Saturday, January 31, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Is Google God?
I think they make a good case.
D
Reposted From: http://www.thechurchofgoogle.org/Scripture/Proof_Google_Is_God.html
» PROOF #1
D
Reposted From: http://www.thechurchofgoogle.org/Scripture/Proof_Google_Is_God.html
» PROOF #1
Google is the closest thing to an Omniscient (all-knowing) entity in existence, which can be scientifically verified. She indexes over 9.5 billion WebPages, which is more than any other search engine on the web today. Not only is Google the closest known entity to being Omniscient, but She also sorts through this vast amount of knowledge using Her patented PageRank technology, organizing said data and making it easily accessible to us mere mortals.
» PROOF #2
Google is everywhere at once (Omnipresent). Google is virtually everywhere on earth at the same time. Billions of indexed WebPages hosted from every corner of the earth. With the proliferation of Wi-Fi networks, one will eventually be able to access Google from anywhere on earth, truly making Her an omnipresent entity.
» PROOF #3
Google answers prayers. One can pray to Google by doing a search for whatever question or problem is plaguing them. As an example, you can quickly find information on alternative cancer treatments, ways to improve your health, new and innovative medical discoveries and generally anything that resembles a typical prayer. Ask Google and She will show you the way, but showing you is all She can do, for you must help yourself from that point on.
» PROOF #4
Google is potentially immortal. She cannot be considered a physical being such as ourselves. Her Algorithms are spread out across many servers; if any of which were taken down or damaged, another would undoubtedly take its place. Google can theoretically last forever.
» PROOF #5
Google is infinite. The Internet can theoretically grow forever, and Google will forever index its infinite growth.
» PROOF #6
Google remembers all. Google caches WebPages regularly and stores them on its massive servers. In fact, by uploading your thoughts and opinions to the internet, you will forever live on in Google's cache, even after you die, in a sort of "Google Afterlife".
» PROOF #7
Google can "do no evil" (Omnibenevolent). Part of Google's corporate philosophy is the belief that a company can make money without being evil.
» PROOF #8
According to Google trends, the term "Google" is searched for more than the terms "God", "Jesus", "Allah", "Buddha", "Christianity", "Islam", "Buddhism" and "Judaism" combined.
God is thought to be an entity in which we mortals can turn to when in a time of need. Google clearly fulfils this to a much larger degree than traditional "gods", as shown in the image below (click to enlarge).
» PROOF #9
Evidence of Google's existence is abundant. There is more evidence for the existence of Google than any other God worshiped today. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If seeing is believing, then surf over to www.google.com and experience for yourself Google's awesome power. No faith required.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Interested in how the New Testament came to be?
Bart D. Ehrman is a NT (New Testament) scholar and professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. He is also an author of several books such as "God's Problem", "Lost Scriptures", "Gospel of Judas", and his most famous book "Misquoting Jesus". In the following video, Dr. Ehrman gives a lecture on his book, "Misquoting Jesus", which talks about how the NT came to be and what has been changed. It is a long lecture (1:40:00) but worth it if you are interested in textual criticism.
Enjoy!
D
Enjoy!
D
Want to know good science from bad?
Below is a wonderful article written by Robert L. Park (read his book Voodoo Science, it is awesome!) about how to spot bad science. He offers us seven warning signs to dangerous pseudo-science. As a challenge, how many scientific claims can you name that fall into the categories below?
D
Reposted From: http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i21/21b02001.htm
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is investing close to a million dollars in an obscure Russian scientist's antigravity machine, although it has failed every test and would violate the most fundamental laws of nature. The Patent and Trademark Office recently issued Patent 6,362,718 for a physically impossible motionless electromagnetic generator, which is supposed to snatch free energy from a vacuum. And major power companies have sunk tens of millions of dollars into a scheme to produce energy by putting hydrogen atoms into a state below their ground state, a feat equivalent to mounting an expedition to explore the region south of the South Pole.
There is, alas, no scientific claim so preposterous that a scientist cannot be found to vouch for it. And many such claims end up in a court of law after they have cost some gullible person or corporation a lot of money. How are juries to evaluate them?
Before 1993, court cases that hinged on the validity of scientific claims were usually decided simply by which expert witness the jury found more credible. Expert testimony often consisted of tortured theoretical speculation with little or no supporting evidence. Jurors were bamboozled by technical gibberish they could not hope to follow, delivered by experts whose credentials they could not evaluate.
In 1993, however, with the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. the situation began to change. The case involved Bendectin, the only morning-sickness medication ever approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It had been used by millions of women, and more than 30 published studies had found no evidence that it caused birth defects. Yet eight so-called experts were willing to testify, in exchange for a fee from the Daubert family, that Bendectin might indeed cause birth defects.
In ruling that such testimony was not credible because of lack of supporting evidence, the court instructed federal judges to serve as "gatekeepers," screening juries from testimony based on scientific nonsense. Recognizing that judges are not scientists, the court invited judges to experiment with ways to fulfill their gatekeeper responsibility.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer encouraged trial judges to appoint independent experts to help them. He noted that courts can turn to scientific organizations, like the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, to identify neutral experts who could preview questionable scientific testimony and advise a judge on whether a jury should be exposed to it. Judges are still concerned about meeting their responsibilities under the Daubert decision, and a group of them asked me how to recognize questionable scientific claims. What are the warning signs?
I have identified seven indicators that a scientific claim lies well outside the bounds of rational scientific discourse. Of course, they are only warning signs -- even a claim with several of the signs could be legitimate.
1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media. The integrity of science rests on the willingness of scientists to expose new ideas and findings to the scrutiny of other scientists. Thus, scientists expect their colleagues to reveal new findings to them initially. An attempt to bypass peer review by taking a new result directly to the media, and thence to the public, suggests that the work is unlikely to stand up to close examination by other scientists.
One notorious example is the claim made in 1989 by two chemists from the University of Utah, B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, that they had discovered cold fusion -- a way to produce nuclear fusion without expensive equipment. Scientists did not learn of the claim until they read reports of a news conference. Moreover, the announcement dealt largely with the economic potential of the discovery and was devoid of the sort of details that might have enabled other scientists to judge the strength of the claim or to repeat the experiment. (Ian Wilmut's announcement that he had successfully cloned a sheep was just as public as Pons and Fleischmann's claim, but in the case of cloning, abundant scientific details allowed scientists to judge the work's validity.)
Some scientific claims avoid even the scrutiny of reporters by appearing in paid commercial advertisements. A health-food company marketed a dietary supplement called Vitamin O in full-page newspaper ads. Vitamin O turned out to be ordinary saltwater.
2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work. The idea is that the establishment will presumably stop at nothing to suppress discoveries that might shift the balance of wealth and power in society. Often, the discoverer describes mainstream science as part of a larger conspiracy that includes industry and government. Claims that the oil companies are frustrating the invention of an automobile that runs on water, for instance, are a sure sign that the idea of such a car is baloney. In the case of cold fusion, Pons and Fleischmann blamed their cold reception on physicists who were protecting their own research in hot fusion.
3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection. Alas, there is never a clear photograph of a flying saucer, or the Loch Ness monster. All scientific measurements must contend with some level of background noise or statistical fluctuation. But if the signal-to-noise ratio cannot be improved, even in principle, the effect is probably not real and the work is not science.
Thousands of published papers in para-psychology, for example, claim to report verified instances of telepathy, psychokinesis, or precognition. But those effects show up only in tortured analyses of statistics. The researchers can find no way to boost the signal, which suggests that it isn't really there.
4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal. If modern science has learned anything in the past century, it is to distrust anecdotal evidence. Because anecdotes have a very strong emotional impact, they serve to keep superstitious beliefs alive in an age of science. The most important discovery of modern medicine is not vaccines or antibiotics, it is the randomized double-blind test, by means of which we know what works and what doesn't. Contrary to the saying, "data" is not the plural of "anecdote."
5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries. There is a persistent myth that hundreds or even thousands of years ago, long before anyone knew that blood circulates throughout the body, or that germs cause disease, our ancestors possessed miraculous remedies that modern science cannot understand. Much of what is termed "alternative medicine" is part of that myth.
Ancient folk wisdom, rediscovered or repackaged, is unlikely to match the output of modern scientific laboratories.
6. The discoverer has worked in isolation. The image of a lone genius who struggles in secrecy in an attic laboratory and ends up making a revolutionary breakthrough is a staple of Hollywood's science-fiction films, but it is hard to find examples in real life. Scientific breakthroughs nowadays are almost always syntheses of the work of many scientists.
7. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation. A new law of nature, invoked to explain some extraordinary result, must not conflict with what is already known. If we must change existing laws of nature or propose new laws to account for an observation, it is almost certainly wrong.
I began this list of warning signs to help federal judges detect scientific nonsense. But as I finished the list, I realized that in our increasingly technological society, spotting voodoo science is a skill that every citizen should develop.
Robert L. Park is a professor of physics at the University of Maryland at College Park and the director of public information for the American Physical Society. He is the author of Voodoo Science: The Road From Foolishness to Fraud (Oxford University Press, 2002).
D
Reposted From: http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i21/21b02001.htm
The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science
By ROBERT L. PARKThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration is investing close to a million dollars in an obscure Russian scientist's antigravity machine, although it has failed every test and would violate the most fundamental laws of nature. The Patent and Trademark Office recently issued Patent 6,362,718 for a physically impossible motionless electromagnetic generator, which is supposed to snatch free energy from a vacuum. And major power companies have sunk tens of millions of dollars into a scheme to produce energy by putting hydrogen atoms into a state below their ground state, a feat equivalent to mounting an expedition to explore the region south of the South Pole.
There is, alas, no scientific claim so preposterous that a scientist cannot be found to vouch for it. And many such claims end up in a court of law after they have cost some gullible person or corporation a lot of money. How are juries to evaluate them?
Before 1993, court cases that hinged on the validity of scientific claims were usually decided simply by which expert witness the jury found more credible. Expert testimony often consisted of tortured theoretical speculation with little or no supporting evidence. Jurors were bamboozled by technical gibberish they could not hope to follow, delivered by experts whose credentials they could not evaluate.
In 1993, however, with the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. the situation began to change. The case involved Bendectin, the only morning-sickness medication ever approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It had been used by millions of women, and more than 30 published studies had found no evidence that it caused birth defects. Yet eight so-called experts were willing to testify, in exchange for a fee from the Daubert family, that Bendectin might indeed cause birth defects.
In ruling that such testimony was not credible because of lack of supporting evidence, the court instructed federal judges to serve as "gatekeepers," screening juries from testimony based on scientific nonsense. Recognizing that judges are not scientists, the court invited judges to experiment with ways to fulfill their gatekeeper responsibility.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer encouraged trial judges to appoint independent experts to help them. He noted that courts can turn to scientific organizations, like the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, to identify neutral experts who could preview questionable scientific testimony and advise a judge on whether a jury should be exposed to it. Judges are still concerned about meeting their responsibilities under the Daubert decision, and a group of them asked me how to recognize questionable scientific claims. What are the warning signs?
I have identified seven indicators that a scientific claim lies well outside the bounds of rational scientific discourse. Of course, they are only warning signs -- even a claim with several of the signs could be legitimate.
1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media. The integrity of science rests on the willingness of scientists to expose new ideas and findings to the scrutiny of other scientists. Thus, scientists expect their colleagues to reveal new findings to them initially. An attempt to bypass peer review by taking a new result directly to the media, and thence to the public, suggests that the work is unlikely to stand up to close examination by other scientists.
One notorious example is the claim made in 1989 by two chemists from the University of Utah, B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, that they had discovered cold fusion -- a way to produce nuclear fusion without expensive equipment. Scientists did not learn of the claim until they read reports of a news conference. Moreover, the announcement dealt largely with the economic potential of the discovery and was devoid of the sort of details that might have enabled other scientists to judge the strength of the claim or to repeat the experiment. (Ian Wilmut's announcement that he had successfully cloned a sheep was just as public as Pons and Fleischmann's claim, but in the case of cloning, abundant scientific details allowed scientists to judge the work's validity.)
Some scientific claims avoid even the scrutiny of reporters by appearing in paid commercial advertisements. A health-food company marketed a dietary supplement called Vitamin O in full-page newspaper ads. Vitamin O turned out to be ordinary saltwater.
2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work. The idea is that the establishment will presumably stop at nothing to suppress discoveries that might shift the balance of wealth and power in society. Often, the discoverer describes mainstream science as part of a larger conspiracy that includes industry and government. Claims that the oil companies are frustrating the invention of an automobile that runs on water, for instance, are a sure sign that the idea of such a car is baloney. In the case of cold fusion, Pons and Fleischmann blamed their cold reception on physicists who were protecting their own research in hot fusion.
3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection. Alas, there is never a clear photograph of a flying saucer, or the Loch Ness monster. All scientific measurements must contend with some level of background noise or statistical fluctuation. But if the signal-to-noise ratio cannot be improved, even in principle, the effect is probably not real and the work is not science.
Thousands of published papers in para-psychology, for example, claim to report verified instances of telepathy, psychokinesis, or precognition. But those effects show up only in tortured analyses of statistics. The researchers can find no way to boost the signal, which suggests that it isn't really there.
4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal. If modern science has learned anything in the past century, it is to distrust anecdotal evidence. Because anecdotes have a very strong emotional impact, they serve to keep superstitious beliefs alive in an age of science. The most important discovery of modern medicine is not vaccines or antibiotics, it is the randomized double-blind test, by means of which we know what works and what doesn't. Contrary to the saying, "data" is not the plural of "anecdote."
