“Few received the truth of Jesus.  But why?  It was the pride of intellect—straining to be wise above what is written; it forgets its own limits, and steps out of its province.  How little the wisest of mortals knew—of anything!  How preposterous for worms to think of fathoming the counsels of the Almighty!” 
—Sir David Brewster, 1868, a founder of the British Association, on his deathbed commenting on the skepticism frequently found among scientists.  Cited by Mulfinger and Orozco, Christian Men of Science (Ambassador Emerald, 2001), p. 64.

  Watch for the Recycle logo to find gems from the back issues!

Note:  The new February page will be posted Thursday evening.

Cells Perform Sporting Interactions    01/31/2007  
The components of living cells perform such acrobatic moving interactions, one would think they are having fun.  Here’s the news from the Wide World of Cellular Sports.

1. Speedway:  A news release from Penn Medicine talks about how motor proteins step on the gas and the brakes in their motions around the cell.  The announcer from the booth calls the action:

   “Imagine that the daughter microtubule is a short train on the track of the mother microtubule,” explains [Phong] Tran.  “The molecular motor is the train’s engine, but the problem is that the cargo – the molecular brakes – gets longer, slowing down the daughter train.  But when the train gets to the end of the track it remains attached to the end of mother microtubule.  At the tail end, it stops moving and that defines the region of overlap.  Our work shows that the cell can make microtubule structures of defined lengths stable by coordinating the sliding of the motors and the slowing of the brakes.”

   The press release contains videos of the speedway in action.

2. Square Dance:  Chromosomes line up in their territories like square dancers on cue, explained an article in Nature (1/25).¹  They even use their arms: “In addition, the structure of the DNA within chromosome territories is nonrandom, as the chromosome arms are mostly kept apart from each other and gene-rich chromosome regions are separated from gene-poor regions.  This arrangement probably contributes to the structural organization of the chromosome, and might also help in regulating particular sets of genes in a coordinated manner.”
       “Remarkably,” even the territories themselves “arranged in particular patterns within the nucleus,” the article explains.  Here’s part of the choreography inside the dance hall (i.e., the nucleus):

   In lower eukaryotes such as plants and flies chromosomes tend to be polarized, with the ends of the arms (telomeres) on one side of the cell nucleus and the point at which the two arms meet (the centromere) on the opposite side.  In mammalian cells, however, chromosome arrangement is more complex.  Even so, each chromosome can be assigned a preferential position relative to the nuclear centre, with particular chromosomes tending to be at the nuclear interior and others at the edge (Fig.  2a).  This preferential radial arrangement also, of course, gives rise to preferred clusters of neighbouring chromosomes.
   

   The players get to socialize, too: “Even the two copies of the same chromosome within the same nucleus often occupy distinct positions and have different immediate neighbours.”  Each chromosome tends to hang out with partners in the same developmental pathways, though.  “It seems that the actual position of a gene in the cell nucleus is not essential to its function,” the author writes.  So, the interviewer asks, “Why have all this organization?”  Is it just for fun?  “It is more likely that positioning contributes to optimizing gene activity.”  It also serves the time-honored strategy of networking:

   The nonrandom organization of the genome allows functional compartmentalization of the nuclear space.  At the simplest level, active and inactive genome regions can be separated from each other, possibly to enhance the efficiency of gene expression or repression.  Such compartmentalization might also act in more subtle ways to bring co-regulated genes into physical proximity to coordinate their activities.  For instance, in eukaryotes, the genes encoding ribosomal RNAs tend to cluster together in an organelle inside the nucleus known as the nucleolus.  In addition, observations made in blood cells suggest that during differentiation co-regulated genes are recruited to shared regions of gene expression upon activation.

   How each partner finds its spot, we don’t know.  Somehow, they always find their way back: “Chromosomes are physically separated during cell division, but they tend to settle back into similar relative positions in the daughter cells, and then they remain stable throughout most of the cell cycle.”  The author claims this behavior is “evolutionarily conserved” (i.e., unevolved).
3. Baton race:  Passing chemical tags without stumbling is described by a paper in Nature² that opens, “Modifier proteins, such as ubiquitin, are passed sequentially between trios of enzymes, like batons in a relay race.  Crystal structures suggest the mechanism of transfer between the first two enzymes.”  As the tags get passed from group to group, the players sometimes undergo large shape changes to hold the tag properly.  In one case, for instance, “combined conformational changes create a surface to which an E2 enzyme binds with high affinity.”  These bends and rotations make the enzymes act like a “conformational switch” to turn on the next reaction in the chain, like handing off the baton.
4. Capture the Flag:  Another paper in Nature³ described how the cell cycle often depends on reading tags hidden on chromosomes.  Describing the “intricate process” of this game, even describing the participants as “players,” a researcher from UC Berkeley calls the action: “Transitions between all cell-cycle phases are controlled by the activation and deactivation of a series of cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs), which control the phosphorylation of other proteins.”  Researchers were having a challenge following the flag.  “Thus, after the origin-recognition complex had been identified, finding the actual targets for S-CDK, the CDK known to promote the switch from G1 to S phase, became a major objective.”
5. Acrobatics and juggling:  A paper in PNAS⁴ describes the dynamic motions of one enzyme that uses three metal ions and multiple conformational changes for precise action on its substrate.  “It is evident that the trimetal cluster undergoes significant structural reorganization in the course of the reaction,” they wrote.  Visualize this circus act as they describe it:

   The analysis presented here emphasizes the significant level of complexity involved in enzymatic catalysis by multinuclear enzymes even when the underlying chemical transformation is relatively straightforward.  At the same time certain universal patterns regarding the multiple mechanistic roles of the metal cofactors emerge.  First, the metal ions play a role in generating the reactive nucleophile.  This process involves precise positioning of a carboxylate ligand to deprotonate an exogenous water molecule and orient the resulting hydroxide for an in-line attack.  Deprotonation is further facilitated by the combined electrostatic effect of two zinc ions (Zn1 and Zn2), necessitating a relatively close distance between them.  The second role of the metals is to accommodate and electrostatically stabilize the more compact partly associative transition state.  Hence, an overall contraction of the trimetal cluster is observed.  Finally, a metal cofactor (Zn3) is responsible for stabilizing the developing charge on the leaving group toward the end of the reaction.  To effectively carry out these roles, the active site rearranges dynamically, a finding, that underscores the crucial importance of flexibility for the reactive transition.

   Since this enzyme is part of the DNA Repair Team, the participants probably don’t do it for applause or to be heroes.  To them, it’s all in a day’s work.

We used to think of chemistry as bonding of outer electrons in orbitals as molecules bounce against each other at random.  Biochemistry has shown much of the action in cells to be mechanical in nature, with parts acting like machines, dancers and acrobats.  It’s hard not to view this new living chemistry as a series of sporting events by highly skilled players.  Be sure to cheer for your home team.
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Amazing Facts

1. Plant checkpoints:  Picture a child watching the wonder of a seedling breaking through the soil into the light for the first time.  Within hours, the ghostly-white stem turns green, and a day later, leaves begin to appear.  Does he or she have any idea what is going on at a scale too small to see?  Not until that kid grows into a modern lab scientist with sophisticated equipment.  The transformation requires the coordinated transportation of key elements through specialized checkpoints, an international team reported in PNAS.¹
       Without boring the reader with technical terms, what basically happens is this.  The underground seedling contains pre-chloroplast parts in readiness for the arrival into sunlight, but saves its energy by not allowing the light-gathering factories to assemble until it’s time.  “Chloroplasts need to import a large number of proteins from the cytosol because most are encoded in the nucleus,” they reported.  Once there, they have a double membrane to get through.  Specialized gates permit entry of the authenticated parts.  One particular light-sensitive part has its own unique gate.  The team decided to see what happened when they mutated one gene in the process.  The results were not pretty: the light-sensitive molecules accumulated outside the plastid because they couldn’t get into the factory.  “After a dark-to-light shift, this pigment operated as photosensitizer and caused rapid bleaching and cell death,” they found.  “Our results underscore the essential role of the substrate-dependent import pathway” that this protein depends on.  Maybe this error resembles a chemical spill outside a pharmaceutical plant, or pistons firing before they get into the engine.
2. Now hear this:  In a surprise finding that might provide hope for the deaf, scientists publishing in PNAS reported that “Restoration of connexin26 protein level in the cochlea completely rescues hearing in a mouse model of human connexin30-linked deafness.”²  Two protein partners are needed for healthy hair-cell formation in the cochlea of the inner ear.  Mutations in one of them, connexin26, account for about half of all cases of inherited human deafness.  Usually, connexin26 and connexin30 join together to form gap junctions, but if one is mutated, deafness results.  The gap junctions are essential for cell-to-cell communication.  Surprisingly, connexin26 (Cx26) appears able to bridge the gap when connexin30 (Cx30) is missing; therefore, “up-regulation of Cx26 or slowing down its protein degradation might be a therapeutic strategy to prevent and treat deafness caused by Cx30 mutations.”
       The scientists suspected that these two isoforms of connexins regulate each other.  They also noted that this partnering occurs in the lens of the eye.  Losing one by mutation, therefore, affects the regulation of the partner.  On a hunch that one of the isoforms could compensate for the loss of the other if allowed to assemble, and could build functional gap junctions on its own, they tried up-regulating the remaining connexin.  To their surprise, hearing was completely restored in mice. 
3. Bad translator triggers SOS:  We’ve talked about the DNA translation team a number of times (e.g., 12/28/2006, 07/26/2005, 06/09/2003, 04/29/2003).  The team of 20 aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases, as they are called, have rigid requirements.  “Mistranslation in bacterial and mammalian cells leads to production of statistical proteins that are, in turn, associated with specific cell or animal pathologies, including death of bacterial cells, apoptosis of mammalian cells in culture, and neurodegeneration in the mouse,” said Bacher and Schimmel in PNAS.³  “A major source of mistranslation comes from heritable defects in the editing activities of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases.”  This is because the protein machines, which snap the right amino acid onto the appropriate transfer-RNA (tRNA), cannot perform their vital role in protein synthesis if broken.
       These researchers suspected that broken synthetases could also cause mutations.  They decided to test what happens when they caused an “editing defect” in one of them.  (These enzymes are usually able to proofread their own errors with a high degree of accuracy.)  The result, again, was not pretty: “A striking, statistically significant, enhancement of the mutation rate in aging bacteria was found.”  The bug was like flipping a fire alarm: “This enhancement comes from an increase in error-prone DNA repair through induction of the bacterial SOS response,” they explained.  “Thus, mistranslation, as caused by an editing-defective tRNA synthetase, can lead to heritable genetic changes that could, in principle, be linked to disease.”
       Another press release from Ohio State also discussed the neurological disease that can result from mistranslated proteins caused by mutated aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases.

Dear Darwinist, does this increase your faith that random accidents in working systems are going to make things better?  Is this a better way to build a plant, an ear, or a translation system?  If you think terrorism is the best way to build a civilization, reread the 12/14/2006 entry. 
Next headline on:  Botany • Cell Biology • Amazing Facts

The Space Race: Just Staying Alive    01/30/2007  
“Ad astra!” the sci-fi slogan announces with eternal optimism: “To the stars!”  Medical doctors and astrobiologists are not sure you would want to stay there long, though.  Some recent findings give a dismal picture of the prospects for life – human or bacterial – at least in our solar system, if that can be assumed a plausible random sample of the universe.
    New Scientist Space announced that future moon astronauts may be in grave danger from solar X-rays.  These come without warning preceding a solar flare.  Without a 21-kg shield 3 square meters in area, an astronaut roving around on the surface could be killed by lethal doses of X-rays before he even knew what was happening.
    Space.com gave depressing news that life on Mars is unlikely to be found.  The reason?  Cosmic radiation levels would likely sterilize the first few meters down.  While this article and one on EurekAlert envision deep aquifers providing a safe haven for life, they both admit that current and planned missions are unlikely to get to such levels.  Earth’s bacteria protect against DNA damage with elaborate repair mechanisms.  These would be unlikely to work, however, in the permafrost of Mars, where life would come near a standstill.  The radiation would not stop for days off by the repair crew.  Tests of Martian radiation levels on Earth organisms under various conditions were not encouraging.  Even if a colony could live for a few million years, the cumulative effects of constant radiation would eventually take their toll.

And that’s under present conditions.  Obviously surviving is easier than emerging in the first place.  Is anyone going to believe for a moment that the first primitive Martian organism evolved with genetic quality control and repair right off the bat?  It’s sad to have to puncture so many dreams of sci-fi writers and early advocates of space flight, bit reality must be faced.  Life underground in perpetual darkness is probably not what the dreamers had in mind.
    These discoveries are having an unexpected benefit, though.  They are generating thankfulness for all we have down here.  As the old hymn expresses, I sing the goodness of the Lord, who filled the earth with food / Who formed the creatures through the Word, and then pronounced them good. / Lord, how Thy wonders are displayed, where'er I turn my eye / If I survey the ground I tread, or gaze upon the sky. // There’s not a bird or flow'r below but makes Thy glories known / and storms arise and tempests blow by orders from Thy throne, / While all who borrow life from Thee are ever in Thy care / And everywhere that man may be, Thou God art present there.
    This calls for an encore!  A little Beethoven, perhaps?  Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee, God of glory, Lord of love; / Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee, opening to the sun above. / Melt the clouds of sin and sadness; drive the dark of doubt away; / Giver of immortal gladness, fill us with the light of day! // All Thy works with joy surround Thee, earth and heaven reflect Thy rays, / Stars and angels sing around Thee, center of unbroken praise. / Field and forest, vale and mountain, flowery meadow, flashing sea, / Singing bird and flowing fountain call us to rejoice in Thee.
    The moon and Mars are interesting and worth exploring, but there’s no comparison.  Rejoice and give thanks today on God’s green Earth, the best real estate in the world!
Next headline on:  Origin of Life • Human Body • Solar System

