http://www.crev.infoNews from science relating to origins, creation vs. evolution, and intelligent design.Sat, 11 Mar 2006 02:33:32 -0800FeedSpring - http://feedspring.com/Sun, 29 May 2011 09:19:29 GMThttp://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rsshttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201105.htm#20110529aMay 29, 2011 — We like to showcase stories of amazing animals, but humans are special, too. What animal can boast some of the qualities that science has recently reported? 1. Math brain: Studies of Amazon tribespeople show that they have an innate understanding of Euclidean geometry, even without ever learning it at school. For the BBC News, Jason Palmer reported, “Tests given to an Amazonian tribe called the Mundurucu suggest that our intuitions about geometry are innate.” People in the Mundurucu tribe only have approximations for numbers, and no language for geometry, but they showed comparable skill to French and US schoolchildren, even exceeding them in some ways. The researchers believe this shows that geometry is intuitive for humans: “they seemed to have an intuition about lines and geometric shapes without formal education or even the relevant words.” They even grasped some non-Euclidean geometry better than some westerners, such as understanding that parallel lines on a sphere can intersect. 2. Baby skill set: Live Science posted a gallery of “Nine Brainy Baby Abilities,” including innate knowledge of social power, mind meld with dogs, following others’ moods, dancing, mimicking, learning during sleep, rudimentary math abilities, ability to learn language, and innate ability to judge character. 3. Infant rationality: A study in Science was titled, “Pure Reasoning in 12-Month-Old Infants as Probabilistic Inference.”1 Whether they can or Kant make a Critique of Pure Reason is a question for philosophers. The abstract said, Many organisms can predict future events from the statistics of past experience, but humans also excel at making predictions by pure reasoning: integrating multiple sources of information, guided by abstract knowledge, to form rational expectations about novel situations, never directly experienced. Here, we show that this reasoning is surprisingly rich, powerful, and coherent even in preverbal infants. When 12-month-old infants view complex displays of multiple moving objects, they form time-varying expectations about future events that are a systematic and rational function of several stimulus variables. See also the Live Science review of this paper. It commented that robot designers have biomimetics on their brain: “The goal, [Joshua] Tenenbaum [MIT] said, is a sort of ‘reverse engineering’ of infant cognition that might help robotics developers build machines that interact with the world more like the human brain does.” 4. Beautiful brain: Behind the outward shows of rationality are amazing cells. Science Daily posted a color picture of the brain’s most common cell, the astrocyte. “Long considered to be little more than putty in the brain and spinal cord, the star-shaped astrocyte has found new respect among neuroscientists who have begun to recognize its many functions in the brain, not to mention its role in a range of disorders of the central nervous system.” A group of researchers at the University of Madison-Wisconsin has now succeeded in culturing some of these cells in a lab dish. Other animals have astrocytes, don’t they? “Astrocytes, some studies suggest, may even play a role in human intelligence given that their volume is much greater in the human brain than any other species of animal,” the article answered. They are involved in every brain function. 5. Blind as a bat: The BBC News, Medical Xpress and Live Science discussed how the blind can develop a sixth sense, a kind of echolocation, that helps them navigate in the absence of vision. “Some blind people are able to use the sound of echoes to ‘see’ where things are and to navigate their environment,” Live Science said. “Now, a new study finds that these people may even be using visual parts of their brains to process the sounds.” In fact, even sighted people can learn how to echolocate. This raises the interesting idea that humans are “over-engineered” for perception, but through lack of practice fail to use all the latent abilities available to them. 6. Power stroke: When you switch from walking to running, your body switches gears. The power in walking comes from the hips, but when running, the body switches to get its power from the ankles, an article on PhysOrg discussed. Researchers at North Carolina State measured this “tradeoff” that occurs automatically; humans just take it in stride. Microsoft has a novel take on human beings: use them as antennas. Live Science reported that since the human body gives off detectable electromagnetic signals, the signals could be harnessed to create a home automation system that learns the layout of the house, then automatically responds to the body. Some day you might turn on lights when you walk into a room, use gestures to turn up the thermostat or control the volume of music, or operate appliances without knobs or switches. The human body is a natural antenna, the article said. “It reliably picks up the electromagnetic signals that emanate from all electrical systems and appliances in the home. These ambient signals can be used to create an affordable home automation system that controls household electronics with a pat on the wall or even a simple hand gesture.” Many are already familiar with the Wii and Kinect game consoles that respond to body movements, and light switches that respond to hand clapping. Tapping into human electromagnetic signals opens up new vistas. The possibilities for “controller free living” are virtually limitless, reporter Leslie Meredith said. A visitor from the past would probably worry he was seeing witchcraft if a wave of the hand could turn on the lights – but it would just be a clever application of manipulating plain old natural forces, like the old theremin musical instrument that fascinated turn-of-the-20th-century viewers with music made by a wave of the hand. When humans can get cats to respond to gestures, then they’ve really got something. Sun, 29 May 2011 09:19:27 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201105.htm#20110528aMay 28, 2011 — A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. When is knowledge enough? And can a lot of knowledge be a dangerous thing, too? Whether little or much, knowledge without ethics empowers evil. 1. Imbalance in India: Ultrasound is a wonderful invention that allows images inside the human body. In India, however, where culture and economics puts a premium on the male sex, its use has had devastating consequences. PhysOrg reported, “In Indian families in which the first child has been a girl, more and more parents with access to prenatal ultrasound testing are aborting a second female in the hope that a subsequent pregnancy will yield a boy, said the study, published in The Lancet.... Between 1980 and 2010, they estimate, four to 12 million girls were aborted because of their sex.” The government has tried to stop the practice, but in a country where corruption is rampant, laws are easily set aside. “A 1996 government regulation designed to prevent the use of ultrasound for prenatal sex determination is widely flouted, the researchers say, pointing out that few health providers have been charged or convicted.” A little bribe goes a long way. This could not have happened before science brought the technology to know the sex of an unborn baby, but where does the fault lie? 2. Imbalance in China: The Three Gorges Dam was a monumental engineering effort in China that worried environmentalists and ethicists because of potential damage to the land and its people. Now that the reservoir is full, New Scientist reported, those worries have been realized. Landslides, pollution, and economic upheaval with dire consequences for many displaced people are the result. The BBC News added that 1.3 billion people were displaced by a project that was the “contentious scheme even before it was approved.” Ignoring warnings that it would cause an “environmental catastrophe,” the government went ahead with the project. Last week, in an unusual move, the government admitted “that the Three Gorges dam has caused significant environmental problems.” But they remain unfazed by the consequences. In fact, they are going to build more dams. 3. Endangered species: The Endangered Species Act has impacted many businesses and homeowners, depriving property owners of rights to use their land in freedom because of the claims of scientists that certain species would be adversely affected. “For more than 40 years,” Science Daily reported, “the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has published the Red List of Threatened Species describing the conservation status of various species of animals.” Now, however, an international team is calling for a reassessment of the definition of endangered species. Are the one-size-fits-all criteria currently in use too simplistic? “Our results challenge the application of the same sets of threat criteria across living organisms and across regions,” the team said, admitting that “identifying which species are most at risk can be difficult....” While each case must be judged on the evidence, one wonders how many human beings have been deprived of their freedom, and what has been the impact on society and the economy, from the application of simplistic standards of assumed knowledge. 4. Climate change: For most of the past decade, global warming has been a doomsday scenario guaranteed by the scientific consensus unless drastic changes in the world’s economies were made. States have passed carbon taxes; the federal government pushed for cap-and-trade legislation; bodies of world governments agreed to make draconian cuts in emissions that would cripple their economies. Many scientists still believe the threat is real. Maybe it is, but the IPCC, the world body that had been trusted with the scientific data to back it up, got caught in an embarrassing credibility crisis over the Climategate affair in 2009. Subsequent investigations found conflicts of interest and sloppy data gathering by the panel. Nature News discussed the latest moves to repair the damage and reform the IPCC, while a growing number of climate skeptics have claimed the threat is either overblown or unreal, leading to questions about how many nations and people might be suffering unnecessarily over a “little knowledge” about climate processes that may be too uncertain for human beings to grasp. 5. Fatherhood: An article on PhysOrg pointed to the grim realities of fatherless families, but attributed the causes to poverty and lack of education. Yet numerous men achieved success in spite of those causes. George Washington Carver was an orphan, was dirt poor, was discriminated against, and yet became a highly successful and benevolent scientist. Is it possible that the researchers behind the report are confusing causes and effects and ignoring other factors? How many times has the government tried to eradicate poverty and ignorance, only to make problems worse? Such questions need to be asked before accepting the opinions of “economists, sociologists, and public policy experts” in academia. The “experts” undoubtedly omitted to include input from the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family and other conservative organizations that might beg to differ on the causes and cures of fatherless families. In fact, a survey of the ideology of the researchers behind this study might be illuminating. How many of them view government as the solution to all social ills? There’s an exhibition on display at Trinity College Dublin called “Human+: The Future of Our Species”. Even the leftist-leaning journal Nature found some of the art, supported by the Wellcome Trust, unsettling.1 Anthony King wrote about the exhibit that challenges what it means to be human. “Genetics and artificial intelligence figure prominently among its themes of augmented abilities, authoring evolution, extended ecologies, life at the edges and non-human encounters.” Some of the exhibits include a man transplanting an ear onto his arm, a robot that makes threats to critics, a robot that makes viewers ill at ease by imitating their facial expressions, a film showing robots boring holes into human bodies, and a place where viewers can get genetically tested for a gene that is claimed to cause high risk behavior. This particular piece caught King’s eye: Taking a still darker turn is the sculpture Euthanasia Coaster. Should medical wonders allow us extended lifetimes, boredom may bedevil us. Julijonas Urbonas imagines a humane and thrilling exit: death by roller coaster in the form of an exhilarating 500-metre drop followed by a series of loops, the G-forces of which would kill passengers in a state of intense euphoria. Sun, 29 May 2011 07:34:48 