5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries. There is a persistent myth that hundreds or even thousands of years ago, long before anyone knew that blood circulates throughout the body, or that germs cause disease, our ancestors possessed miraculous remedies that modern science cannot understand. Much of what is termed "alternative medicine" is part of that myth.
Ancient folk wisdom, rediscovered or repackaged, is unlikely to match the output of modern scientific laboratories.
6. The discoverer has worked in isolation. The image of a lone genius who struggles in secrecy in an attic laboratory and ends up making a revolutionary breakthrough is a staple of Hollywood's science-fiction films, but it is hard to find examples in real life. Scientific breakthroughs nowadays are almost always syntheses of the work of many scientists.
7. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation. A new law of nature, invoked to explain some extraordinary result, must not conflict with what is already known. If we must change existing laws of nature or propose new laws to account for an observation, it is almost certainly wrong.
I began this list of warning signs to help federal judges detect scientific nonsense. But as I finished the list, I realized that in our increasingly technological society, spotting voodoo science is a skill that every citizen should develop.
Robert L. Park is a professor of physics at the University of Maryland at College Park and the director of public information for the American Physical Society. He is the author of Voodoo Science: The Road From Foolishness to Fraud (Oxford University Press, 2002).
Monday, January 26, 2009
Jesus Is Green
Apparently, there is a new bible out, and it is eco-friendly. The new bible (which is seemingly a lot like all the others, you know, ten commandments, the great flood that killed all the inhabitants of the earth except for the one rightuous man and his family........oh yeah, and two of every species on the planet or is it seven? but that is really neither here nor there, that is for a later post) puts focus on the passages which humans are supposed to be taking care of the earth. That sounds nice and all, but isn't god going to destroy the earth? I might have that wrong, but if that is true, then why bother to be eco-friendly? Though, maybe I shouldn't say anything, we really need all the people we can to take care of our earth. It is the only home we know. So, I will stop peeing on their parade, at least they are doing something to try to fix the problem as opposed to their right wing counter parts.
D
Story Reposted From:
http://media.www.bcheights.com/media/storage/paper144/news/2009/01/26/Features/Green.Bible.Incorporates.Environment.Into.Religion-3596440.shtml
Green Bible incorporates environment into religion
Many evangelical Christians have been trumpeting creation care, which is the idea that God gave people this earth to protect and nurture. With the recent widespread awareness of the human-constructed problem of global warming, this topic, which has always been a hot-button issue, is now more controversial than ever. Creation care goes beyond immediate environmental problems and states that the bible specifically tells humans to be the caretakers of the earth, whether or not the planet is in dire straits. The new edition of the Bible, coined "The Green Bible," is a representation of Christians highlighting these concepts. While creation care had previously been thought of as merely another fad, the Green Bible has moved beyond such limited popularity. Customized bibles are a token of every Christian group, whether they be angst-ridden teens or working moms. Now, the environmental group has its own cohesive text.
James Martin, SN, a Jesuit priest, calls the Bible "imaginative, innovative, and inspiring. The Green Bible may change the way that you live in the world." The site for the Green Bible provides a video that says, "It makes 490 references to heaven and 530 to love, yet it makes over 1,000 references to the Earth." The concept of heaven is one of the central foundations of the Christian faith. And yet, references to caring for the Earth in the Bible are more than double to those of these key elements now focused on by the Christian church.
The book highlights quotes such as, "The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it" and "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the Earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth." The book was first published last October, on recycled paper with soy-based ink with the 1,000 eco-friendly versus written in green ink. Out of the 37,000 copies printed, 25,000 were sold within the first few weeks.
The Bible's purpose is not merely for people to recognize the passages concerning nature within the book, but it is meant to encourage its readers to become active in environmental issues. The Web site greenletterbible.com reads, "The Green Bible will equip and encourage people to see God's vision for creation and help them engage in the work of healing and sustaining it." The Web site also shows the supporters of the publication, not only the religious group Eco-Justice Program, but also secular organizers such as the Sierra Club and The Humane Society. The endorsement from these secular groups can be taken one of two ways. To begin with, it might provide an image of unity between the secular and religious world toward a common goal and pave the way for future alliances.
On the other hand, it can inspire secular-fearing Christians to think they are being tainted by "outsiders" twisting the words of God. The controversy of a green Bible has brought up a great deal of debate in the Christian world. While its existence shows a trend toward a more eco-friendly religion, some view the book as a ploy. Many Christians against the green movement consider the bible to be created by those who want to speak for Christianity but have no real religious authority. Not only is there the concern of outsiders corrupting the religion but also about environmentalism detracting from "true" worship. If environmentalism is not the main purpose of human existence on Earth, then efforts to care for the planet are steps away from God's teachings. Despite these disheartening claims on the side against the new green Christianity, this debate can be seen as quite encouraging for the environmentalists out there. It shows that there is discussion on the merits of creation care, which may lead to widespread acceptance in the future.
The Christian right has frequently played the role of both a useful ally as well as a formidable foe in the political realm. As proved in the example of the recent Mormon initiative against gay marriage in California, a religious group with a mission is strong adversary. These groups hold their beliefs as closely as one can; the vindication for their cause is held to their very core. These groups always seem to play the children's game "follow the leader." There are "Christian fads" that come and go. One that caused a great stir in the liberal left was the "The Way God Intended It" T-shirts. With the recent memories of the clash created by the seemingly simple T-shirt, one can conversely picture the power behind the united liberal left and the Christian right. This is becoming a reality with environmentalism.
D
Story Reposted From:
http://media.www.bcheights.com/media/storage/paper144/news/2009/01/26/Features/Green.Bible.Incorporates.Environment.Into.Religion-3596440.shtml
Green Bible incorporates environment into religion
Many evangelical Christians have been trumpeting creation care, which is the idea that God gave people this earth to protect and nurture. With the recent widespread awareness of the human-constructed problem of global warming, this topic, which has always been a hot-button issue, is now more controversial than ever. Creation care goes beyond immediate environmental problems and states that the bible specifically tells humans to be the caretakers of the earth, whether or not the planet is in dire straits. The new edition of the Bible, coined "The Green Bible," is a representation of Christians highlighting these concepts. While creation care had previously been thought of as merely another fad, the Green Bible has moved beyond such limited popularity. Customized bibles are a token of every Christian group, whether they be angst-ridden teens or working moms. Now, the environmental group has its own cohesive text.
James Martin, SN, a Jesuit priest, calls the Bible "imaginative, innovative, and inspiring. The Green Bible may change the way that you live in the world." The site for the Green Bible provides a video that says, "It makes 490 references to heaven and 530 to love, yet it makes over 1,000 references to the Earth." The concept of heaven is one of the central foundations of the Christian faith. And yet, references to caring for the Earth in the Bible are more than double to those of these key elements now focused on by the Christian church.
The book highlights quotes such as, "The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it" and "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the Earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth." The book was first published last October, on recycled paper with soy-based ink with the 1,000 eco-friendly versus written in green ink. Out of the 37,000 copies printed, 25,000 were sold within the first few weeks.
The Bible's purpose is not merely for people to recognize the passages concerning nature within the book, but it is meant to encourage its readers to become active in environmental issues. The Web site greenletterbible.com reads, "The Green Bible will equip and encourage people to see God's vision for creation and help them engage in the work of healing and sustaining it." The Web site also shows the supporters of the publication, not only the religious group Eco-Justice Program, but also secular organizers such as the Sierra Club and The Humane Society. The endorsement from these secular groups can be taken one of two ways. To begin with, it might provide an image of unity between the secular and religious world toward a common goal and pave the way for future alliances.
On the other hand, it can inspire secular-fearing Christians to think they are being tainted by "outsiders" twisting the words of God. The controversy of a green Bible has brought up a great deal of debate in the Christian world. While its existence shows a trend toward a more eco-friendly religion, some view the book as a ploy. Many Christians against the green movement consider the bible to be created by those who want to speak for Christianity but have no real religious authority. Not only is there the concern of outsiders corrupting the religion but also about environmentalism detracting from "true" worship. If environmentalism is not the main purpose of human existence on Earth, then efforts to care for the planet are steps away from God's teachings. Despite these disheartening claims on the side against the new green Christianity, this debate can be seen as quite encouraging for the environmentalists out there. It shows that there is discussion on the merits of creation care, which may lead to widespread acceptance in the future.
The Christian right has frequently played the role of both a useful ally as well as a formidable foe in the political realm. As proved in the example of the recent Mormon initiative against gay marriage in California, a religious group with a mission is strong adversary. These groups hold their beliefs as closely as one can; the vindication for their cause is held to their very core. These groups always seem to play the children's game "follow the leader." There are "Christian fads" that come and go. One that caused a great stir in the liberal left was the "The Way God Intended It" T-shirts. With the recent memories of the clash created by the seemingly simple T-shirt, one can conversely picture the power behind the united liberal left and the Christian right. This is becoming a reality with environmentalism.
The United States, however, has been nowhere near the forefront of the green movement. The power of corporations and strict government budgeting leaves no room for "indulging" environmentalism. The startup cost seems too great for the skeptics, and the concept of doing things for the greater good is foreign to the hearts of the majority of capitalists. Capitalist tendencies are what rule most of our lives in the United States. Those of us who have a deep love of credit cards make up nearly 100 percent of the population. But, Protestantism is still a powerful force in the lives of 51 percent of Americans. If the Green Bible slowly permeates through this group, the impact could be great.
If America were to become more proactive about environmental issues, there could be a clear effect on the rest of the world. As the superpower for the past hundred years, the United States and the ideals it embraces seep through the globalized market of ideas and goods. The ripples can be seen with a small movement in one part of the U.S. which then travels first across the country and then abroad. While other countries may be more eco-friendly, the world still lacks a global leader. If Christians embrace environmentalism, the movement could evolve into an American initiative and then lead to a global shift toward environmentalism.
If America were to become more proactive about environmental issues, there could be a clear effect on the rest of the world. As the superpower for the past hundred years, the United States and the ideals it embraces seep through the globalized market of ideas and goods. The ripples can be seen with a small movement in one part of the U.S. which then travels first across the country and then abroad. While other countries may be more eco-friendly, the world still lacks a global leader. If Christians embrace environmentalism, the movement could evolve into an American initiative and then lead to a global shift toward environmentalism.
15 Gems of Evolution (Part 15)
15) Variation versus stability
Species can remain mostly unchanged for millions of years, long enough for us to pick up their traces in the fossil record. But they change, too, and often very suddenly. This has led some to wonder whether species — usually those developing along specific tracks — store the potential for sudden change under the hood, unleashing a flood of otherwise hidden variation at times of environmental stress — variation on which selection can act.
This idea of such ‘evolutionary capacitance’ was first mooted by Suzanne Rutherford and Susan Lindquist in startling experiments on fruitflies. Their idea was that key proteins involved in the regulation of developmental processes are ‘chaperoned’ by a protein called Hsp90 that is produced more at times of stress. On occasion, Hsp90 is overwhelmed by other processes and the proteins it normally regulates are left to run free, producing a welter of otherwise hidden variation.
Aviv Bergman from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and Mark Siegal at New York University explored whether evolutionary capacitance is particular to Hsp90 or found more generally; their study was published in 2003. They used numerical simulations of complex gene networks and genomewide expression data from yeast strains in which single genes had been deleted. They showed that most, and perhaps all, genes hold variation in reserve that is released only when they are functionally compromised. In other words, it looks as if evolutionary capacitance might go wider and deeper than Hsp90.
Reference
Bergman, A. & Siegal, M. L. Nature 424, 549–552 (2003).
Additional resources
Stearns, S. C. Nature 424, 501–504 (2003).
Rutherford, S. L. & Lindquist, S. Nature 396, 336–342 (1998).
Author websites
Mark Siegal: http://www.nyu.edu/fas/biology/faculty/siegal/index.html
Aviv Bergman: http://www.bergmanlab.org
Susan Lindquist: http://www.wi.mit.edu/research/faculty/lindquist.html
Suzanne Rutherford: http://depts.washington.edu/mcb/facultyinfo.php?id=142
Stephen Stearns: http://www.yale.edu/eeb/stearns
Species can remain mostly unchanged for millions of years, long enough for us to pick up their traces in the fossil record. But they change, too, and often very suddenly. This has led some to wonder whether species — usually those developing along specific tracks — store the potential for sudden change under the hood, unleashing a flood of otherwise hidden variation at times of environmental stress — variation on which selection can act.
This idea of such ‘evolutionary capacitance’ was first mooted by Suzanne Rutherford and Susan Lindquist in startling experiments on fruitflies. Their idea was that key proteins involved in the regulation of developmental processes are ‘chaperoned’ by a protein called Hsp90 that is produced more at times of stress. On occasion, Hsp90 is overwhelmed by other processes and the proteins it normally regulates are left to run free, producing a welter of otherwise hidden variation.
Aviv Bergman from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and Mark Siegal at New York University explored whether evolutionary capacitance is particular to Hsp90 or found more generally; their study was published in 2003. They used numerical simulations of complex gene networks and genomewide expression data from yeast strains in which single genes had been deleted. They showed that most, and perhaps all, genes hold variation in reserve that is released only when they are functionally compromised. In other words, it looks as if evolutionary capacitance might go wider and deeper than Hsp90.
