Episode #1083
News Items
Dumbest Thing of the Week
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2026/04/03/fema-offical-teleportation-waffle-house/1731775261629/
Science or Fiction
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Item #1
Science
Despite diverging over 600 million years ago, before the evolution of eyes, insect and mammal vision not only use the same protein family, opsins, but tune their red color sensitivity at the same exact amino acid location. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00018-025-06017-9
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Item #2
Science
A new study finds that a single nucleotide change in a non-coding regulatory region was able to cause XX mice to develop as fully male. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-71328-9
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Item #3
Fiction
Researchers describe the oldest fossil egg of an early mammal relative, Lystrosaurus, indicating they laid small hard-shelled eggs and likely fed their young through lactation. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0345016
Skeptical Quote of the Week.
“It is the function of science to discover the existence of a general reign of order in nature and to find the causes governing this order. And this refers in equal measure to the relations of man – social and political – and to the entire universe as a whole.” ― Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev