Science: A long, long road to… us

== Lottsa Luca ==

Luca, the Last Universal Common Ancestor, is estimated to have lived some four billion years ago, when Earth was a mere 560 million years old.  For a long time the three great domains of life -- bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes -- seemed to have no common point of origin. But now scientists have zeroed in on 355 genes that probably originated in Luca, the joint ancestor of bacteria and archaea (and hence us eurkaryotes)… and thus they stumbled onto strong indications of conditions for the origin of all Earthly life.  Because those 355 genes point very strongly at deep sea volcanic vents – “the gassy, metal-laden, intensely hot plumes caused by seawater interacting with magma erupting through the ocean floor.”

The 355 genes ascribable to Luca include some that metabolize hydrogen as a source of energy as well as a gene for an enzyme called reverse gyrase, found only in microbes that live at extremely high temperatures.  This much is spectacular!  It means that astronomers are not the only ones using amazing inferences to peer beyond all previous limitations toward early origins.

From my perspective as a planetary scientist and science fiction author, I have to say that the implications are huge for life elsewhere.  For volcanic vents are exactly the sort of thing one expects to find at the bottoms of the “roofed oceans” that we now figure exist on at least ten small worlds in just this solar system, starting with Europa and Enceledus. Such roofed worlds are not dependent upon so-called "goldilocks zones" and might exist in the vast majority of solar systems and make up the vast majority of abodes of life.

Moreover, the LUCA lead researcher has taken this a step further, in an inference that is weaker but just as startling!  The inferred, 355 gene LUCA seems to be missing so many genes necessary for life that he believes it must still have been relying on chemical components from its environment! In other words: it still relied on a surrounding “soup” of chemicals created abiotically, presumably by the basal “Miller-Urey-Orgel” processes.  Hence it was only “half alive,” Dr. William F. Martin of Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf writes.

The latter supposition is viewed skeptically by those who think the Soup got all used up millions of years earlier, before the Late Bombardment. And I share this skepticism. Still… it is a terrific article.  Wow.  What times we live in.  And what a loss for those waging War on Science. You folks are missing out, exactly as we are learning so much about Creation. 

== Homo economicus… make him extinct? ==

Much of modern economics is based upon a general theory of human choice behavior called Homo economicus, which posits that market participants (humans) behave in ways that reflect self-interested game theory. Only lately, study after study has shown this set of assumptions to be problematic. One quandary comes from the fact that initial research focused on the easiest test subjects for western university professors to get ahold of. Their own students.

This fascinating article by David Sloan Wilson calls it: “the WEIRD People problem.(Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic)  Researchers often think they’re studying “Homo sapiens“, but actually they’re studying a particularly peculiar form of cultural psychology. This is because, until recently, most studies have been done with WEIRD undergraduates. But, it turns out when placed in cross-cultural perspective WEIRD undergraduates are psychologically rather unusual and a really poor model for our species psychology.

But it gets… weirder. Wilson interviews Joseph Henrich, who says, “Not only do we find that the Homo economicus predictions fail in every society (24 societies, multiple communities per society), but instructively, we find that it fails in different ways in different societies. Nevertheless, after our paper “In search of Homo economicus” in 2001 in the American Economic Review, we continued to search for him. Eventually, we did find him. He turned out to be a chimpanzee.

"The canonical predictions of the Homo economicus model have proved remarkably successful in predicting chimpanzee behavior in simple experiments. So, all theoretical work was not wasted, it was just applied to the wrong species.” 

Read more in Henrich's book, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species and Making Us Smarter.

== Send in the Clones ==

Remember Dolly, the cloned sheep? Back in Glory Season, I speculated that it would be difficult to clone mammals and that hence there might still be some (slight) need for males, even in a hyper feminist world.  Well, we’ve seen some ups and downs since. Dolly seemed to suggest that tech empowered female humans will be able to dispense with us hairy-inseminators in the future – and at times I admit, I wouldn’t blame em.