Reference
Bergman, A. & Siegal, M. L. Nature 424, 549–552 (2003).
Additional resources
Stearns, S. C. Nature 424, 501–504 (2003).
Rutherford, S. L. & Lindquist, S. Nature 396, 336–342 (1998).
Author websites
Mark Siegal: http://www.nyu.edu/fas/biology/faculty/siegal/index.html
Aviv Bergman: http://www.bergmanlab.org
Susan Lindquist: http://www.wi.mit.edu/research/faculty/lindquist.html
Suzanne Rutherford: http://depts.washington.edu/mcb/facultyinfo.php?id=142
Stephen Stearns: http://www.yale.edu/eeb/stearns
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Ohne Dich
Since Alison guessed correctly (on my wife's birthday post..........see it below). I will now post the Rammstein video for Ohne Dich.
Enjoy!
D
Enjoy!
D
Saturday, January 24, 2009
My Wife's Birthday
To my lovely wife,
Ohne dich kann ich nicht sein,
Ohne dich,
Mit dir bin ich auch allein,
Ohne dich,
Ohne dich zähl ich die Stunden ohne dich,
Mit dir stehen die Sekunden,
Lohnen nicht ohne dich
D
p.s. Yes, it isn't original, but it is a wonderful sentiment. Points to anyone who can tell me what that says or what song it is and by whom.
Ohne dich kann ich nicht sein,
Ohne dich,
Mit dir bin ich auch allein,
Ohne dich,
Ohne dich zähl ich die Stunden ohne dich,
Mit dir stehen die Sekunden,
Lohnen nicht ohne dich
D
p.s. Yes, it isn't original, but it is a wonderful sentiment. Points to anyone who can tell me what that says or what song it is and by whom.
Kevin Trudeau: Fined More Than $37 Million
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Re-posted from: http://www1.ftc.gov/opa/2009/01/trudeau.shtm
D
Re-posted from: http://www1.ftc.gov/opa/2009/01/trudeau.shtm
D
Judge Orders Kevin Trudeau to Pay More Than $37 Million for False Claims About Weight-Loss Book
A federal judge has ordered infomercial marketer Kevin Trudeau to pay more than $37 million for violating a 2004 stipulated order by misrepresenting the content of his book, “The Weight Loss Cure ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About.”
In August 2008, Judge Robert W. Gettleman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois had ordered Trudeau to pay more than $5 million and banned him, for three years, from producing or publishing infomercials for products in which he has an interest. The ruling confirmed an earlier contempt finding, the second such finding against Trudeau in the past four years.
Urged by both the FTC and Trudeau to reconsider aspects of its August order, on November 4 Judge Gettleman amended the judgment to $37,616,161, the amount consumers paid in response to the deceptive infomercials. The judge also revised the three-year ban to prohibit Trudeau from “disseminating or assisting others in disseminating” any infomercial for any informational publication in which he has an interest. On December 11, the court denied Trudeau’s request to reconsider or stay this ruling.
The FTC filed its first lawsuit against Trudeau in 1998, charging him with making false and misleading claims in infomercials for products he claimed could cause significant weight loss and cure addictions to heroin, alcohol, and cigarettes, as well as enable users to achieve a photographic memory. A stipulated court order resolving that case barred Trudeau from making false claims for products in the future, ordered him to pay $500,000 in consumer redress, and established a $500,000 performance bond to ensure compliance.
In 2003, the Commission charged Trudeau with violating the 1998 order by falsely claiming in infomercials that a product, Coral Calcium Supreme, could cure cancer. The court subsequently entered a preliminary injunction that ordered him not to make such claims. When Trudeau continued to make cancer-cure claims about Coral Calcium, he was found in contempt. In 2004, Trudeau agreed to an order that resolved the Coral Calcium matter. He was directed to pay $2 million in consumer redress and banned from infomercials, except for informational publications such as books, provided that he “must not misrepresent the content”
of those publications. The 2004 injunction remains in effect.
The Federal Trade Commission works for consumers to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices and to provide information to help spot, stop, and avoid them. To file a complaint in English or Spanish, visit the FTC’s online Complaint Assistant or call 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357). The FTC enters complaints into Consumer Sentinel, a secure, online database available to more than 1,500 civil and criminal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad. The FTC’s Web site provides free information on a variety of consumer topics.
- MEDIA CONTACT:
- Frank Dorman,
Office of Public Affairs
202-326-2674 - STAFF CONTACT:
- Laureen Kapin,
Bureau of Consumer Protection
202-326-3237
(Trudeau)
Bill Hicks: Revelations
One of the greatest stand - up comedians ever, Bill Hicks, your voice is missed.
D
One Note: He is wrong about JFK, but that's really neither here nor there, enjoy!
D
One Note: He is wrong about JFK, but that's really neither here nor there, enjoy!
15 Gems of Evolution (Parts 12,13, and 14)
12) Darwin’s Galapagos finches
When Charles Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands, he recorded the presence of several species of finch that all looked very similar except for their beaks. Ground finches have deep and wide beaks; cactus finches have long, pointed beaks; and warbler finches have slender, pointed beaks, reflecting differences in their respective diets. Darwin speculated that all the finches had a common ancestor that had migrated to the islands. Close relatives of the Galapagos finches are known from the South American mainland, and the case of Darwin’s finches has since become the classic example of how natural selection has led to the evolution of a variety of forms adapted to different ecological niches from a common ancestral species — termed ‘adaptive radiation’. This idea has since been reinforced by data showing that even small differences in the depth, width or length of the beak can have major consequences for the overall fitness of birds.
To find out what genetic mechanisms underlie the changes in beak shape that mark each species, Harvard University’s Arhat Abzhanov and his colleagues examined numerous genes that are switched on in the developing beaks of finch chicks; their study was published in 2006. The researchers discovered that shape differences coincide with differing expression of the gene for calmodulin, a molecule involved in calcium signalling that is vital in many aspects of development and metabolism. Calmodulin is expressed more strongly in the long and pointed beaks of cactus finches than in the more robust beaks of other species. Artificially boosting the expression of calmodulin in the embryonic tissues that give rise to the beak causes an elongation of the upper beak, similar to that seen in cactus finches. The results show that at least some of the variation in beak shape in Darwin’s finches is likely to be related to variation in calmodulin activity, and implicates calmodulin in the development of craniofacial skeletal structures more generally.
The study shows how biologists are going beyond the mere documentation of evolutionary change to identify
the underlying molecular mechanisms.
Reference
Abzhanov, A. et al. Nature 442, 563–567 (2006).
Author websites
Clifford Tabin: http://www.hms.harvard.edu/dms/bbs/fac/tabin.html
Peter Grant: http://www.eeb.princeton.edu/FACULTY/Grant_P/grantPeter.html
13) Microevolution meets macroevolution
Darwin conceived of evolutionary change as happening in infinitesimally small steps. He called these ‘insensible gradations’, which, if extrapolated over long periods of time, would result in wholesale changes of form and function. There is a mountain of evidence for such small changes, called microevolution — the evolution of drug resistance, for instance, is just one of many documented examples. We can infer from the fossil record that larger species-to-species changes, or macroevolution, also occur, but they are naturally harder to observe in action. That said, the mechanisms of macroevolution can be seen in the here-and-now, in the architecture of genes. Sometimes genes involved in the day-to-day lives of organisms are connected to, or are even the same as, those that govern major features of animal shape and development. So everyday evolution can have large effects.
Sean Carroll from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and his colleagues looked at a molecular mechanism that contributes to the gain of a single spot on the wings of male flies of the species Drosophila biarmipes; they reported their findings in 2005. The researchers showed that the evolution of this spot is connected with modifications of an ancestral regulatory element of a gene involved in pigmentation. This regulatory element has, over time, acquired binding sites for transcription factors that are ancient components of wing development. One of the transcription factors that binds specifically to the regulatory element of the yellow gene is encoded by engrailed, a gene fundamental to development as a whole.
This shows that a gene involved in one process can be co-opted for another, in principle driving
macroevolutionary change.
Reference
Gompel, N., Prud’homme, B., Wittkopp, P. J., Kassner, V. A. & Carroll, S. B. Nature 433, 481–487 (2005).
Additional resources
Hendry, A. P. Nature 451, 779–780 (2008).
Prud’homme, B. et al. Nature 440, 1050–1053 (2006).
Author website
Sean Carroll: http://www.hhmi.org/research/investigators/carroll_bio.html
14) Toxin resistance in snakes and clams
Biologists are increasingly coming to understand the molecular mechanisms that underlie adaptive evolutionary change. In some populations of the newt Taricha granulosa, for example, individuals accumulate the nerve poison tetrodotoxin in their skin, apparently as a defence against garter snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis). Garter snakes that prey on the newts that produce tetrodotoxin have evolved resistance to the toxin. Through painstaking work, Shana Geffeney at the Stanford School of Medicine in California and her colleagues uncovered the underlying mechanism; their study was published in 2005. Variation in the level of resistance of garter snakes to their newt prey can be traced to molecular changes that affect the binding of tetrodotoxin to a particular sodium channel.
Similar selection for toxin resistance apparently occurs in softshell clams (Mya arenaria) in areas of the North American Atlantic coast, as reported by Monica Bricelj at the Institute for Marine Biosciences in Nova Scotia, Canada, and her colleagues in the same issue of Nature. The algae that produce ‘red tides’ generate saxitoxin — the cause of paralytic shellfish poisoning in humans. Clams are exposed to the toxin when they ingest the algae. Clams from areas subject to recurrent red tides are relatively resistant to the toxin and accumulate it in their tissues. Clams from unaffected areas have not evolved such resistance.
Resistance to the toxin in the exposed populations is correlated with a single mutation in the gene that encodes a sodium channel, at a site already implicated in the binding of saxitoxin. It seems likely, therefore, that the saxitoxin acts as a potent selective agent in the clams and leads to genetic adaptation.
These two studies show how similar selective pressures can lead to similar adaptive responses even in very
different taxa.
References
Geffeney, S. L., Fujimoto, E., Brodie, E. D., Brodie, E. D. Jr, & Ruben, P. C. Nature 434, 759–763 ( 2005).
Bricelj, V. M. et al. Nature 434, 763–767 (2005).
Additional resources
Mitchell-Olds, T. & Schmitt, J. Nature 441, 947–952 (2006).
Bradshaw, H. D. & Schemske, D. W. Nature 426, 176–178 (2003).
Coltman, D. W., O’Donoghue, P, Jorgenson, J. T., Hogg, J. T. Strobeck, C. & Festa-Bianchet, M. Nature 426, 655–658 (2003).
Harper Jr, G. R. & Pfennig, D. W. Nature 451, 1103–1106 (2008).
Ellegren, H. & Sheldon, B. Nature 452, 169–175 (2008).
Author websites
Shana Geffeney: http://wormsense.stanford.edu/people.html
Monica Bricelj: http://marine.biology.dal.ca/Faculty_Members/Bricelj,_Monica.php
When Charles Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands, he recorded the presence of several species of finch that all looked very similar except for their beaks. Ground finches have deep and wide beaks; cactus finches have long, pointed beaks; and warbler finches have slender, pointed beaks, reflecting differences in their respective diets. Darwin speculated that all the finches had a common ancestor that had migrated to the islands. Close relatives of the Galapagos finches are known from the South American mainland, and the case of Darwin’s finches has since become the classic example of how natural selection has led to the evolution of a variety of forms adapted to different ecological niches from a common ancestral species — termed ‘adaptive radiation’. This idea has since been reinforced by data showing that even small differences in the depth, width or length of the beak can have major consequences for the overall fitness of birds.
To find out what genetic mechanisms underlie the changes in beak shape that mark each species, Harvard University’s Arhat Abzhanov and his colleagues examined numerous genes that are switched on in the developing beaks of finch chicks; their study was published in 2006. The researchers discovered that shape differences coincide with differing expression of the gene for calmodulin, a molecule involved in calcium signalling that is vital in many aspects of development and metabolism. Calmodulin is expressed more strongly in the long and pointed beaks of cactus finches than in the more robust beaks of other species. Artificially boosting the expression of calmodulin in the embryonic tissues that give rise to the beak causes an elongation of the upper beak, similar to that seen in cactus finches. The results show that at least some of the variation in beak shape in Darwin’s finches is likely to be related to variation in calmodulin activity, and implicates calmodulin in the development of craniofacial skeletal structures more generally.
The study shows how biologists are going beyond the mere documentation of evolutionary change to identify
the underlying molecular mechanisms.
Reference
Abzhanov, A. et al. Nature 442, 563–567 (2006).
Author websites
Clifford Tabin: http://www.hms.harvard.edu/dms/bbs/fac/tabin.html
Peter Grant: http://www.eeb.princeton.edu/FACULTY/Grant_P/grantPeter.html
13) Microevolution meets macroevolution
Darwin conceived of evolutionary change as happening in infinitesimally small steps. He called these ‘insensible gradations’, which, if extrapolated over long periods of time, would result in wholesale changes of form and function. There is a mountain of evidence for such small changes, called microevolution — the evolution of drug resistance, for instance, is just one of many documented examples. We can infer from the fossil record that larger species-to-species changes, or macroevolution, also occur, but they are naturally harder to observe in action. That said, the mechanisms of macroevolution can be seen in the here-and-now, in the architecture of genes. Sometimes genes involved in the day-to-day lives of organisms are connected to, or are even the same as, those that govern major features of animal shape and development. So everyday evolution can have large effects.
