SCIENCE: Jeremy England, the Man Who May One-Up Darwin

Photo via Ozy.

Ozy introduce us to Jeremy England, the man who can change what we think not only about evolution but also about faith.

"On a sunny afternoon, at a bustling cafe less than a mile from Stanford University’s campus, near Palo Alto, and more than 5,000 miles from his home, an assistant professor from MIT is telling me about science. Very advanced science. His name is Jeremy England, and at 33, he’s already being called the next Charles Darwin.

Say what?

In town to give a lecture, the Harvard grad and Rhodes scholar speaks quickly, his voice rising a few pitches in tone, his long-fingered hands making sudden jerks when he’s excited. He’s skinny, with a long face, scraggly beard and carelessly groomed mop of sandy brown hair — what you might expect from a theoretical physicist. But then there’s the street-style Adidas on his feet and the kippah atop his head. And the fact that this scientist also talks a lot about God."

Read full article in OZY. E.T.P. 7'

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Photo Nicky Bay via Wired.

Photo via Planet Minecraft.

This news is absolutely (almost literally) fantastic: "Velvet worms are adorable caterpillar-y looking things, silently plodding along on stumpy legs in tropical forests around the world. A recently discovered species was so cute, it got a name straight out of Studio Ghibli: Eoperipatus totoros. The species name is an homage to the CatBus in the film My Neighbor Totoro." Read full article in Wired. E.T.P. 3'

 

Photo via Vice.

Vice's Thijs Roes got in touch with Professor Brian Cox to have an interesting chat about the one thing we all want to have a chat about with Cox: the meaning of life. "Human civilisation has caught up with a good chunk of science fiction. We drive around in electric cars, send spaceships beyond our solar system and use silicon and electricity to help us get laid. Things that seemed like some distant fantasy less than 20 years ago (like, say, reading this article on your phone like some kind of wizard) are now accepted – and often overlooked – parts of our everyday reality.
Professor Brian Cox – who you’ll probably recognise from the past decade of British popular culture – is one of a few doing a good job of pointing all this out to us. For instance, his new BBC series, Human Universe, sets out to make us understand our place in the universe – why we’re here, what we’ve achieved and how we can use those achievements to better ourselves." Read full interview in Vice. E.T.P. (with videos): 9'

SCIENCE

Image via Gizmodo.

As impressive as Boston Dynamics' humanoid robot ATLAS moves, it's still not completely free to explore wherever it wants. Thick trunk lines keep it tethered to machinery and pumps that provide power, hyrdraulic fluids, and of course communications and data. But researchers at MIT are now working to free ATLAS of its leash-like umbilical cord sometime in the next six months. Read full article in Gizmodo. E.T.P. 5'

Photo: A mite on an eyelash via The Creator's Project.

There is no better way of describe what you are about to see than the way the Creator's Project did: Timelapses Of Microscopic Nature, In All Its Stunning (And Disgusting) Glory. Yes, disgusting. Louie Schwartzberg at TED 2014 in Vancouver unveiled "a National Geographic-sponsored voyage into glimpses of Earth that the naked eye could never see: microscopic mites on our eyelashes, the tongues of snails, and even the skin of sharks. The hyper-defined images are miraculous, but admittedly a little terrifying—especially the snapshot of nano organisms that crawl on already-microscopic parasites." Read full article and have a look at the video in The Creator's Project website. E.T.P. 9'

SCIENCE

Photos via The Creators Project.

"BioScapes Photo Competition Winners Prove Sometimes Nature Is The Best Artist. An annual contest that challenges both scientists and every day nature enthusiasts to find beauty in the tiniest of microbes, the Humped Bladderwort beat out over 2,100 still images submitted from 71 countries for the grand prize and unofficial title of "the hottest thing under a microscope."  Read full article and see some pretty amazing photos in The Creators Project. E.T.P. 5'

Photo via The Independent.

"How would you like to own 33 of the most interesting items in the world? This is the pitch behind a new Kickstarter project called the Mini Museum, which promises pocket-sized collections from objects spanning “billions of years of life, science and history”. For $239 (£143) backers of the project will receive a resin block containing various rare fragments. Everything from mammoth hair to a fragment of coal from the Titanic is included". Read full article in The Independent. E.T.P. 3'

SCIENCE

Image Eiko Ojala via The New York Times.

The science of sleep. "In a series of new studies, published this fall in the journal Science, the Nedergaard lab may at last be shedding light on just what it is that would be important enough. Sleep, it turns out, may play a crucial role in our brain’s physiological maintenance. As your body sleeps, your brain is quite actively playing the part of mental janitor: It’s clearing out all of the junk that has accumulated as a result of your daily thinking." Read this insighful article by Maria Konnikova in The New York Times. E.T.P. 7'

Illustration Beatrice the biologist, via Wired.

Does evolution evolves under pressure? Biologist Susan Rosenberg hopes to resolve a major debate that had rocked biology in different incarnations for more than 100 years. Were organisms capable of altering themselves to meet the needs of their environment, as Jean Baptiste Lamarck had proposed in the early 1800s? Or did mutations occur randomly, creating a mixture of harmful, harmless or beneficial outcomes, which in turn fueled the trial-and-error process of natural selection, as Charles Darwin proposed in “On the Origin of Species”? Read full article in Wired. E.T.P. 12'

SCIENCE

Image via The Guardian.

Why it's time for brain science to ditch the 'Venus and Mars' cliché. "As hardy perennials go, there is little to beat that science hacks' favourite: the hard-wiring of male and female brains. For more than 30 years, I have seen a stream of tales about gender differences in brain structure under headlines that assure me that from birth men are innately more rational and better at map-reading than women, who are emotional, empathetic multi-taskers, useless at telling jokes. I am from Mars, apparently, while the ladies in my life are from Venus." Read full article in The Guardian. E.T.P. 7'

Photo via Gizmodo.

Genetically modified bees can make concrete instead of honey? Apparently so. "Spiders, silkworms, and honeybees are already 3D printers—and bioengineering is rapidly making that more than just a poetic metaphor. These creatures are organic examples of depositional manufacturing, and they have been domesticated and used throughout human history for specific creative ends". Read full article in Gizmodo. E.T.P. 15'

SCIENCE

Eneas de Troya, Creative Commons via Medium.

I never think of antibiotics, luckily I've been a relatively healthy person all my life, but there is no way of remain indifferent after reading Maryn McKenna's article in Medium. I feel that I need to learn more and follow the development of this news. According to the article human overuse of antibiotics produce drug-resistant bacterias that now we can't fight anymore. We are approaching a post antibiotic world, and definitely we are not prepared for it.  "Before antibiotics, five women died out of every 1,000 who gave birth. One out of nine people who got a skin infection died, even from something as simple as a scrape or an insect bite. Three out of ten people who contracted pneumonia died from it. Ear infections caused deafness; sore throats were followed by heart failure. In a post-antibiotic era, would you mess around with power tools? Let your kid climb a tree? Have another child?" Read full article in Medium. E.T.P. 20'.

Photo via The Independent.

Waste not, want not: how supposedly out-of-date food can be used in delicious recipes. Mark Hix wrote in The Independent: "According to the survey, a fifth of the bread produced in Britain gets wasted and one in five potatoes ends up in the bin. Our throw-away culture accounts for millions of tonnes of edible waste. I understand that we get confused by sell-by and best-before dates but have we lost our sense of smell and taste? People should trust their instincts more on these things." Read full article that includes a couple of tasty looking recipes here. E.T.P. 6'

SCIENCE

Anti-carbon tax protesters in Canberra, motivated by politics, not science. Photograph: Torsten Blackwood/AFP/Getty via The Guardian.

Last week Adam Corner in the New Scientist asked why people is not listening what is being said about climate change. This week, John Abraham and Dana Nuccitelli, keep the conversation going in The Guardian pointing out that, being honest, the global warming debate isn't about science. The scientific evidence on human-caused global warming is clear. Opposition stems from politics, not science. Read full article in The Guardian.

Crystals in polarized light (urea) by Fernan Federici via Wired.

Wired published this week a series of microscopic images that belong to Fernan Federici, Biological Sciences Ph.D. from Cambridge University, that will definitely blow your mind. "A couple years ago, Federici was working on his Ph.D. in biological sciences at Cambridge University studying self-organization (...) using microscopes and a process called fluorescence microscopy to see if he could identify these kinds of patterns on a cellular level. Have a look at this amazing colleciton of images in Wired.

Photo The trail left behind by the Chelyabinsk meteorite as it rushed through the atmosphere. Image: Константин Кудинов/Wikimedia, via Wired.

According to Wired and their report on a Russian meteorite, it turns out that Earth gets hit by meteorites more often than we think. "Meteorite collisions are often compared in size to nuclear explosions, but because they are speeding toward Earth they have momentum that makes them far more destructive. And to make matters worse, they may occur more often than currently estimated". Read full article in Wired.