Science News Thread (for articles that don't relate to ongoing discussions)

[darthgently]

10 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Evolution May Be Purposeful And It’s Freaking Scientists Out

https://www.forbes.com/sites/andreamorris/2024/06/14/evolution-may-be-purposeful-and-its-freaking-scientists-out/

I'm finding this line of inquiry very interesting.  If you recall the 'Selfish Gene' line of thinking - where everything in biology is determined by DNA (predestined, if you will)... This is *sort of* the opposite. 

The 'standard model' is that DNA is determinative and that the germ ( reproductive cells) is isolated from the rest of the organism, such that over time (millions of generations) variations in the combination of germs from the successful individuals drives the evolution of the species - regardless of events within the individual's experience / lifetime.  It's a very binary theory - successful individuals survive to procreate, failures die, and the successful genome (established before birth) is passed on (in combination with another successful individual) to succeeding generations.   This is the standard view of evolution. 

Iconoclasts are making waves. 

They start with the notion that the germ isn't isolated from entity and that experience within the lifetime of the organism can rewrite portions the germ DNA. This makes sense to me - especially in light of research I read decades ago regarding heritability of stress response: parent generation experiencing great stress can pass on heightened stress response to the next generation. 

Serious consternation is ensuing - as is publication & counterpublication. 

MIT just published some of this for anyone willing to shell out the $75.

Anyway - interesting developments in biology afoot 

This fits my empirical experience anyway.  Seems implicitly related to Assembly Theory in some way

(Edit: below is unrelated.  Probably.  But the  forum merged my reply and post making it unclear.  Anyway... )

Mind expanding ponderations 

 

Edited June 17 by darthgently

[darthgently]

The mystery of the mechanism of anesthesia is a deep one.  Yet we've relied on it immensely for over a century (iirc).  And obviously it is entangled with our ignorance of the nature of consciousness itself.  If Penrose's microtubule hunch pans out it could end up indicating that consciousness is more photon based than electron based.   The ancient term "light of consciousness" comes to mind.  Or even the phrase "beat the daylights" out of someone.  Then there is Musk's stated goal to prevent the light of consciousness from being extinguished by making terrestrial life interplanetary.  What next?  Microtubule based AI?  Anyway, time will tell

 

Edited June 18 by darthgently

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Timeliness of this article is eerie. 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/jun/17/the-big-idea-can-you-inherit-memories-from-your-ancestors

The title is misleading - no heritability of memories, per se, but stress response?  Yes.  

This challenges a very early, cornerstone precept of the neo-Darwinist thought - the Weissman barrier. (See above post re: standard model). 

Spoiler

Since the early twentieth century it has been common in both psychology and behavioral biology to draw a sharp distinction between learned and innate behavior, or elements of behavior. The persistence of this dichotomy may be attributed in part to the fundamental importance of the separation of inherited and acquired characters within neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, one of the essential foundations for the modern study of behavior. A cornerstone of early neo-Darwinian thought was August Weismann's theory of the germ plasm, which proposed a segregation between germinal and somatic cells during development, thus ruling out the possibility that acquired characters could be inherited. This denial of Lamarckian hereditary mechanisms became one of the hallmarks of neo-Darwinism, as opposed to classical Darwinism. Within the neo-Darwinian framework it thus became important, as Weismann himself pointed out, to distinguish sharply between inherited and acquired characters. Although the dichotomy has frequently been criticized it remains tenacious, surfacing in different guises as older versions of it became terminologically unacceptable. The analysis offered here suggests that this tenacity may partly be explained by the implications of Weismann's germ-plasm theory, and its modern incarnation in the central dogma of molecular genetics, and by the central thematic position of those ideas in the neo-Darwinian foundations of modern behavioral biology

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7602088/#:~:text=A cornerstone of early neo,acquired characters could be inherited.

 

See also, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weismann_barrier

 

What caught my attention {prompting this and the post above} was a line in a video about the misdirection of resources and research in genetics, especially the medical application of our understanding of genetics. 

With the exception of about 5% of our genetic code, merely deactivating a known 'switch' for a disorder does not provide a cure. The body has a way of bypassing the deactivated segment and continues to exhibit the trait.  (Exceptions are for things like cystic fibrosis which have extremely specific genetic causes). 

The new approach if adopted would allow / require looking at the whole individual, including environmental factors when seeking genetic cures. 

The problem for the neo-Darwinist is apparently the idea of 'purpose' - as in it's  not just random chance and mutation in the germ line between generations that drives evolution - but the experience of the cell / organism and its purpose to survive and procreate that can drive genetic changes (evolution) within the lifetime of the cell/ organism and be passed on successfully to the offspring.   In other words, the experience of the individual and gene expression via environmental stress / success can be passed back to the germ line to the following generations - it's not just random.  Evolution could be purposeful and happen in a lifetime. 

That is apparently as dramatic a statement to a biologist as challenging determinism to a physicist. 

Edited June 18 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[DDE]

1 hour ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

August Weismann's theory of the germ plasm

Fun fact: Trofim Lysenko argued he was defending Darwinism from Wesimann's heresy.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

3 hours ago, DDE said:

Fun fact: Trofim Lysenko argued he was defending Darwinism from Wesimann's heresy.

He also discredited belief in DNA, didn't he? 

Edit - among other criminally stupid things.  Just looked him up and reminded myself of this period in history.  Stalin and cronies.  SMH. 

Edited June 19 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[DDE]

Simply mentioning scientific ethics in a scientific article makes readers more suspicious

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27150266/

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

9 hours ago, DDE said:

ethics in a scientific article makes readers more suspicious

Makes sense - we've been prepped by history and media to think that when scientists are doing things on the edge of the ethical - they have probably already crossed the line 

[kerbiloid]

Say, between the nuclear physicists only Sakharov got obsessed by the ethics, and only after brainwashing from his second wife, having her own personal poorly ethical reasons and background (daughter of a political brainwasher), and due to his personal mental problems (grown in the ivory tower of academic family, so being sensitive to mental attacks).

Edited June 23 by kerbiloid

[AckSed]

Eris and Makemake may be geologically active

Pluto has been found to be geologically active and have a thin atmosphere. Going by the hydrogen/deuterium ratio in their methane spectra, the lower deuterium count in the methane on the surfaces of Eris and Makemake indicate it may be produced by abiotic and thermogenic processes, and thus be active too.

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is geological action. :-) What this means for other Kuiper Belt Objects isn't clear, but it is interesting.

[darthgently]

26 minutes ago, AckSed said:

Eris and Makemake may be geologically active

Pluto has been found to be geologically active and have a thin atmosphere. Going by the hydrogen/deuterium ratio in their methane spectra, the lower deuterium count in the methane on the surfaces of Eris and Makemake indicate it may be produced by abiotic and thermogenic processes, and thus be active too.

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is geological action. :-) What this means for other Kuiper Belt Objects isn't clear, but it is interesting.

I wonder about Neptune's moon Triton now given the latest suspicion that it and Pluto are basically twins and orbited each other until a Neptune encounter broke them apart, keeping Triton

https://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/Pluto/PlutoC.pdf

 

Edited Thursday at 07:25 PM by darthgently
Replaced pay-walled link with NASA pdf link

[kerbiloid]

_{Happily, Pluto then met Charon!
The Pluto's "heart" is a tattoo for memories.}

_{Eris and Sedna were competing Charon, but failed.}

_{Netflix should film this drama!}

Edited Friday at 05:19 AM by kerbiloid