Tag: science

American Dream a Biological Impossibility

He paints a disturbing picture of 21st century American life, where behavioral tendencies produced by millions of years of scarcity-driven evolution don’t fit the social and economic world we’ve constructed.

Our built-in dopamine-reward system makes instant gratification highly desirable, and the future difficult to balance with the present. This worked fine on the savanna, but not the suburbs: We gorge on fatty foods and use credit cards to buy luxuries we can’t actually afford. And then, overworked, underslept and overdrawn, we find ourselves anxious and depressed.

That individual weakness is reflected at the social level, in markets that have outgrown their agrarian roots and no longer constrain our excesses — resulting in the current economic crisis, in which America’s unpaid bills came due with shocking speed.

But with this crisis, comes the opportunity to rethink how Americans live, as individuals and as a nation, and build a country that works.

let the deconstruction begin

Barcode of Life

Mitochondrial genes are inherited maternally. They are not scrambled by recombination, and mitochondrial variation offers rough clues about evolutionary history. Insect people were using the back end of a mitochondrial gene known as CO1 to help identify specimens, marine invertebrate people liked the front end, and vertebrate zoologists used a different mitochondrial gene altogether. Hebert’s idea was that, out of a hodgepodge of related techniques, he could build a simple, universal identification system — assuming, that is, the same small piece of mitochondrial DNA worked reliably for all the animals in the world. “We believe that a CO1 database can be developed within 20 years for 5-10m animal species on the planet for $1b”

2020-12-18: Genomic Encyclopedia

Researchers announced a significant advance. They have assembled the largest catalog of microbes to date, containing over 50k genomes from 18k different microbial species—12k of which have never been documented before. Their study expands the known tree of life by 45%. They also found 700k viruses and linked them to their bacterial and archeal hosts, further illuminating the vast interconnections in this unseen world.

“It’s a fucking incredible amount of data. There are only ~10K species of microbes that have been cultured and described formally, and yet there might be 1B species. That is why this study is so important.”

2021-08-06: The database currently holds 10m barcodes mapped to 330k species.
2022-07-15: Evolution isn’t a tree

“If the evolutionary history of the hoatzin conformed to processes we already understand well, then we’d probably have already figured out what it is most closely related to. The fact that we don’t know its nearest relative suggests that there were processes involved that we still do not understand.” The hoatzin could have more than 1 set of closest relatives— “an unsettling prospect in the context of existing classification and in the minds of many contemporary biologists.”

This strange-sounding state of affairs is not unique to the hoatzin; we see it in our own DNA. Human beings share their most recent common ancestor with chimpanzees and bonobos, but more than 10% of the human genome is actually more closely related to the gorilla genome. Another tiny fraction of the human genome also seems to be most closely shared with an even more distant relative: the orangutan. “This implies that there is no such thing as a unique evolutionary history of the human genome. Rather, it resembles a patchwork of individual regions following their own genealogy.”

Crows use causal reasoning

The use of causal reasoning to solve problems was previously thought to be something only humans can do. But new research suggests that crows are capable of it too.

and the deconstruction of intelligence continues

Stiffness Gradients

The squid’s beak is one of the hardest organic substances in existence — such that the sharp point can slice through a fish or whale like a Ginsu knife. Yet the beak is attached to squid flesh that itself is the texture of jello. How precisely does a gelatinous animal safely wield such a razor-sharp weapon? Why doesn’t it just sort of, y’know, rip off? The beak contains a huge gradation of stiffness: The tip of the beak is 100 times more rigid than the base of the beak — so the base can blend easily with the surrounding flesh. Water is the key to the proper functioning of this gradient: If the beak is dried out, the soft base calcifies until it’s nearly as dense and rigid as the peak. If we could reproduce the property gradients that we find in squid beak, it would open new possibilities for joining materials

Samaritan Genography

recent archaeological findings, coupled with deeper examination of religious texts, have led researchers to propose that the Samaritans were Jews themselves. During the Babylonian Captivity, not all Jews were rounded up by the Assyrians. Some stayed behind, possibly marrying other Assyrian exiles who themselves had been relocated. This would make sense given that, even though Samaritans are not considered Jews, they share many of the same ancient Hebrew rituals. While these rituals have evolved for 100s of years among most Jewish sects, they remain unchanged among the isolated Samaritans, even to this day. This also fits well with the historical animosity of Jews toward Samaritans because of their association with non-Jews.

they need to do more of that to defuse the nonsense and irrational beliefs about “heritage” in the near east

Mayan Muons

using repurposed muon detectors to see inside Mayan archaeological ruins. also: “Foreign physicists building iron rooms beneath the pyramids! To search for secret chambers based on the evidence of cosmic particles.”

Mayan underworld portal

Mexican archeologists have discovered a maze of stone temples in underground caves, some submerged in water and containing human bones, which ancient Mayans believed was a portal where dead souls entered the underworld.

paging harrison ford.

N3UROCH!P Rap

science rap. omg

Disease Theory of Religion

religious diversity causes people to keep themselves to themselves, and thus makes it harder for them to catch germs from infidels.

Cell-Sorting Implants

1 usage of automation would be high-throughput screening of cancer cells in vivo. “If you can input devices and look for circulating tumor cells in blood cells, you can even think about screening out those tumor cells out. You can potentially use this as a way of slowing the spread cancers.”

implantable soon