As the largest class of natural products, terpenes have a variety of roles in mediating antagonistic and beneficial interactions among organisms. They defend many species of plants, animals and microorganisms against predators, pathogens and competitors, and they are involved in conveying messages to conspecifics and mutualists regarding the presence of food, mates and enemies. Despite the diversity of terpenes known, it is striking how phylogenetically distant organisms have come to use similar structures for common purposes. New natural roles undoubtedly remain to be discovered for this large class of compounds, given that such a small percentage of terpenes has been investigated so far.Now, the Japanese team has expanded that "striking" fact to bacteria, pushing the origin of the technology for synthesizing hundreds of complex compounds down into the simplest of organisms: bacteria. What's also astonishing is that bacteria produce some unique terpenes not known from higher organisms, such as plants and fungi." EN&V
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| Mr. Tyson |
The finding suggests serious biases in molecular clocks, which are heavily used to date many kinds of living things. ... "Paleontology and molecular clocks have a long, uneasy relationship," said Peter Wilf, a paleobotanist and professor of geoscience, Penn State. "Paleontologists want molecular clocks to work. However, for years we have seen molecular dates, mostly for very deep evolutionary events, that are much older than the corresponding fossils. This situation has been a frustrating Catch-22 because if the clocks are wrong, no fossils exist that could demonstrate they are wrong. Here, we looked at many new plant fossils from the extremely productive region of Patagonia, and we found the opposite, that the fossils are much older than the clock dates. In this case, we can definitely say that the clocks are wrong. The fossils prove it." EN&V
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, Romans 1:22
This year, debates in physics circles took a worrying turn. Faced with difficulties in applying fundamental theories to the observed Universe, some researchers called for a change in how theoretical physics is done. They began to argue -- explicitly -- that if a theory is sufficiently elegant and explanatory, it need not be tested experimentally, breaking with centuries of philosophical tradition of defining scientific knowledge as empirical. We disagree. As the philosopher of science Karl Popper argued: a theory must be falsifiable to be scientific.In particular, they chide the string theorists, multiverse advocates, inflation theorists, and purveyors of the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics. Speaking of inflation, it's interesting that Science Magazine listed the downfall of the BICEP2 results on inflation as one of the leading "Breakdowns" (as opposed to "Breakthroughs") of the year." EN&V
At the first light of dawn on Christmas Day, some German soldiers emerged from their trenches and approached the Allied lines across no-man’s-land, calling out “Merry Christmas” in their enemies’ native tongues. At first, the Allied soldiers feared it was a trick, but seeing the Germans unarmed they climbed out of their trenches and shook hands with the enemy soldiers. The men exchanged presents of cigarettes and plum puddings and sang carols and songs. There was even a documented case of soldiers from opposing sides playing a good-natured game of soccer.