1. Taking the pulse:  The Chandra X-ray Observatory wrote a glowing report about a “textbook supernova,” which is a nice pairing of observation and theory.  It added this caveat, though, about dating stars:

   By combining X-ray and radio observations, astronomers have evidence that G11.2-0.3 is likely the result of the explosive death of such a massive star, perhaps witnessed in 386 A.D.  Radio observations measure the remnant’s expansion rate, which, in turn, can be used to calculate how long ago the star exploded.  The radio data is consistent with association of the supernova remnant with the “guest star” reported by Chinese astronomers nearly 2,000 years ago.  Chandra’s ability to pinpoint the pulsar at nearly the very center of G11.2-0.3 also supports the idea that this debris field could have been created around the time of the Chinese observations.  Surprisingly, the age of the pulsar determined from the X-ray and radio data differs from the standard pulsar age estimate, usually determined from how fast it is spinning.  In this case, the so-called spin parameters suggest the G11.2-0.3 is 10 times older than the remnant age.  This argues strongly that young pulsar spin ages can be very misleading and should be considered with caution.

   Previously, pulsar ages determined from spindown rates were thought to be well constrained.

2. Standard (flickering) candles:  An article on EurekAlert described another supernova remnant observed by Chandra.  The goal was to determine if Kepler’s supernova, observed by Johannes Kepler 400 years ago, was the “Type Ia” variety.  “Astronomers have studied Kepler intensively over the past three decades with radio, optical and X-ray telescopes,” the article states, “but its origin has remained a puzzle.”  In theory, the white dwarf companion of a neutron star pulls in iron-rich material that produces a Type Ia.  But the material in the surrounding nebula is rich in nitrogen, more characteristic of a Type II.  To explain the unusual mix, the astronomers speculate that this event was a rare “prompt Type Ia” explosion that took place in a young progenitor (100 million years, not several billion).
       Why is it important to tease out the oddballs among Type Ia supernovas?  The ramifications are simply astronomical.  “This information is essential to improve the reliability of the use of Type Ia stars as “standard candles” for cosmological studies of dark energy as well as to understand their role as the source of most of the iron in the universe.”  All the hubbub over the last decade about an accelerating universe of 73% dark energy depends, in large measure, on distance measurements made using Type Ia supernovas.  This case shows that not all members of the type are cooperative.

3. Anorexic black hole:  The black hole at the center of our Milky Way had a snack recently, reported Space.com.  Maybe it was a Mars bar or Starburst.  Anyway, Ker Than wrote that for a supermassive black hole in a galaxy’s core, ours doesn’t eat much.  “Why our black hole is so dim is not entirely understood,” he said.  Quoting an astronomer, “The huge appetite is there, but it’s not being satisfied.” 

4. Supernova blasts theory:  Supernova 1987A was caught in the act 20 years ago.  Finally, astronomers had a fairly nearby supernova to watch develop with modern telescopes.  And watch they did, with shock and awe.  A press release from UC Berkeley contained some interesting glimpses into astronomer reactions to uncooperative data.  SN1987A “provided important tests for theories of how stars die, but it also raised some new questions,” the article begins.  In theory, blue supergiants become red supergiants before exploding.  Three analogues to 1987A, however, never went through such a phase.  Also, the rings are supposed to form after the explosion, not before.  Why are similar rings found around some stars that haven’t exploded yet?
       The article confesses, “This makes a pretty solid case,” for what?  for confirmation of a theory?  No: “that we should rethink models for how the rings around SN1987A were formed.”  Nathan Smith remarked that this “would be a bit of a shock” to what? to the interior of a star?  No; “to our understanding of stellar evolution.”  In addition, the triple-ring nebula formed around SN1987A has been “difficult to understand”.  Astronomers are modeling a complex interaction between two cannibalizing stars and a supergiant to fit the data.  Other problems between theory and observation are noted in the article.

5. Faux pas de trois:  A rare triple-quasar system was described in Science (Jan 27, p. 454).  How could this form?  Dr. Frederic Rasio [Northwestern U] believes he has the program notes.  At a recent meeting of the American Astronomical Society, he told a story of colliding galaxies, their central black holes waltzing happily till a third galaxy collided and its black hole intervened, leading to a violent reaction.  The three then split apart at up to tens of thousands of kilometers per second.  Testing this “partner-swapping dance” theory, however, might take some time.  The black holes are only in Act 1.  The peroration of the denouement, when all is understood, won’t happen for 100 million years.  One critic said,

   “The process that Dr. Rasio has modeled is very, very far in the future,” said astronomer Virginia Trimble of the University of California, Irvine.  “So in some sense, the prediction has been verified by the observation, and the observation has been explained by the theory.” 

   Writer Tom Siegried seems to have sensed a non-sequitur here.  How can something be considered verified in the present if the verification data lies in the future?  “100 million years is a long time to wait to see whether the future behavior of the triplet really matches the theoretical forecast,” he remarked.  Rasio obviously will not be concerned about defending his story then.

6. Midlife crisis:  Two old interacting galaxies are producing stars like newlyweds, reported East Tennessee State University.  The Arp 82 pair looks middle-aged, the article states, but apparently never got reproductively active till now.  “The puzzle is: why didn’t Arp 82 form many stars earlier, like most galaxies of that mass range?  Scientifically, it is an oddball and provides a relatively nearby lab for studying the age of intermediate-mass galaxies.”  They call this a case of “arrested development,” that needed a “kick-in-the-pants to get the stars forming recently.”

It’s kind of sadistic watching astronomers try to fit their observations to their theories.  Science operates only by the constant interplay of modeling and observing.  Astronomy wouldn’t be fun if all the ideas were locked up.  It’s important to remember, though, as these examples illustrate, that one must always be prepared to shed assumptions and chuck theories in the light of new evidence.  The one needing a kick-in-the-pants is the cocky astronomer.
Next headline on:  Astronomy • Dating Methods

Squid Eye Beats Zeiss    01/29/2007  
A squid whose scientific name means “vampire from hell” wears specs with excellent specs (that’s lenses with excellent specifications, for the pun-challenged).  Elisabeth Pennisi in Science reported on a talk given at an Arizona science conference about the vampire squid, whose “lenses are designed for seeing details, even in virtual darkness.”  Researchers studying cephalopod eyes found interesting optical features in the eyes of this species.  “Seeing clearly underwater requires a special spherical lens with a high refractive index in the center but a lower index toward the edge,” explained Pennisi.  In the vampire squid, “This gradation is achieved with progressively lower concentrations, from the lens’s center outward, of proteins called crystallins.”
    How well does this design work?  Pennisi ends,

After her study, [Alison] Sweeney [Duke U] is deeply impressed by cephalopod vision.  Indeed, she noted, the shipboard tests showed that the vampire squid’s lens, which appeared early in the evolutionary history of cephalopods, “has a visual acuity better than in a state-of-the-art Zeiss dissecting microscope.”

