Science news and science jobs from New Scientist - New Scientist. Full text | The common ancestry of life. Reviewer 1 William Martin, University of Duesseldorf Here, Koonin and Wolf show that "the purported demonstration (by Theobald [4]) of the universal common ancestry is a trivial consequence of significant sequence similarity between the analyzed proteins". They are absolutely right on this in my view and there is not much more to say about this set of circumstances, really. The issue is a recent paper by Theobald claiming to have found evidence for common ancestry of life based on the analysis of 23 sequences that Jim Brown and colleagues [18] had identified as "universal" among genomes on the basis of database searches and sequence comparisons, but 10 years ago (in 2001).
One might addd that in 2000, Hansmann and Martin showed that the same proteins that Theobald investigated are even encoded in the same superoperon in most prokaryotes [19]. Reviewer 2 Ivan Iossifov, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, nominated by Andrey Rzhetsky Reviewer 3. Welcome to Forbes. Oxford Journals. PLOS. Chemistry & Biology. Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine. Science Daily: News & Articles in Science, Health, Environment & Technology.
Evolution News & Views. Archives. The Scientist Magazine® National Center for Biotechnology Information. Science News – Science Articles and Current Events | LiveScience. RedOrbit - Science, Space, Technology, Health News and Information. Archaeology Magazine. SmOnline | The online manifestation of MetroCosm. What does it take to wipe out more than 90 per cent of all the life on Earth... and how long would it take to do it? It seems all you need are greenhouse gas-belching volcanoes and about 60,000 years THROUGHOUT ITS 3.8bILLION-YEAR HISTORY, life on Earth has faced more than its fair share of challenges, set backs and catastrophes.
Everything from ice ages to asteroids has been thrown at it and yet, somehow, life is more diverse today than it has ever been. That’s not to say that life laughs in the face of adversity – it has been pushed to brink of annihilation several times in its long history (most famously by the asteroid that ended the reign of the dinosaurs), but perhaps the closest life ever came to total obliteration was 251million years ago.
Universe Today — Space and astronomy news. The Falcon 9 and Dragon capsule stand ready for launch prior to the detection of a helium leak in one of the engines forcing a scrub of the launch attempt on April 14. 2014 – now reset to April 18, 2014. Credit: nasatech.net NASA and SpaceX are marching forward towards a Friday, April 18 liftoff attempt for the Falcon 9 rocket sending a commercial Dragon cargo craft on the company’s third resupply mission to the International Space Station following the scrubbed launch attempt on Monday, April 14 – forced by the discovery of a Helium gas leak inside the rocket during the latter stages of the countdown.
An on time blastoff of the upgraded Falcon 9 sets the stage for an Easter Sunday rendezvous and berthing of the Dragon resupply spacecraft at the massive orbiting outpost packed with almost 5000 pounds of science experiments and supplies for the six person crew. However the weather prognosis is rather [click to continue…] The newly-confirmed extrasolar planet has been dubbed Kepler-186f. Popular Science | New Technology, Science News, The Future Now. WordPress.com - Get a Free Blog Here. Europeans Show Mild Apathy Toward Science. BRUSSELS—Only 53% of Europeans say they are interested in science, and 40% say that they feel informed about it, according to a public opinion survey published by the European Commission yesterday. The Eurobarometer report is based on more than 27,000 face-to-face interviews carried out in all 28 member states of the European Union earlier this year.
On average, the proportion of people interested in science across the union has increased by about 8 percentage points compared with a similar survey carried out in 2001. (There were only 15 E.U. countries at the time.) But the figures reveal wide variations across the bloc, with the proportion of science enthusiasts ranging from 34% in the Czech Republic to 77% in Sweden. More than a third of respondents also appear content to be left out of science and technology decisions. The survey also shows a slight increase of traditional views, in particular in Eastern and Mediterranean countries. Science Daily: News & Articles in Science, Health, Environment & Technology. Astronomy Now - The UK's best magazine for stargazing. Focus Magazine | Science and Technology. Phys.org - Science News, Technology, Physics, Nanotechnology, Space Science, Earth Science, Medicine.
Nature Publishing Group : science journals, jobs, and information. Peter Singer vs John Lennox - Is There a God? Most public academic debates concerning the existence of God tend to feature religious apologists who propose sophisticated philosophical arguments for the existence of a supernatural or transcendent Being.
Here is where we're exposed to things like the ontological argument, the argument from necessity and contingency, the kalam cosmological argument, the moral argument, Pascal's wager, the argument from design or its fine-tuning cousin, etc. There is something disingenuous about such approaches, however, because the Gods these apologists believe in go way beyond the scope of their own philosophical arguments. I'll post the debate between Lennox and Richard Dawkins in a few weeks, so stay tuned. Giant Human Remains - From records and sources all over the world. Watch incredible geyser erupt - CNN.com Video. Human... - Paranormal Phenomena. The Jesus Discovery » Vision TV Channel Canada. Friday, Apr. 18 | Midnight ET/9pm PT This new documentary by Emmy winning filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici (The Naked Archeologist; The Lost Tomb of Jesus) reveals a stunning new archaeological find that revolutionizes our understanding of Jesus and the birth of Christianity.
