Category: science
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Female Orgasm as Mate Screening
Whereas Robinson suggests the evolutionary underpinnings of orgasm lie in the ‘Yes!’ factor of gene continuation, in How Women Got Their Curves and Other Just-So Stories: Evolutionary Enigmas David Barash and Judith Lipton believe it could be, at least for the potentially multi-orgasmic female, an “anti-infanticide insurance policy” that spurred women to mate successively with…
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Sex Without Orgasm Could Lead to Healthier Relationships
One solution to the “widespread disharmony in intimate relationships” is to “change the way you make love”, promotes Marnia Robinson, suggesting that through ‘conventional sex’ we keep our dopamine and prolactin levels “uncomfortably high or uncomfortably low”. Instead, to ensure a stable relationship (through a more stable neurochemistry), we should practice ‘conventional orgasm’-free sex with…
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What Makes Us Human: Tolerance and Cooperation
In the 1950s, Russian scientist Dmitri Belyaev ran a selective breeding project to, by artificial selection, breed (incredibly cute) domesticated silver foxes. The results of this multi-decade experiment were impressive, especially given that the foxes were selected solely for their amicability toward humans: After only forty generations, the selected foxes began to display changes you (and Darwin, too) might…
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Richard Dawkins and Hugh Hewitt Interview
The former Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and founder of the Foundation for Reason and Science, Richard Dawkins, was recently invited to appear on The Hugh Hewitt Show where the two discussed religion, Rome, evolution and much more. One particular exchange (the Okay, do you believe Jesus turned water into wine? incident) has…
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Mysteries of Evolution and an Evolving Dawkins
It is time to move away from anti-religious sentiment/philosophy and instead appeal to the logic of those who refute the theory of evolution. This appears to be the premise of Richard Dawkins’ latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth, where he “traces the scientific investigation of biological change as if it were a crime-scene investigation…
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The Over-Estimation of Sampling Errors
Fairly obvious, but something I haven’t previously given much consideration to: Sampling errors mean that initial figures are equally as likely to be under-estimates as over-estimates but [in media stories where figures for a disease or condition are quoted] we only ever seem to be told that the condition is under-detected. That’s from a short post…
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The Downside of Scientific Progress
Scientific progress is making most ground-breaking academic achievements occur later on in researchers’ lives. This in itself is not a bad thing, of course, but could it be signalling the end of the polymath (or the intellectual polygamist, as Carl Djerassi would prefer it be called)? Back in the early 19th century you could grasp a…
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DNA R/W+ 12 Speed
The speed at which Synthetic Biology is evolving (pun intended) is mind-blowing, especially to someone who has just stumbled upon the science (inspired by Tuur Van Balen’s presentation at Interesting 2009). In his words, it “will make most of us wonder why we ever got so excited about the Internet”. You can tell a technology…
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Image Compression and The Origins Of Life
Human life on Earth is the result of an extremely fortunate environment. This includes our temperate position near a stable star, in a stable area of the galaxy, with neighbouring bodies of the right size and distance to protect us. It is a Rare Earth. As we evolved, this environment continued (and continues) to influence…
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Seeing with Tongues
A new breakthrough device, recently covered in Scientific American, restores partial eyesight to the blind by using sensors in the tongue to send sign signals to the brain. The research comes from neuroscientist Paul Bach-y-Rita. Experiments have shown that: within 15 minutes of using the device, blind people can begin interpreting spatial information via the…