Monthly Archives: August 2017

Those pesky robots, eh? This week, Facebook shut down a pair of its artificial intelligence chatbots after they invented their own language and started talking to each other in a way only they understood. Eat your heart out, Stanley Kubrick. This was like a sinister plot twist in a dystopian vision of the future.

If the tinny tykes arent hell-bent on universal domination (see Doctor Whos Cybermen), theyre becoming scarily sentient (witness Humans or Westworld).

Hyper Evolution: Rise of the Robots (BBC Four) was a timely two-part documentary investigating how far robots have come and what it could mean if, like in those sci-fi series, machines developed true consciousness and emotional intelligence.

This concluding episode saw evolutionary biologist Dr Ben Garrod and electronics engineer Professor Danielle George criss-crossing the globe to come face to metal face with a range of futuristic creations.

Go here to see the original:

Hyper Evolution: Rise of the Robots is a timely look at robots that Kubrick could only dream of - review - Telegraph.co.uk

The 2001 discovery of the seven million-year-old Sahelanthropus, the first known upright ape-like creatures, was yet more proof of humanitys place among the great apes. And yet Mike Pence, then a representative and now US vice president, argues for the opposite conclusion.

For him, our ideas about our ancestors have changed, proving once more that evolution was a theory, and therefore we should be free to teach other theories alongside evolution in our classrooms.

How to respond? The usual answer is that we should teach students the meaning of the word theory as used in science that is, a hypothesis (or idea) that has stood up to repeated testing. Pences argument will then be exposed to be what philosophers call an equivocation an argument that only seems to make sense because the same word is being used in two different senses.

Evolution, Pence argues, is a theory, theories are uncertain, therefore evolution is uncertain. But evolution is a theory only in the scientific sense of the word. And in the words of the National Academy of Sciences, The formal scientific definition of theory is quite different from the everyday meaning of the word. It refers to a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence. Attaching this label to evolution is an indicator of strength, not weakness.

If you take this approach, you have failed to understand the purpose of Pences rhetoric, or why it is so appealing to creationists. Pence is an accomplished politician, and knows exactly how to appeal to his intended audience. He is also an accomplished trial lawyer, which makes him a conjuror with words, and like any skilful conjuror he has pulled off his trick by distraction. Pence has drawn us into a discussion about words, when our focus should be on the evidence.

I would suggest the opposite approach. The problem is not really with the word theory at all. Students will have learned its meaning in the same way they learn meanings in general: by seeing how the word is used.

They will have heard of atomic theory, which no one has seriously doubted for over a century. And what about the theory of gravity? Finally, they may have seen how Darwin himself uses the expression my theory, although at the time it was neither comprehensive nor well supported (there were huge gaps in the fossil record), to refer in a very general way to his linked ideas about mutability of species, common descent, and the power of natural selection.

So if anyone says, Evolution is a theory, dont give them a lecture on the meaning of the word theory. If you do, youve fallen into the trap of making it seem that how we define words should affect how we see reality. You will be fighting on ground of your opponents choosing, since arguing about how to apply words is the stock in trade of theologians, preachers and lawyers like Mike Pence.

The correct response is to say that evolution is a theory like gravity is a theory and then redirect attention to the evidence. And that evidence is overwhelming.

Start with family relationships. Carl Linnaeus showed how living things can be classified into species, genera, families and so on, and Darwin pointed out that this is exactly the structure we would expect from a family tree. All dogs are canines, so dogs share an ancestor with foxes; all canines are carnivora, so dogs share a more remote ancestor with bears; all carnivora are mammals, so dogs and sheep are, albeit more remotely, related, and so on.

Then look at the discovery over the past few decades of family relationships at the molecular level, and the fact that the molecular family tree matches that based on anatomical resemblances.

Observe the fossil record. Once lamentably full of gaps (Darwin was among the lamenters), it is now densely populated. A century ago, it still made sense to point to the missing link between humans and pre-human apes. Now we know of several different hominin species living alongside each other, and the problem becomes one of distinguishing our grandparents from our great uncles. And yes, there are missing links in the chain, but without evolution we would not have a chain at all.

And then theres biogeography: for example, why marsupials are only found in South America and Australasia, and except for a few species that made their way across the Isthmus of Panama, are never found elsewhere.

Plus we can actually observe evolution, and study it in the field or in the lab. The emergence of pesticide resistance is evolution in action, as shown in the justly famous Harvard/Technion demonstration evolution on a plate. So is the delightful Russian experiment of breeding tame foxes. Artificial selection, just as much as natural selection, is evolution in action.

