animal group called the hemichordates are related, and provides new evidence in the historical debate among zoologists. The fossils are over half-a-billion years old and were discovered at a Burgess Shale site in the Canadian Rockies.
Month: August 2020
Evolutionary Insight: New Connection Discovered Between Primordial Organisms and Complex Life
A novel connection between primordial organisms and complex life has been discovered, as new evidence sheds light on the evolutionary origins of the cell division process that is fundamental to complex life on Earth. The discovery was made by a cross-disciplinary team of scientists led by Profess
Source: Evolutionary Insight: New Connection Discovered Between Primordial Organisms and Complex Life
Darwin skeptic focuses on the repeated evolution of the camera eye
How Birds Evolved Their Incredible Diversity – Scientific American
An analysis of 391 skulls shows that birds evolved surprisingly slowly, compared with their dinosaur forerunners
Source: How Birds Evolved Their Incredible Diversity – Scientific American
A tiny space rock holds clues about the evolution of life | Engadget
Source: A tiny space rock holds clues about the evolution of life | Engadget
New study shows evolutionary breakdown of ‘social’ chromosome in ants
Scientists from Queen Mary University of London have found that harmful mutations accumulating in the fire ant social chromosome are causing its breakdown.
Source: New study shows evolutionary breakdown of ‘social’ chromosome in ants
Sacisaurus helps to fill the hole in the evolution of ornithischians
Cosmic rays may soon stymie quantum computing
Infinitesimally low levels of radiation, such as from incoming cosmic rays, may soon stymie progress in quantum computing.
The symmetric of two failures: Russian communism and American capitalist democracy…
The previous post stumbled on something interesting. We already knew it, but sort of, it is just that we have to complete the thought so to speak. Which is that we always contrast the USA and Russia. It was a titanic struggle of two alternate universes, and as of 1989, it seemed a contest in which the US hence capitalism won. Fast forward a generation, and what do we find: the very symmetry of two ‘opposites’, but now we see that the issue wasn’t the success of capitalism against socialism, but two failures symmetric in a different way. The US is coming to the kind of gross failure that defeated Russia and its ‘communism’: the symmetry now we can see is the equal failure of the US and its capitalism. The lesson of history is that symmetry of failure. The US seemed triumphant for long, but in the last few years, and especially during this pandemic, we suddenly see the failure of the American way and the symmetry comes full circle in more than a dialectical conflict of opposites: a double failure of two false opposites. It is suddenly transparent to see this double failure. To be sure, Trump is a passing phantom, but the overall constellation of effects shows how disastrously off the American system is, or has become. It is a puzzling situation to see such a sudden and gross finale complete with mass death, latent fascism coming to the fore, incompetent or wilfully malevolent government, the apotheosis of Ayn Rand, and a crash mental or otherwise of conceptual stock in the fading away of the American pretense.
The symmetric failure of Russian and the US tells us something: that we must find something, socialism so-called or not, that reconciles two opposites in their failures…
Genomic analysis reveals many animal species may be vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 infection
Analysis of ACE2, the main receptor that SARS-CoV-2 uses to bind and enter cells, across 410 vertebrate species reveals that many are potentially susceptible to infection by the novel coronavirus. They include a number of endangered and threatened species, notably apes and old world primates. The study could also reveal potential intermediate hosts and animal models for the virus.
Darwiniana 