Sean Carroll from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and his colleagues looked at a molecular mechanism that contributes to the gain of a single spot on the wings of male flies of the species Drosophila biarmipes; they reported their findings in 2005. The researchers showed that the evolution of this spot is connected with modifications of an ancestral regulatory element of a gene involved in pigmentation. This regulatory element has, over time, acquired binding sites for transcription factors that are ancient components of wing development. One of the transcription factors that binds specifically to the regulatory element of the yellow gene is encoded by engrailed, a gene fundamental to development as a whole.
This shows that a gene involved in one process can be co-opted for another, in principle driving
macroevolutionary change.
Reference
Gompel, N., Prud’homme, B., Wittkopp, P. J., Kassner, V. A. & Carroll, S. B. Nature 433, 481–487 (2005).
Additional resources
Hendry, A. P. Nature 451, 779–780 (2008).
Prud’homme, B. et al. Nature 440, 1050–1053 (2006).
Author website
Sean Carroll: http://www.hhmi.org/research/investigators/carroll_bio.html
14) Toxin resistance in snakes and clams
Biologists are increasingly coming to understand the molecular mechanisms that underlie adaptive evolutionary change. In some populations of the newt Taricha granulosa, for example, individuals accumulate the nerve poison tetrodotoxin in their skin, apparently as a defence against garter snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis). Garter snakes that prey on the newts that produce tetrodotoxin have evolved resistance to the toxin. Through painstaking work, Shana Geffeney at the Stanford School of Medicine in California and her colleagues uncovered the underlying mechanism; their study was published in 2005. Variation in the level of resistance of garter snakes to their newt prey can be traced to molecular changes that affect the binding of tetrodotoxin to a particular sodium channel.
Similar selection for toxin resistance apparently occurs in softshell clams (Mya arenaria) in areas of the North American Atlantic coast, as reported by Monica Bricelj at the Institute for Marine Biosciences in Nova Scotia, Canada, and her colleagues in the same issue of Nature. The algae that produce ‘red tides’ generate saxitoxin — the cause of paralytic shellfish poisoning in humans. Clams are exposed to the toxin when they ingest the algae. Clams from areas subject to recurrent red tides are relatively resistant to the toxin and accumulate it in their tissues. Clams from unaffected areas have not evolved such resistance.
Resistance to the toxin in the exposed populations is correlated with a single mutation in the gene that encodes a sodium channel, at a site already implicated in the binding of saxitoxin. It seems likely, therefore, that the saxitoxin acts as a potent selective agent in the clams and leads to genetic adaptation.
These two studies show how similar selective pressures can lead to similar adaptive responses even in very
different taxa.
References
Geffeney, S. L., Fujimoto, E., Brodie, E. D., Brodie, E. D. Jr, & Ruben, P. C. Nature 434, 759–763 ( 2005).
Bricelj, V. M. et al. Nature 434, 763–767 (2005).
Additional resources
Mitchell-Olds, T. & Schmitt, J. Nature 441, 947–952 (2006).
Bradshaw, H. D. & Schemske, D. W. Nature 426, 176–178 (2003).
Coltman, D. W., O’Donoghue, P, Jorgenson, J. T., Hogg, J. T. Strobeck, C. & Festa-Bianchet, M. Nature 426, 655–658 (2003).
Harper Jr, G. R. & Pfennig, D. W. Nature 451, 1103–1106 (2008).
Ellegren, H. & Sheldon, B. Nature 452, 169–175 (2008).
Author websites
Shana Geffeney: http://wormsense.stanford.edu/people.html
Monica Bricelj: http://marine.biology.dal.ca/Faculty_Members/Bricelj,_Monica.php
Friday, January 23, 2009
Evolution: Bacteria to Apes
This is a short clip of Richard Dawkins explaining (in a nutshell) the evolution from bacteria to ape. It's only four minutes, but I promise it's worth all four.
Enjoy!
D
Enjoy!
D
15 Gems of Evolution (Part 11)
11) Evolutionary history matters
Evolution is often thought to be about finding optimal solutions to the problems that life throws up. But natural selection can only work with the materials at hand — materials that are themselves the results of many millions of years of evolutionary history. It never starts with a blank slate. If that were the case, then tetrapods faced with the task of moving on land would not have had their fins transform into legs; they might perhaps have evolved wheels.
A real-life case of the ingenuity of adaptation concerns a moray eel (Muraena retifera), a long, snake-like reef predator. Historically, bony fish use suction to catch their prey. A fish approaching food opens its mouth wide to create a large cavity into which prey and water flood. As the excess water leaves through the gills, the fish sucks the prey down into its throat and pharyngeal jaws, a second set of jaws and teeth derived from the skeleton that supports the gills. But morays have a problem because of their elongated, narrow shape. Even with their jaws agape, their mouth cavity is too small to generate enough suction to carry prey to their
pharyngeal jaws. The solution to this conundrum was documented in 2007.
Through careful observation and X-ray cinematography, Rita Mehta and Peter Wainwright from the University of California, Davis, discovered evolution’s breathtaking solution. Rather than prey coming to the pharyngeal jaws, the pharyngeal jaws move forwards into the mouth cavity, trapping the prey and dragging it backwards. This, the researchers say, is the first described case of a vertebrate using a second set of jaws to both restrain and transport prey, and is the only known alternative to the hydraulic prey transport reported in most bony fish — a major innovation that could have contributed to the success of moray eels as predators.
The mechanics of the moray’s pharyngeal jaws are reminiscent of the ratchet mechanisms used by snakes — also long, thin and highly predatory creatures. This is an instance of convergence, the evolutionary phenomenon in which distantly related creatures evolve similar solutions to common problems. This study demonstrates the contingent nature of evolution; as a process it does not have the luxury of ‘designing from scratch’.
Reference
Mehta, R. S. & Wainwright, P. C. Nature 449, 79–82 (2007).
Additional resource
Westneat, M. W. Nature 449, 33–34 (2007).
Author websites
Rita Mehta: http://www.eve.ucdavis.edu/~wainwrightlab/rsmehta/index.html
Peter Wainwright: http://www.eve.ucdavis.edu/~wainwrightlab
Evolution is often thought to be about finding optimal solutions to the problems that life throws up. But natural selection can only work with the materials at hand — materials that are themselves the results of many millions of years of evolutionary history. It never starts with a blank slate. If that were the case, then tetrapods faced with the task of moving on land would not have had their fins transform into legs; they might perhaps have evolved wheels.
A real-life case of the ingenuity of adaptation concerns a moray eel (Muraena retifera), a long, snake-like reef predator. Historically, bony fish use suction to catch their prey. A fish approaching food opens its mouth wide to create a large cavity into which prey and water flood. As the excess water leaves through the gills, the fish sucks the prey down into its throat and pharyngeal jaws, a second set of jaws and teeth derived from the skeleton that supports the gills. But morays have a problem because of their elongated, narrow shape. Even with their jaws agape, their mouth cavity is too small to generate enough suction to carry prey to their
pharyngeal jaws. The solution to this conundrum was documented in 2007.
Through careful observation and X-ray cinematography, Rita Mehta and Peter Wainwright from the University of California, Davis, discovered evolution’s breathtaking solution. Rather than prey coming to the pharyngeal jaws, the pharyngeal jaws move forwards into the mouth cavity, trapping the prey and dragging it backwards. This, the researchers say, is the first described case of a vertebrate using a second set of jaws to both restrain and transport prey, and is the only known alternative to the hydraulic prey transport reported in most bony fish — a major innovation that could have contributed to the success of moray eels as predators.
The mechanics of the moray’s pharyngeal jaws are reminiscent of the ratchet mechanisms used by snakes — also long, thin and highly predatory creatures. This is an instance of convergence, the evolutionary phenomenon in which distantly related creatures evolve similar solutions to common problems. This study demonstrates the contingent nature of evolution; as a process it does not have the luxury of ‘designing from scratch’.
Reference
Mehta, R. S. & Wainwright, P. C. Nature 449, 79–82 (2007).
Additional resource
Westneat, M. W. Nature 449, 33–34 (2007).
Author websites
Rita Mehta: http://www.eve.ucdavis.edu/~wainwrightlab/rsmehta/index.html
Peter Wainwright: http://www.eve.ucdavis.edu/~wainwrightlab
Thursday, January 22, 2009
The Great Debate: Does God Exist (Lennox vs.Shermer)
Here is a great debate (and is the great debate!) on the existence of god. John Lennox (taking the side of theism) versus Michael Shermer (taking the side of atheism) is in my opinion one of the better god debates that I have seen. It is very even handed, both debaters are cordial and polite, they are clear and concise, and most of all there is a great sense of humor with all of the people involved. The debate is serious but everyone keeps it lighthearted enough for the audience to not go nuts.
The debate is broken up into ten parts and it runs about an hour and a half. If you are interested in the god debate, then I suggest you get yourself some popcorn and park it right here.
D
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
PART FIVE
PART SIX
PART SEVEN
PART EIGHT
PART NINE
PART TEN
The debate is broken up into ten parts and it runs about an hour and a half. If you are interested in the god debate, then I suggest you get yourself some popcorn and park it right here.
D
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
PART FIVE
PART SIX
PART SEVEN
PART EIGHT
PART NINE
PART TEN
Oh Ray Comfort........If You Only Had A Clue
Anyone know who Ray Comfort is, anyone? For those of you who don't know, Ray is a rather famous Evangelical Christian Proselytizer. He has his own evangelical T.V. show called "Way of the Master", which is co-hosted by none other than Kirk Cameron (yes, the Kirk Cameron of 1980's t.v. classic Growing Pains). They have brought us such intellectual gems like:
Do a quick Google search, and you will find that the banana Ray is holding is not a wild banana (they look very different). The kind of banana we usually find in the grocery store (the kind that Ray is holding) has been cultivated to be that look and shape over many generations. It was human guided selection (as opposed to natural selection) that gave us the banana we know today. But on to more important things than Ray's misunderstanding of the cultivation of bananas.
I found out from P.Z. Myers blog, that Ray has a new website called Pull the Plug on Atheism.
It's a slick looking website, easy to navigate, and it's full of short ignorant diatribes about atheism and science (especially cosmology, biology, and chemistry). For Example:
An atheist is someone who believes that nothing made everything. He will of course deny that because it's an intellectual embarrassment, but if I say that I don’t believe that a builder built my house, then I am left with the insanity of believing that nothing built it. It just happened.
There are a few things wrong with that statement:
1) An atheist is someone who believes that a god does not exist, and that's it. But, let's go ahead and play Ray's game. I can't speak for all atheists but here is my perspective. I don't know how the universe or anything for that matter, came into being. Cosmology has some interesting theories such as our universe could have been started because of a black hole in another universe. That is, if we belonged to a multi verse (Think of our universe as one among many, kind of like a slice of bread in a loaf.). This says nothing about how the multi verse came into being. So, it's back to I/we just don't know(yet?). Atheists will (or at least they should) admit their ignorance when it comes to this issue. But ignorance in science is OK, it is something it strives to conquer. As you can see, there is no belief there, it is simply a "I don't really know". Now, Ray is the one who believes something, he posits that a god created the universe. And Ray has to believe or have faith in his position because there is no evidence for such a position. Besides that, I could just as easily turn and ask who created Ray's god. If everything has to have a creator, then this line of questioning will end up in an infinite regress. The argument really gets us nowhere, and it is an instant draw in a debate on the god hypothesis.
2) Of course Ray believes that a builder built his house..........he understands the process of building a house. So, he makes no viable point here. He is just trying a bait and switch here. First, he uses the house metaphor and then switches the house with our universe. He and no one else knows how the universe came to be (in the sense of where all matter came from, the big bang is a very solid theory), so he uses god to make what is called an argument from ignorance.
He doesn't know how matter came to be, so he uses god (this is known as the first cause argument).
And then there is this gem:
So the next time you hear the word “atheist” and the word “intelligent” in the same sentence, you will know better.
At least I'm not positing certitude in the face of ignorance, I would say that that is a pretty intelligent thing to do.
Do a quick Google search, and you will find that the banana Ray is holding is not a wild banana (they look very different). The kind of banana we usually find in the grocery store (the kind that Ray is holding) has been cultivated to be that look and shape over many generations. It was human guided selection (as opposed to natural selection) that gave us the banana we know today. But on to more important things than Ray's misunderstanding of the cultivation of bananas.
I found out from P.Z. Myers blog, that Ray has a new website called Pull the Plug on Atheism.
It's a slick looking website, easy to navigate, and it's full of short ignorant diatribes about atheism and science (especially cosmology, biology, and chemistry). For Example:
An atheist is someone who believes that nothing made everything. He will of course deny that because it's an intellectual embarrassment, but if I say that I don’t believe that a builder built my house, then I am left with the insanity of believing that nothing built it. It just happened.
There are a few things wrong with that statement:
1) An atheist is someone who believes that a god does not exist, and that's it. But, let's go ahead and play Ray's game. I can't speak for all atheists but here is my perspective. I don't know how the universe or anything for that matter, came into being. Cosmology has some interesting theories such as our universe could have been started because of a black hole in another universe. That is, if we belonged to a multi verse (Think of our universe as one among many, kind of like a slice of bread in a loaf.). This says nothing about how the multi verse came into being. So, it's back to I/we just don't know(yet?). Atheists will (or at least they should) admit their ignorance when it comes to this issue. But ignorance in science is OK, it is something it strives to conquer. As you can see, there is no belief there, it is simply a "I don't really know". Now, Ray is the one who believes something, he posits that a god created the universe. And Ray has to believe or have faith in his position because there is no evidence for such a position. Besides that, I could just as easily turn and ask who created Ray's god. If everything has to have a creator, then this line of questioning will end up in an infinite regress. The argument really gets us nowhere, and it is an instant draw in a debate on the god hypothesis.
