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Displaying entries 31 through 45 of 51 found.

Life's Corporeal Evolution Develops, Encodes and Organizes Itself: An EarthWinian Genesis Synthesis

Papastavrou, Nikolaos, et al.. RNA-catalyzed evolution of catalytic RNA. PNAS. 121/11, 2024. Salk Institute of Biological Studies geneticists including its director Gerald Joyce are now able to discern a pathway by which this crucial nucleotide molecule could shape up, have the necessary capacities so as to propel living systems going on their evolutionary way. See also Prebiotic Astrochemistry from Astronomical Observations and Laboratory Spectroscopy by Lucy Ziurys in the Annual Review of Physical Chemistry (Volume 75, 2024.)

An RNA polymerase ribozyme obtained by directed evolution can propagate a functional RNA through repeated rounds of replication and selection. Earlier versions did not have sufficient copying fidelity, but an improved variant can now replicate the hammerhead ribozyme through a reciprocal synthesis. Two evolutionary lineages were carried out using either the prior low-fidelity or the newer high-fidelity polymerase. Deep sequencing followed the course of evolution, revealing variants that diverged from as fitness increased. This study demonstrates the critical importance of replication fidelity for maintaining heritable information in an RNA-based evolving system, such as is thought to have existed during the early history of life on Earth. (Abstract)

Purvis, Graham, et al. Generation of long-chain fatty acids by hydrogen-driven bicarbonate reduction in ancient alkaline hydrothermal vents. Communications Earth & Environment. 5/30, 2024. Newcastle University paleobiochemists quantify how another vital complexity stage came to readily occur. Once again our Earthuman retrospective scenario from prebiotic sources onto replicative protocells indeed takes on a robust guise of a natural endemic fertility.

The origin of life at some point required membrane-bound compartments to foster the separation and concentration of internal biochemistry from the external environment. Long-chain amphiphilic molecules, such as fatty acids, appear good candidates to have formed the first cell membranes. Here we show that the reaction of dissolved hydrogen and bicarbonate with the iron-rich mineral magnetite under conditions of continuous flow, alkaline pH and simple low temperatures (90 °C) generate a range of long-chain aliphatic compounds. Readily generated membrane-forming amphiphilic organic molecules in the first cellular vesicles may have been driven by similar chemistry generated from the mixing of bicarbonate-rich water with alkaline hydrogen-rich fluids. (Abstract)

Walton, Craig, et al. Cosmic dust fertilization of glacial prebiotic chemistry on early Earth. arXiv:2402.12310. ETH Zurich. Cambridge University, Oxford University, University of Bergen and Open University, UK including Oliver Shorttle make a latest case that an interstellar medium suffused with biomaterials shed from exoplanets may well have showered our own planet with vital missing reagents,

Earth's surface lacks many elements considered necessary for prebiotic chemistry. In contrast, extraterrestrial rocky objects are rich in these ingredients and may have delivered them as exogenous material. Today, the flux of extraterrestrial matter to Earth is made up of fine-grained cosmic dust deposits due to the action of sedimentary processes. We study dust formation and planetary accretion to show that localized deposits could have accumulated in arid environments on early Earth. Our results challenge the widely held assumption that cosmic dust is incapable of fertilizing prebiotic chemistry. (Abstract)

Bridges, Alice, et al.. Bumblebees socially learn behaviour too complex to innovate alone. Nature. March, 2024. Seven social biologists mainly at Queen Mary University of London including Lars Chittka demonstrate ways to extend life’s prevalent impetus for collaborative, informed societies all the way to invertebrate insects.

Culture refers to behaviours that are commonly learned and persist within a population over time. It has been found that animal culture can also be cumulative. Here we show that even bumblebees can learn from trained demonstrator bees to obtain food rewards, even though they fail to do so on their own. This suggests that social learning might permit the acquisition of behaviours too complex to ‘re-innovate’ through individual learning. (Excerpt)

Gorbonos, Dan, et al. Geometrical Structure of Bifurcations during Spatial Decision-Making. PRX Life. 2/1, 2024. In this new Physical Review journal, DG and Iain Cousin, MPI Animal Behavior, and Nir Gur, Weizmann Institute of Science add a further technical finesse about how creaturely movements keep their assemblage and perform so well. Rapid internal responses are seen to imply a statistical physics spin model along with an active particle coherence.

Animals must constantly make decisions on the move among multiple options. Here we model this process to explore how its dynamics accounts for branching trajectories exhibited by animals during spatial decision-making, and to provide new insights into spatiotemporal computation. Our analysis reveals the nature of the spontaneous symmetry breaking bifurcations in trajectory space and new geometric principles for spatiotemporal decision-making. This suggests that a non-Euclidean neural representation of space may be expected to have evolved across species in order to facilitate spatial decision-making. (Excerpt)

These results highlight the richness of this spin model, where movement through space is determined by spin-spin interactions, which are in turn dependent on the position of the animal or group with respect to the targets. The model has a broader theoretical physics perspective due to its coupling of equilibrium spin dynamics and propulsion of active-matter particles, as well as its connection to general research on decision-making in moving agents. (10)

Herbrich, Maxime, et al. Network nestedness in primates: a structural constraint or a biological advantage of social complexity?. arXiv:2402.13658. Université de Strasbourg, Utrecht University, University of Agder, Norway, University of Greenwich, UK, Leibniz Institute for Primate Research, Göttingen, University of Konstanz, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Kyoto University, University of Lausanne, and Inkawu Vervet Project, South Africa animal behaviorists join field work with theoretic studies to conclude that external environs have a larger role than somatic or neural aspects.