It’s sad that this article was suffused with evolutionary storytelling.  The biologists told a fable about how the crystallins became optimized after some ancient gene duplication event, and that the “old” crystallins were on the periphery, and the “new” ones in the center of the lens.  Moreover, this lucky accident that produced a lens superior to Carl Zeiss specifications happened multiple times in different lineages!  The fability (01/16/2007 commentary) of Darwinians is fabulous.
    Pray for poor Elisabeth.  She comes up with some of the most amazing examples of design in her reports for Science (e.g., next entry) but always has to tow the Darwin Party line.  Such mandatory myopia must be causing a splitting headache.  Suggested therapy: take the blinders off.
Next headline on:  Marine Biology • Physics • Amazing Facts

Muscles Use Gears, Automatic Transmission    01/28/2007  
Analogies may not be perfect representations of reality, but it must pique the interest of all of us the way Elisabeth Pennisi in Science¹ compared muscle to cars and bicycles:

One look at a ballerina as she pirouettes and poses drives home the remarkable ability of our muscles to adapt to diverse biomechanical demands.  Manny Azizi and Thomas Roberts, biomechanists at Brown University, have now found that as certain muscles contract, they vary their shape to balance the need for speed and force.  It’s as if these muscles have a builtin automatic transmission, says Azizi....
[Azizi’s] simulations showed that certain muscle shapes caused contracting pinnate fibers to shift to a less steep angle.  When that happens, the muscle’s overall height decreases more than it would have had the fibers maintained their angle.  In other words, the virtual muscle shifted into the equivalent of a high gear ratio, increasing the speed of contraction.... Azizi then looked at whether real muscles acted this way.  He had expected that each pinnate muscle would have just one gear ratio, that is, undergo a characteristic shape change, and therefore be strong or contract fast but not have both features.... [they found] the muscle operated at a lower gear and took full advantage of the dense packing of pinnate fibers....
    Just as one changes gears on a bicycle to crawl up an ever-steeper hill, “the direction of change in the muscle gears matches the mechanical demands of contraction,” Azizi said.  Moreover, the muscle’s shifting of gears required no nervous system input, occurring automatically depending on the load applied.

Need we say?  There was no mention of evolution in this article.  Picture some examples of human muscle in action: the ballerina on tiptoes, a skater doing a triple lutz, the contestant in the World’s Strongest Man Competition hoisting a car, the concert pianist pounding a fortissimo section of a Rachmaninoff concerto, a gymnast doing an iron cross on the rings, a sprinter doing the high hurdles, a Chinese contortionist balancing water-filled glasses all over her body while lifting herself by a mouth grip – or just you, reaching on tiptoe for an item in the top cupboard.  Did anyone score you a 10 for that?  You’re amazing.  You knew that, of course.  But the right response should be, “Shucks, I’m just enjoying the gifts I got for my birthday.”
Next headline on:  Physics • Human Body • Amazing Facts

Cell Membrane Has Ticket-Operated Turnstiles    01/27/2007  
Cells are like castles surrounded by walls.  A wall without gates, however, would prevent commerce and trap the inhabitants inside.  The cell has ingenious gates that control the flow of goods and services through its outer membrane under tight surveillance and quality control.  This controlled flow, as opposed to passive diffusion or osmosis, is termed active transport.  Depending on the type of import or export required, the cell uses a variety of mechanisms.  It might wrap the cargo in clathrin proteins and send it through in a self-mending breach of the walls (endocytosis; 05/15/2005, 11/04/2005, bullet 7).  It might use one of the specialized authenticating channels through the membrane (e.g., aquaporins 04/18/2002 and ion channels, 05/29/2002).  It might export genetic material or proteins through one of the pumps, or secretion systems (10/11/2005, 11/10/2004).   Or, it might check cargo through one of the varieties of self-operating ticketed turnstiles.
    A description of one of these gates excited awe in a commentary in PNAS.¹  Robert M. Stroud summarized decades of work on a kind of lactose turnstile.  Key researchers published their latest results in the current issue of the journal.  They believe they have finally figured out how this molecule-sized machine works.  It is a protein, 417 amino acids long, folded into a kind of rocking door in the membrane.  For a lactose passenger to get through the membrane using this transporter, it has to pay the fare: a proton ticket must first be inserted into the active site.  Then, the lactose molecule gets in and fastens its seat belt, so to speak, for the short but wild ride.  The nanomachine undergoes a conformational change that seals off the outside and opens the door to the inside, where the passengers undock.  Then, the gate automatically repositions itself for the next load.  Called LacY, or lactose permease, this molecular machine operates with practically 100% efficiency: each proton ticket grants admittance to one and only one lactose passenger.
    LacY is one of a whole family of gates called the “Major Facilitator Superfamily” (MFS).²  “The mechanism most probably pertains to the many other transporters of the MFS that are found throughout all domains of life,” Stroud says.  Another member of this family, for instance, is called GlpT.  This machine works with a reverse-ticketing process; a phosphate outside the cell is exchanged for a glycerol phosphate inside.
    Stroud was palpably delighted with the elucidation of the mechanism of these intriguing nanomachines after so much research by so many scientists for so many years.  Here’s what he said about the LacY device:

The MFS of transporters can be run in reverse, such that outward movement of lactose, driven by reverse concentration gradient, can generate an H⁺ gradient across the membrane; LacY can work in either direction toward a coupled equilibrium.  It is a beautiful example of energy transduction at the level of the membrane and is a near-perfect machine in the sense that the stoichiometry³ is always 1:1 without any leakage.

Wonderful, amazing, mind-boggling discoveries come from the investigation of design in nature.  Stroud said nothing about how these machines arose by evolution; indeed, he said these mechanisms are “found throughout all domains of life.”  Moreover, this particular 100%-efficient machine is made up of 417 amino acids.  Our online book calculates the probability for a 400-amino-acid protein arising by chance as one in 10¹⁶¹.  This unfathomably low probability rules out its formation by any lucky accident in trillions upon trillions of universes (ch. 7).
    The LacY protein machine cannot tolerate much error, either.  One primary method the scientists use to learn about them is by replacing amino acids with the wrong ones, and watching how the machines break.
    From the top of the giraffe to the lowly crocus, molecular machines transduce life within a physical medium.  This is no hocus, folkus.  This is intelligent design coming into focus – at the locus of mind and matter, at the intersection of faith and reason.  Let the NCSE run for cover, wailing, “Cloak us from the face of ID, for the facts emerging from biophysics provoke us to shame and despair.”  Rejoice, O science, as the lens of molecular biology leads to a refocus on intelligent design.
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Amazing Facts

It’s premature to say whether Noerdlinger’s ideas will become accepted.  What’s notable at this time is that the accepted theory has problems, and that his theory seems even more ad hoc.
    Positing an unknown body to come in just at the right time and velocity to make two bodies from one seems a tremendously lucky accident.  The glancing-impact theory was a post-Apollo invention to overcome big objections to the three other hypotheses: the primordial nebula hypothesis, the spin-off hypothesis, and the impact hypothesis.  Now, at least one astronomer feels the consensus theory is also too improbable.  But is his any better?  He has to envision a close encounter with just the right conditions to break up the moon and make the Earth steal its iron.
    If nothing else, this article shows that people living today who weren’t there and don’t know everything have a hard time putting the pieces together.  There’s always a way out for them: believing in miraculous luck.  At least his miracle led to iron for the hemoglobin in his brain, and iron for the sword that defined human history.
Next headline on:  Solar System

Robot Legs Can’t Keep Up With Animals    01/25/2007  
Robot designers are envious of animals.  Insects, crabs and lizards leave them in the dust.  Alison Abbott in Nature (Jan 18) described the latest attempts to get the bugs out of insect-imitating “biological robots.”¹  “Programming a robot to think like an insect is tough,” the subtitle reads, “but it could help breed machines as manoeuvrable as flies.”  Which animals are robot designers looking at?

• Flies:   Abbott described a German robot named Tarry II with six legs that creaks with every step.  Building legs, though, is the easy part.  The legs need to be programmed to work.  Tarry II’s designer is envious of the software in a fly: “Although our encounters with flies often leave an impression of aimless and irritating meandering,’ Abbott writes, “these tiny creatures’ decisions are just as purposeful as those of other animals.  A fly scans its environment with eyes and antennae, processes this information in its brain and then makes a decision, perhaps to turn away from potential danger or hurry towards food.”
      Much of the information processing in an insect occurs outside the brain.  Circuits of nerves in the fly’s nerve chord direct some of the movements.  This can be seen when a fly is decapitated and a neurotransmitter is applied onto the chord: “then it will start to walk around like – well, like a headless chicken.”  A headless fly can even be stimulated to groom eyes that are no longer there.  This kind of distributed processing has not escaped the notice of robot designers.  “These basic movement programmes are well studied and have been transferred to robots” like the predecessor to Tarry II, which “has been walking with the confident coordination of a decapitated stick insect for more than a decade.”  The “cleverer stuff” like decision making and coordinated movement, of course, requires a brain.  Designers are also observing how insects use stereo vision and parallax to sight their targets, and how they vary step size and walking rate to achieve optimum energy efficiency.
• Cockroaches:  “If only the Mars rovers had been more like cockroaches, sigh insect biologists, they might have been able to extricate themselves from the sand dunes and rocks on which they have occasionally come a cropper and had to be carefully steered to safety by their human controllers,” Abbott writes.  Roland Strauss, builder of Tarry II, said, “We are very happy if what we learn from nature can be put to use to make better robots.”  Cockroach brains are about 50 times bigger than fly brains.  Using “brain damage” experiments, designers learn how the cockroach software works to encounter obstacles.  It’s a challenge to detect an obstacle, decide whether it needs to be avoided, and decide which way to turn.
      “Insect biologists are eager to model ever more intricate types of insect behaviour in their robots, such as walking uphill or climbing,” Abbott writes.  “....But until these robots can be programmed with more sophisticated and autonomous software – precisely the directions that biologists are extracting from insect’s brains – they cannot pass for true robotic insects.”  Autonomous control is a highly-sought-after skill being watched by NASA, the European Space Agency and other groups into robotics.  That’s why they are watching these experimental labs with great interest.  “Just a few of an insect’s effortless navigational skills would be a boon for many of today’s applied robots, which can negotiate obstacles only via human intervention and remote control.”  Abbott envisioned insect lookalikes someday navigating the moon or “confidently striding” the canyons of Mars.
      On Earth, too, we can all benefit from these studies.  The military will be able to perform safer surveillance.  Victims of natural disasters might some day be met by friendly search-and-rescue robots with a marked resemblance to spiders or cockroaches.
• Crab Legs:  When robots have mastered insect navigation, they might be ready for the big time.  It’s hard enough to walk on a hard surface.  Sand provides a new challenge: the foot slips with every step.  The ghost crab, however, is king of the sand hill.  Elisabeth Pennisi writes in Science (Jan 19),² “With legs that are a blur to the naked eye, Ocypode quadrata scoots up to 2 meters per second on hard-packed sand” – the Olympic champion of sand locomotion, at least when it is firm. 
• Leapin’ Lizards:  “But soften up the sand a bit,” Pennisi continues, “and the gold medal instead goes to the zebra-tailed lizard, an animal that spends little time on the grainy material.”  It clocked 1.5 meters per second on soft sand that slows the ghost crab to a gecko-like crawl.
      Daniel Goldman and a team from the Georgia Institute of Technology built an artificial sand track to learn from the abilities of animals having to negotiate a variety of surfaces in the wild: mud, gravel, sand, and debris-covered surfaces.  The zebra-tailed lizard has long, gangly toes that spread out when hitting the sand and curl up with lifting the foot.  Robot designers want to invent machines that can navigate all kinds of surfaces.  That’s why they study the animal experts for clues.

Evolution has nothing to do with it; these stories are about design through and through.  We can observe design, we can study it, and we can imitate it.  When we do, science progresses and leads to wonderful inventions that improve our lives and extend our reach.
    Go to the ant, thou sluggard evolutionist; consider her ways, and be wise.  When you’ve learned those ways, go to the fly, the cockroach, the crab, the lizard, and all the other examples of optimized hardware and software in the living world.  Catch up to the design-theoretic scientists who are way ahead of you.
Next headline on:  Terrestrial Zoology • Biomimetics • Amazing Facts

“Our study points to a previously unknown mechanism of immune system tolerance,” Turley explains.  “When you think of the conditions in the small intestine, with so many millions of bacteria cells and so much opportunity for dendritic cells to stimulate an immune attack, it’s remarkable that intestinal tissue is so rarely the target of an immune attack.  Our findings demonstrate that the immune system has features that remain to be discovered.”

When you say grace for a meal, you can now mean it from the gut.  In the ancient near east, the bowels were considered the seat of the emotions.  Talk to your stromal cells, T cells and bacterial allies like Paul did to Philemon, “Yea, brother, let me have joy of thee in the Lord: refresh my bowels in the Lord.”  (Works best when you send down regular donations of healthy provisions.)
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1. The search technology is picking up speed, so by mid-century it would be difficult to continue arguing that SETI is still in its early stages.
2. If missions searching for earth-like planets fail, “That would be a premium-grade bummer.”
3. If expeditions to Mars and Europa fail to turn up evidence that these bodies ever produced a microbe, “then that would certainly put me on the defensive.”

Indeed, my personal feeling is that if SETI hasn’t turned up something by the second half of this century, we should reconsider our search strategy, rather than assume that we’ve failed because there is nothing—or no one—to find.  Would I ever conclude that we’ve searched enough?  Would I ever truly give up on SETI’s bedrock premise, and tell myself that the extraterrestrials simply aren’t out there?  Not likely.  That would be to assume that we’ve learned all there is to know about our universe, a stance that is contrary to the spirit of explorers and scientists alike.  We might yearn, or even need to believe that we are special, but to conclude that Homo sapiens is the best the cosmos has to offer is egregious self-adulation.

You have to hand it to Seth Shostak for at least trying to tackle the biggest criticisms of his craft head on.  We had raised the objections here that SETI had no criteria for failure (02/11/2003, 04/17/2006).  It still doesn’t, despite his hints that some eventualities might be discouraging – but at least he talked about it.  As long as he wants to spend Paul Allen’s millions, it doesn’t hurt anything to look.  It might even keep them busy so they don’t cause political trouble.
    Shostak might be the latest incarnation of Percival Lowell.  That committed advocate of life on Mars squinted through his telescope at the red planet for decades looking for the fabled canals with nothing but faith in flawed assumptions to keep him going.  His failure bequeathed to us the Lowell Observatory, where some legit science (like finding Pluto) has been done.  It’s also a nice place to visit when passing through Flagstaff on the way to Grand Canyon or Meteor Crater.  Someday a docent may tell students at the Allen Telescope Array, “Here, children, is where people who used to believe in ET tried for 50 years to detect signals from other civilizations” (sounds of giggling from the group).  “Now astronomers use it for mapping the cyanogen distribution among Seyfert galaxies.”
    What we’ve said before about SETI still holds: it is not a science till it has a subject (06/03/2006).  Using scientific equipment no more validates SETI as science than using mortars and pestles validated alchemy.  Moreover, it is held to with religious zeal (notice Shostak’s appeals to courageous faith in the face of their daunting lack of evidence).  Paradoxically, most SETI proponents are evolutionists (11/30/2006, 09/30/2006) despite using intelligent-design principles in the expectation of being able to separate natural from intelligent causes (02/16/2006, 12/03/2005).  But unlike the intelligent design movement, which has an observable message already in the bag (DNA and molecular machines), SETI has nothing at this point but faith.  It is, therefore, indistinguishable from a secular religion (01/04/2007).  They can build their cathedrals if they want to on their own time and dime.  Try to force it on students in textbooks and science classes, though, and there will be a fight for Separation of Search and State.  (Wow; has anyone thought of that SETI line before?  Copyright!)
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The team did not see the fish evolving into separate species.  Even if they had, they would be talking about microevolution, which is not controversial.  It would contribute no argument to how the fish emerged in the first place with their remarkable sense of smell.
    For a fascinating documentary on how a salmon is able to smell its way from the open sea all the way back up to the particular tributary where it was born, see the film Wonders of God’s Creation by Moody Video.
Next headline on:  Marine Biology • Amazing Facts

Astronomers toss around millions of years recklessly.  If they were charged a penny for every year their estimates are found to be inflated, they would be a lot more careful.  Couching the fluff with qualifiers like a million years or less is like saying “Your house is worth $300 million, or less,” or “Honey, I’ll be home at 3007 AD, or sooner.”
Next headline on:  Stars • Dating Methods

Imagine the sound of snow, hissing.  If someone hears occasional gunshots in the noise, will it be a Bonanza?  Maybe the mike’ll land on a planet in the west, listening to little little Lorne Green men giving us cowboy logic.  Ponder Rosa sitting at the console listening to all this; will Dan block her?  “Boss,” she’ll say, “this ain’t no chance string of bits; it carries a message.”  “What’s it say?”  She pauses, translating: “Keep your Hoss before the cart.”  “Right,” he responds.  “Good design detection work.”
Next headline on:  SETI • Physics

Skeptics Society Apology Illustrates Christian Virtue    01/21/2007  
Some evolutionists leaped onto a press release from a group named PEER last December that claimed national park rangers at Grand Canyon were obeying some new policy under pressure from the Bush administration that did not allow them to claim the canyon was millions of years old (see 01/11/2007, bullet 2).  This was supposedly related to sales of the young-earth creationist book Grand Canyon: A Different View in park bookstores (10/14/2004).*  PEER’s claim got mention in Science magazine, though the journal did note that the park denied it.
    The online newsletter of the Skeptics Society, eSkeptic, had also parroted this claim but then gotten taken to task for it by readers.  A former park ranger’s blog, parkrangerx, said on January 16 that “this story just won’t die” and explained again why the story was unfounded.  Michael Shermer, president, decided to investigate.  He explained that “in our eagerness to find additional examples of the inappropriate intrusion of religion in American public life (as if we actually needed more),” he had taken the PEER press release at face value.  “Embarrassed and angered” after calls and emails to PEER and its executive director Jeff Ruch, he found it was an unreliable source:

PEER is an anti-Bush, anti-religion liberal activist watchdog group in search of demons to exorcise and dragons to slay.  On one level, that’s how the system works in a free society, and there are plenty of pro-Bush, pro-religion conservative activist watchdog groups who do the same thing on the other side.  Maybe in a Hegelian process of thesis-antithesis-synthesis we find truth that way; at least at the level of talk radio.  But journalistic standards and scholarly ethics still hold sway at all levels of discourse that matter, and to that end I believe we were duped by an activist group who at the very least exaggerated a claim and published it in order to gain notoriety for itself, or worse, simply made it up.

We congratulate Shermer for acting like a good Christian by testing all things (I Thessalonians 5:21, Philippians 4:8) and not bearing false witness (Exodus 20:16).  We say this tongue in cheek, of course, because Shermer lost his childhood faith under the tutelage of a Darwin bulldog professor in college (06/01/2004), and now treats Christians and creationists like unscientific fools (11/29/2001).  Last week, the Darwin bulldog rag Nature also had a moralistic editorial about the need for ethics in the laboratory.  It portrayed the myth of the honest scientist in the white lab coat, claiming that misconduct is rare and must be guarded against by some unspecified standard of honesty: “It is here in the laboratory – not in the law courts or the offices of a university administrator – that the trajectory of research conduct for the twenty-first century is being set.”  I.e., shape up, scientists, if you want to keep the government off our backs.
    Though Shermer illustrated diligence in getting the facts straight and hastening to apologize, is this behavior not inconsistent with his core beliefs?  He denies that the Hegelian process is worthy of “journalistic standards and scholarly ethics” for finding the “truth”.  Yet, to quote Pilate, what is truth?  To a Darwinist, whatever exists arose through competition and power, a Hegelian process.  Truth, then, is relative.  Absolute truth is incomprehensible to an evolved brain fully described by the motions of its constituent atoms.  It is not just incomprehensible; it is inconceivable.

Why do the editors of Nature and eSkeptic know intuitively the difference between right and wrong?  They use the vague words ethics and trajectory and misconduct but you know what they’re talking about.  They don’t mean some kind of wishy-washy Hegelian ethics that could some day be orthogonal to today’s moral trajectory.  Moral relativism would not make any sense.  They speak with conviction, assuming absolute morality and honesty are eternally valid principles.  If not, then let them admit that “for now, our culture values honesty, so let’s all go with the flow till it changes.”  If they said that, they would have to admit that some future society might deem it ethical to burn all the back issues of Nature.  As philosopher Greg Bahnsen teaches, one cannot choose the consequences of one’s world view, and the place the materialists’ plane is headed is not where they want to land.  Don’t let a materialist think he can get off at Chicago and change planes when his ticket is only valid for Boston.  (Our apologies to Bostonians; this is the illustration Bahnsen used.)

Shermer talks materialism, but uses his soul.  He acts as if truth has external existence.  He shows that the pursuit of truth is a value in and of itself.  His actions, therefore, echo his childhood memories of Ten Commandments and other absolutes he abandoned in college.  Now, however, he is a committed evolutionist and anti-creationist.  He has substituted old values for new ones.  If he were consistent, he would join PEER and do whatever he could to stamp out the creationist competitors, even if it involved lying and terrorism.  That is the way things get done in Darwinland.
    If his pretensions of journalistic ethics are part of a surreptitious ploy to catch Christians off guard (like terrorists stealing and using American weapons), then he is being consistent, and we can discount his apology as a ruse.  (One piece of supporting evidence for this theory is that he did manage to sneak in a smokebomb that millions of years is science, and the creationist view is pseudoscience: he referred to Vail’s book in the inspiration section along with “other books of myth and spirituality.”)  But if he was really sincere about apologizing for a breach of ethics, then he needs to apologize for another: theft of intellectual property.  We cannot allow the pro-evolutionary materialistic skeptics to borrow a little Christianity when it suits them.

---

*Footnote:  Interested in learning more about the creationist view of the Grand Canyon?  Want to have a lot of fun doing it?  Tom Vail, the author of the book Grand Canyon: A Different View, is leading a 3-day raft trip in August, and you can sign up here: see Creation Safaris.
Next headline on:  Geology • Media • Politics and Ethics

Birds and insects can fold and rotate their wings during flight, but bats have many more options.  Their flexible skin can catch the air and generate lift or reduce drag in many different ways.  During straightforward flight, the wing is mostly extended for the down stroke, but the wing surface curves much more than a bird’s does – giving bats greater lift for less energy.  During the up stroke, the bats fold the wings much closer to their bodies than other flying animals, potentially reducing the drag they experience.  The wing’s extraordinary flexibility also allows the animals to make 180-degree turns in a distance of less than half a wingspan.

[Sharon] Swartz, an associate professor in ecology and evolutionary biology at Brown University, and longtime collaborator with [Kenneth] Breuer, is particularly interested in how bats evolved their capabilities.  “The assumption has always been that bats evolved from some sort of flying squirrel-type animals,” says Swartz.  “Gliding has evolved in mammals seven times.  That tells us that it’s really easy for an animal with skin to evolve into a glider, but going from a square gliding wing to a long, skinny flapping wing has not happened seven times.  It might have happened once.  And now it doesn’t look like bats have any relationship to these gliding things.”

The design work was productive; the evolutionary speculation was useless.  Actually, it was useful for one thing: to show that bats did not evolve from gliders, contrary to “the assumption” that has “always been”.  How about fewer assumptions and more videotape?
Next headline on:  Mammals • Biomimetics • Evolutionary Theory • Amazing Facts

Good science can discover, understand, and imitate the natural world without any need for evolutionary storytelling.  That’s another reason why biomimetics can provide a nonsectarian, nonphilosophical escape hatch for disillusioned Darwinists.  The authors did not need to mention evolution.  Intelligent design was not mentioned either, but was implicit.
Next headline on:  Terrestrial Zoology • Biomimetics • Physics • Amazing Facts

Van den Burgh raised another interesting point in passing.  Is the evolutionary tuning-fork diagram an artifact of human psychology?  Maybe what’s evolving is not the phenomenon under observation, but our science:

Albert Einstein and many others have commented on the effectiveness of mathematics for formulation of the laws of nature.  As a result, science sometimes evolves in those directions in which mathematics can be applied.  However, several areas, including friction, turbulence and morphological classification, remain largely in the mathematical wilderness.  Progress in galaxy morphology has mainly resulted from the remarkable human capacity to recognize patterns.

Van den Bergh here speaks as a believer; he is not criticizing mathematics or pattern recognition.  He speaks of “progress” instead of “random walk” in our science.  The question deserves consideration, though, to what extent humans impose their psychological predilections on the observations instead of truly understanding what is “out there” in nature.  Could there be a selection effect that biases our outlook?  Because of our skill at pattern recognition, are we seeing mainly the phenomena that can be classified by simple mathematical laws, and overlooking the more difficult phenomena in the “mathematical wilderness”?  If so, how well do we really understand the universe?
    Hubble’s evolutionary diagram – a tree with only two branches – appears simplistic.  It discords with the observations.  How much more the imposition of an tree pattern onto the bewildering diversity in the living world?  As we have seen, evolutionary biologists strive to impose “tree-thinking” onto their psyches before the observations speak (11/14/2005).  What if the data are discontinuous at a fundamental level?  Human psychological needs do not justify imposing continuity on a discontinuous data set that refuses to be so classified, any more than you can have pi or e integers, evolutionize the prime numbers, or rationalize irrational numbers (or people).
    Hubble’s tuning fork can still be salvaged.  Instead of making it an evolutionary symbol, make it do what tuning forks are designed to do.  You’re not supposed to look at it for meaning as if it’s some kind of divining rod.  You strike it and listen to a very precise, pure tone.  Compare that to the observations, and you hear a very strong concordance (11/27/2006, 08/11/2006).
    Science has strayed so far off pitch from its original program (online book) that it has become, like a John Cage concert, a bewildering cacophony of conflicting and nihilistic discords, with blaring trumpets and clanging cymbals going nowhere without a score or conductor.  Time out for a tune up.  Following the right pitch can lead to harmonious and pleasing insights into the world (see Kepler). 
Next headline on:  Cosmology

The Evolution of Electrical Engineering:  An Imaginary Tale    01/17/2007  
Nerves carry electrical impulses.  Ipso facto, they are subject to laws of physics concerning conductance, capacitance, and resistance.  Getting a signal from one end of an animal to the other in time can be a matter of life and death.  In order to maintain optimum levels of electrical conductivity to meet their lifestyle requirements, animals possess numerous adaptations to increase throughput.  In a paper in Current Biology,¹ D. K. Hartline (U of Hawaii) and D. R. Colman (McGill U, Quebec) described how these adaptations fall into two main categories:

Nervous systems have evolved two basic mechanisms for increasing the conduction speed of the electrical impulse.  The first is through axon gigantism: using axons several times larger in diameter than the norm for other large axons, as for example in the well-known case of the squid giant axon.  The second is through encasing axons in helical or concentrically wrapped multilamellar sheets of insulating plasma membrane – the myelin sheath.  Each mechanism, alone or in combination, is employed in nervous systems of many taxa, both vertebrate and invertebrate.  Myelin is a unique way to increase conduction speeds along axons of relatively small caliber.  It seems to have arisen independently in evolution several times in vertebrates, annelids and crustacea.  Myelinated nerves, regardless of their source, have in common a multilamellar membrane wrapping, and long myelinated segments interspersed with ‘nodal’ loci where the myelin terminates and the nerve impulse propagates along the axon by ‘saltatory’ conduction.  For all of the differences in detail among the morphologies and biochemistries of the sheath in the different myelinated animal classes, the function is remarkably universal.