2) Of course Ray believes that a builder built his house..........he understands the process of building a house. So, he makes no viable point here. He is just trying a bait and switch here. First, he uses the house metaphor and then switches the house with our universe. He and no one else knows how the universe came to be (in the sense of where all matter came from, the big bang is a very solid theory), so he uses god to make what is called an argument from ignorance.
He doesn't know how matter came to be, so he uses god (this is known as the first cause argument).
And then there is this gem:
So the next time you hear the word “atheist” and the word “intelligent” in the same sentence, you will know better.
At least I'm not positing certitude in the face of ignorance, I would say that that is a pretty intelligent thing to do.
15 Gems of Evolution (Part 10)
10) Selective survival in wild guppies
Natural selection favours traits that increase fitness. Over time, such selection might be expected to exhaust genetic variation by driving advantageous genetic variants to fixation at the expense of less advantageous or deleterious variants. In fact, natural populations often show large amounts of genetic variation. So how is it maintained?
An example is the genetic polymorphism seen in the colour patterns of male guppies (Poecilia reticulata). As reported in 2006, Kimberly Hughes from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her colleagues manipulated the frequencies of males with different colour patterns in three wild guppy populations in Trinidad. They showed that rare variants have much higher survival rates than more common ones. In essence, variants are favoured when rare, and selected against when common. Such ‘frequency-dependent’ survival, in which selection favours rare types, has been implicated in the maintenance of molecular, morphological and health-related polymorphisms in humans and other mammals.
Reference
Olendorf, R. et al. Nature 441, 633–636 (2006).
Additional resource
Foerster, K. et al. Nature 447, 1107–1110 (2007).
Author websites
Kimberly Hughes: http://www.bio.fsu.edu/faculty-hughes.php
Anne Houde: http://www.lakeforest.edu/academics/faculty/houde
David Reznick: http://www.biology.ucr.edu/people/faculty/Reznick.html
Natural selection favours traits that increase fitness. Over time, such selection might be expected to exhaust genetic variation by driving advantageous genetic variants to fixation at the expense of less advantageous or deleterious variants. In fact, natural populations often show large amounts of genetic variation. So how is it maintained?
An example is the genetic polymorphism seen in the colour patterns of male guppies (Poecilia reticulata). As reported in 2006, Kimberly Hughes from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her colleagues manipulated the frequencies of males with different colour patterns in three wild guppy populations in Trinidad. They showed that rare variants have much higher survival rates than more common ones. In essence, variants are favoured when rare, and selected against when common. Such ‘frequency-dependent’ survival, in which selection favours rare types, has been implicated in the maintenance of molecular, morphological and health-related polymorphisms in humans and other mammals.
Reference
Olendorf, R. et al. Nature 441, 633–636 (2006).
Additional resource
Foerster, K. et al. Nature 447, 1107–1110 (2007).
Author websites
Kimberly Hughes: http://www.bio.fsu.edu/faculty-hughes.php
Anne Houde: http://www.lakeforest.edu/academics/faculty/houde
David Reznick: http://www.biology.ucr.edu/people/faculty/Reznick.html
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
15 Gems of Evolution (Part 9)
9) Differential dispersal in wild birds
Gene flow caused, for instance, by migration, can disrupt adaptation to local conditions and oppose evolutionary differentiation within and between populations. Indeed, classical population genetics theory suggests that the more that local populations migrate and interbreed, the more genetically similar they will be. This concept seems to accord with common sense, and it assumes that gene flow is a random process, like diffusion. But non-random dispersal can actually favour local adaptation and evolutionary differentiation, as Ben Sheldon of the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology in Oxford, UK, and his colleagues reported in 2005. Their work was part of a multi-decade study of the great tits (Parus major) that inhabit a wood in Oxfordshire,
UK. The researchers found that the amount and type of genetic variation in nestling weight in this songbird differs from one part of the wood to another. This pattern of variation leads to varying responses to selection in different parts of the wood, leading to local adaptation. The effect is reinforced by non-random dispersal; individual birds select and breed in different habitats in a way that increases their fitness. The authors conclude that “when gene flow is not homogeneous, evolutionary differentiation can be rapid and can occur over
surprisingly small spatial scales”.
In another study of great tits on the island of Vlieland in the Netherlands, published in the same issue of Nature, Erik Postma and Arie van Noordwijk from the Netherlands Institute of Ecology in Heteren found that gene flow, mediated by non-random dispersal, maintains a large genetic difference in clutch size at a small spatial scale, again illustrating, as these scientists put it, “the large effect of immigration on the evolution of local adaptations and on genetic population structure”.
References
Garant, D., Kruuk, L. E. B., Wilkin, T. A., McCleery, R. H. & Sheldon, B. C. Nature 433, 60–65 (2005).
Postma, E. & van Noordwijk, A. J. Nature 433, 65-68 (2005).
Additional resource
Coltman, D. W. Nature 433, 23–24 (2005).
Author websites
Ben Sheldon: http://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/egi/people/faculty/ben_sheldon.htm
Erik Postma: http://www.nioo.knaw.nl/ppages/epostma
Arie van Noordwijk: http://www.nioo.knaw.nl/PPAGES/avannoordwijk
David Coltman: http://www.biology.ualberta.ca/faculty/david_coltman
Gene flow caused, for instance, by migration, can disrupt adaptation to local conditions and oppose evolutionary differentiation within and between populations. Indeed, classical population genetics theory suggests that the more that local populations migrate and interbreed, the more genetically similar they will be. This concept seems to accord with common sense, and it assumes that gene flow is a random process, like diffusion. But non-random dispersal can actually favour local adaptation and evolutionary differentiation, as Ben Sheldon of the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology in Oxford, UK, and his colleagues reported in 2005. Their work was part of a multi-decade study of the great tits (Parus major) that inhabit a wood in Oxfordshire,
UK. The researchers found that the amount and type of genetic variation in nestling weight in this songbird differs from one part of the wood to another. This pattern of variation leads to varying responses to selection in different parts of the wood, leading to local adaptation. The effect is reinforced by non-random dispersal; individual birds select and breed in different habitats in a way that increases their fitness. The authors conclude that “when gene flow is not homogeneous, evolutionary differentiation can be rapid and can occur over
surprisingly small spatial scales”.
In another study of great tits on the island of Vlieland in the Netherlands, published in the same issue of Nature, Erik Postma and Arie van Noordwijk from the Netherlands Institute of Ecology in Heteren found that gene flow, mediated by non-random dispersal, maintains a large genetic difference in clutch size at a small spatial scale, again illustrating, as these scientists put it, “the large effect of immigration on the evolution of local adaptations and on genetic population structure”.
References
Garant, D., Kruuk, L. E. B., Wilkin, T. A., McCleery, R. H. & Sheldon, B. C. Nature 433, 60–65 (2005).
Postma, E. & van Noordwijk, A. J. Nature 433, 65-68 (2005).
Additional resource
Coltman, D. W. Nature 433, 23–24 (2005).
Author websites
Ben Sheldon: http://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/egi/people/faculty/ben_sheldon.htm
Erik Postma: http://www.nioo.knaw.nl/ppages/epostma
Arie van Noordwijk: http://www.nioo.knaw.nl/PPAGES/avannoordwijk
David Coltman: http://www.biology.ualberta.ca/faculty/david_coltman
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
15 Gems of Evolution (Part 8)
8) A case of co-evolution
Species evolve together, and in competition. Predators evolve ever deadlier weapons and skills to catch prey, which, as a result of Darwin’s canonical ‘struggle for existence’, become better at escaping them, and so the arms race continues. In 1973, evolutionary biologist Leigh Van Valen likened this to the Red Queen’s comment to Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, “it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!” The ‘Red Queen’
hypothesis of co-evolution was born.
A problem with studying Red-Queen dynamics is that they can be seen only in the eternal present. Discovering their history is problematic, because evolution has generally obliterated all earlier stages.
Happily, Ellen Decaestecker from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium and her colleagues discovered a remarkable exception, in the co-evolutionary arms race between water fleas (Daphnia) and the microscopic parasites that infest them; their research was published in 2007. As the water fleas become better at evading parasitism, the parasites become better at infecting them. Both prey and predator in this system can persist in dormant stages for many years in the mud at the bottom of the lake they share. The sediments of the lake
can be dated to the year they were formed, and the buried predators and prey can be revived. Thus, their interactions can be tested, against one another, and against predators or prey from their relative pasts and futures.
Confirming theoretical expectations, the parasite adapted to its host over a period of only a few years. Its infectivity at any given time changed little, but its virulence and fitness rose steadily — matched at each stage by the ability of the water fleas to resist them.
This study provides an elegant example in which a high-resolution historical record of the co-evolutionary process has provided an affirmation of evolutionary theory, showing that the interaction of parasites and their hosts is not set in time but is instead the result of a dynamic arms race of adaptation and counter-adaptation, driven by natural selection, from generation to generation.
Reference
Decaestecker, E. et al. Nature 450, 870–873 (2007).
Additional resources
The Red Queen Hypothesis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen
Van Valen, L. Evol. Theory 1, 1–30 (1973).
Author website
Ellen Decaestecker: http://bio.kuleuven.be/de/dea/people_detail.php?pass_id=u0003403
Species evolve together, and in competition. Predators evolve ever deadlier weapons and skills to catch prey, which, as a result of Darwin’s canonical ‘struggle for existence’, become better at escaping them, and so the arms race continues. In 1973, evolutionary biologist Leigh Van Valen likened this to the Red Queen’s comment to Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, “it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!” The ‘Red Queen’
hypothesis of co-evolution was born.
A problem with studying Red-Queen dynamics is that they can be seen only in the eternal present. Discovering their history is problematic, because evolution has generally obliterated all earlier stages.
Happily, Ellen Decaestecker from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium and her colleagues discovered a remarkable exception, in the co-evolutionary arms race between water fleas (Daphnia) and the microscopic parasites that infest them; their research was published in 2007. As the water fleas become better at evading parasitism, the parasites become better at infecting them. Both prey and predator in this system can persist in dormant stages for many years in the mud at the bottom of the lake they share. The sediments of the lake
can be dated to the year they were formed, and the buried predators and prey can be revived. Thus, their interactions can be tested, against one another, and against predators or prey from their relative pasts and futures.
Confirming theoretical expectations, the parasite adapted to its host over a period of only a few years. Its infectivity at any given time changed little, but its virulence and fitness rose steadily — matched at each stage by the ability of the water fleas to resist them.
This study provides an elegant example in which a high-resolution historical record of the co-evolutionary process has provided an affirmation of evolutionary theory, showing that the interaction of parasites and their hosts is not set in time but is instead the result of a dynamic arms race of adaptation and counter-adaptation, driven by natural selection, from generation to generation.
Reference
Decaestecker, E. et al. Nature 450, 870–873 (2007).
Additional resources
The Red Queen Hypothesis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen
Van Valen, L. Evol. Theory 1, 1–30 (1973).
Author website
Ellen Decaestecker: http://bio.kuleuven.be/de/dea/people_detail.php?pass_id=u0003403
Monday, January 19, 2009
Obama The Anti-Christ.....Or Maybe Not
It is the eve of the inauguration of the our new President Barack Obama and change is on the horizon. Now, I'm not just repeating our new president's mantra. According to some misguided, kooky, crazy, silly, strange, and unthinking half wits, Obama brings with him the end times. Yes, that's right, someone out there in T.V. land has just played the anti-Christ end times card.
My dear reader, you may be picking up on my skepticism here. As well you should, this is after all Skeptic Dave you are reading. Sorry, but I bet there are just as many missed anti-Christ predictions as there are end of the world predictions (maybe not as many, but A LOT!) So, I have been inspired to list all of the supposed anti-Christs throughout history. Though, I will only be focusing on the most famous for the sake of brevity.
I also want to challenge all of you to list as many that you can think of (or find), especially those that I have missed. Are you ready? Here we go!!
Hitler
Yasser Arafat
Jimmy Carter (WTF?)
Bill Gates
Mikhail Gorbachev
John F. Kennedy
Martin Luther
Henry Kissinger
Benito Mussolini
Nero Ceaser
Pope John Paul II
Ronald Reagan
Pat Robertson (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!)
David Rockefeller
Anwar el-Sadat
Saddam Hussein
Willy Brandt
Caligula
King Juan Carlos of Spain
Emperor Frederick II of Germany
King George II of England
Emperor Justinian
Ayatollah Khomeini
Nikita Khrushchev
Sun Myung Moon
Napoleon Bonaparte
Czar Peter the Great
Pete Seeger
Josef Stalin
Kaiser Wilhelm
Boris Yeltsin
Barack Obama
George W. Bush
Elvis
John Lennon
Prince Charles of England
Tony Blair
Barney the Dinosaur (is there any reason to take these folks serious anymore?)
Sources:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/apocalypse/antichrist/quiz.html
http://www.bible-prophecy.com/antichristtheories.htm#Theories (the Barney folks)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antichrist
My dear reader, you may be picking up on my skepticism here. As well you should, this is after all Skeptic Dave you are reading. Sorry, but I bet there are just as many missed anti-Christ predictions as there are end of the world predictions (maybe not as many, but A LOT!) So, I have been inspired to list all of the supposed anti-Christs throughout history. Though, I will only be focusing on the most famous for the sake of brevity.
I also want to challenge all of you to list as many that you can think of (or find), especially those that I have missed. Are you ready? Here we go!!
Hitler
Yasser Arafat
Jimmy Carter (WTF?)
Bill Gates
Mikhail Gorbachev
John F. Kennedy
Martin Luther
Henry Kissinger
Benito Mussolini
Nero Ceaser
Pope John Paul II
Ronald Reagan
Pat Robertson (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!)
David Rockefeller
Anwar el-Sadat
Saddam Hussein
Willy Brandt
Caligula
King Juan Carlos of Spain
Emperor Frederick II of Germany
King George II of England
Emperor Justinian
Ayatollah Khomeini
Nikita Khrushchev
Sun Myung Moon
Napoleon Bonaparte
Czar Peter the Great
Pete Seeger
Josef Stalin
Kaiser Wilhelm
Boris Yeltsin
Barack Obama
George W. Bush
Elvis
John Lennon
Prince Charles of England
Tony Blair
Barney the Dinosaur (is there any reason to take these folks serious anymore?)
Sources:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/apocalypse/antichrist/quiz.html
http://www.bible-prophecy.com/antichristtheories.htm#Theories (the Barney folks)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antichrist
15 Gems of Evolution (Part 7)
7) Natural selection in lizards
A popular evolutionary hypothesis is that behavioural shifts in new environments negate the effects of natural selection. But work by Harvard University’s Jonathan Losos and his colleagues in 2003 lends little support to this theory. The researchers introduced the large ground-dwelling predatory lizard Leiocephalus carinatus to six small islands in the Bahamas, with six other islands serving as controls. They found that the lizard’s prey, a smaller lizard called Anolis sagrei, spent more time higher up in the vegetation on islands occupied by the larger predator than they did on the islands where L. carinatus was absent. But mortality in A. sagrei was still
much higher on the experimental islands than on control islands.
The presence of the larger predator selected for longer-legged male A. sagrei lizards, which can run faster, and also favoured larger females, which are both faster and harder to subdue and ingest. The researchers did not detect any selection on size in males; they suggested that the larger males may have been more vulnerable because of their conspicuous territorial behaviour.
The study shows how the introduction of a predator can cause individuals of a prey species to change their behaviour so as to reduce the risk of predation, but also cause an evolutionary response at the level of the population that differs between the sexes according to their ecology.
Reference
Losos, J. B., Schoener, T. W. & Spiller, D. A. Nature 432, 505–508 (2004).
Additional resources
Butler, M. A., Sawyer, S. A. & Losos, J. B. Nature 447, 202–205 (2007).
Kolbe, J. J. et al. Nature 431, 177–181 (2004).
Calsbeek, R. & Smith, T. B. Nature 426, 552–555 (2003).
Losos, J. B. et al. Nature 424, 542–545 (2003).
Author website
Jonathan Losos: http://www.oeb.harvard.edu/faculty/losos/jblosos
A popular evolutionary hypothesis is that behavioural shifts in new environments negate the effects of natural selection. But work by Harvard University’s Jonathan Losos and his colleagues in 2003 lends little support to this theory. The researchers introduced the large ground-dwelling predatory lizard Leiocephalus carinatus to six small islands in the Bahamas, with six other islands serving as controls. They found that the lizard’s prey, a smaller lizard called Anolis sagrei, spent more time higher up in the vegetation on islands occupied by the larger predator than they did on the islands where L. carinatus was absent. But mortality in A. sagrei was still
much higher on the experimental islands than on control islands.
The presence of the larger predator selected for longer-legged male A. sagrei lizards, which can run faster, and also favoured larger females, which are both faster and harder to subdue and ingest. The researchers did not detect any selection on size in males; they suggested that the larger males may have been more vulnerable because of their conspicuous territorial behaviour.
The study shows how the introduction of a predator can cause individuals of a prey species to change their behaviour so as to reduce the risk of predation, but also cause an evolutionary response at the level of the population that differs between the sexes according to their ecology.
Reference
Losos, J. B., Schoener, T. W. & Spiller, D. A. Nature 432, 505–508 (2004).
Additional resources
Butler, M. A., Sawyer, S. A. & Losos, J. B. Nature 447, 202–205 (2007).
Kolbe, J. J. et al. Nature 431, 177–181 (2004).
Calsbeek, R. & Smith, T. B. Nature 426, 552–555 (2003).
Losos, J. B. et al. Nature 424, 542–545 (2003).
Author website
Jonathan Losos: http://www.oeb.harvard.edu/faculty/losos/jblosos
Texas Doomed?
I have read some potentially bad news from the skeptic community. Creationism is trying to creep into Texas public schools and the BOE (board of education) will be voting next week on the new science standards. Apparently, the creationists have a slight minority and only need to sway one vote so they can teach their non-science (that's the nicest way I can put that). To say the least, Texas is on the brink of science (educational?) destruction.
But there is hope and you can help!
Go visit: http://teachthemscience.org/texas
There, they will inform you on how you can get involved. If you live in Texas, go to the school board meeting and voice your opinion (that's if you can!). There are other ways to help out if you can't be at the board meeting, for instance, writing an Op/Ed piece in your local paper and so on. The time is now Texas!
D
But there is hope and you can help!
Go visit: http://teachthemscience.org/texas
There, they will inform you on how you can get involved. If you live in Texas, go to the school board meeting and voice your opinion (that's if you can!). There are other ways to help out if you can't be at the board meeting, for instance, writing an Op/Ed piece in your local paper and so on. The time is now Texas!
D
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Poll Results (What to do with your body when you die)
Only five respondents, but the results were:
Three are choosing to be buried, zero to be cremated, and two to be donated to science!
Look out for the new poll!
Three are choosing to be buried, zero to be cremated, and two to be donated to science!
Look out for the new poll!
Steven Seagal........trust me, this is funny
Any Steven Seagal fans out there? Any Steven Seagal haters out there (I know my wife is)? Whether you love him, hate him, or are indifferent, you will probably like this clip. Though you do have to be a fan of crotch humor!
D
D
15 Gems Of Evolution (Part 4, 5, and 6)
To try and hold you over for the weekend, here are parts 4, 5, and 6 of the 15 Gems of Evolution.
D
4) The evolutionary history of teeth
One motivation in the study of development is the discovery of mechanisms that guide evolutionary change. Kathryn Kavanagh at the University of Helsinki and her colleagues investigated just this by looking at the mechanisms behind the relative size and number of molar teeth in mice. The research, published in 2007, uncovered the pattern of gene expression that governs the development of teeth — molars emerge from the front backwards, with each tooth smaller than the last. The beauty of the study lies in its application. Their model predicts the dentition patterns found in mouselike rodent species with various diets, providing an example of ecologically driven evolution along a developmentally favoured trajectory. In general, the work shows how the pattern of gene expression can be modified during evolution to produce adaptive changes in natural systems.
Reference
Kavanagh, K. D., Evans, A. R. & Jernvall, J. Nature 449, 427–432 (2007).
Additional resources
Polly, P. D. Nature 449, 413–415 (2007).
Evans, A. R., Wilson, G. P., Fortelius, M. & Jernvall, J. Nature 445, 78–81 (2006).
Kangas, A. T., Evans, A. R., Thesleff, I. & Jernvall, J. Nature 432, 211–214 (2004).
Jernvall, J. & Fortelius, M. Nature 417, 538–540 (2002).
Theodor, J. M. Nature 417, 498–499 (2002).
Author website
Jukka Jernvall: http://www.biocenter.helsinki.fi/bi/evodevo
5) The origin of the vertebrate skeleton
We owe much of what makes us human to remarkable tissue, found only in embryos, called the neural crest. Neural-crest cells emerge in the developing spinal cord and migrate all over the body, effecting a remarkable series of transformations. Without the neural crest, we would not have most of the bones in our face and neck, or many of the features of our skin and sensory organs. The neural crest seems to be unique to vertebrates, and helps to explain why vertebrates have distinctive ‘heads’ and ‘faces’. Untangling the evolutionary history of the neural crest is especially hard in fossil forms, as embryonic data are obviously absent. One key mystery, for example, is how much of the vertebrate skull is contributed by neuralcrest cells and how much comes from deeper layers of tissue. New techniques have allowed researchers to label and follow individual cells as embryos develop. They have revealed the boundaries of the bone derived from the neural crest, down to the single-cell level, in the neck and
shoulders. Tissue derived from the neural crest anchors the head onto the front lining of the shoulder girdle, whereas the skeleton forming the back of the neck and shoulder grows from a deeper layer of tissue called the mesoderm.
Such detailed mapping, in living animals, casts light on the evolution of structures in the heads and necks of animals long extinct, even without fosilized soft tissue such as skin and muscle. Skeletal similarities that result from a shared evolutionary history can be identified from muscle attachments. This allows the tracing of, for example, the location of the major shoulder bone of extinct land vertebrate ancestors, the cleithrum. This bone seems to survive as part of the shoulder blade (scapula) in living mammals. This kind of evolutionary scan may have immediate clinical relevance. The parts of the skeleton identified by Toshiyuki Matsuoka from the Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research in London and his colleagues as being derived from the neural crest are specifically affected in several developmental disorders in humans, providing insights into their origins.Mitsuoka’s study shows how a detailed analysis of the morphology of living animals, informed by evolutionary thinking, helps researchers to interpret fossilized and now-extinct forms.
Reference
Matsuoka, T. et al. Nature 436, 347–355 (2005).
Author website
Georgy Koentges: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/systemsbiology
6) Natural selection in speciation
Evolutionary theory predicts that divergent natural selection will often have a key role in speciation. Working with sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus), Jeffrey McKinnon at the University of Wisconsin in Whitewater and his colleagues reported in 2004 that reproductive isolation can evolve as a by-product of selection on body size. This work provides a link between the build-up of reproductive isolation and the divergence of an ecologically important trait.
The study was done on an extraordinary geographical scale, involving mating trials between fish taken in Alaska, British Columbia, Iceland, the United Kingdom, Norway and Japan. It was underpinned by molecular genetic analyses that provided firm evidence that fish that have adapted to living in streams had evolved repeatedly from marine ancestors, or from fish that live in the ocean but return to fresh water to spawn. Such migratory populations in the study had larger bodies on average than did those living in streams. Individuals tended to mate with fish of a similar size, which accounts well for the reproductive isolation between different
stream ecotypes and their close, seafaring neighbours.
Taking into account the evolutionary relationships, a comparison of the various types of stickleback, whether stream or marine, strongly supports the view that adaptation to different environments brings about reproductive isolation. The researchers’ experiments also confirmed the connection between size divergence and the build-up of reproductive isolation — although traits other than size also contribute to reproductive isolation to some extent.
Reference
McKinnon, J. S. et al. Nature 429, 294–298 (2004).
Additional resources
Gillespie, R. G. & Emerson, B. C. Nature 446, 386–387 (2007).
Kocher, T. D. Nature 435, 29–30 (2005).
Emerson, B. C. & Kolm, N. Nature 434, 1015–1017 (2005).
Author websites
Jeffrey McKinnon: http://facstaff.uww.edu/mckinnoj/mckinnon.html
David Kingsley: http://kingsley.stanford.edu
Dolph Schluter: http://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~schluter
D
4) The evolutionary history of teeth
One motivation in the study of development is the discovery of mechanisms that guide evolutionary change. Kathryn Kavanagh at the University of Helsinki and her colleagues investigated just this by looking at the mechanisms behind the relative size and number of molar teeth in mice. The research, published in 2007, uncovered the pattern of gene expression that governs the development of teeth — molars emerge from the front backwards, with each tooth smaller than the last. The beauty of the study lies in its application. Their model predicts the dentition patterns found in mouselike rodent species with various diets, providing an example of ecologically driven evolution along a developmentally favoured trajectory. In general, the work shows how the pattern of gene expression can be modified during evolution to produce adaptive changes in natural systems.
Reference
Kavanagh, K. D., Evans, A. R. & Jernvall, J. Nature 449, 427–432 (2007).
Additional resources
Polly, P. D. Nature 449, 413–415 (2007).
Evans, A. R., Wilson, G. P., Fortelius, M. & Jernvall, J. Nature 445, 78–81 (2006).
Kangas, A. T., Evans, A. R., Thesleff, I. & Jernvall, J. Nature 432, 211–214 (2004).
Jernvall, J. & Fortelius, M. Nature 417, 538–540 (2002).
Theodor, J. M. Nature 417, 498–499 (2002).
Author website
Jukka Jernvall: http://www.biocenter.helsinki.fi/bi/evodevo
5) The origin of the vertebrate skeleton
We owe much of what makes us human to remarkable tissue, found only in embryos, called the neural crest. Neural-crest cells emerge in the developing spinal cord and migrate all over the body, effecting a remarkable series of transformations. Without the neural crest, we would not have most of the bones in our face and neck, or many of the features of our skin and sensory organs. The neural crest seems to be unique to vertebrates, and helps to explain why vertebrates have distinctive ‘heads’ and ‘faces’. Untangling the evolutionary history of the neural crest is especially hard in fossil forms, as embryonic data are obviously absent. One key mystery, for example, is how much of the vertebrate skull is contributed by neuralcrest cells and how much comes from deeper layers of tissue. New techniques have allowed researchers to label and follow individual cells as embryos develop. They have revealed the boundaries of the bone derived from the neural crest, down to the single-cell level, in the neck and
shoulders. Tissue derived from the neural crest anchors the head onto the front lining of the shoulder girdle, whereas the skeleton forming the back of the neck and shoulder grows from a deeper layer of tissue called the mesoderm.
Such detailed mapping, in living animals, casts light on the evolution of structures in the heads and necks of animals long extinct, even without fosilized soft tissue such as skin and muscle. Skeletal similarities that result from a shared evolutionary history can be identified from muscle attachments. This allows the tracing of, for example, the location of the major shoulder bone of extinct land vertebrate ancestors, the cleithrum. This bone seems to survive as part of the shoulder blade (scapula) in living mammals. This kind of evolutionary scan may have immediate clinical relevance. The parts of the skeleton identified by Toshiyuki Matsuoka from the Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research in London and his colleagues as being derived from the neural crest are specifically affected in several developmental disorders in humans, providing insights into their origins.Mitsuoka’s study shows how a detailed analysis of the morphology of living animals, informed by evolutionary thinking, helps researchers to interpret fossilized and now-extinct forms.
Reference
Matsuoka, T. et al. Nature 436, 347–355 (2005).
Author website
Georgy Koentges: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/systemsbiology
6) Natural selection in speciation
Evolutionary theory predicts that divergent natural selection will often have a key role in speciation. Working with sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus), Jeffrey McKinnon at the University of Wisconsin in Whitewater and his colleagues reported in 2004 that reproductive isolation can evolve as a by-product of selection on body size. This work provides a link between the build-up of reproductive isolation and the divergence of an ecologically important trait.
The study was done on an extraordinary geographical scale, involving mating trials between fish taken in Alaska, British Columbia, Iceland, the United Kingdom, Norway and Japan. It was underpinned by molecular genetic analyses that provided firm evidence that fish that have adapted to living in streams had evolved repeatedly from marine ancestors, or from fish that live in the ocean but return to fresh water to spawn. Such migratory populations in the study had larger bodies on average than did those living in streams. Individuals tended to mate with fish of a similar size, which accounts well for the reproductive isolation between different
stream ecotypes and their close, seafaring neighbours.
Taking into account the evolutionary relationships, a comparison of the various types of stickleback, whether stream or marine, strongly supports the view that adaptation to different environments brings about reproductive isolation. The researchers’ experiments also confirmed the connection between size divergence and the build-up of reproductive isolation — although traits other than size also contribute to reproductive isolation to some extent.
Reference
McKinnon, J. S. et al. Nature 429, 294–298 (2004).
Additional resources
Gillespie, R. G. & Emerson, B. C. Nature 446, 386–387 (2007).
Kocher, T. D. Nature 435, 29–30 (2005).
Emerson, B. C. & Kolm, N. Nature 434, 1015–1017 (2005).
Author websites
Jeffrey McKinnon: http://facstaff.uww.edu/mckinnoj/mckinnon.html
David Kingsley: http://kingsley.stanford.edu
Dolph Schluter: http://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~schluter
Friday, January 16, 2009
15 Gems Of Evolution (Part 3)
3) The origin of feathers
One of the objections to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was the lack of 'transitional forms' in the fossil record — forms that illustrated evolution in action, from one major group of animals to another. However, hardly a year after the publication of On the Origin of Species, an isolated feather was discovered in Late Jurassic (about 150 million years old) lithographic limestones of Solnhofen in Bavaria, followed in 1861 by the first fossil of Archaeopteryx, a creature with many primitive, reptilian features such as teeth and a long, bony tail — but with wings and flight feathers, just like a bird.
Although Archaeopteryx is commonly seen as the earliest known bird, many suspected that it was better seen as a dinosaur, albeit one with feathers. Thomas Henry Huxley, Darwin's colleague and friend, discussed the possible evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds, and palaeontologists speculated, if wildly, that dinosaurs with feathers might one day be found.
In the 1980s, deposits from the early Cretaceous period (about 125 million years ago) in the Liaoning Province in northern China vindicated these speculations in the most dramatic fashion, with discoveries of primitive birds in abundance — alongside dinosaurs with feathers, and feather-like plumage. Starting with the discovery of the small theropod Sinosauropteryx by Pei-ji Chen from China's Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology and his colleagues, a variety of feather-clad forms have been found. Many of these feathered dinosaurs could not possibly have flown, showing that feathers first evolved for reasons other than flight, possibly for sexual display or thermal insulation, for instance. In 2008, Fucheng Zhang and his colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing announced the bizarre creature Epidexipteryx, a small dinosaur clad in downy plumage, and sporting four long plumes from its tail. Palaeontologists are now beginning to think that their speculations weren't nearly wild enough, and that feathers were indeed quite common in
dinosaurs.
The discovery of feathered dinosaurs not only vindicated the idea of transitional forms, but also showed that evolution has a way of coming up with a dazzling variety of solutions when we had no idea that therewere even problems. Flight could have been no more than an additional opportunity that presented itself to
creatures already clothed in feathers.
References
Chen, P.-J., Dong, Z.-M. & Zhen, S.-N. Nature 391, 147–152 (1998).
Zhang, F., Zhou, Z., Xu, X., Wang, X. & Sullivan, C. Nature 455, 1105–1008 (2008).
Additional resources
Gee, H. (ed.) Rise of the Dragon (Univ. Chicago Press, 2001).
Chiappe, L. Glorified dinosaurs (Wiley-Liss, 2007).
Gee, H. & Rey, L. V. A Field Guide to Dinosaurs (Barron's Educational, 2003).
Thursday, January 15, 2009
15 Gems Of Evolution (Part 2)
2) From water to land
The animals we are most familiar with are tetrapods — they are vertebrates (they have backbones) and they live on land. That includes humans, almost all domestic animals and most of the wild ones that any child would recognize: mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles. The vast majority of vertebrates, however, are not tetrapods, but fish. There are more kinds of fish, in fact, than all the species of tetrapods combined. Indeed, through the lens of evolution, tetrapods
are just one branch of the fish family tree, the members of which just
happen to be adapted for life out of water.
The first transition from water to land took place more than 360 million years ago. It was one of the most demanding such moves ever made in the history of life. How did fins become legs? And how did the transitional creatures cope with the formidable demands of land life, from a desiccating environment to the
crushing burden of gravity?
It used to be thought that the first landlubbers were stranded fish that evolved to spend more and more time ashore, returning to water to reproduce. Over the past 20 years, palaeontologists have uncovered fossils that have turned this idea upside down. The earliest tetrapods, such as Acanthostega from eastern Greenland around 365 million years ago, had fully formed legs, with toes, but retained internal gills that would soon have dried out in any long stint in air. Fish evolved legs long before they came on land. The earliest tetrapods did most of their evolving in the more forgiving aquatic environment. Coming ashore seems to have been the very last stage.
Researchers suspect that the ancestors of tetrapods were creatures called elpistostegids. These very large, carnivorous, shallow-water fish would have looked and behaved much like alligators, or giant salamanders. They looked like tetrapods in many respects, except that they still had fins. Until recently, elpistostegids were known only from small fragments of fossils that were poorly preserved, so it has been hard to get a rounded picture of what they were like.
In the past couple of years, several discoveries from Ellesmere Island in the Nunavut region of northern Canada have changed all that. In 2006, Edward Daeschler and his colleagues described spectacularly wellpreserved fossils of an elpistostegid known as Tiktaalik that allow us to build up a good picture of an aquatic predator with distinct similarities to tetrapods — from its flexible neck, to its very limb-like fin structure.
The discovery and painstaking analysis of Tiktaalik illuminates the stage before tetrapods evolved, and shows how the fossil record throws up surprises, albeit ones that are entirely compatible with evolutionary thinking.
References
Daeschler, E. B., Shubin, N. H. & Jenkins, F A. Nature 440, 757–763 (2006).
Shubin, N. H., Daeschler, E. B., & Jenkins, F A. Nature 440, 764–771 (2006).
Additional resources
Ahlberg, P. E. & Clack, J. A. Nature 440, 747–749 (2006).
Clack, J. Gaining Ground (Indiana Univ. Press, 2002)
Shubin, N. Your Inner Fish (Allen Lane, 2008)
Gee, H. Deep Time (Fourth Estate, 2000)
Tiktaalik homepage: http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu
Author websites
Edward Daeschler: http://www.ansp.org/research/biodiv/vert_paleo/staff.php
Neil Shubin: http://pondside.uchicago.edu/oba/faculty/shubin_n.html
2
Gems from the fossil record
3
NATURE|January 2009|doi:10.1038/nature07740
www.nature.com/evolutiongems
© 2009 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved
The animals we are most familiar with are tetrapods — they are vertebrates (they have backbones) and they live on land. That includes humans, almost all domestic animals and most of the wild ones that any child would recognize: mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles. The vast majority of vertebrates, however, are not tetrapods, but fish. There are more kinds of fish, in fact, than all the species of tetrapods combined. Indeed, through the lens of evolution, tetrapods
are just one branch of the fish family tree, the members of which just
happen to be adapted for life out of water.
The first transition from water to land took place more than 360 million years ago. It was one of the most demanding such moves ever made in the history of life. How did fins become legs? And how did the transitional creatures cope with the formidable demands of land life, from a desiccating environment to the
crushing burden of gravity?
It used to be thought that the first landlubbers were stranded fish that evolved to spend more and more time ashore, returning to water to reproduce. Over the past 20 years, palaeontologists have uncovered fossils that have turned this idea upside down. The earliest tetrapods, such as Acanthostega from eastern Greenland around 365 million years ago, had fully formed legs, with toes, but retained internal gills that would soon have dried out in any long stint in air. Fish evolved legs long before they came on land. The earliest tetrapods did most of their evolving in the more forgiving aquatic environment. Coming ashore seems to have been the very last stage.
Researchers suspect that the ancestors of tetrapods were creatures called elpistostegids. These very large, carnivorous, shallow-water fish would have looked and behaved much like alligators, or giant salamanders. They looked like tetrapods in many respects, except that they still had fins. Until recently, elpistostegids were known only from small fragments of fossils that were poorly preserved, so it has been hard to get a rounded picture of what they were like.
In the past couple of years, several discoveries from Ellesmere Island in the Nunavut region of northern Canada have changed all that. In 2006, Edward Daeschler and his colleagues described spectacularly wellpreserved fossils of an elpistostegid known as Tiktaalik that allow us to build up a good picture of an aquatic predator with distinct similarities to tetrapods — from its flexible neck, to its very limb-like fin structure.
The discovery and painstaking analysis of Tiktaalik illuminates the stage before tetrapods evolved, and shows how the fossil record throws up surprises, albeit ones that are entirely compatible with evolutionary thinking.
References
Daeschler, E. B., Shubin, N. H. & Jenkins, F A. Nature 440, 757–763 (2006).
Shubin, N. H., Daeschler, E. B., & Jenkins, F A. Nature 440, 764–771 (2006).
Additional resources
Ahlberg, P. E. & Clack, J. A. Nature 440, 747–749 (2006).
Clack, J. Gaining Ground (Indiana Univ. Press, 2002)
Shubin, N. Your Inner Fish (Allen Lane, 2008)
Gee, H. Deep Time (Fourth Estate, 2000)
Tiktaalik homepage: http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu
Author websites
Edward Daeschler: http://www.ansp.org/research/biodiv/vert_paleo/staff.php
Neil Shubin: http://pondside.uchicago.edu/oba/faculty/shubin_n.html
2
Gems from the fossil record
3
NATURE|January 2009|doi:10.1038/nature07740
www.nature.com/evolutiongems
© 2009 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved
Putting Evolution To Use In The Everyday World (SciAm Article)
Think evolution is just about learning the origins of species and how they change? Guess what......now you can learn exactly how scientists apply the theory of evolution in the everyday world. Biologists and medical doctors aren't the the only professionals using evolution. All different fields use the findings of evolution. Anyone from aerospace engineers to police forensics experts.
The following article walks through all of the everyday applications that evolution provides.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=evolution-in-the-everday-world
D
The following article walks through all of the everyday applications that evolution provides.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=evolution-in-the-everday-world
D
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
15 Gems of Evolution
This is another post from my myspace blog, but it fits in really well with what I have going on here. So, for my myspace blog followers, sorry, you are just going to have to read this one over again!
D
This is the year of Darwin. In this year we will come to meet the anniversary of the Darwin's 200th birthday and the 150th year since the publishing of, "On The Origin of Species". I do plan to have a formal series on the Theory of Evolution through the whole year. I know this may not seem to different from the past years but with this, I do plan to have it formatted in a concise easy to understand way. I find it vitally important that we all have (at least) a basic understanding of Evolution. If you have followed my blog for the past year (or so) you will understand why I believe the above.
Before I start the series though, I found an interesting article on the top 15 "gems" of the Theory of Evolution. This article has been given to all as a free resource for the understanding of the evidence for Evolutionary theory.
You can find the PDF file here.
Until next time,
D
1) Land-living ancestors of whales
Fossils offer crucial clues for evolution, because they reveal the often remarkable forms of creatures long vanished from Earth. Some of them even document evolution in action, recording creatures moving from one
environment to another.
