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Category: biological

PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY • JUN 3, 2021
Culture drives human evolution more than genetics

I wonder about the thought that only humans do this, and perhaps that somehow culture is separate in some way from biological evolution enmeshed with the rest of the planet?
by University of Maine

Culture is an under-appreciated factor in human evolution, Waring says. Like genes, culture helps people adjust to their environment and meet the challenges of survival and reproduction. Culture, however, does so more effectively than genes because the transfer of knowledge is faster and more flexible than the inheritance of genes, according to Waring and Wood.

Waring and Wood say culture is also special in one important way: it is strongly group-oriented. Factors like conformity, social identity and shared norms and institutions—factors that have no genetic equivalent—make cultural evolution very group-oriented, according to researchers. Therefore, competition between culturally organized groups propels adaptations such as new cooperative norms and social systems that help groups survive better together.

According to researchers, “culturally organized groups appear to solve adaptive problems more readily than individuals, through the compounding value of social learning and cultural transmission in groups.” Cultural adaptations may also occur faster in larger groups than in small ones.

With groups primarily driving culture and culture now fueling human evolution more than genetics, Waring and Wood found that evolution itself has become more group-oriented.

“In the very long term, we suggest that humans are evolving from individual genetic organisms to cultural groups which function as superorganisms, similar to ant colonies and beehives,” Waring says. “The ‘society as organism’ metaphor is not so metaphorical after all.

ORIGINAL PAPER

Timothy M. Waring et al, Long-term gene–culture coevolution and the human evolutionary transition, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2021). DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2021.0538
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/…/10…/rspb.2021.0538
Thanks to Zoomers of the Sunshine Coast BC & Folkstone Design Inc.
#CulturalEvolution

In a new study, University of Maine researchers found that culture helps humans adapt to their environment and overcome challenges better and faster than genetics.

After conducting an extensive review of the literature and evidence of long-term , scientists Tim Waring and Zach Wood concluded that humans are experiencing a special evolutionary transition in which the importance of culture, such as learned knowledge, practices and skills, is surpassing the value of genes as the primary driver of evolution.

Culture is an under-appreciated factor in human evolution, Waring says. Like genes, culture helps people adjust to their environment and meet the challenges of survival and reproduction. Culture, however, does so more effectively than genes because the transfer of knowledge is faster and more flexible than the inheritance of genes, according to Waring and Wood.

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## MATHEMATICS • MAY 24, 2021

# *Noise is commonly discarded, but identifying patterns in noise can be very useful.*

*Generalize the Hearst exponent by adding more coefficients in order to get a more complete description of the changing data. This makes it possible to find patterns in the data that are usually considered noise and were previously impossible to analyze.*

*The development of this mathematical apparatus can solve the issue of parameterisation and analysis of processes for which there is no exact mathematical description. This opens up enormous prospects in describing, analyzing and forecasting complex systems.*

*by moscow institute of physics and technology*

One of the metrics used in economics and natural sciences in time series analysis is the Hurst exponent. It suggests whether the trend present in the data will persist: for example, whether values will continue to increase, or whether growth will turn to decline. This assumption holds for many natural processes and is explained by the inertia of natural systems. For example, lake level change, which is consistent with predictions derived from analysis of the Hurst exponent value, is determined not only by the current amount of water, but also by evaporation rates, precipitation, snowmelt, etc. All of the above is a time-consuming process.

Thanks to folkstone design inc. & zoomers of the sunshine coast BC

**Relevant Stories**

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpEBFr960dwZqR-9HtCWIcQ

## ORIGINAL PAPER

Raoul Nigmatullin et al, **Generalized Hurst Hypothesis: Description of Time-Series in Communication Systems**, Mathematics (2021). DOI: 10.3390/math9040381

https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/9/4/381

#ComplexSystems #forecasting #Noise #GeneralizedHurstHypothesis.

A team of scientists from MIPT and Kazan National Research Technical University is developing a mathematical apparatus that could lead to a breakthrough in network security. The results of the work have been published in the journal Mathematics.

Complex systems, such as or living organisms, do not have deterministic physical laws to accurately describe them and predict future behavior. In this case, an important role is played by , which describes the behavior of the system in terms of sets of statistical parameters.

Such complex systems are described by trendless sequences, often defined as long-term time series or “noise”. They are fluctuations produced by a combination of different sources and are among the most difficult data to analyze and extract reliable, stable information.

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Researchers created an algorithm to identify similar cell types from species – including fish, mice, flatworms and sponges – that have diverged for hundreds of millions of years, which could help fill in gaps in our understanding of evolution.

Cells are the building blocks of life, present in every living organism. But how similar do you think your cells are to a mouse? A fish? A worm?

Comparing cell types in different species across the tree of life can help biologists understand how cell types arose and how they have adapted to the functional needs of different life forms. This has been of increasing interest to evolutionary biologists in recent years because new technology now allows sequencing and identifying all cells throughout whole organisms. “There’s essentially a wave in the scientific community to classify all types of cells in a wide variety of different organisms,” explained Bo Wang, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford University.

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Circa 2010

Researchers have discovered a possible new species of bacteria that survives by producing and ‘breathing’ its own oxygen. The finding suggests that some microbes could have thrived without oxygen-producing plants on the early Earth — and on other planets — by using their own oxygen to garner energy from methane (CH4).

“The mechanism we have now discovered shows that, long ago, these organisms could have exploited the methane sources on Earth and possibly on other planets and moons by mechanisms that we didn’t know existed,” says Mike Jetten, a microbiologist at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands and part of the team that conducted the study, which is published in Nature today1.

The oxygen-producing bacterium, provisionally named Methylomirabilis oxyfera, grows in a layer of methane-rich but oxygen-poor mud at the bottom of rivers and lakes. The microbes live on a diet of methane and nitrogen oxides, such as nitrite and nitrate. These nitrogen-containing compounds are especially abundant in sediment contaminated by agricultural runoff.

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A new topic a new challenge for future civilizations.

I won’t write an introduction I will ask couple of questions to make you think about it.

In the forth industrial revolution are we going to change the way we reproduce? Could be the first step for post-human era in 2040?

How can we change the way we deal with economics? Because economy depends on population grow. In a way or another world population will stop at 11 billion so it is necessary to change the economy.

How can we colonize and expand while fertility rate is going down could another creatures like machines and biological engineered animals help us to expand and the human specie will limit its population?

Freddie Sayers meets Prof Shanna Swan of Mount Sinai, New York.

Accompanying article here: https://unherd.com/thepost/spermageddon-are-humans-going-extinct/

Listen to the podcast here: https://shows.acast.com/lockdowntv-with-freddie-sayers/spermageddon-are-humans-going-extinct.

Is the human race in danger of extinction? That’s the jaw-dropping claim made in Professor Shanna Swan’s new book ‘Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race’. According to the book, sperm counts have dropped almost 60% since 1973 and suggests that they could reach zero by 2045, which would mean no more reproduction and no more babies.

Our Science Editor Tom Chivers wasn’t overly convinced by the thesis, but we wanted to hear Dr Swan out. She argues that chemicals such as “Pthalates”, to be found in everything from ATM receipts to Tupperware plastic, are altering —and endangering — human sexual development, which is getting worse by the year.

Having devoted over 20 years of her career to the study of sperm, the epidemiologist is about as well-credentialed as they come and she is certainly worth listening to. We thank prof Swan for her time and hope you enjoy the discussion.

#sperm #epidemiology #plastics

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The scale-free complexity associated with the biological system in general, and the neuron in particular, means that within each cell there is a veritable macromolecular brain, at least in terms of structural complexity, and perhaps to a certain degree functional complexity as well—a fractal hierarchy. This means that the extremely simplistic view of the synapse as a single digital bit is misrepresenting the reality of the situation—such as, if we were to utilize the parlance of the neurocomputational model, each ‘computational unit’ contains a veritable macromolecular brain within it. There is no computer or human technology yet equivalent to this.\.

A study published in the journal Science has upended 80 years of conventional wisdom in computational neuroscience that has modeled the neuron as a simple point-like node in a system, integrating signals and passing them along.

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Using an advanced microscopy technique, Texas A&M researchers have uncovered a twin boundary defect in a soft polymer that has never been observed before.

Texas A&M University scientists have for the first time revealed a single microscopic defect called a “twin” in a soft-block copolymer using an advanced electron microscopy technique. This defect may be exploited in the future to create materials with novel acoustic and photonic properties.

“This defect is like a black swan — something special going on that isn’t typical,” said Edwin Thomas, professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. “Although we chose a certain polymer for our study, I think the twin defect will be fairly universal across a bunch of similar soft matter systems, like oils, surfactants, biological materials, and natural polymers. Therefore, our findings will be valuable to diverse research across the soft matter field.”

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Archaea are more than just oddball lifeforms that thrive in unusual places — they turn out to be quite widespread. Moreover, they might hold the key to understanding how complex life evolved on Earth. Many scientists suspect that an ancient archaeon gave rise to the group of organisms known as eukaryotes, which include amoebae, mushrooms, plants and people — although it’s also possible that both eukaryotes and archaea arose from some more distant common ancestor.

As scientists learn more about enigmatic archaea, they’re finding clues about the evolution of the complex cells that make up people, plants and more.

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