Researchers from the University of Arizona in Tuscon announced that the most pervasive global strain of HIV began spreading among humans between 1884 and 1924. This finding suggests that growing urbanization in colonial Africa was the catalyst for the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Michael Worobey, an assistant ecology and evolutionary biology professor at Arizona, led the research, which studied a number of HIV-1 (the strain found in most cases outside of Africa) genetic sequences to determine the time periods when the virus genetically diverged from its predecessors. These findings, published in the current issue of Nature, were mapped out in the form of a family tree whose roots date back to the beginning of the 20th century…

The scientists recovered the 48-year-old HIV gene fragments from a wax-embedded lymph node tissue biopsy from a woman in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The oldest known HIV-1 group M genetic sequence comes from a 1959 blood sample given by a Kinshasa man. A comparison between the same genetic regions of the 1959 and 1960 viruses provided additional evidence that their common ancestor existed around 1900.

Read more here.

In recent years researchers have turned to the study of gossip-our predilection for talking about people who are not present. Why is news about others so irresistible?

As it turns out, gossip serves a useful social function in bonding group members together. In the distant past, when humans lived in small bands and meeting strangers was a rare occurrence, gossip helped us survive and thrive.

Our modern-day infatuation with celebrities reveals the ancient evolutionary psychology of gossip in sharp relief: anyone whom we see that often and know that well becomes socially important to us.

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Supernova

In an article from Foxnews.com this morning, scientists are now considering that earth may be a unique planet.  “Earth may be trapped in an abnormal bubble of space-time that is particularly devoid of matter,” scientists are hypothesizing.

Dark energy is is a hypothetical exotic form of energy that permeates all of space and tends to increase the rate of expansion of the universe. Dark energy is the most popular way to explain recent observations that the universe appears to be expanding at an accelerating rate. In the standard model of cosmology, dark energy currently accounts for 74% of the total mass-energy of the universe. (1)

According to the article:

If we were in an unusually sparse area of the universe, then things could look farther away than they really are and there would be no need to rely on dark energy as an explanation for certain astronomical observations.

“If we lived in a very large under-density, then the space-time itself wouldn’t be accelerating,” said researcher Timothy Clifton of Oxford University in England. “It would just be that the observations, if interpreted in the usual way, would look like they were.”

The criticism of this theory is that it negates a principle that has ruled astronomy for more than 450 years: namely, that our place in the universe isn’t special.

When Nicholas Copernicus argued that it made much more sense for the Earth to be revolving around the sun than vice versa, it revolutionized science.

Since then, most theories have to pass the Copernican test. If they require our planet to be unique, or our position to be exalted, the ideas often seem unlikely.

“This idea that we live in a void would really be a statement that we live in a special place,” Clifton told SPACE.com. “The regular cosmological model is based on the idea that where we live is a typical place in the universe. This would be a contradiction to the Copernican principle.”

So the negative of this theory, which says that earth is in unique area of the universe that makes things appear to be farther away than they are, is that it makes earth a special planet, and that just can’t be.  Funny, it appears to be the only one in our area of the universe that has life.

What do you think about this uniqueness argument?

Notes:

(1) “Dark energy.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 28 Sep 2008, 17:05 UTC. 1 Oct 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dark_energy&oldid=241564528>.

Game on, I say!

Today I begin my writing journey known as the doctoral dissertation. I want to be done as soon as possible. I know that I have need to be working on three things in my life right now: finishing a book on success in ministry, writing my dissertation, and continuing to get physically healthy. In the past couple of weeks I’ve gotten a good bit done on the book, and now starts the dissertation.

I’ve already set up an auto-responder to let people know that I may not respond quickly. I have my writing music in place and my office set up as I need it.

My thesis is Continue Reading

For quite some time, I’ve wondered why so many people can believe in God (or god) and yet we have such a strange disinterest in a relationship with Him. Experimental philosophy has given us clues.

In a recent article from Scientific American Mind, Joshua Knobe an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, wrote an article entitled, “Can a Robot, an Insect or God Be Aware?: Our intuitions about consciousness in other beings and objects reveal a lot about how we think. In the article, he looks at the new field of Experimental Philosophy and how it sheds light on how we think.

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