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201105.htm#20110527aMay 27, 2011 — The plants and animals around us seem so ordinary, but they all are so extraordinary, the extraordinary becomes ordinary simply because of their numbers. But if you expanded the sample space to include the entire solar system, what we have in earth’s biosphere should astonish everyone. Here are some notable fellow creatures. Nine amazing creatures described, with quotations that are eye-opening.Sat, 28 May 2011 08:53:01 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201105.htm#20110526aMay 26, 2011 — The Mars rover Spirit is now dead in its tracks (JPL) but the planet under it continues to rumble, in theoretical overhauls and anomalies. Mars has been much on the mind of news reporters this week after a new paper speculated that the red planet grew up fast and then stopped as a runt. In Nature,1 Dauphas and Pourmand studied ratios of isotopes of hafnium (Hf) and tungsten (W) to envision a history of Mars much different than previously assumed. Their model makes Mars form in about one-fifth or less the time previously assumed to be required. In the same issue of Nature,1 Alan Brandon summed up the new idea: “It seems that Mars had grown to near its present size by 2 million to 4 million years after the Solar System began to form,” he said. “Such rapid growth explains why the planet is much smaller than Earth and Venus.” Any explanatory gains, however, appear to be offset by puzzles, according to Bloch’s Law, “Every solution breeds new problems.” Brandon said, “The authors finding that rocky bodies the size of Mars accreted within 2 million to 4 million years has ramifications for models of early planetary history.” Some of these ramifications confirm earlier theories, while others contradict them: With such an early time for Mars accretion, which probably led to the formation of a global magma ocean, how do we explain the times for magma-ocean solidification of around 100 million years after the Solar System began to form that are obtained from measurements of Lu (lutetium)-Hf and Sm-Nd chronometers in Martian meteorites? Magma oceans are not supposed to take that long to solidfy. This suggests that, although Dauphas and Pourmand have provided us with a key constraint on the early formation and evolution of our planets, we still have much to learn. None of the three authors explained how primary accretion (the gathering of dust particles into bodies large enough to grow by gravitational attraction) might have occurred; they all began by assuming large bodies were already present. They also assumed the truth of the controversial theory that earth’s moon formed by collision of a Mars-sized body into our planet. Philosophically speaking, it is usually not a good idea to resort to ad hoc conditions to explain anomalies. Live Science posted three videos of Mars, The Changing Face of Mars, Where’ All the Water Go? and What Went Wrong on Mars? which includes some dramatic flyovers of Martian terrain based on orbital photographs. The narrator divines unobserved Martian prehistory as if an eyewitness. PhysOrg and Science Daily presented the Dauphas-Pourmand theory uncritically, treating the isotope ratios as unproblematic chronometers that allow scientists to see the unobserved past in a kind of crystal ball. Space.com recounted the history of failed spacecraft at Mars, the “spacecraft graveyard.” Keep an eye on JPL Mars Exploration for latest news on this fall’s planned launch of the next-generation red rover, Mars Science Laboratory, recovering from an incident that did not damage the backshell (see PhysOrg). Fri, 27 May 2011 00:24:14 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201105.htm#20110525aMay 25, 2011 — Some evolutionists have defended their theory by proposing a falsification test: the discovery of a Precambrian rabbit. No such fossil has ever been found, partly because any stratum containing a rabbit fossil would never have been labeled Precambrian in the first place. But evolutionists would be surprised at finding complex non-marine multicellular eukaryotes in Precambrian strata, and this has just been announced in Nature. A team led by Paul Strother of Boston College with help from Oxford University and University of Sheffield has announced “Earth’s earliest non-marine eukaryotes.”1 “Direct evidence of fossils within rocks of non-marine origin in the Precambrian is exceedingly rare,” they said. In Arizona, they found not only ambiguous traces, but oodles of clear evidence for freshwater eukaryotes: Here we report the recovery of large populations of diverse organic-walled microfossils extracted by acid maceration, complemented by studies using thin sections of phosphatic nodules that yield exceptionally detailed three-dimensional preservation. These assemblages contain multicellular structures, complex-walled cysts, asymmetric organic structures, and dorsiventral, compressed organic thalli, some approaching one millimetre in diameter. They offer direct evidence of eukaryotes living in freshwater aquatic and subaerially exposed habitats during the Proterozoic era. The apparent dominance of eukaryotes in non-marine settings by 1?Gyr ago indicates that eukaryotic evolution on land may have commenced far earlier than previously thought. The date of one billion years is nearly twice as long ago as the Cambrian explosion. The paper shows over a dozen specimens of different shapes and levels of organization, from spherical clumps of cells to others with differentiated structures. “The Torridonian assemblages contain some striking examples of microfossils that show complexity that goes considerably beyond that of simple leiospheres” [i.e., nondescript clusters]. Some have vesicles, outer walls and armlike projections (thalli). They figured these organisms were “approaching a tissue-level grade of organization.” Where would these fit into evolutionary theory? Some evolutionists posit the origin of life at 3 billion years ago. These organisms, at 1 billion years, would represent early experiments into multicellular organisms. The small sizes, they said, argue against them being blastulae (early developmental stages of metazoans). “The simplicity of these balls of cells precludes their systematic assignment within the Eukarya,” they said; “However, their morphology, in combination with larger, probably multicellular thalli (Fig. 3 b), indicates that evolutionary processes that preceded tissue-grade multicellularity in marine settings, such as cell-to-cell adhesion, were also evident in non-marine settings by 1?Gyr ago.” This means that “Early eukaryotes were clearly capable of diversifying within non-marine habitats, not just in marine settings as has been generally assumed.” Because terrestrial environments offer more variety, “Such habitat heterogeneity translates directly into increased speciation potential,” they claimed. Another interesting fossil was reported in the same issue of Nature.1 A giant version of anomalocaris, the terror of Cambrian seas (as pictured in the opening of the film Darwin’s Dilemma; see trailer) has been found in Ordovician deposits in Morocco. Science Daily has an artist rendition of the creature that measured up to three feet long – a foot longer than earlier records, and 30 million years younger than other specimens famous from the Burgess Shale. The “extraordinarily well-preserved fossils” also show a series of “segments across the animal’s back, which scientists think might have functioned as gills.” So not only was this creature more complex, it “existed for much longer and grew to much larger sizes than previously thought,” the article said. How were they fossilized? “The animals found in Morocco inhabited a muddy sea floor in fairly deep water, and were trapped by sediment clouds that buried them and preserved their soft bodies.”Thu, 26 May 2011 00:39:54 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201105.htm#20110524aMay 24, 2011 — Astronomers have found over a thousand extrasolar planets now. How does our solar system compare? Thanks to the Kepler spacecraft, we now have a catalog of 1,235 alien planet candidates after just four months of operation. Of the 408 that have been found in multiple-planet systems, 170 of these containing two to six planets have been pictured in a “Kepler Orrery” posted by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The press release says, “most of those look very different than our solar system” (see also 05/21/2011, bullet 2). The poster is accompanied by an animated version that shows the 170 systems revolving like gears (see also PhysOrg). Due to selection effects of the transiting method, Kepler has tended to find systems with low inclinations. These have planets smaller than Neptune, because large gas giants can perturb the orbits of member planets into higher inclinations. The Kepler team was surprised to find so many multiple-planet systems in their quarry: over 100, when only two or three were expected. It is still too early, though, to detect earth-mass planets within their stars’ habitable zones. How do planets form? The astronomical community has undergone a paradigm revolution in the last decade about planet formation (05/07/2001). Ever since Laplace, astronomers have assumed that disks of dust and gas will slowly condense into planets (the nebular hypothesis). The discovery of “hot Jupiters” (gas giants orbiting extremely close to their parent stars) was shocking. It indicated that planets migrate inward and will quickly be destroyed unless they can form faster than the core accretion model permits. This was a factor contributing to a newer “disk instability” model that posits clumps within the disk condensing rapidly into planets – a “heretical” view when first proposed (06/03/2003, 03/21/2006). All such models have problems of their own, however (09/22/2003, 08/27/2004, 08/06/2004, 07/15/2005). In either case, an upper limit typically given for planet formation has been ten million years or less to avoid the death spiral. Ten million years now appears too long. Observations of IC 348, a cluster of stars thought to be two or three million years old, shows that the dust is rapidly depleting in nine disks detected. Universe Today interpreted what this means: “If planets are forming in IC 348 at the same frequency in which they form in systems astronomers have observed elsewhere, this would seem to suggest that the gravitational collapse model is more likely to be correct since it doesn’t leave a large window in which forming planets could accrete. If the core accretion model is correct, then planetary formation must have begun very quickly.” Join Voisey’s headline for the story was, “Want to Make Planets? Better Hurry.” The 05/07/2001, 06/03/2003 and 05/21/2009 entries show this has been known to be a problem for at least a decade. Tue, 24 May 2011 19:41:41 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201105.htm#20110523aA few years ago, scientists were clamoring for access to human embryos for stem cell research. Now, the discovery of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) from human skin and other adult tissues has sidetracked interest in embryonic stem cells. The momentum is clearly going with iPS. Is there any longer a need for embryonic stem cell research? 