First the link to this week’s complete list as HTML and as PDF.
Schurger et al. summarily debunk the main and most important experiment behind the denial of true free will. Philosophically I find this result extremely pleasing and am looking forward to more in the same vain.
Marasco, but also Orozco-terWengel of last week, are two of many newer results about evolution not being completely random and at least partially reviving some of Lyssenko’s and Lamarck’s ideas. (And even with conventional breeding stressing strains and reusing the individuals that survive is the way to go forward.)
C. P. Snow’s Two cultures have risen with a vengeance. In a society, where the broad majority neither knows what science is nor can tell it apart from magic or witchcraft, it is no wonder when the public reaction to natural disasters again turns to the burning of witches. Due to the delay in postal delivery nature’s Editorial is the first I see in the serious journals and I await further reactions. In this age of mounting insecurities I don’t see the scientist’s position any more secure than it was in the late middle ages. It’s up to archaeologists to advise now, only they have studied the long cycles of civilisation that are at work here.
Phrampus & Hornbach are willfully ambiguous about their timing. What do “recent” and “Holocene” mean? The abstract once mentions 5000 years but the only number in the text is during the twentieth century. The source for the latter sees it happening in one single step exactly synchronous with a change in measurement but still considers it real, at least for the region discussed here.
Huang et al. confirm the single domestication of rice already reported by Molina et al. (list of 2011-05-19).