Only then Dolly died young, sickened with many diseases of aging and with shortened chromosomes, suggesting that a cloned mammal inherits some of the aging clock of the parent and does not reset its embryonic timer back to zero! Baaaah! So much for parthenogeneis and eliminating males.

Only now … another reversal!  It seems a dozen more Dolly clones are doing just fine, with no sign of premature senescence.  So maybe it just took a better process.  Sorry guys. Your services are no longer needed. (Except maybe for amusement and moving some furniture, now and then.) Try to tidy up a bit on your way out, hm?

== Bio Wonders! ==

African birds who guide humans to hidden beehives in order to share in the beeswax and honey.

The amazing discovery that lichens do not consist of a single fungus and algae.

Will painting “eyes” on the butts of cattle help deter lions so African herders can live side by side with them?  I guess we’ll find out.  

A potential breakthrough.  Scientists have developed an “artificial leaf” type of solar cell that uses water and sunlight to transform CO2 into CO or carbon monoxide.  Don’t let it escape! Because CO is a nasty greenhouse gas and indoors it can be poisonous.  But fed into further processes it can make methane – natural gas – which can be stored and used as fuel.  One more piece for the puzzle.  

Biology challenges us!  “The federal government announced plans Thursday to lift a moratorium on funding of certain controversial experiments that use human stem cells to create animal embryos that are partly human. Receiving special concern are experiments designed to create animals with human brain cells or human brain tissue. Scientists might want to create them to study neurological conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. But the experiments would undergo intensive scrutiny if there's any chance there might be a "substantial contribution" or "substantial functional modification" to an animal's brain. In other words… “uplift.”

Critics denounced the decision. "Science fiction writers might have imagined worlds like this — like The Island of Dr. Moreau, Brave New World, Frankenstein," says Stuart Newman, a biologist at New York Medical College.  

On the other hand... there is no more certain proof of lack of agility, than to see someone purportedly “wise” commenting on a potential scientific problem, by citing only the oldest and most simplistic clichés. Try reading something written after 1910, grampa.

And inspires…

In the last 62 years, there have been 115 interactions recorded between humpback whales and killer whales, and in a great many cases the Humpbacks have gone to great lengths fending the Orcas off from attacking other species, like Gray whales and even seals. “The most logical biological explanation for the humpbacks’ vigilante-like behavior is that the whales receive some sort of benefit from interfering with orca hunts.”  Of all the incidents the scientists investigated over the last five decades, killer whales targeted humpbacks just 11 percent of the time. The other 89 percent involved orcas hunting seals, sea lions, porpoises, and other marine mammals. 

We keep learning how nature has islands of altruism, and yes friendliness to humans, despite all we've done. (E.g. elephants and whales and dolphins who travel great distances to where some kind of "rumor" has informed them that the humans are kindly, and will remove the fishing net, hook, or snare.)  Yes!  Nature needs us to behave much much better with our power. But can we?

We are surrounded by nihilists who cynically proclaim that all is already lost, so why bother trying?... and by short-termers seeking only short range benefit for themselves... and 'reformers' who agitate for a better world but frantically denounce any offer of good news, because "it might undermine our sense of urgency!"

What can the majority of science-loving, progress-seeking, cautiously optimistic-while-worried, pragmatic reformers do, in the face of such cynicism, ferociously-repeated with the fervor of a cult?  The one personality trait that unites a mad far-left and an insane entire-right?

I have been a fighter for the Earth for all my adult life and before that. (See my novel EARTH!) Hence I know one thing very well; the short-sighted profit-grabbers and "it'll all be over soon" kooks are both the enemy. Cynics are no friends. And they are wrong.

Case in point. Go back to 1980 and find anyone who would put money down that every species of whale would still be around, in 2016.  And growing more numerous, each year. You'd have found no takers.

We have a chance, still. But only if we believe we do.