Myelin sheaths are frequently associated with rapid reactions, especially in invertebrate taxa.  For fibers of a few microns or more in diameter, myelin speeds the conduction of nerve impulses by a factor of ten or more compared to unmyelinated fibers of the same diameter.  This increases the nervous system’s information processing capacity and delivery speeds, decreasing reaction times to stimuli, increasing temporal precision, more closely synchronizing spatially distributed targets (such as different regions of a muscle sheet), and providing for shorter delays in feedback loops (for example in muscle control).  Because less current is needed to satisfy the charging needs of myelinated fibers, mean sodium channel densities averaged over the length of a fiber are much lower than for unmyelinated ones.  This results in a smaller ionic imbalance that must be restored after an impulse passes and confers a several hundred-fold improvement in metabolic efficiency for recouping the energy cost of nerve impulse traffic.  For a nervous system such as ours, which already accounts for 20% of the body’s resting metabolic energy budget, this is not an inconsequential advantage.  Another advantage is economy of space: to achieve the same ten-fold improvement on conduction speed through increasing axonal diameter, axons would have to be 100 times larger (with a comparable scale-up in soma size to accommodate the metabolic needs).  Imagine yourself with a 100-fold thicker spinal cord!

• Both mechanisms (axon gigantism and insulation) are dispersed throughout the animal kingdom.
• There are great evolutionary distances between similar adaptations.
• There are no transitional forms.
• There are no clues from fossils.

So ancient is its evident appearance in each of these lines, and so sophisticated its morphological and chemical structure, that its exact origin in most of those lines is hard to establish.  Even in vertebrates there is a great evolutionary distance between the unmyelinated hyperoartia (lampreys) and the gnathostomes.
    The initial steps in the evolution of myelination may not, however, be that difficult to reconstruct.  Electrically sealing together two apposed membrane surfaces over a small region of axon decreases its transverse capacitance and proportionately speeds impulse propagation along it.  The sealing can be achieved by narrowing the conductive space, either cytoplasmic or extracytoplasmic, between adjacent axonal and/or glial membranes ... or through impermeable specializations at margins, for example precursors of septate junctions.  Even the random sealing of patches of single-layer glial membrane over half of an axon’s surface is predicted to increase conduction speed by about 20%.  Once such a process has started, it is not difficult to imagine a sequence of small improvements driven by natural selection that would ultimately lead to the complex structures we see today.  This is speculative, however; no cases have been described so far of ‘intermediate stages’ in extant groups.  Developmental sequences, the lack of fossil records and the paucity of candidate molecular precursors so far identified have made the task more difficult.  Perhaps better insight will be gained through increased attention to myelin evolved in the invertebrates. (Bold and underlining added.)

These guys started right off the bat with the BAD strategy (brazen assertions of dogmatism): “Nervous systems have evolved...”  Ahem--there are a lot of people who do not accept that.  Your evidence, please?  Some fossils, perhaps?  A long sequence of intermediate steps, each with increased survival value?  A clear phylogenetic pattern?  None of the above.  So here is their argument: “it is not difficult to imagine...”
    If you thought science was about evidence and proof, welcome to the Storybook Land of the Darwinist (see 12/22/2003 commentary).  Instead of launching into another sermon against imagination in science as a substitute for evidence, this time we will let the Good Book do it for us.  Substitute Darwin and natural selection where appropriate:

• God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (Genesis 6:5)
• the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth. (Genesis 8:15)
• Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? (Psalm 2:1)
• they imagined a mischievous device, which they are not able to perform. (Psalm 21:11)
• They also ... imagine deceits all the day long. (Psalm 38:12)
• Which imagine mischiefs in their heart (Psalm 140:2)
• Deceit is in the heart of them that imagine evil (Proverbs 12:20)
• neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their evil heart. (Jeremiah 3:17)
• But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward. (Jeremiah 7:24)
• But have walked after the imagination of their own heart, and after Baalim, which their fathers taught them. (Jeremiah 9:24; for fun, try substituting Darwin for Baalim here)
• Yet they obeyed not, nor inclined their ear, but walked every one in the imagination of their evil heart (Jeremiah 11:8)
• This evil people, which refuse to hear my words, which walk in the imagination of their heart (Jeremiah 13:10)
• And ye have done worse than your fathers; for, behold, ye walk every one after the imagination of his evil heart (Jeremiah 16:12)
• And they said, There is no hope: but we will walk after our own devices, and we will every one do the imagination of his evil heart. (Jeremiah 18:12)
• Thou hast seen all their vengeance and all their imaginations against me. (Lamentations 3:60, 61)
• What do ye imagine against the Lord? (Nahum 1:9)
• He ... hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. (Mary, praising God in Luke 1:51)
• Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. (Paul, in Romans 1:21)

Paul continues, “professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”  Here you have witnessed academic elite scientists claiming, out of thin air, without any evidence, that sophisticated electrical engineering emerged by mistake!  Does the shoe fit, or what?  They have glorified their own speculations.  They have imagined a fable that runs 180 degrees contrary to the evidence.  They have totally refused to bend their stiff necks to alternative explanations, like intelligent design.  They have shown themselves to be dogmatist wolves in scientist sheep’s clothing, walking after the imaginations of their own foolish hearts.
    So we end with more advice from the Apostle Paul: words that would have been understood as a mission statement by many of the founders of science: “Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God” (II Corinthians 10:4).
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Evolutionary Theory

He scrambled about 20 feet up the side of the canyon, following a trail of bone fragments, to a flat ledge where he saw what was unmistakably a large fossil: a dinosaur pelvis exposed in the rock.
    “Literally his butt was hanging out of the hill,” [Mark] Eatman said.
    The team brushed away the crumbly stone, exposing a femur articulated into the pelvis and, even more striking, tendons.
    “To see them like guitar strings going down the side of this big bone was pretty amazing,” Eatman said.

The hypothesis of mortal combat appeals to our sense of drama from seeing B-movies of dinosaurs, but think about it: would Gorgon be thinking about a meal while drowning?  The pro believed that they were buried in a flood event.  That’s a common explanation for a dinosaur here, a dinosaur there, and a dinosaur over yonder.  The impressive wall of bone at Dinosaur National Monument far to the south in Utah is also explained by watery burial.  They never seem to consider connecting the dots that maybe the same flood event buried them all.  For tendons and articulated limbs to be preserved it must have been a very unusual and widespread event, unlike anything ever seen in Dinotopia before.  Does their entombment in crumbly rock really support the notion that the burial occurred 75 million years ago, and that these explorers happened along just as the bones were disintegrating?  Only if one believes in dumb luck.
Next headline on:  Fossils • Dinosaurs

Evolutionists have been on their own one-yard line since they took possession of the ball and got the referee to disqualify the other team.  Even with their overwhelming advantage, they have been moving one yard forward, one yard back for 146 years.  The crowds are getting restless.
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