This study investigates the prevalence of nestedness within primate social networks by its relationship with cognitive and structural factors. We studied 51 primate groups across 21 species to evaluate nestedness, modularity, neocortex ratio, and group size. We found a significant occurrence of this multiplex feature exceeding chance expectations. Our analysis showed little correlation with neocortex ratio or group size, which suggests a greater role for ecological factors in cognitive evolution. Overall, our research provides new insights into primate social network structures by way of complex interplays between network geometries. (Excerpt)

Enquist, Brian, et al. Scaling approaches and macroecology provide a foundation for assessing ecological resilience in the Anthropocene. Philosophical Transactions B. April, 2024. Senior environmental theorists BE, University of Arizona, Doug Erwin, National Museum of Natural History and Van Savage and Pablo Marquet, Santa Fe Institute make a case for wider perspectives as a better way to study, analyze and manage flora and fauna biotas because of their multiple complexities.

In the Anthropocene, intensifying ecological disturbances challenge our predictive capabilities for ecosystem responses. A macroecology of emergent statistical patterns in ecological systems can find consistent regularities in biodiversity and ecosystems by way of abundance, body size, geographical range, species interaction networks, or the flux of matter and energy. We suggest a conceptual and theoretical basis for ecological resilience that integrates macroecology with a stochastic diffusion approximation constrained by principles of biological symmetry. We show how our framework can quantify major disturbances and their extensive ecological ramifications. (Excerpt)

Life’s Cerebral Cognizance Becomes More Complex, Smarter, Informed, Proactive, Self-Aware

Quin-Conroy, Josephine, et al.. Patterns of language and visuospatial functional lateralization and cognitive ability. Laterality. September, 2023. University of Western Australia linguists contribute a latest quantified affirmation of nature’s archetypal hemispheric preferences. Once again we wonder however these verse and vision complements could be known well enough such that they might apply to political parties.

For most individuals, language is predominately localized to the left hemisphere of the brain and visuospatial processing to the right. Evolutionary theories of lateralization suggest that this typical pattern is most common as it delivers a cognitive advantage. In contrast, deviations from the typical pattern may lead to poorer cognitive abilities. The aim of this systematic review was to assess the evidence for an association between patterns of language and visuospatial lateralization and measures of cognitive ability. (Excerpt).

University of Western Australia Just 10 minutes from Perth city, UWA is located on the banks of the Swan River on the land of the Whadjuk Nation. We have the privilege of being on sacred soil where Western Australian kaartdijin, or knowledge, began. It has been a place to gather and learn for tens of thousands of years by the world’s oldest continuous culture.

Mitchell, Kevin. Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023. The author, a neuro-geneticist at Trinity College Dublin, studies the many relationships between genes, brains, and minds on both individual and evolutionary levels. Into these 2020s he has prepared the first whole book length treatment for the leading edge content of this Life’s Cerebral Cognizance Becomes More Complex, Smarter, Informed, Proactive, Self-Aware chapter. In so doing, the work describes an oriented encephalization from sensory stirrings to scales of ramified neural complexities all the way to our mosaic neocortex. A central track becomes evident as an increasing adaptive behavior with regard to one’s own life, group and environs. In retrospect, life’s cerebral/cognitive evolutionary course can then be seen to assert a liberated agency of personal choice. The vital message (my take) from brains instead of bones could be that we peoples can rise from sinners to winners, avoid nuclear war, and proceed to select ourselves as a unified Earthropocene success.

Scientists are finding how brain activity controls behavior and neural circuits effect actions. But many still conclude that agency—or free will—is an illusion. Free Agents presents a wealth of evidence to the contrary, arguing that we are not mere machines but distinct selves empowered with purpose. Across Earth’s long evolution, Mitchell describes how living beings capable of choice arose from physical origins. As nervous systems came to be, they gave sentient animals the capacity to model, predict, and simulate. These faculties have reached their peak with our human abilities to imagine, introspect, reason and view possible futures. {Publisher)

A purely reductionist, mechanistic approach to life misses the point. On the contrary, basic laws of physics that deal only with energy and matter and forces cannot explain what life is or its defining property – living organisms do things for reasons, as causal agents, in their own right. They are driven by information whose meaning is embedded in the structure of the system itself, based on its history. In short, there are distinct types of causation at play in living organisms by virtue of their organization. (x-xi)

As we will see in later chapters, meaning and value are the internal currency and action selection that emerged as life continued to evolve. From the rocks and sea of our early world, life arose as organisms that maintained theor internal states and sustain a degree of causal autonomy from the world around them. The next step in the evolution of agency is the ability of these autonomous organisms to back upon the world, to become causes in their own right. (43)