Using a specialized robotic camera developed in Toronto, Jacobovici, renowned biblical scholar James Tabor and a team of technical experts explore a sealed, previously unexcavated tomb in Jerusalem from around the time of Jesus. The ossuaries, or bone boxes, that are uncovered and their associated carvings are some of the most important archaeological discoveries ever made. Co-produced with award-winning documentary producer Felix Golubev, The Jesus Discovery offers a dramatic witness to what the people who knew Jesus actually believed.
In 2007, Jacobovici made international headlines by claiming to have found the lost tomb of Jesus in Talpiot, a suburb of Jerusalem. What The Press is Saying About The Jesus Discovery. The Resurrection Tomb Mystery: A Remarkable Discovery. In the footsteps of ancient Israelite kings. The call went out among the hill tribes: Go back to Gilgal to hold another coronation ceremony for the new king. The people were not accustomed to having a king or institutions of government when the first king, Saul son of Kish, was crowned. Many of them doubted his ability to rule. During the first ceremony, the tribe of Benjamin was chosen by lot to provide the first king. Within the tribe, the family of the Matrites was chosen, and among that family, the lot fell upon Saul son of Kish, as if Heaven and the people had chosen him to rule over Israel (as told in 1 Samuel 10).
When he was called upon to arise and accept the high position, no one could find him. He had vanished, but the prophet Samuel knew where he was. Saul had never sought the kingship. But not everyone accepted Saul. Saul's first test of leadership came quickly. Do the stories of the Bible have an actual historical basis or are they myths -- tales that created an artificial national history? A pre-Temple cultic site. Productions - Associated Producers Ltd. King David’s Palace at Khirbet Qeiyafa? Update: Qeiyafa archaeologists described the 2013 finds at Qeiyafa and their upcoming fieldwork at Lachish in a recent BAR article.
Read what the archaeologists have to say about the finds mentioned in the news article below. The palatial structure David and a Byzantine farmhouse at Khirbet Qeiyafa. Photo: Sky View, courtesy of the Hebrew University and the Israel Antiquities Authority. The Israel Antiquities Authority’s (IAA) July 18, 2013, press release is crowned with an extraordinary headline: “King David’s Palace was Uncovered in the Judean Shephelah.” At the close of the seventh season of excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa, the Hebrew University Professor Yosef Garfinkel and IAA archaeologist Saar Ganor announced the discovery of “the two largest buildings known to have existed in the tenth century B.C.E. in the Kingdom of Judah” with great fanfare. One of these buildings is a centrally located 100-foot-long palatial structure decorated with elegant imported vessels. Shanks, Hershel. News and information about biblical-archaeology - Science. Christians at Masada! | Simcha Jacobovici.
Last week I posted an article on the controversy surrounding the so-called “Jesus Family Tomb” in Talpiot. The fact is that Jesus’ tomb has been found. Compare for a moment Herod’s tomb which is being featured in a multi-million dollar exhibit at the Israel Museum. The so-called tomb of Herod the Great, excavated by the late legendary Ehud Netzer, is a very interesting find. But is it Herod’s tomb? The fact is that the tomb is not intact, the sarcophagi (the coffins) were found in pieces and incomplete, there were no bones, no symbols and no inscriptions. Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign up! In contrast, in Talpiot, a fully intact tomb was found in 1980 containing fully intact bone boxes, or ossuaries, with clear inscriptions including “Jesus, son of Joseph”, “Maria”, and “Yose”, the particular spelling provided by the Gospel of Mark for one of Jesus’ brothers.
Never before published cross from the southern caves at Masada 1. 2. Christians at Masada! | Simcha Jacobovici. 2013 Mt Zion Dig Season Reveals Possible 2nd Temple Period Priestly Mansion | TaborBlog. The press release below was just released on Eurekalert.org by the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. News media should contact: the science writer James Hathaway (jbhathaw@uncc.edu; 704-687-5743) at UNC Charlotte for more information or to arrange interviews with Profs.
Gibson and/or Tabor. Quirks of history protect details regarding domestic lives of Jerusalem elites from the time of Jesus Sunrise over Mt Zion, End of 2013 Season, Mt of Olives in Background In excavating sites in a long-inhabited urban area like Jerusalem, archaeologists are accustomed to noting complexity in their finds — how various occupying civilizations layer over one another during the site’s continuous use over millennia.
But when an area has also been abandoned for intermittent periods, paradoxically there may be even richer finds uncovered, as some layers have been buried and remain undisturbed by development. Unusual for the period, a bath chamber with bathtub was found buried at Mt. –James Hathaway. Archaeological Amnesia! | Simcha Jacobovici TV. Picture from tour guide Binyamin Tropper/Kfar Etzion Field School A few months ago I blogged about a mysterious First Temple-era archaeological find under a Palestinian Arab orchard near Bethlehem. The find got some news attention despite attempts to keep it quiet. The story started in February when a tour guide, leading a group through an underground tunnel in the rural West Bank, not far from Jerusalem, was surprised to stumble upon the remains of a unique carved pillar.
The pillar matched monumental construction from the 9th or 8th centuries BCE – the time of the First Temple in Jerusalem. That signaled the presence of an important and previously unknown structure from that period. But the remains are in a politically charged area of the West Bank, on the outskirts of an Arab village and on land privately owned by a Palestinian. More than this, it is near the security fence separating the areas under control of the Palestinian Authority from the areas under Israeli control.