Whales, for example, are beautifully adapted to life in water, and have been for millions of years. But, like us, they are mammals. They breathe air, and give birth to and suckle live young. Yet there is good evidence that mammals originally evolved on land. If that is so, then the ancestors of whales must have taken to the water at some point.
As it happens, we have numerous fossils from the first ten million years or so of whale evolution. These include several fossils of aquatic creatures such as Ambulocetus and Pakicetus, which have characteristics now seen only in whales — especially in their ear anatomy — but also have limbs like those of the land-living mammals from which they are clearly derived. Technically, these hybrid creatures were already whales. What was missing was the start of the story: the land-living creatures from which whales eventually evolved.
Work published in 2007 might have pinpointed that group. Called raoellids, these now-extinct creatures would have looked like very small dogs, but were more closely related to even-toed ungulates — the group that includes modern-day cows, sheep, deer, pigs and hippos. Molecular evidence had also suggested that whales and even-toed ungulates share a deep evolutionary connection.
The detailed study, by Hans Thewissen at Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy in Rootstown and his colleagues, shows that one raoellid, Indohyus, is similar to whales, but unlike other eventoed ungulates in the structure of its ears and teeth, the thickness of its bones and the chemical composition of its teeth. These indicators suggest that this raccoon-sized creature spent much of its time in water. Typical raoellids, however, had a diet nothing like those of whales, suggesting that the spur to take to the water may
have been dietary change.
This study demonstrates the existence of potential transition forms in the fossil record. Many other examples could have been highlighted, and there is every reason to think that many others await discovery, especially in groups that are well represented in the fossil record.
Reference
Thewissen, J. G. M., Cooper, L. N., Clementz, M. T., Bajpai, S. & Tiwari, B. N. Nature 450, 1190–1194 (2007).
Additional resources
Thewissen, J. G. M., Williams, E. M., Roe, L. J. & Hussain, S. T. Nature 413, 277–281 (2001).
de Muizon, C. Nature 413, 259–260 (2001).
Novacek, M. J. Nature 368, 807 (1994).
Zimmer, C. At The Water's Edge (Touchstone, 1999).
Video of Thewissen's research: www.nature.com/nature/videoarchive/ancientwhale
D
This is the year of Darwin. In this year we will come to meet the anniversary of the Darwin's 200th birthday and the 150th year since the publishing of, "On The Origin of Species". I do plan to have a formal series on the Theory of Evolution through the whole year. I know this may not seem to different from the past years but with this, I do plan to have it formatted in a concise easy to understand way. I find it vitally important that we all have (at least) a basic understanding of Evolution. If you have followed my blog for the past year (or so) you will understand why I believe the above.
Before I start the series though, I found an interesting article on the top 15 "gems" of the Theory of Evolution. This article has been given to all as a free resource for the understanding of the evidence for Evolutionary theory.
You can find the PDF file here.
Until next time,
D
1) Land-living ancestors of whales
Fossils offer crucial clues for evolution, because they reveal the often remarkable forms of creatures long vanished from Earth. Some of them even document evolution in action, recording creatures moving from one
environment to another.
Whales, for example, are beautifully adapted to life in water, and have been for millions of years. But, like us, they are mammals. They breathe air, and give birth to and suckle live young. Yet there is good evidence that mammals originally evolved on land. If that is so, then the ancestors of whales must have taken to the water at some point.
As it happens, we have numerous fossils from the first ten million years or so of whale evolution. These include several fossils of aquatic creatures such as Ambulocetus and Pakicetus, which have characteristics now seen only in whales — especially in their ear anatomy — but also have limbs like those of the land-living mammals from which they are clearly derived. Technically, these hybrid creatures were already whales. What was missing was the start of the story: the land-living creatures from which whales eventually evolved.
Work published in 2007 might have pinpointed that group. Called raoellids, these now-extinct creatures would have looked like very small dogs, but were more closely related to even-toed ungulates — the group that includes modern-day cows, sheep, deer, pigs and hippos. Molecular evidence had also suggested that whales and even-toed ungulates share a deep evolutionary connection.
The detailed study, by Hans Thewissen at Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy in Rootstown and his colleagues, shows that one raoellid, Indohyus, is similar to whales, but unlike other eventoed ungulates in the structure of its ears and teeth, the thickness of its bones and the chemical composition of its teeth. These indicators suggest that this raccoon-sized creature spent much of its time in water. Typical raoellids, however, had a diet nothing like those of whales, suggesting that the spur to take to the water may
have been dietary change.
This study demonstrates the existence of potential transition forms in the fossil record. Many other examples could have been highlighted, and there is every reason to think that many others await discovery, especially in groups that are well represented in the fossil record.
Reference
Thewissen, J. G. M., Cooper, L. N., Clementz, M. T., Bajpai, S. & Tiwari, B. N. Nature 450, 1190–1194 (2007).
Additional resources
Thewissen, J. G. M., Williams, E. M., Roe, L. J. & Hussain, S. T. Nature 413, 277–281 (2001).
de Muizon, C. Nature 413, 259–260 (2001).
Novacek, M. J. Nature 368, 807 (1994).
Zimmer, C. At The Water's Edge (Touchstone, 1999).
Video of Thewissen's research: www.nature.com/nature/videoarchive/ancientwhale
A Penny For Your Thoughts...Or How About A Trillion Trillion
Do me a favor, imagine one of something.......anything. Or try to imagine one penny. Easy enough, right? Now it's probably not a stretch for you to imagine 10, 100, or even a 1,000 pennies. You may even be able visualize 10,000 or even 100,000 pennies. You'll notice something here, as the numbers get bigger, the harder it gets for you to relate or to comprehend exactly how big the number really is. It makes sense, we are beings who normally don't have to deal with large numbers. Look at our simian cousins, how often do they need to deal with trillions? Our brains are developed to understand what we encounter, we usually don't encounter anything that there are trillions of.
I bring this up because, there are approximately a trillion trillion stars in the known universe. That is 10 to the 24th power!!! Our Milky Way Galaxy only has 600-800 million stars.
That is only .0000000000006% to .0000000000008% of all the stars in the known universe!!!!
Still having trouble grasping these ginormous numbers, then check this out. The MegaPenny Project has put together simple, easy to understand illustrations on numbers. They start of with one penny and they work their way up to one quintillion (10 to the 18th power!). Check out their website here.
So, how many pennies would equal all the stars in the known universe (check out the illustration below)? But we aren't done yet, the illustration below is only showing us what one trillion pennies would look like. Take that block of pennies and multiply it by a trillion and you will have as many pennies as stars.
I originally found the MegaPenny Project site at:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/
1,000,000,016,640
One trillion, sixteen thousand six hundred and forty Pennies
[ One cube measuring 273 x 273 x 273 feet ]
x 273 feet ]
I bring this up because, there are approximately a trillion trillion stars in the known universe. That is 10 to the 24th power!!! Our Milky Way Galaxy only has 600-800 million stars.
That is only .0000000000006% to .0000000000008% of all the stars in the known universe!!!!
Still having trouble grasping these ginormous numbers, then check this out. The MegaPenny Project has put together simple, easy to understand illustrations on numbers. They start of with one penny and they work their way up to one quintillion (10 to the 18th power!). Check out their website here.
So, how many pennies would equal all the stars in the known universe (check out the illustration below)? But we aren't done yet, the illustration below is only showing us what one trillion pennies would look like. Take that block of pennies and multiply it by a trillion and you will have as many pennies as stars.
I originally found the MegaPenny Project site at:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/
1,000,000,016,640
One trillion, sixteen thousand six hundred and forty Pennies
[ One cube measuring 273 x 273 x 273 feet ]
x 273 feet ]
Monday, January 12, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Measles on the rise
Apparently, in the UK, measles cases are on the rise. This is seemingly because fewer people are having their children vaccinated. Why are fewer children getting vaccines? It's thanks to Jenny McCarthy and her ilk.
Jenny along with her cohorts, believe that vaccines gave their children autism. While the scientific community has shown over and over again that vaccines DO NOT cause autism. But because Jenny is famous and can easily spout off pseudo-science to a large audience (and that audience typically doesn't have the critical thinking skills needed to sift through such crap!), she and her followers are posing a danger to public health and most importantly, their children.
The following story from the BBC is a report on the rise in measles cases in the UK. While correlation is not causation, the rise in measles cases is seemingly related to fewer children getting vaccines. Another statistic to note is that countries that stop vaccinations do not see a drop in autism rates. Once again, correlation is not causation but it is something to take note of and to try and understand. So far the scientific community has determined that vaccines do not cause autism and it is possibly a genetic disorder. Why children have autism and it's causes are still unknown, but we do know that vaccines are not the cause.
BBC News Story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7819874.stm
Also, for more information you may want to check out Steve Novella's (he's a MD) Blog:
http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=444
D
Jenny along with her cohorts, believe that vaccines gave their children autism. While the scientific community has shown over and over again that vaccines DO NOT cause autism. But because Jenny is famous and can easily spout off pseudo-science to a large audience (and that audience typically doesn't have the critical thinking skills needed to sift through such crap!), she and her followers are posing a danger to public health and most importantly, their children.
The following story from the BBC is a report on the rise in measles cases in the UK. While correlation is not causation, the rise in measles cases is seemingly related to fewer children getting vaccines. Another statistic to note is that countries that stop vaccinations do not see a drop in autism rates. Once again, correlation is not causation but it is something to take note of and to try and understand. So far the scientific community has determined that vaccines do not cause autism and it is possibly a genetic disorder. Why children have autism and it's causes are still unknown, but we do know that vaccines are not the cause.
BBC News Story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7819874.stm
Also, for more information you may want to check out Steve Novella's (he's a MD) Blog:
http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=444
D
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Intelligent Design Fails Again!
I originally posted this on myspace and now I thought I would share it here with you. For those of you who don't know, I don't much care for Intelligent Design (ID) or Creationism (which ID is just Creationism in a cheap tux, they are the same thing........pretty much). The problem isn't that the ID/Creation folks believe in god, it's that it isn't science. Sorry, but it's true. ID/Creationism provides no scientific data whatsoever and chooses to promote their ideas using politicians instead of the peer reviewed scientific community. But there will be more (trust me much much more) on that in the future.
The following article is about irreducible complexity (IC). IC is a dead horse that the ID folks keep on kicking (probably because it is the core of their whole position). Casey Luskin (a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute.....the ID people) has come up with a new analogy for IC. And it fails miserablely. He uses the bicycle as his example of an irreducibly complex system. Appearently he thinks that if you remove a wheel, the bicycle can no longer function. I see already that most of you (those of you that know what IC is) see the problem with this analogy. But before we get to Casey's misfiring, let's define what IC is.
Michael Behe (the most famous IDer) defines IC as:
A single system which is composed of several interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. (Darwin's Black Box p39 in the 2006 edition)
Unfortunately for Michael and his ID cohorts, they have not been able find any examples for IC. Don't think that they haven't tried. Behe's famous example is the bacterial flagellum. But this example was shown to be wrong by Ken Miller at the Dover Trial. When you remove most of the parts of the flagellum you end up with a syringe. This shows how the flagellum is not irreducibly complex.
The analogy that Behe touts is that the bacterial flagellum is like a mouse trap, you take one part of the mouse trap away and it doesn' work. So what good is a mouse trap that is missing the hammer for instance? It wouldn't be very effective at killing mice would it? Actually, a mouse trap with just it's base is still going to be able to catch mice. Now, it may not be very effective at doing it but it still may be able to trip a mouse and break it's neck or something to the like. So, from there, the rest of the parts can be selected for to eventually become what we know as the modern mouse trap.
On to the real science writer, Carl Zimmer a wonderful science journalist who wrote the following article.
D
REPOSTED FROM: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2008/12/30/oh-no-ive-seen-the-impossible-my-eyes/
Oh No! I've Seen the Impossible! My Eyes!
Ah, the things you learn from creationists…
If you've ever read about intelligent design (a k a "the progeny of creationism"), you've probably encountered their favorite buzz words, "irreducible complexity." If you take a piece out of a complex biological system (like the cascade of blood-clotting proteins) and it fails to work, this is taken as evidence that the system could not have evolved. After all, without all the pieces in place, it couldn't work.
Scientists have shown over and over again that this is a false argument. At the famous intelligent-design trial in Dover in 2005, Pennsylvania, for example, Brown biologist Ken Miller showed how dolphins and other species are missing various proteins found in our blood-clotting cascade, and they can still clot blood. (Here's Miller on Youtube giving a lecture on the experience–the blood starts to clot at 39:00.)
Three years later, the creationists are still trying to salvage irreducible complexity. This generally involves a bait-and-switch game. Today, for example, the Discovery Institute tells us that the evidence of dolphins does not touch the argument for irreducible complexity. See, what you have here are two different irreducibly complex systems, with one that just happens to have an extra part. Just think about bicycles…
"Bicycles have two wheels. Unicycles, having only one wheel, are missing an obvious component found on bicycles. Does this imply that you can remove one wheel from a bicycle and it will still function? Of course not. Try removing a wheel from a bike and you'll quickly see that it requires two wheels to function. The fact that a unicycle lacks certain components of a bicycle does not mean that the bicycle is therefore not irreducibly complex."
Of course not. No. It's not as if five seconds of googling could turn up a bicycle that still functioned without both wheels…
Hey! You there! Get off that bike! You're ruining a metaphor!
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