9 cases of advances in adult stem cells provided.Tue, 24 May 2011 02:59:46 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201105.htm#20110522aMay 22, 2011 — It’s a common myth that enlightenment atheists gave birth to the scientific era by casting off the darkness of the Christian middle ages and replacing magical arts like alchemy with the scientific experimental method. Historians of science know better. A couple of recent articles help set the record straight. Alchemy has long had a bad rap, but that is beginning to change. Professor Lawrence Princippe (Johns Hopkins University) has spent 30 years investigating the writings and experiments of alchemists, and has concluded that many of them were “real scientists” doing valid work in chemistry. Among the respectable practitioners were Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton. This does not mean that the methods of alchmemists deserve a comeback, or that their belief that base metals could be turned into gold should be taken seriously, but rather that for their time, they were pursuing real scientific questions with the limited materials available to them. Sara Reardon described the growing recovery of alchemy’s reputation in Science.1 In a Nature blog,1 James Hannam, historian of science and author of The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution wrote to correct misconceptions about the relation of Christianity to science. Right off the bat he made a list: The ongoing clash of creationism with evolution obscures the fact that Christianity has actually had a far more positive role to play in the history of science than commonly believed. Indeed, many of the alleged examples of religion holding back scientific progress turn out to be bogus. For instance, the Church has never taught that the Earth is flat and, in the Middle Ages, no one thought so anyway. Popes haven’t tried to ban zero, human dissection or lightening rods, let alone excommunicate Halley’s Comet. No one, I am pleased to say, was ever burnt at the stake for scientific ideas. Yet, all these stories are still regularly trotted out as examples of clerical intransigence in the face of scientific progress. After dispensing with the myths, he listed positive cases of the church supporting science. Churches supported the teaching of science and even built observatories into cathedrals, for example. Hannam then pointed out that Christians did science as an act of worship when it was unprofitable. He mentioned a historical point rarely considered: It was only during the nineteenth century that science began to have any practical applications. Technology had ploughed its own furrow up until the 1830s when the German chemical industry started to employ their first PhDs. Before then, the only reason to study science was curiosity or religious piety. Christians believed that God created the universe and ordained the laws of nature. To study the natural world was to admire the work of God. This could be a religious duty and inspire science when there were few other reasons to bother with it. It was faith that led Copernicus to reject the ugly Ptolemaic universe; that drove Johannes Kepler to discover the constitution of the solar system; and that convinced James Clerk Maxwell he could reduce electromagnetism to a set of equations so elegant they take the breathe [sic] away. Hannam went on to describe how the Middle Ages, dominated by the Church, was actually a time of innovation and progress. Even the Dark Ages that preceded it was a time of advance, he said, in spite of the depression caused by the fall of Rome. Why, then, do so many people get the idea that Christianity and science are opposed? Hannam presented a brief conspiracy theory, pointing out that the conflict of science with religion arose only during the “enlightenment” (his mock quotes and non-capitalization). Voltaire and his fellow philosophes opposed the Catholic Church because of its close association with France’s absolute monarchy. Accusing clerics of holding back scientific development was a safe way to make a political point. The cudgels were later taken up by TH Huxley, Darwin’s bulldog, in his struggle to free English science from any sort of clerical influence. Creationism did the rest of the job of persuading the public that Christianity and science are doomed to perpetual antagonism. In closing, Hannam said that both “science and religion are the two most powerful intellectual forces on the planet,” pointing out that “Both are capable of doing enormous good, but their chances of doing so are much greater if they can work together.” He ended by congratulating Lord Martin Rees winning of the Templeton Prize as a “small step in the right direction.” Mon, 23 May 2011 06:23:48 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201105.htm#20110521aMay 21, 2011 — Life’s dependency on carbon was so distinctive to aliens in Star Trek, they nicknamed humans “carbon units.” With its four valences, carbon is able to form an almost infinite number of complex molecules based on chains (polymers) and geometric shapes. But does the presence of carbon in abundance explain the appearance of life? Evolutionists desire a unified, “bottom-up” story that derives complex life from particles exploding out of the big bang by undirected processes and natural law. Here’s a look at stages in the grand story. 1. Whence carbon? Over a half century ago, flamboyant astrophysicist Fred Hoyle realized that a finely-tuned resonance state in nuclear reactions going on in the interiors of stars was responsible for carbon nucleosynthesis. Now, according to PhysOrg, researchers at North Carolina State University have modeled the Hoyle State state from first principles and proved it correct. Dean Lee at NC State commented, “This work is valuable because it gives us a much better idea of the kind of ‘fine-tuning’ nature has to do in order to produce carbon in stars.” 2. Whence carbon-rich planets? Once you have carbon, what happens to it? Much of it remains in stars, but supernovas can blast it and other heavy elements out into molecular clouds. As theory has it, these clouds condense and form planets (but see 05/21/2009, 06/09/2009, 08/21/2009, . Rocky planets might have abundant carbon. Science news outlets are asking if the Kepler spacecraft has found one. Space.com asked, “Is the Rocky Alien Planet Gliese 581d Really Habitable?” It’s seven times bigger than earth, but appears to lie in the circumstellar habitable zone (see other habitable zone requirements in the 02/26/2011 commentary). Beyond that, nobody knows if it has the requirements for life, and detection of life is beyond current capabilities. Guillermo Gonzalez, astrobiologist, intelligent design advocate and co-author of The Privileged Planet (see video version on YouTube), was asked about the likelihood of life on this world on ID the Future. He said that other factors, such as plate tectonics and the right atmosphere and temperature, will have to be evaluated. Uncommon Descent noticed that Gonzalez, who predicted in his book that habitable planets would be rare, has been right in that prediction so far – but that didn’t win him any awards in academia. After The Privileged Planet came out proposing that life was rare in the universe, he later lost his tenure battle at Iowa State due to the intolerance of some atheist professors for his views on intelligent design (05/22/2007 bullet 7, 11/08/2007, 12/16/2008). An article on New Scientist agrees that worlds like ours are rare, and is worried about it. In “No place like home: Our lonesome solar system,” Lee Billings quoted planet hunter Geoff Marcy saying, “Our system is a rarity, there’s no longer a question about that. The only question that remains is, just how rare is it?” 3. Whence carbon-based life? Is that end of the road – a planet with carbon and other heavy elements that just sits there? Obviously, evolutionary scientists would like to see those elements self-organize into living cells. A story on Science Daily promised “important clues to how life originated from non-life and how modern cells came to exhibit complex behaviors.” Unfortunately for tantalized readers, the researchers at Penn State did not bring carbon to life. They played with toy models of cells. They “generated simple, non-living model ‘cells’ with which they established that asymmetric division – the process by which a cell splits to become two distinct daughter cells – is possible even in the absence of complex cellular components, such as genes.” Whatever this oversimplified model has to do with the origin of life is anyone’s guess. One researcher claimed, “We observed that even model cells can divide in a structured way, which implies a kind of intrinsic order.” Whether that order was intrinsic or was inserted by the investigators into the system, since they tweaked variables in their model to get the outcomes they desired, is a good follow-up question. They modeled various carbon-based molecules such as amino acids and lipids to get their toy cells to divide without genetic control. It was left unstated if real molecules would do such things. Real cells divide with a host of complex machines, and require accurate copying of millions of base pairs of DNA. They saw their work as just a piece of a puzzle: “Scientists have simulated early-Earth conditions in laboratories and have demonstrated that many amino acids – the biochemical constituents of proteins – can form through natural chemical reactions,” Christine Keating [Penn State] said. We hope our research helps to fill in another part of the puzzle: how chemical and spatial organization may have contributed to the success of early life forms.” Taxpayers can thank the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health for funding these imaginary scenarios. 4. Whence life complexity? Give evolutionists all the carbon-based molecules they want – will they get life to form and evolve? Will the amino acids form proteins (see online book) that can evolve into complex life? Michael Lynch and Ariel Fernandez, scientists at the University of Chicago, reported PhysOrg began with proteins, and then speculated that “Errors in protein structure sparked evolution of biological complexity.” That’s right: complex life is the result of mistakes. This idea was published in Nature.1 Over four billion years of evolution, plants and animals grew far more complex than their single-celled ancestors. But a new comparison of proteins shared across species finds that complex organisms, including humans, have accumulated structural weaknesses that may have actually launched the long journey from microbe to man. This new idea is actually un-Darwinian. In a nutshell, PhysOrg said, “random introduction of errors into proteins, rather than traditional natural selection, may have boosted the evolution of biological complexity.” Has can that be? Is there any complex system that gets better with the introduction of random errors? The article continued, “Flaws in the ‘packing’ of proteins that make them more unstable in water could have promoted protein interactions and intracellular teamwork, expanding the possibilities of life.” Jason Palmer cheerfully echoed this “could have” story on the BBC News, quoting Michael Lynch [Indiana U], who added this un-Darwinian comment: “We’ve opened up the idea that the roots of complexity don’t have to reside in purely adaptational arguments.” The team felt that new protein interactions “nudged complexity forward” with functional possibilities. No actual possibilities were presented. Wouldn’t many of these actions be deleterious? Don’t proteins denature into sticky, shapeless masses unless they fold correctly? To solve this problem, they had another could-have story up their sleeves: “The authors suggest then that other adaptations occur that ‘undo’ the deleterious effects of the sticky proteins.” Co-author Fernandez applied the tinkerer metaphor to their idea while tossing a useful line to intelligent design advocates: “Natural designs are often one notch more sophisticated than the best engineering,” he said in the PhysOrg article. “This is another example: Nature doesn’t change the molecular machinery, but somehow it tinkers with it in subtle ways through the wrapping.” (See personification.) Palmer’s BBC story included a curious quote by Ford Doolittle [Dalhousie University] about this “new evolutionary pathway that didn’t exist before.” Doolittle commented about what he perceived as useless complexity in real life: “Darwinists are a little bit like the pre-Darwinists before them, who would have marveled at the perfection of God’s creation.” Doolittle disagrees with Lynch about the repair of deleterious proteins; instead, he imagines cells with “presuppression” mechanisms that would protect them from mistakes. “But we both agree that much of complexity does not have an adaptive explanation.” They also agree that it does not have a design explanation, but that goes without saying; their idea presents a random explanation: stuff happens. That’s a new label for creationists: “pre-Darwinists”. Will they like it? Sat, 21 May 2011 06:39:22 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201105.htm#20110520bMay 20, 2011 — One might think that past embarrassments about the peppered moth as evidence for evolution would keep evolutionists reluctant to mention them. A team from the University of Liverpool either didn’t get the message, or shed all reluctance anyway. They published a new paper about Biston betularia in Science,1 calling the moth story “a textbook example of how an altered environment may produce morphological adaptation through genetic change” and “one of the most widely recognized examples of contemporary evolutionary change.” Their paper, however, only discussed which mutations might have produced the black variety. The black ones, apparently losing their color due to a single mutation, did better when the trees were darker, but are now rapidly disappearing. No long-term evolutionary adaptation was demonstrated. Here’s how the paper ended: The rapid spread of an initially unique haplotype, driven by strong positive selection, is expected to generate the profile of linkage disequilibrium we have observed, establishing that UK industrial melanism in the peppered moth was seeded by a single recent mutation that spread to most parts of mainland Britain and also colonized the Isle of Man (fig. S4). Paradoxically, although the carbonaria [black] morph is now strongly disadvantageous and consequently rare in the United Kingdom, the rapidity of its decline has minimized the eroding effect of typica [white] introgression on the molecular footprint of strongly positive selection created during its ascendency. This means that the mutant appeared recently, spread for awhile, and is dying out, without leaving much of an evolutionary trace on the species. Sat, 21 May 2011 06:12:46 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201105.htm#20110520aMay 20, 2011 — As imaging techniques improve, cells are yielding up their secrets. Scientists are getting closer to watching the processes in cellular factories in real time. 1. Dynein: PhysOrg reported, “Biologists capture cell’s elusive ‘motor’ on videotape, solving the mystery of its deployment.” The article began, “Their experiments can be likened to restoring never-before-seen footage to a classic film.” Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst are discovering “How dynein, the cell’s two-part, nano-scale ‘mitotic motor,’ positions itself to direct the [cell] dividing process.” They described their delight at watching “a complete surprise and a eureka moment for us to witness a hypothesis supported by direct evidence for the first time.” 2. Myosin: Another motor machine in the cell is myosin. PhysOrg described how scientists on the east coast have found a way to turn the motor on and off with light. “Molecular ‘motors’ are at the root of most biological movement,” the press release stated. “They propel cell components, whole cells, and even our muscles on command.” The team’s paper claimed “this should make it possible to follow cellular processes that involve myosin in real time.” 3. DNA structure: Scientists at the University of Amsterdam have measured the force holding DNA together, and found that a small force can make it separate like a zipper. PhysOrg told how the strands re-join when the tension is relaxed. With this research, they “can now have a better understanding of how DNA in cells is locally opened so genes can be turned ‘on’ or ‘off’.” 4. DNA packaging Penn State researchers have discovered more about how DNA is packaged into chromosomes. They have achieved a milestone in the goal of assembling a chromosome from its component parts by adding histones to purified yeast DNA and watching it wrap into nucleosomes – building blocks of the supercoils that form chromosomes. To get the wrapping started, they had to add ATP, which they likened to the leaven that makes bread rise. Enzymes used the ATP to wrap the DNA neatly into the nucleosomes. Some 60,000 nucleosomes make up a yeast chromosome. According to PhysOrg, their work “overturns three previous theories of the genome-packaging process and opens the door to a new era of genome-wide biochemistry research.” It is hoped that research like this will yield insights leading to therapies for genetic disorders. 5. Photosynthesis: Argonne National Laboratory “has worked for fifty years to understand photosynthesis—one of the most mysterious and wonderful chemical processes in the world,” an article on PhysOrg began. “Photosynthesis built a green Earth out of the bare, meteor-blistered planet which had sat empty for a billion years; it tipped the composition of the atmosphere towards oxygen, allowing all kinds of life to blossom, including us.” The team is applying what they are learning for human benefit. “Basically, we’ve been reverse-engineering photosynthesis,” one of the researchers said. “If we understand how Nature does it, we can tweak the process to produce hydrogen” that would lead to efficient solar cells. 6. Photosynthesis reactor: Speaking of photosynthesis, Japanese scientists have achieved the imaging of the “Crystal structure of oxygen-evolving photosystem II at a resolution of 1.9?Å,” zooming in almost twice as far as previous studies. Their paper, published in Nature,1 spoke of the reactor as “indispensable for sustaining life on Earth.” It includes detailed drawings of the 20 subunits involved with numerous molecular contacts. The particular part of the reactor that splits water molecules and combines oxygen atoms into the O2 gas we breathe they said is “one of nature’s most fascinating and important reactions.” Understanding Photosystem II may help humans to mimic plants’ ability to split water efficiently at ambient temperatures, leading to renewable energy for a multitude of applications. The ability lives all around us if we can tap into its secrets. 7. Ribosome: Biochemists from five US universities have witnessed a key reaction in the ribosomes, the elaborate structures that translate messenger RNA [mRNA] into proteins. Reporting in Science,2 they described how the ribosome, the transfer RNA [tRNA] molecules and other elements form moving parts and machinery: During protein synthesis, the ribosome controls the movement of tRNA and mRNA by means of large-scale structural rearrangements. We describe structures of the intact bacterial ribosome from Escherichia coli that reveal how the ribosome binds tRNA in two functionally distinct states, determined to a resolution of ~3.2 angstroms by means of x-ray crystallography. One state positions tRNA in the peptidyl-tRNA binding site. The second, a fully rotated state, is stabilized by ribosome recycling factor and binds tRNA in a highly bent conformation in a hybrid peptidyl/exit site. The structures help to explain how the ratchet-like motion of the two ribosomal subunits contributes to the mechanisms of translocation, termination, and ribosome recycling. Drawings in the paper show the moving parts with rotations of up to 70°. In their concluding paragraph, they described what they saw: “Because simple mRNAs can be translated in the absence of exogenous factors like EF-G (44), the ribosome itself serves as a Brownian ratchet, with tRNA substrates probably serving as the ‘teeth.’,” they said. “A notable feature of the ratcheting mechanism is the use of RNA secondary structural elements to control large-scale conformational rearrangements in the ribosome.” They went on to compare the moving parts to bridges, swivels, springs, pawls, and hinges. 8. Ribosome information: Information is a profound concept that presupposes purpose and design. It is being joined to biology. Two researchers at the University of Maryland titled a paper, “An Extensive Network of Information Flow through the B1b/c Intersubunit Bridge of the Yeast Ribosome.” Writing in PLoS One,3 they described “an extensive network of information exchange between distinct regions of the large and small subunits” of the ribosome. Mutations, they found, “had wide-ranging effects on cellular viability and translational fidelity” and mentioned some of the diseases they cause. They discussed two subunits in particular that “work together to communicate information pertaining to the tRNA occupancy status of the P-site and the B1b/c bridge.” In fact, “These shared changes in rRNA chemical protection patterns suggest that, while spatially remote, all of these different regions of the ribosome are connected through specific ‘informational nodes’ comprised of specific bases of 25S rRNA.” The words information and translational fidelity were key terms in this paper. Fri, 20 May 2011 21:54:44 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201105.htm#20110519aMay 19, 2011 — Scientists continue to insert their particular methods and viewpoints into every aspect of life, but questions might be raised about the validity of their findings and the propriety of scientists acting as advisors on moral and political questions. 1. Happiness science: Advice found online: “the best way to increase your happiness is to stop worrying about being happy and instead divert your energy to nurturing the social bonds you have with other people.” Did that come from a religious counselor or family member? No, it was on Science Daily, touting what “psychological science” has concluded. Live Science added material on “why were’re not happy” and “how to be happy” based on research by psychologists at the University of Denver. 2. Gossip science: Live Science presumed to explain “Why we love juicy gossip mags”. While some might respond “Speak for yourself,” Joseph Brownstein entertained the antics of a primatologist from UC Davis, Eliza Bliss-Moreau, who speculated about why unobserved ancestors may have found gossip titillating. Whether experiments on human subjects presented with visual stimuli says anything about unobserved ancestors, the article was confident in its ignorance: “While the reasons negative gossip draws attention are still unknown, researchers noted that it matches up with evolutionary findings in people and in animals.” 3. Love science: A photo of a happy couple accompanies an article on Science Daily that announced, “Want Lasting Love? It’s Not More Commitment, but Equal Commitment That Matters.” But did they get their material from Focus on the Family or the Family Research Council? No – the article relied on the work of six researchers from academia, who “used the rich mine of data in the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (MLSRA), coupled with a lab procedure, to look for the answers” of lasting relationships. Can science go beyond correlations and statistics to present advice? 4. Abortion science: An article on Medical Xpress claims that Poland’s law making abortions illegal has reduced hospital abortions by 99% but led to a flourishing private abortion industry. While gathering statistics may be valid for researchers, the article stated, “Women have been the biggest losers during this push of abortion provision into the clandestine private sector,” tainting the findings with suggestions of policy advice throughout the article. 5. Global politics: Ever heard of the Anthropocene Era? That is a name some scientists are giving to the period of earth history showing influence by humans. PhysOrg said that humans are giving the earth an “extreme makeover,” leading scientists to become geopolitical advisors. The Anthropocene concept “forces us to ponder whether humanity’s outsized impact on the planet could lead to undesired, possibly uncontrollable, outcomes, and what, if anything, humanity should do about it,” the article said. “That leaves scientists who may be more comfortable classifying rocks than rocking the boat in a tricky position.” 6. IQ and criminal justice: New Scientist posted a story with unpleasant throwbacks to eugenics and impacts on criminal law. “Some people in the US may have been wrongly executed because of inaccuracies in the IQ tests used to assess them,” the article by Jessica Griggs began. “But the inaccuracies may also have seen some escape execution if they scored lower on the tests than their real IQ.” That reference to “real IQ” presumes that IQ is a valid concept that could, in principle be measured with accurate IQ tests (04/27/2011, bullet 1). These articles in the “science” media raise questions about whether researchers should just state their findings, and leave policy to the government and culture. Laws against drug abuse, for instance, contribute to many unsavory consequences in crime and drug trafficking, but is it the job of scientists or “researchers” to present legal advice? The same questions could be asked about laws regarding anything: monopolies, energy policy, vice and prostitution, alcoholism, and much more. Additionally, science appears to continue usurping roles traditionally given to counselors outside the science department. Whether that advice is more valid than those of non-scientists is bound to raise questions about the presumptive authority of scientists and the so-called scientific method, if there is such a thing. Thu, 19 May 2011 20:05:21 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201105.htm#20110518aMay 18, 2011 — Fossils come in a variety of manifestations – not always bone. They could be leaf imprints, whole animals trapped in amber, footprints, or mineral traces made by leaving organisms. Some recent fossil finds are having trouble fitting into evolutionary theory. But one thing about those Darwinists: they always find a way. 1. Graph fight: Evolutionists have used the mineral graphite as a biomarker – a sign of fossilized life. By dating the rocks containing the graphite, they have inferred the age of the fossils. Science Daily has some bad news: the graphite could be much younger. A study of rocks in Canada by a team from four scientific institutions has concluded that “carbonaceous particles are millions of years younger than the rock in which they’re found, pointing to the likelihood that the carbon was mixed in with the metamorphic rock later than the rock’s earliest formation – estimated to be 3.8 to 4.2 billion years ago.” What does this do to evolutionary theory? One team member, Dominic Papineau of Boston College, said, “That can only ring a bell and require us to ask if we need to reconsider earlier studies.” He added, “We can no longer assume that carbon is indigenous in the oldest metamorphosed sedimentary rock.” The article paraphrased his remarks and the impact of this upset on evolutionary theory: Nearly 4,000-million years old samples from Greenland have been used to develop the dominant time line regarding the emergence of the earliest biosphere. The recent findings suggest the biosphere may have emerged millions of years later, a hypothesis that now demands a rigorous study, said Papineau.... The presence of carbon and the specific characteristics of that carbon’s source material are crucial to understanding the evolution of the early microbial biosphere. The subject of much debate within scientific circles, a new set of assumptions may be required when using the presence of carbon to date milestones in Earth’s evolution. 