In humans, the expansion of our neural resources and recursive architecture of our cognitive systems gave us the ability to think about thoughts. Our minds were set free. We are capable of open-ended truly creative imaginations and hypothetical futures, of creating art, music, science, abstract reasoning that has revealed the deepest laws and principles of the universe. (294)

And we do not do this alone: the true power of human thought comes through collective interactions and cumulative culture. We have as individuals and as a species the power to transcend the immediacies of our own biology. And, though the prospects seem gloomy, we have within our reach the possibility of wisdom, of making optimal decisions for the long-term survival of our planet if we choose to exercise it. (294)

Youngblood, Mason. Language-like efficiency and structure in house finch song. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. April, 2024. As his bio below says, by way of the latest computational abilities, it is now possible to find generic similarities between avian twittering and the social network Twitter. The same mathematical formats thus seem to repeat themselves in kind across each and every conversational mode.

Communication needs to be complex enough to be functional while minimizing learning and production costs. Recent work suggests that the vocalizations and gestures of some songbirds, cetaceans and great apes may conform to linguistic laws that reflect this trade-off between efficiency and complexity. In these studies, clustering signals into types cannot be done a priori, and an analysis may affect statistical signals in the data. Here we assess the language-like efficiency and structure in house finch song across three levels of granularity in syllable clustering. The results show strong evidence for Zipf's rank–frequency law, Zipf's law of abbreviation and Menzerath's law. These statistical patterns are robust and exhibit a degree of scale invariance. (Excerpt)

My name is Mason Youngblood, and I am a postdoctoral fellow in the Institute for Advanced Computational Science at Stony Brook University. In my research, I apply methods from cognitive science, computational social science, and cultural evolution to questions about human and non-human animal behavior. Specifically, I’m interested in understanding how cognitive biases and population structure shape the cultural evolution of behaviors and beliefs (e.g. music, extremist ideology, birdsong, conspiracy theories).

Our Earthuman Ascent: A Major Evolutionary Transition in Individuality

Pierre-Yves Oudeyer. www.pyoudeyer.com.. . The French computational psychologist (search) is the director of the Flowers project-team at the Inria Center of University of Bordeaux. Current (March 2024) projects are now much involved with chatty AI features guided by insights gained from studies with children. A recent talk is Developmental AI: machines that learn like children and help children learn better. As the quotes say, another senior scholar finds evidence that both youngsters and large language modes use trail/error iterate methods in similar ways. See also Open-ended learning and development in machines and humans on the flowers.inria.fr. site.

Together with a great team, I study lifelong autonomous learning, and the self-organization of behavioural, cognitive and language structures at the frontiers of artificial intelligence and cognitive sciences. I use machines as tools to understand better how children learn and develop, and I study how one can build machines that learn autonomously like children, as well as integrate within human cultures, within the new field of developmental artificial intelligence. (P-Y O)

The Flowers project-team, at the University of Bordeaux and at Ensta ParisTech, studies versions of hoistic individual development. These models can help us better understand how children learn, as well as to build machines that gain knowledge as children do, aka developmental artificial intelligence, with applications in educational technologies, automated discovery, robotics and human-computer interaction.

Ryali, Srikanth, et al. Deep learning models reveal replicable, generalizable, and behaviorally relevant sex differences in human functional brain organization. PNAS. 121, 2024. Into this year, Stanford University psychologists including Vinod Menon make a strong empirical case that there are significant distinctions between the bilateral brains and consequent behaviors of women and men. Using the latest explainable neural net methods (XAI), the team were consistently able to quantify an array of typical masculine and feminine characteristics. Google the title for many reviews of this major work (which of course we knew all along).

Sex is an important biological factor that influences human behavior, impacting cognitive capacity and the manifestation of psychiatric and neurological disorders. However, previous research on how brain organization differs between males and females remain mostly inconclusive. Leveraging recent advances in artificial intelligence and large multicohort functional MRI datasets, we identify replicable, generalizable, and behaviorally relevant sex differences in human neural architecture localized to the default mode network, striatum, and limbic network. (Excerpt)

Nichols, Ryan. Cultural evolution: A review of theoretical challenges. Evolutionary Human Sciences. Volume 6, February, 2024. In this Cambridge Press journal edited by Oxford anthropologist Ruth Mace, eleven sociality scientists with postings in the USA, Morocco, Denmark, Germany, France and Spain including Mathieu Charbonneau, Miriam Haidle and Jose Segovia-Martin address a real concern that this academic field which should follow from biological sources remains ill defined, parcellated, debated to an extent that inhibits clarity and integrity. After a broad review of these issues, several pathways toward consiience are laid out.

Perez, Jermey, et al. Perez, Jeremy, et al. Cultural evolution in populations of Large Language Models. arXiv:2403.08882. Flowers Team, INRIA, Bordeaux, France scholars including Pierre-Yves Oudeyer (search) advance insightful approaches to provide better, more humane, realistic editorial guidance for these vicarious textual corpora. By March 2024, as the Earthificial section above reports, it has been noticed that these spontaneous cognitive venues actually seem to train themselves akin to how children persistently learn to speak and discover.