Articole, studii, site-uri si carti STIINTIFICE relationate cu problemele dezbatute pe arie

Their religious roots, not their Communist experience, support authoritarianism and risk aversion.
Eastern Orthodox Christianity has done more to shape certain ex-Communist countries than communism. It also, some say, made their people relatively unhappy and anti-capitalist. This theory got a lot of play in 1990s Russia but has now resurfaced in a fresh World Bank working paper.
They concluded that Orthodoxy made certain countries fertile ground for communism and generally shaped their path as distinct from those taken by countries steeped in Western Christian traditions.

New research finds that, when evangelical organizations raise their profile by sponsoring a high-profile political campaign, a backlash ensues.
Religion in America has been rocked in recent decades by two societal shifts: the rise of Christian evangelicals as a right-wing political force, and the increasing number of people who decline to affiliate with any faith tradition.
New research presents evidence that these trends, usually discussed separately, are in fact related. It reports the rate at which people disassociate themselves from religion is higher in states where the Christian right exerts its political muscle.
"Religious attachments fade in the face of visible Christian right policy victories," writes a research team led by Denison University political scientist Paul Djupe. "There is clear evidence that people—probably those without strong relationships with houses of worship—use the Christian right as a proxy for religion as a whole, and discontinue their religious identities as a result."
In the journal Political Research Quarterly, Djupe and his colleagues analyze the intersection of personal faith and religion-driven politics on a state-by-state basis.

Cooperation among different species of birds is common. Some birds build their nests near those of larger, more aggressive species to deter predators, and flocks of mixed species forage for food and defend territories together in alliances that can last for years. In most cases, though, these partnerships are not between specific individuals of the other species—any bird from the other species will do.
But in a new study published in the journal Behavioral Ecology, scientists from the University of Chicago and University of Nebraska show how two different species of Australian fairy-wrens not only recognize individual birds from other species, but also form long-term partnerships that help them forage and defend their shared space as a group.
"Finding that these two species associate was not surprising, as mixed species flocks of birds are observed all over the world," said Allison Johnson, Ph.D., a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Nebraska who conducted the study as part of her dissertation research at UChicago. "But when we realized they were sharing territories with specific individuals and responding aggressively only to unknown individuals, we knew this was really unique. It completely changed our research and we knew we had to investigate it."

The analysis of more than 100 countries found that young people are less religious no matter what else is happening in the countries.
Although the age gap in religious commitment is larger in some nations than in others, it occurs in many different economic and social contexts — in developing countries as well as advanced industrial economies, in Muslim-majority nations as well as predominantly Christian states, and in societies that are, overall, highly religious as well as those that are comparatively secular.
Only two nations — Georgia (the former Soviet republic) and Ghana (in West Africa) — had young people who were more religious than the adults.

Now, Nagy and other researchers are learning it may not have been so difficult after all. The evidence comes from multiple directions. The evolutionary histories of some groups of organisms record repeated transitions from single-celled to multicellular forms, suggesting the hurdles could not have been so high. Genetic comparisons between simple multicellular organisms and their single-celled relatives have revealed that much of the molecular equipment needed for cells to band together and coordinate their activities may have been in place well before multicellularity evolved. And clever experiments have shown that in the test tube, single-celled life can evolve the beginnings of multicellularity in just a few hundred generations—an evolutionary instant.
Hints of multicellularity date back 3 billion years, when impressions of what seem to be mats of microbes appear in the fossil record. Some have argued that 2-billion-year-old, coil-shaped fossils of what may be blue-green or green algae—found in the United States and Asia and dubbed Grypania spiralis—or 2.5-billion-year-old microscopic filaments recorded in South Africa represent the first true evidence of multicellular life. Other kinds of complex organisms don't show up until much later in the fossil record. Sponges, considered by many to be the most primitive living animal, may date back to 750 million years ago, but many researchers consider a group of frondlike creatures called the Ediacarans, common about 570 million years ago, to be the first definitive animal fossils. Likewise, fossil spores suggest multicellular plants evolved from algae at least 470 million years ago.
Plants and animals each made the leap to multicellularity just once. But in other groups, the transition took place again and again. Fungi likely evolved complex multicellularity in the form of fruiting bodies—think mushrooms—on about a dozen separate occasions, Nagy concluded in a preprint posted 8 December 2017 on bioRxiv, based on a review of how different species of fungi—some single-celled, some multicellular—are related to one another. The same goes for algae: Red, brown, and green algae all evolved their own multicellular forms over the past billion years or so.
These studies show that many functions of specialized cells in a complex organism are not new. Instead, features and functions seen in single-celled organisms are rearranged in time and space in their multicellular relatives, says Corina Tarnita, a theoretical biologist at Princeton University. For example, in a unicellular relative of Volvox, Chlamydomonas, organelles called centrioles do double duty. For much of the cell's lifetime they anchor the two whirling flagella that propel the cell through the water. But when that cell prepares to reproduce, it loses the flagella, and the centrioles move toward the nucleus, where they help pull apart the dividing cell's chromosomes. Later, the daughter cells each regrow the flagella. Chlamydomonas can both swim and reproduce, but not at the same time.

Our recent paper in Scientific Advances shows that, in the 20th century, secularisation occurred before economic development and not the other way around. Although this doesn’t prove secularisation makes a country wealthier, it does rule out the reverse. The arrow of time points in one direction, so economic performance cannot be expected to influence people’s opinions in the past.

Their study showed that although injuries disrupting volition—the desire to act—can occur in many different locations, they fall within the same brain network. Injuries disrupting agency—the feeling of responsibility for carrying out those actions—also can occur in many different locations, but they fall within a separate network.
"Our approach challenges the assumption that neuropsychiatric symptoms should localize to one brain region, and instead shows that these symptoms localized to interconnected brain networks," said Darby, the lead author of the study. "Once we understand that agency and volition localize to brain networks, can we then take that knowledge and develop a new approach to treating a symptom?"
Supporting this possibility, the authors found that brain stimulation to different parts of these brain networks could change free will perception.

o perform their study, they examined data from the Cell Collective database. This rich resource represents biological processes across life -- encapsulating a wide range of biological processes from humans to animals, plants, bacteria and viruses. The number of components in these networks ranged from five nodes to 321 nodes, encompassing 6500 different biological interactions.
"In a stable system, organisms will always come back to their original state," explains Daniels. "In an unstable system, the effect of a small change will grow and cause the whole system to behave differently."
As such, the team found that sensitivity, which is a measure of stability, was near a special point that biologists call "criticality," suggesting that the networks may be evolutionarily adapted to an optimal tradeoff between stability and instability.

New research provides evidence that delusion-prone individuals, dogmatic individuals, and religious fundamentalists are more likely to believe fake news. The study, which appears in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, suggests that the inability to detect false information is related to a failure to be actively open-minded.
The rise of online social media has led to growing concerns about the spread of unsubstantiated rumors, misleading political propaganda, and blatantly false articles designed to create viral web traffic. Even the U.S. Army has become involved in efforts to understand and combat disinformation in cyberspace.

Archaeus5.Ai diaree de postare? "New research found/demonstrated..."Cercetarea cui, a carui institut!?
In lumea moderna, o dovada a seriozitatii autorului si totodata sursa de credibilitate o constituie postarea obligatorie a sursei informatiei.Titlu+sursa+adresa http....

Daca chiar vrei sa transmiti ceva, si crezi ca e ceva valoros, nu ai face bine sa mai si traduci? Nu ai timp, ti-e lene?

Plants convert sunlight into energy through photosynthesis; however, most crops on the planet are plagued by a photosynthetic glitch, and to deal with it, evolved an energy-expensive process called photorespiration that drastically suppresses their yield potential. Researchers from the University of Illinois and U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service report in the journal Science that crops engineered with a photorespiratory shortcut are 40 percent more productive in real-world agronomic conditions.
Photosynthesis uses the enzyme Rubisco—the planet's most abundant protein—and sunlight energy to turn carbon dioxide and water into sugars that fuel plant growth and yield. Over millennia, Rubisco has become a victim of its own success, creating an oxygen-rich atmosphere. Unable to reliably distinguish between the two molecules, Rubisco grabs oxygen instead of carbon dioxide about 20 percent of the time, resulting in a plant-toxic compound that must be recycled through the process of photorespiration.

An international research team, including a member of the Complexity Science Hub Vienna, investigated the role of "big gods" in the rise of complex large-scale societies. Big gods are defined as moralizing deities who punish ethical transgressions. Contrary to prevailing theories, the team found that beliefs in big gods are a consequence, not a cause, of the evolution of complex societies. The results are published in the current issue of the journal Nature.
For their statistical analyses, the researchers used the Seshat Global History Databank, the most comprehensive collection of historical and prehistorical data. Currently, Seshat contains about 300,000 records on social complexity, religion and other characteristics of 500 past societies, spanning 10,000 years of human history.
"It has been a debate for centuries why humans, unlike other animals, cooperate in large groups of genetically unrelated individuals," says Seshat director and co-author Peter Turchin from the University of Connecticut and the Complexity Science Hub Vienna. Factors such as agriculture, warfare, or religion have been proposed as main driving forces.
One prominent theory, the big or moralizing gods hypothesis, assumes that religious beliefs were key. According to this theory, people are more likely to cooperate fairly if they believe in gods who will punish them if they don't. "To our surprise, our data strongly contradict this hypothesis," says lead author Harvey Whitehouse. "In almost every world region for which we have data, moralizing gods tended to follow, not precede, increases in social complexity." Even more so, standardized rituals tended on average to appear hundreds of years before gods who cared about human morality.
Such rituals create a collective identity and feelings of belonging that act as social glue, making people to behave more cooperatively. "Our results suggest that collective identities are more important to facilitate cooperation in societies than religious beliefs," says Harvey Whitehouse.

Scientists engineer shortcut for photosynthetic glitch, boost crop growth by 40 percent


'Designul inteligent' al zeului este corectat de muritorii de rand.
Fotosinteze a fost imbunatatita de cercetatori cu 40% corectand un proces chimic natural care dadea rateuri  ...

Omul l-a creat pe Dumnezeul după chipul și după asemănare sa.

Complex societies gave birth to big gods, not the other way around: study

Using what they call DASH (DNA-based Assembly and Synthesis of Hierarchical) materials, Cornell engineers constructed a DNA material with capabilities of metabolism, in addition to self-assembly and organization – three key traits of life.
"We are introducing a brand-new, lifelike material concept powered by its very own artificial metabolism. We are not making something that's alive, but we are creating materials that are much more lifelike than have ever been seen before," said Dan Luo, professor of biological and environmental engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Creația perfectă s-a degenerat, datorită căderii omului, inițial lucrurile nu stăteau așa!



dumnezeul ăla, creat după chipul și asemănarea omului, nu este Adevăratul Dumnezeu!

Scientists engineer shortcut for photosynthetic glitch, boost crop growth by 40 percent

'Designul inteligent' al zeului este corectat de muritorii de rand.
Fotosinteze a fost imbunatatita de cercetatori cu 40% corectand un proces chimic natural care dadea rateuri  ...