And finally, and most convincingly, we must look at the way that these different lines of evidence mesh together. We can apply biogeography to the fossil record, and link it to what we know about the movements of the continents. Using the methods of molecular biology, we can identify and time the mutations that led different species to diverge from their common ancestor, and match the timing against the fossil record.

Thus the fossil record, deep anatomical resemblances, and DNA evidence agree in showing that whales, for instance, are closely related to hoofed mammals, diverging from them in the Eocene period. There are many other examples of such consistency.

Then, and only then, pause to explain how a scientific theory is an interlocking connection of ideas that explain things about the world, and that evolution is one of the most successful examples. And challenge the Mike Pences of this world to spell out exactly what they would like to see taught alongside the Theory of Evolution and why.

See original here:

How to slam dunk creationists when it comes to the theory of evolution - The Conversation UK

Contact: Sarah Nicholas

STARKVILLE, Miss.Mississippi State is part of a new research collaboration sponsored by the National Science Foundation in which a colorful tropical butterfly is helping researchers investigate genetics and evolution.

Scientists at the Starkville land-grant university and the University of Puerto RicoRio Piedras will be studying the relationship in organisms between genetic material, or genotype, and physical characteristics due to gene expression and environmental influences, or phenotype.

Brian Counterman, an associate professor of biological sciences, leads the MSU research team. Ryan Range, assistant professor of biological sciences, as well as Jovonn Hill and Federico Hoffman, both assistant professors in the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Entomology and Plant Pathology, also are part of the study that will examine genotype-phenotype relationships using color patterns of the Heliconius butterfly.

More than $1.2 million is being provided through the NSFs Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, known as EPSCoR, for the MSU collaboration over four years.

National Science Foundation leaders have noted how the genotype-to-phenotype relationship has significant societal and economic implications across scientific fields and areas of industry such as medicine, agriculture and biotechnology.

According to EPSCoR Head Denise Barnes, Over the past several decades, scientists and engineers have made massive strides in decoding, amassing and storing genomic data. For that reason, the federal agency is committed to providing the U.S. scientific community, including MSU, with resources for future discoveries that may help improve food-crop yields, better predictions for human disease risk and new drug therapies.

Angus Dawe, head of MSUs Department of Biological Sciences, said that in addition to helping raise our profile nationally, the project will make possible extensive support for training students and extend the impact of work at MSU to other regions.

This award will support foundational work at the cutting edge of genetics and evolution, Dawe said.

As Counterman recounted, groundbreaking 19th century naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-82) considered Heliconius to be the most striking example of natural selection in the wild because it has the ability to work with other butterflies to train predators that they are toxic.

When species work together, more individual butterflies survive and produce offspring, which is the process of natural selection at its best, Counterman observed.

Counterman said the new inquiry actually is an extension of a project we were already working on with Puerto RicoRio Piedras. When we finished in February, we decided to take it a step further and write a proposal for this grant.

Dawe said the MSU department is proud of its facultys continued success in obtaining research support from a variety of agencies, even as federal funding rates have been cut dramatically. To be able to receive awards in this climate is further evidence that biological sciences at Mississippi State competes with the very best programs anywhere, he emphasized.

Counterman said he and fellow team members are excited about opportunities to provide highly specialized genomic training in both Mississippi and Puerto Rico.

An MSU faculty member since 2010, Counterman is a biology doctoral graduate of Duke University who earlier earned a bachelors degree in ecology and evolution at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Dawe said that research proposals for national grants typically involve a tremendous amount of work. He expressed his departments deep appreciation for administrative support and scientific collaborations with campus colleagues in the College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Entomology and Plant Pathology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, as well as the offices of Sponsored Projects and Research and Economic Development.

We are extremely grateful for their support, without which the submission of grant proposals could not happen, he said.

For details about EPSCoRs ongoing mission, visit http://www.nsf.gov/od/oia/programs/epscor.

MSUs College of Arts and Sciences includes more than 5,000 students, 300 full-time faculty members, nine doctoral programs and 25 academic majors offered in 14 departments. It also is home to the most diverse units for research and scholarly activities, including the Department of Biological Sciences.

Research expenditures in the humanities are also an important part of Mississippi States overall research portfolio. Additionally, the NSF has ranked MSU among the top 25 for research expenditures in the social sciences. For more information on MSUs College of Arts and Sciences, visit http://www.cas.msstate.edu. The Department of Biological Sciences is online at http://www.biology.msstate.edu.

MSU is Mississippis leading university, also available online at http://www.msstate.edu.

Read the original here:

MSU genetics and evolution study receives $1.2 million NSF grant - Mississippi State Newsroom