2. Croco-bird split: The phrase “earlier than thought” appears often in fossil news. Here’s a case noted by University of Washington: “China fossil shows bird, crocodile family trees split earlier than thought.” A specimen of Xilousuchus sapingensis, looking like a crocodile with four legs under its body and a sail-like fin like that of dimetrodon, has been reclassified as an archosaur. This means it “turns out to have come from the crocodile family tree after it had already split from the bird family tree,” the article claimed (birds are assumed to have come from the archosaur branch). What does this mean to the evolutionary picture? “The work could sharpen debate among paleontologists about whether archosaurs existed before the Permian period and survived the extinction event, or if only archosaur precursors were on the scene before the end of the Permian.” It also means “early members of the crocodile and bird family trees evolved earlier than previously thought.” 3. Snake lizard: There are lizards alive today that resemble snakes, because they have no legs (see (05/13/2011, bullet 5). A press release from the University of Toronto published on PhysOrg reported the discovery of a tiny lizard said to be 47 million years old that resolves a controversy about the relationship of snakes and lizards. According to a lead author, “This fossil refutes the theory that snakes and other burrowing reptiles share a common ancestry and reveals that their body shapes evolved independently.” In that case, why PhysOrg called this a “missing link” is anyone’s guess. 4. Genetic fossils: Genes can be an indirect type of fossil – provided one believes the evolutionary story connecting genomes by phylogenetic trees. A press release at the University of Texas announced, “Sodium Channels Evolved Before Animals’ Nervous Systems, Research Shows.” The old story was that sodium channels came along with the first nervous systems in jellyfish. The research team found genes for sodium channels (highly important in the nervous systems of complex animals) in a one-celled animal that has no nervous system: a choanoflagellate. They “discovered the genes for such sodium channels hiding within an organism that isn’t even made of multiple cells, much less any neurons.” What does this do to evolutionary theory? “Because the sodium channel genes were found in choanoflagellates, the scientists propose that the genes originated not only before the advent of the nervous system, but even before the evolution of multicellularity itself.” Sodium channels are pretty complex systems. That would be quite an innovation for a poor one-celled organism. David Hillis rescued evolution thusly: “This study shows how complex traits, such as the nervous system, can evolve gradually, often from parts that evolved for other purposes.” His colleague Harold Zakon picked up on the co-option theme: “Evolutionarily novel organs do not spring up from nowhere,” he said, “but from pre-existing genes that were likely doing something else previously.” What they were doing in the choanoflagellate was not explained; apparently that is the next research project. 5. Texas lemur: Speaking of Texas, Science Daily “announced the discovery of a previously unknown species of fossil primate, Mescalerolemur horneri, in the Devil’s Graveyard badlands of West Texas.” The only primates living in the wild in Texas today are those on football fields and freeways. The press release was ready to explain how this primate evolved so far from its ancestors in Africa: “Mescalerolemur’s dental anatomy reveals a close evolutionary relationship with adapiform primates from Eurasia and Africa, including Darwinius masillae, a German fossil primate previously claimed to be a human ancestor,” the reporter wrote. “However, the discovery of Mescalerolemur provides further evidence that adapiform primates like Darwinius are more closely related to living lemurs and bush babies than they are to humans” (bush babies are small nocturnal primates resembling lemurs). The article also appealed to convergent evolution to explain fusion of lower jaws in a related lemur and those of apes and humans. A picture of the lemur’s jaw was posted at the University of Texas website. 6. Dog or cat? One might suppose that paleontologists are good at telling dogs from cats, but when it comes to marsupial mammals in Australia, they’ve had trouble classifying thylacines – alternately classed as “marsupial wolf” or “Tasmanian tiger.” Recently, Brown University researchers voted it into the cat category, according to Science Daily. The old story was one of evolutionary convergence, the article explained: “The conventional thinking had been that dingoes were the placental spitting image of the marsupial thylacines, evolved in isolated settings, which biologists term evolutionary convergence. When dingoes [dogs] arrived in Australia, they helped push the thylacines out.” Now, the picture is more subtle and complicated: “What that means for the dingo’s role in the thylacine’s disappearance from continental Australia is not clear, but it does show the animals, while similar in many respects, likely hunted differently.” No further evolutionary explanation was offered for the remarkable convergence of many marsupials to their placental look-alikes (for chart, see NWCreation.com). 7. Marsupial flood: Speaking of marsupials, about 35 fossilized marsupial rats were found buried together in a mass grave in Bolivia, according to Live Science. From the collection, researchers concluded that they were social animals, unlike today’s marsupials. But the mechanism of burial might lead to other inferences: “They seem to have all died at the same time, possibly during a flash flood or other natural catastrophe.” PhysOrg provided more detail and noted that the bones showed “exceptional preservation”. 8. Raindrop tales: How much can you tell from fossil raindrops? David Catling [U of Washington] thinks quite a lot. According to New Scientist, he is deducing atmospheric pressure 2.7 billion years ago from the size and shape of the tiny craters made by raindrops in “an ancient bed of volcanic ash in South Africa”. The number of variables involved would seem to make any conclusions dubious. 9. Spider detail: Remains of a spider trapped in Baltic amber have been revealed in exquisite detail thanks to X-ray computed tomography, reported Science Daily. The article includes an image of the spider taken at University of Manchester from Karl Berendt’s 19th century collection. Nothing was said about spider evolution in the article, but Science Daily did focus attention on the evolutionary age in its headline, “Imaging Technology Reveals Intricate Details of 49-Million-Year-Old Spider.” But in the body of the article, there was this detail about what happens to amber fossils in one fifty-thousandth of that time: “A problem here is that these old, historical amber pieces have reacted with oxygen over time and are now often dark or cracked, making it hard to see the animal specimens inside.” Apparently they were clear when Berendt collected them. How about human fossils? An intact fossil canine tooth said to be from Peking Man (Homo erectus) has been found in an unopened box of fossils originally dug up in China, reported PhysOrg. Per Ahlberg from Uppsala University remarked that this is “an absolutely incredible find” because most of the Peking Man fossils were lost during World War II. This adds a fourth tooth to their collection, and the only canine tooth. The press release did not explore what this means to the story of human evolution; they just want to figure out the person’s diet. Last month, Ann Gibbons on Science Magazine News showed fossil footprints of about 30 “archaic” humans of various ages found in volcanic ash near an African lake. They look surprisingly modern for being “120,000 years old”. Gibbons said that researchers “have uncovered 350 tracks made by anatomically modern humans (as shown by their arched feet), over an area of 150 square meters.” In her focus on what the tracks reveal about the social behavior of the group, she did not explain how the “well-preserved trail” could have lasted for 120,000 years. Thu, 19 May 2011 06:24:47 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201105.htm#20110517aMay 17, 2011 — While elephants and whales impress us with their bulk, there are smaller critters that are no less impressive. Here are a few fantastic animals that come in very small packages. 1. Bears in space: Here’s an animal so bizarre, so well-armed, so scary looking, if you knew they were in your back yard you would run away screaming – unless you were told they are less than a millionth of a meter in size. They’re called water bears, or tardigrades. Take a look at the color electron micrograph of one on the BBC News and imagine your reaction coming across one of these if it were as large as an army tank. The picture of a water bear egg further down the article looks like an alien spaceship, yet these creatures live in many environments around our world. The article said that the Italian Space Agency is studying what makes tardigrades world-class survivors. They have the ability to shut down operations so completely, they can survive freezing and even the vacuum of outer space with its ionizing radiation. Called the “hardiest animal on earth,” the water bear can enter a “cryptobiotic state” of dessication that can allow it to survive for months or years, showing “a high resistance to physical and chemical extremes” such as “very low and high temperatures, exposure to high pressure or vacuum, as well as contact with organic solvents and ionizing radiation.” The Italian Space Agency would like to apply their secrets to learn how to “protect other organisms, including humans, from the extreme stresses found under space conditions.” Maybe a water bear spacesuit will become the latest fashion on some future spaceship. 2. Flatworm regeneration: Students who have looked at flatworms in biology class have been amused by their tiny triangular heads and cross-eyed look, but they can do something students can’t do: regenerate themselves. Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported that one of their teams has figured out that the tiny creatures do it with adult stem cells. They are a long way, though, from figuring out exactly how regeneration works. Amazing as flatworm regeneration is, one of the researchers attributed it to a blind, unguided process: “This is an animal that, through evolution, has already solved the regeneration problem,” Dan Wagner, a grad student, said. “We’re studying planarians to see how their regeneration process works. And, one day, we’ll examine what are the key differences between what’s possible in this animal and what’s possible in a mouse or a person.” 3. Honeybee flight simulator: Researchers at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique are trying to see how honeybees get around in life. They built a flight simulator consisting of a complex tunnel with lines and curves intended to challenge the bees’ navigational abilities, with a reward at the end. They have learned that bees, with their large peripheral vision, measure optical flow (the lateral movement of objects) to judge distance, and can speed up or slow down with the information. Bees are able to see objects overhead as well as on both sides and forward. “The researchers observed that a bee’s speed decreased in proportion to the narrowest point of passage in the flight chamber, whether the constriction was horizontal or vertical,” the article explained. “In other words, a bee slows its flight speed as an obstacle gets closer. Its speed depends on the size of the visual field and, therefore, on the closeness of the obstacle.” The press release began with an expression of astonishment: “How can a creature as tiny as a bee, whose brain is proportionally smaller than that of a bird, manage to control its flight and avoid obstacles both in flight and on the ground? We now know that bee sensory-motor performance depends on a nervous system consisting of a hundred thousand to a million neurons.” However bees do it, their tiny brains could help us design objects weighing tons: “These findings could have aerospace applications, such as during the crucial phases when aircraft fly in confined environments.” Maybe the Millennium Falcon had honeybee software that allowed Han Solo to navigate successfully through that asteroid field. 4. Colorblind hiding in plain color sight: Cuttlefish have the remarkable ability to quickly blend in with their surroundings by turning a variety of colors. But since they are color blind, how do they do it? Scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, wanted to find out. “Previous studies have shown that certain background variables—such as brightness, contrast, edge and size of objects, etc.—are essential for eliciting camouflaged body patterns,” a press release posted on PhysOrg said. “However, cephalopod eyes lack color perception, thus the vexing question of how they achieve effective camouflage while being colorblind still remains.” The team tackled this “incredibly difficult problem” by using a new imaging technology, Hyper Spectral Imaging (HSI), that samples 540 windows of color. This allowed them to hone in on the aspects of a cuttlefish profile that a predator would see. The cuttlefish is able to dodge a predator’s sensitivity to brightness, or luminance, with color tricks: “What this means is that cuttlefish camouflage strategies take away a tool from predators in their ability to pick out their prey from the background and instead leave them with only brightness as a method for prey identification.” This is only a partial explanation, they realize, for a phenomenon that puzzled Aristotle. It doesn’t explain the systems the cuttlefish uses, nor how it discerns its background so as to blend in. “We hope our work takes us one step closer to understanding how a colorblind animal adopts near-perfect camouflage in a variety of backgrounds.” New Scientist posted a video of the creatures adjusting to different backgrounds with split-second timing. The panoply of life is so vast and varied, that even with teams of scientists around the world run no risk of understanding it all any time soon. Whether in remote parts of the earth, or just under our feet, living things reveal new and amazing features that surprise PhDs and inspire entrepreneurs. Tue, 17 May 2011 21:16:04 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201105.htm#20110516aMay 16, 2011 — Stephen Hawking’s recent comment that heaven is a fairy tale (see The Guardian) started blogger keystrokes clicking. But one might ask, what does he know about it? Are the opinions of a cosmologist any better than those of a theologian? Hawking told The Guardian that he considers the brain like a computer that stops working when its components fail. It was timely that PhysOrg just reported that Jian-Jun Shu, an engineer Nanyang Technical University in Singapore, thinks that the next stage of computing should imitate genetics. “For some problems, DNA-based computing could replace silicon-based computing, offering many advantages.” Its potential for parallel processing and fuzzy logic are attractive. Shu is wondering, though, how to plug a monitor into DNA. Returning to the topic of heaven, the science blogs are focusing not on the evidence for it, but on whether or not belief in heaven is innate, or is useful to human beings. PhysOrg told about 40 studies in 20 countries that indicated belief in an afterlife is “hardwired” into the human brain. “The studies (both analytical and empirical) conclude that humans are predisposed to believe in gods and an afterlife, and that both theology and atheism are reasoned responses to what is a basic impulse of the human mind.” The 57 researchers were not out to establish the validity of beliefs but to determine whether they are innate or learned. One researcher commented, “Just because we find it easier to think in a particular way does not mean that it is true in fact.” Even so, why would an unguided evolutionary process produce belief in god or heaven that do not exist? Echoes of Anselm’s old Ontological Argument for the existence of God may come to mind. The article did not discuss how evolution would produce belief in heaven, but a lively debate arose in the reader comments. Stephanie Pappas at Live Science weighed in with her take on Hawking’s statement, saying that his opinion doesn’t matter, because belief in heaven offers benefits. Pappas invited responses from Daniel Kruger, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Michigan, and Nathan Heflick, a psychology doctoral student at the University of Florida, who has investigated beliefs in the afterlief. Kruger noted that belief in heaven provides hope, staves off fear of death, and promotes a sense of fairness that stimulates society to produce just laws. Heflick pointed out that heaven enables people to think of themselves as more than their bodies. “If you think of your body as a machine, it’s kind of hard to believe in life after death,” Heflick said. “You’re not going to be able to think of yourself as a spirit.” Nevertheless, such thinking might well raise questions about the Inventor of the Machine, based on our common experience that machines come via intelligent design. Thus far, we have watched scientists trying to analyze a theological question. But how firm a grip does science have in its own domain? – on reality, even so-called observable reality, or nature? New Scientist posted an intriguing article on the many ways our eyes fool us. Our brain is filling in information and predicting the future for us, reporter Graham Lawton pointed out, producing in us a “grand delusion” that we see what is really there. Speaking of cosmology (Hawking’s specialty), Live Science reminded us that cosmologists are still looking for 96% of an assumed universe about which they are clueless. It would seem premature for Hawking to rule out heaven when the reality he assumes is mostly hidden – even if he could trust his senses. There might be much more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in his philosophy (naturalism). Scientists do best when they stick with the observations. PhysOrg, echoing a press release from Cardiff University, provided a mix of news and history in an article about the Herschel Space Observatory, describing not only the latest observations, but giving a history of the Herschel family – William, the father of stellar astronomy, who discovered Uranus and infrared light and catalogued thousands of objects in space (and many comets) along with his faithful sister Caroline, and John, his son, who extended the observations into the southern hemisphere. Professor Matt Griffin said, “Two centuries on, I think William and Caroline would be intrigued and certainly quite pleased to see how what they started has developed.” Hawking might take note of the fact that excellent scientific work, both observational and theoretical, was done by the Herschels who were strong believers in heaven. Tue, 17 May 2011 01:29:59 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201105.htm#20110515aMay 15, 2011 — The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence arouses excitement in some, boredom in others. The SETI Institute has taken lumps recently; due to a $5 million shortfall in funding, they had to mothball a search using the Allen Telescope Array. But PhysOrg announced that an unspecified group of astronomers will be using the Green Bank Radio Telescope, the world’s largest steerable antenna, to watch 86 stars identified by the Kepler spacecraft as potential sites for habitable planets. The article did not say who is funding the project. A press release from UC Berkeley contained more detail. The astronomers involved are from UC Berkeley. The press release said that the Green Bank Observatory is funded by the National Science Foundation, but did not specify if NSF funds are being used for the SETI activity. Volunteers around the world will parse the data using SETI@home software after a year of searching. SETI@home is partly funded by the NSF and NASA, the article said, but did not specify the amount. Mon, 16 May 2011 04:03:50 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201105.htm#20110514aMay 14, 2011 — Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io continues to erupt, its heat flowing into science journals. Planetary scientists are mapping its surface and devising new ideas about what drives its activity. A paper in Icarus presented a new global geologic map of Io’s surface.1 The most common feature is plains (65.8%), followed by lava flow fields (28.5%, about a third of which are currently active), with a few mountains (3.2%) and patera floors (volcanic depressions, 2.5%). These paterae account for 64% of Io’s hot spots. The mountains and volcanoes appear evenly distributed by longitude, whereas there is a slight dropoff of lava flows in the polar regions. This was the first complete map of Io from Galileo data at 1:15M scale (1 km per pixel). Detailed surface mapping is essential for contemplating Io’s interior. This little moon, about the size of Earth’s moon, is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. What makes it pop, with dozens of volcanoes active at a time, spewing out 100 times more lava than all Earth’s volcanoes combined? A new theory by Krishan Khurana [UCLA] and a team from UCLA, UC Santa Cruz and University of Michigan at Ann Arbor is that Io has a global subsurface ocean of magma. Space.com and PhysOrg featured the theory published in Science.2 The team inferred the presence of a global conducting layer based on magnetometer data from the Galileo mission. They estimate that 20-30 miles below the crust, a layer of molten rock 30 miles deep produces the magnetic signature. They did not address, however, questions about how the molten material erupts onto the surface without plate tectonics, or why heavy elements seen in the ultramafic lavas remain near the surface rather than having dropped deep into the interior billions of years ago. Sat, 14 May 2011 18:34:31 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201105.htm#20110513bMay 13, 2011 — Are there a thousand species of dinosaurs – or far fewer? John Horner, a dinosaur hunter himself, thinks the classification is a mess and wants to clean it up. According to Science Magazine News Horner is worred that “with almost 1000 types of dinosaurs on record and a new species being named somewhere in the world every 2 weeks—too many supposedly new discoveries are actually duplicates of animals already on the books.” Another paleontologist, Michael J. Benton, estimates that over half of the named dinosaurs are misclassified. Apparently human pride is to blame. “Part of the problem, Horner says, is that scientists are sometimes too keen on finding and naming new dinosaurs.” Naming a new dinosaur gets you noticed and published. As a result, fossil hunters tend to focus on the differences instead of the similarities. Additionally, “paleontologists are coming to realize that the bones of an adult dinosaur can be very different from those of a juvenile animal of the same species and can easily mislead scientists into thinking they are two different species.” Ignoring these pitfalls can lead to misinterpretations about dinosaur evolution. “Early in their development, Horner explains, the skulls of young dinosaurs may resemble the relatively unspecialized skulls of primitive ancestral species. To avoid confusion, paleontologists must know precisely where a specimen came from, how it appeared while still encased in rock, and which level it occupied in a geologic formation.” Horner has proposed a “Unified Frame of Reference” (UFR) to fellow paleontologists to try to rein in these problems. Sat, 14 May 2011 18:33:52 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201105.htm#20110513aMay 13, 2011 — Evolution is a strange theory; it goes forwards, backwards, sideways and nowhere, fast or slow, up or down, inside out and outside in. Here are some examples that contradict the slow, gradual picture of progress that was so popular in Victorian England. 1. Re-using lost genes: Scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology are claiming that evolution dug into an old bag of tricks and pulled out something lost 200 years ago. “Ever since Charles Darwin proposed his theory of evolution in 1859, scientists have wondered whether evolutionary adaptations can be reversed,” the press release from MIT News said. Examples have been the re-evolution of wings in insects (see 05/28/2003). Using a computational model, Jeff Gore at the university decided that evolution can reverse itself, but only if fewer than four mutations were involved. He studied bacteria that achieved resistance to an antibiotic named cefotaxime. It took five mutations to confer resistance; there were 120 ways to get all five, but only 18 could actually occur, he found. The article did not get back to the question of how insects could re-evolve wings – a reversal that would seem to involve many more than four mutations. It also repeated the discredited idea that the human appendix is no longer needed. 2. Going nowhere: New Scientist announced in a bold headline, “Horsetail fossil tells tale of plant evolution.” But when the reader looks for said evolution, there is none to be found except a tale indeed. Alan Channing [Cardiff U] found a fossilized horsetail that must have been preserved in a hot spring environment. It looks modern: “Though a new species, the fossilised plant is quite similar to some horsetails living today with a single upright evergreen shaft,” the article confessed. While admitted that horsetails have had a “contested evolutionary history” that Channing’s work now “clears up,” the article went on to say that “The findings suggest horsetails experienced only modest innovations in their long evolutionary history.” Innovations? The article presented no evidence of ancestors of horsetails. Worse, Channing’s study pushes the origin of modern-looking horsetails back another 14 million years, to 150 million years before the present. The fossil preserved “not only stems but also leaf sheaths, roots and reproductive structures.” It’s as if this plant popped into existence 150 million years ago and never dreamt up any new innovations all the way to the present except, if anything, the older ones were bigger and better: “Today’s horsetail plants are living fossils, the only surviving members of the class Equisetopsida, the article ended. “For more than a 100 million years, Equisetopsida plants dominated the understory of the late Mesozoic period forests, stretching up to 30 metres high.” 3. Evolution in reverse: PhysOrg tells us that cicada-like insects called treehoppers cast aside their front wings 200 million years ago, only to call them up into service as headgear. “That’s probably shocking news if you are an entomologist, and challenges some very basic ideas about what makes an insect an insect, the researchers said.” Strange things happen in evolution. “But then, some 50 million years ago, something strange happened to the cicada-like treehoppers: they once again sprouted wing-like structures from the top of the first segment of the thorax.” But they didn’t flap: “Some of these wildly divergent extrusions resemble thorns, others look like antlers, and still others like aggressive ants or animal droppings, creating one of Nature’s most exotic menageries.” It wasn’t clear if the capitalized Nature referred to the outdoors or the journal Nature, where the study made the cover story.1 What does this mean for evolutionary theory? “Evolution is usually described as linear, but these modified wings suggested the process had come full circle.” Turning evolution into a personified inventor, French biologist Benjamin Prud'homme said, “This extra pair of wings was not needed for flight, but nor did it prevent it. So it became raw material for evolution to play with.” A co-author said that the study shows “how development abilities can be lost or silenced over millions of years, only to be redeployed to contribute to the evolution of a complex and beautiful appendage.” The abstract of the Nature paper remarked, “This innovation in the insect body plan is an unprecedented situation in 250 Myr of insect evolution.” The paper claimed this required no new genetic information: “We submit that morphological innovations can arise from the deployment of existing but silenced developmental potentials, therefore requiring not so much the evolution of new genetic material but instead the expression of these potentials.” 4. Evolution in hiding: Biologists who study fungi have found an embarrassing surprise: according to PhysOrg, “a hitherto unknown type of fungi which has fundamentally expanded the scientific understanding of this group of organisms.” A British team has uncovered a whole new group of fungi which they named cryptomycota – hidden fungi. Dr Tom Richards, from the University of Exeter’s Biosciences department and the Natural History Museum London, said: “This study has been very surprising – not least because the original sample came from the nearby pond. Fungi have been well studied for 150 years and it was thought we had a good understanding of the major evolutionary groups, but these findings have changed that radically. “Current understanding of fungal diversity turns out to be only half the story – we’ve discovered this diverse and deep evolutionary branch in fungi that has remained hidden all this time.” Cryptomycota apparently lack a rigid cell wall. What does this mean? The article referred to the fungus as either an “intermediate state” or a “living fossil,” but admitted that it must be successful: “Despite lacking the tough cell wall, they seem still to be very successful in the environment because of their extensive diversity and cosmopolitan distribution.” The discovery also points out that biologists may be oblivious to large segments of the living world: “Until recent years, researchers investigating microbial diversity have sampled by growing microbes in lab cultures, but now it seems that the vast majority of life forms are never captured using these methods – meaning most of the evolutionary complexity of life remains unsampled.” 5. Unnatural selection: What would you call “unnatural selection” Would it be synonymous with intelligent design? Not according to Michael Le Page at New Scientist, who has been writing a series about how humans are harming the environment with their pesticides, hunting, climate change, pollution, diseases, and shuffling of invasive species. He left begging the question of whether humans were naturally selected to do this. Fri, 13 May 2011 20:12:30 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201105.htm#20110511aMay 11, 2011 — When science became a profession instead of an avocation, there were some unintended consequences. Scientists began to lose touch with the public. When a scientist goes to work doing science for a living, he or she sometimes takes public support for granted, thinking the work is justified for its own sake. Recent articles, however, warn scientists and scientific institutions to re-think their presumed authority. They need to start acting more accountable to the public who expects a return on investment. Part of the need for scientists to re-evaluate their status comes from mistakes and surprises. Society looks to scientists to understand the world, but often, they are caught off guard or backtracking on previously well-established theories. In today’s news, for instance, the BBC said that astronomers are “mystified” by high-energy gamma rays seen coming from the Crab Nebula. Space.com says this burst “defies explanation.” Many of the findings from the Cassini Mission to Saturn, like the Enceladus geysers and the lack of an ethane ocean on Titan, contradicted predictions and still have no explanation. PhysOrg reported that the discovery of hot Jupiters (gas giants orbiting near other stars) orbiting backwards “so obviously violates our most basic picture of planet and star formation.” Another embarrassment comes when the public comes to believe, or scientists admit, that their projects were not worth doing in the first place. For instance, the political push for biofuels is well known, but PhysOrg reported on a study that shows that conventional fossil fuels are sometimes greener than biofuels, when their entire carbon footprint is measured. Remember the promises of artificial intelligence (AI)? PhysOrg reminded readers that back in the 1950s and 60s, “hopes were high that tools emerging from the new science of computation would soon unravel the mysteries of human thought.” Since then, AI research has had to dramatically reduce its aspirations; “As the computational complexity of even the most common human cognitive tasks became clear, however, researchers trimmed their sails,” the article admitted, quoting one researcher who couldn’t imagine building a robot able to reach into its pocket for its keys. Embryonic stem cell research has yet to produce one actual treatment despite soaring promises, and the Human Genome Project, while generating a great deal of knowledge, similarly failed to simplify our understanding of human diseases. Last week, Science News reported that “Evolutionary literary criticism” (see 01/27/2006 has flopped, remaining unpopular in the university. To be sure, any investigation of the unknown is going to have problems and setbacks. But when the public pays for it, or when parents pay big bucks to have their children sit under science professors, they have reason to expect some return on investment. This was emphasized in a Nature editorial this week,1 “Value judgements.” Members of the public are stake-holders in science, the editors admitted; their values cannot be ignored. Scientists cannot just assume that the old canard of “knowledge for its own sake” will sell. A recent symposium published by the journal Minerva raised awareness of this: Policy-makers, funders and scientists should take note. For example, a paper by Ryan Meyer, also a policy scientist at Arizona State University, focuses on the failure of the US government’s Global Change Research Program to deliver broad public value (Minerva 49, 47–70; 2011). Basing his studies on public statements and private interviews with researchers and political decision-makers, Meyer says that US climate programmes have in the past two decades benefited from public investment of more than US$30 billion, but have largely failed to produce information and participation in the forms that policy-makers and the public wanted. The notion that society considers any advance in knowledge to be inherently good – even if the science fails to meet the objectives and priorities it was meant to address – cannot be sustained, says Meyer. The editorial reflected on post-normal science: “Science becomes ‘post-normal’ when facts are uncertain, stakes high, values in dispute and decisions urgent; in such cases, societal needs must be taken into account to avoid costly mistakes.” The controversies about climate science come to mind. The editors pointed to climate science as an example; “But, according to the workshop participants, most climate researchers continue to act as if purely scientific values are, and will always be, adequate to set the agenda.” The editors of Nature agree with the scientific consensus on climate science, but realize that scientists have lost the public trust on the matter. This pointed up another unintended consequence of the professionalism of science: scientists became a special-interest group, seeking their own priorities instead of those of society: More importantly, these studies highlight a significant deficit in current typical appraisals of science and technology outcomes. They should serve as cautionary tales about the danger of scientists’ interests, deliberately or otherwise, becoming too dominant in determining outcomes. And they introduce ways to assess failures in social returns on investment that, one can only hope, will help to improve science’s public value. How did science become professionalized in the first place? The Scientist presented an essay by historian of science by Laura J. Snyder. “In the 19th century, four friends changed the way scientists viewed themselves,” the subtitle of her essay begins, and “It’s time for another shake-up.” Those friends, featured in her new book The Philosophical Breakfast Club (Broadway Books, 2011), were William Whewell (who coined the term scientist), Charles Babbage, John Herschel, and Richard Jones. “Each of the four men was brilliant, self-assured, and possessed of the optimism of the age,” Snyder said. It was these four, who met for “Philosophical Breakfasts” to discuss the status of science, who were most influential in transforming science “from the province of the amateur—the clergyman collecting fossils or beetles in his spare hours, or the wealthy gentleman conducting electrical experiments at his country estate—to the career of the professional: trained at the university, published in specialized journals, and admitted to associations open only to fellow professionals.” Darwin, for instance, rode the wave that elevated the scientist to the revered professional. But then Snyder pointed out that the achievement of these four philosophers led to a serious problem plaguing science in our day: One of the unintended consequences of the revolution wrought by the Philosophical Breakfast Club has been that the professional scientist is now less interested in, and perhaps less capable of, connecting with the broader public, sharing the new discoveries and theories that most excite the scientific community. Although there are some notable exceptions, today’s researcher has been less adept than the Victorian-era natural philosopher at engaging the public—and this estranged the general public from science. In part this is because the scientific establishment discourages its members from writing popular books and articles, considering these projects unserious, even frivolous, diversions from the real work of research. But this attitude has to change in order to mend the ever-deepening rift between science and the rest of modern culture. Today’s scientist should strive to be more like the 19th-century natural philosopher—ironically, more like those very men who created the modern scientist. Thu, 12 May 2011 02:47:13 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201105.htm#20110510aMay 10, 2011 — The giant smog-shrouded moon of Saturn, Titan, is changing – both in situ and in the minds of planetary scientists. Several news stories show not only dynamic processes in play, but revolutions in what scientists think about the moon and its history. Readers will need to determine which ideas are solidly based on observational evidence. 1. Punching bag: Where did Titan get its thick nitrogen atmosphere, unique to the bodies of the outer solar system? Yasuhito Sekine, a planetary scientist at the University of Tokyo, believes the nitrogen came special delivery, in the form of comets, during a theoretical period called the Late Heavy Bombardment. Space.com and New Scientist parroted Sekine’s ideas without stopping to ask why the comets left their gas at Titan and not the other moons. Space.com did ask, however, where the impact craters went. Perhaps they were covered up somehow. The article quoted one other planetary scientist who called Sekine’s idea “an interesting hypothesis.” 2. Falling sky: A Cassini press release from Jet Propulsion Laboratory says that Titan’s atmospheric haze is dropping as the sun moves northward, changing Titan’s seasons from equinox to solstice. In just a few months, the news feature said, the upper haze layer dipped from 310 miles to 240 miles. Chicken Little was not interviewed for reaction, although the caption said he was “notified”. 3. Unobservable ocean: Space.com says that “all signs point to hidden ocean” under Titan’s surface. “Certain details of Titan’s orbit and rotation aren’t compatible with the behavior of a celestial body that is completely solid all the way through,” the short article stated. “But these details make a lot of sense if the huge moon is assumed to have a subsurface ocean, likely of liquid water, researchers said.” If true, the ocean (estimated 100 miles or more beneath the icy crust) is composed mainly of water – not of hydrocarbons necessary to replenish Titan’s atmospheric methane. The article did not address the problem of keeping volatile, short-lived methane around for billions of years. The article threw in the L-word, saying that Titan “is considered one of the leading candidates to host life beyond Earth.” Rose-Marie Balland [Royal University of Belgium], whose team is proposing the ocean model, was not shy about leaping beyond scientific knowledge: “Astrobiologists do not not really know yet what are the necessary conditions for life to emerge,” she said, “but it seems that the presence of water is a requirement.” 4. Familiar shores: Space.com posted a video animation, based on actual radar data, of a flyover of Titan’s large southern lake, Ontario Lacus (warning: loud Kinect ad precedes and follows the video). Steve Wall explains the bays, beaches and bathtub rings of the lake, thought to be filled with liquid ethane and methane, surrounded by water ice mountains. 5. Separated at birth: Live Science floated the idea that Titan has look-alikes. “Some Alien Planets May Be Like Saturn’s Moon Titan,” Charles Q. Choi speculated after hearing astrobiologist Chris McKay speculate about planets around red dwarfs, and even “rogue planets” careening through space in the dark without a star to warm them. Maybe they should understand a Titan they can see before speculating about unseen brethren. Last month the BBC News recounted the success of the Huygens Probe, the first spacecraft to land on Titan. Now, it’s about TiME to return to Titan to explore its lakes: the Titan Mare Explorer (TiME) is one of several proposed missions after Cassini to return to Titan’s maria and investigate them at sea level. PhysOrg and New Scientist reported on the proposal from Johns Hopkins to land a floating craft in one of the lakes. As it drifts with the breeze, it could “measure the lake’s depth with sonar and taste the brew of chemicals it contains” looking for signs of life. A decision about which proposed planetary missions gets funding should be made in 2012. Wed, 11 May 2011 05:26:22 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201105.htm#20110509aMay 09, 2011 — Evolutionists have long known of systematic gaps in the fossil record. This has been a frequent criticism lodged by Darwin skeptics against the evolutionary notion of a gradually unfolding tree of life. Now, however, it appears that evolutionists have revived use of a tool in their arsenal for combating the critics: imagination. Missing transitions in the record? No problem. Fill them in with “evolutionary thinking.” This tactic was illustrated in a cheerful article about Dr Marcello Ruta of the University of Bristol, posted on Science Daily, describing his research into the Permian extinction – an evolutionary scenario that supposedly wiped out the majority of life forms on earth 250 million years ago. In particular, parareptiles,2 “a diverse group of bizarre-looking terrestrial vertebrates which varied in shape and size,” had been thought to have been hit hard by the extinction event, whatever it was; but the Bristol team is now claiming that, to the contrary, “parareptiles were not hit much harder by the end-Permian extinction than at any other point in their 90 million-year history.” They lived merrily on for another 50 million years, declining and diversifying repeatedly during their long tenure on earth. At first glance, the article seems to score wins for Darwinism: the team at Bristol has made strides connecting the dots and filling in the gaps. After all, they were “studying the fossil record,” the article alleged. A closer look at their gap-filling material, however, shows it lacks empirical substance: # However, as the quality and completeness of the fossil record varies considerably, both geographically and stratigraphically, palaeontologists need to find a way to ‘join the dots’ and piece together the fragments of a complex mosaic to give a more satisfactory and better picture of ancient life’s diversity. # The team led by Dr Marcello Ruta of Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences ... used the evolutionary relationships among known parareptiles to produce a corrected estimate of changing diversity through time. # Dr Marcello Ruta said: “Evolutionary relationships can be superimposed on a time scale, allowing you to infer missing portions of past diversity. They are powerful tools that complement and refine the known record of extinct diversity. If you visualize evolutionary relationships in the form of branching diagrams and then plot them on a time scale, new patterns begin to emerge, with gaps in the fossil record suddenly filling rapidly.” One of the team members elaborated on the success of visualization and imagination as gap-filling strategies. “It is as if ghosts from the past appear all of a sudden and join their relatives in a big family tree – you have a bigger tree,” he said. “This way, you can start analysing observed and extrapolated abundance of species through time, and you can quantify novel origination and extinction events that would otherwise go unnoticed if you were to look at known finds only.” How big a part do the known finds play in this game? Apparently, not that much. Another co-author of the paper emphasized the role of “evolutionary thinking” as a substitute for real bones: “Classic text-book views of waxing and waning of groups through deep time will certainly benefit, where possible, from the use of evolutionary thinking.” A peer from the University of Washington seemed delighted with this first-ever detailed study of parareptile relationships, because “we still know very little about their biology.” The study was published in the journal Palaeontology.2 The abstract states that they provided “Phylogeny-corrected measures of diversity” and examined “ghost lineages” – i.e., lineages that should be there if evolution were true, but left no fossils. Paul Nelson at the Discovery Institute described ghost lineages in a pair of articles for Evolution News in January 19 and February 4, 2011. Wed, 11 May 2011 00:44:28 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201105.htm#20110508aMay 08, 2011 — Humans sip their nectar by tipping a glass and slurping, but how can a hummingbird pull liquid out of flowers with a tongue? Up until now, scientists thought that hummingbird tongues acted like capillary tubes. New research with high-speed cameras show that the action is much more clever – so clever it might lead to advances in human machinery. PhysOrg posted a summary of a paper on PNAS,1 where scientists from the University of Connecticut decided to check out how hummingbirds do it. Using high-speed cameras on 30 hummingbirds from 10 species, Rico-Guevara and Rubega discovered that the hummingbird tongue acts as a fluid trap, not a capillary tube. The tongue splits into two parts, lined with hair-like extensions called lamellae. As the bird pulls the tongue out from the nectar, the two parts come together automatically and trap the nectar, pulling the food into the mouth. The PhysOrg article includes four video clips showing the action in slow motion. The researchers further discovered that the same action occurs when the tongue of dead birds is pulled through simulated nectar, showing it is an automatic action, “therefore highly efficient because no energy expenditure by the bird is required to drive the opening and closing of the trap.” According to the article, hummingbirds flick their tongues in and out of the nectar as fast as 20 times per second. The abstract from the paper ended with a tantalizing hint of where this research can lead: “We propose a conceptual mechanical explanation for this unique fluid-trapping capacity, with far-reaching practical applications (e.g., biomimetics).” Bird lovers will want to watch the entertaining performance on Science Nation of Griffin, an African gray parrot, posted on Live Science. Is this bird really smart enough to understand shapes and colors, or is it responding to subconscious cues from its trainers? Whether or not you believe Irene Pepperberg’s claim that they controlled for such cues, everyone will agree that “bird brains” are “smarter than you think.” Mon, 09 May 2011 06:22:17 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201105.htm#20110507aMay 07, 2011 — Remember when botulinum toxin, one of the most potent poisons known to man, entered medical science for good? Now fashion models brag about how “botox” improved their good looks, and sufferers of excess sweating or migraines find relief with the neurotoxin. The search for good in bad substances has not stopped; other venomous organisms, once a scourge of mankind, are being investigated as agents of health for our bodies and our crops. 1. Nature’s pharmacy: Live Science listed the following plants and animals as potential sources of medicine: venomous cone snails, cave creatures, sap from the guggel tree, a weed from the Nile, and various extracts from sea squirts. “Nature is a prolific source of new medicines,” the article said. “In fact, natural products have led to more than half of the new drugs introduced during the past 25 years.” A passing reference to evolution said, “Over millions of years, organisms have evolved protective chemicals that interact with specific proteins in their enemies,” but did not elaborate on how that could have happened or how the organisms survived without them in the meantime. “Where nature is hiding the next medical treasure is anyone’s guess.” 2. Snail drug store: Back in February, PhysOrg mentioned work at the University of Utah to isolate prialt, a venom from a marine cone snail. “Prialt is injected into the fluid surrounding the spinal cord to treat chronic, intractable pain suffered by people with cancer, AIDS, injury, failed back surgery or certain nervous system disorders.” 3. Scorpion fertilizer: An article on Science Daily describes work at Michigan State working to understand scorpion venom as a useful pesticide for farmers. Apparently the venom attacks some ion channels in insects but not mammals. If researchers can determine why, they may be able to design pesticides that selectively attack insects without hurting other animals. They are using the Israeli desert scorpion as their model organism. 4. Spider painkiller: Back in March, Science Daily reported on work at UC Riverside to isolate a toxin in the American funnel web spider that appears effective in blocking the action of calcium channels. “The toxin offers a new target for studying T-type channels, which play a role in congestive heart failure, hypertension, epilepsy and pain.” The Live Science article mentioned above explained why natural substances hold promise for medicine: “Because all living things share the same basic biochemistry, those chemicals can interact with the same proteins in people.” Sometimes a little poison, injected into the right place under the right conditions, can bring healing and relief. See also 06/08/2004, 05/21/2007 bullet 4, and 12/10/2010, bullet 14. Mon, 09 May 2011 05:34:40 GMT