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Just as I cant believe that there was a Creator, I cant believe that this all happened by chance, which implies there was a Creator. So you see Im in a completely hopeless bind, and Ive stayed there. | ||||||||||||||
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If you have been a regular visitor, please write in and tell us what you think about this service. Please give your name and city, and (optional) vocation. Your name will not be published without your permission. Click here to email a message. Thank you for helping spread the word about Creation-Evolution Headlines. Make it your one-stop portal for lively information on lifes most important question: where did we come from? Cosmologist Squirms at Thought of Fine-Tuning 09/30/2004 Lawrence Krauss (Case Western Reserve U, Ohio) meant to talk about prospects for distinguishing between sources of so-called dark energy, the mysterious force that appears to be accelerating the expansion of the universe. But in the process, he opened his soul and revealed feelings, dreams, and nightmares. First, he states the problem: Dark energy is perplexing. Physical theory currently has no explanation of why the energy of empty space should be precisely zero (quantum-mechanical effects combined with relativity in fact predict quite the opposite). But it also gives no explanation of why that energy should not instead be so huge that it would dwarf all of the energy in anything else (making galaxy formation impossible). (Emphasis added in all quotes.)The measured value for the cosmological constant hovers around exactly -1. That is far from huge, but not zero. Sounds like we a fine-tuning problem here. Krauss would rather find a theory that predicts why the universe has to be the way it is. If dark energy, whatever it is, appears to be due to a finely tuned value for the cosmological constant, we are stuck with explaining how we became so lucky to have another precisely fixed cosmic parameter that, if changed, would rule out life, because it would rule out galaxy formation. He takes some comfort in the work of Kunz et al. who are looking for other sources for the dark energy. If he fails, the thought of this big problem in cosmology lurking on the horizon gives Krauss nightmares: Thus, some of us wake up in the middle of the night worrying that the discovery of dark energy may put cosmology on the same footing as particle physics, with all of the data that have come in over the years pointing consistently to exactly the same set of cosmic parameters, but without revealing any smoking-guns that could direct us to a fundamental theoretical rationale for why the data take these values. I have even made a bet with physicists Stephen Hawking and Frank Wilczek that this will happen (then, even if my worst nightmare turns out to be true, I will at least get a few bottles of wine out of the bargain). On the other hand, perhaps the cross-comparison of present and future cosmological observations, along the lines proposed by Kunz et al., will yield some new handle on this slippery problem. In that case, I might lose my bet, but the golden age of cosmology would persist. 1Lawrence M. Krauss, Cosmology: What is dark energy?, Nature 431, 519 - 520 (30 September 2004); doi:10.1038/431519b. Atheists would rather get drunk than face the prospect that they live in a finely-tuned universe, created on purpose by an all-wise, caring, intelligent Creator. Fear not, Dr. Krauss; the sober life brings more ultimate satisfaction.PBS Airs Another Evolution Series: Origins 09/29/2004 PBS NOVA aired its latest installment on evolution, a 4-hour miniseries entitled Origins, on September 28 and 29. The website hype describes it as follows: Has the universe always existed? How did it become a place that could harbor life? What was the birth of our planet like? Are we alone, or are there alien worlds waiting to be discovered? NOVA presents some startling new answers in Origins, a groundbreaking four-part NOVA miniseries hosted by dynamic astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. Tyson leads viewers on a cosmic journey to the beginning of time and into the distant reaches of the universe, searching for lifes first stirrings and its traces on other worlds. (Emphasis added in all quotes.)The series has four parts. Our reaction is added in green after each synopsis.
Maybe PBS learned its lesson from October 2001 that the E word is a lightning rod. Concepts are not mitigated by avoidance of loaded words and euphemisms. Maybe Origins is gentler word, but this was nothing less than PBS Evolution 2004 (See 09/28/2001 headline), and evolution was the last word Tyson uttered, with feeling.Date of Biblical Artifact Corroborated 09/29/2004 In 1979, a silver scroll was discovered near Jerusalem that contained the text of the priestly benediction known from the Pentateuch (Numbers 6:24-26). The scroll was dated at the 7th century BC at the time, but doubts remained, some thinking that instead it was from post-exilic times centuries later. Now, according to a New York Times report by John Noble Wilford echoed in the Oakland Tribune, researchers at the University of Southern California have now re-examined the inscriptions using space-age photographic and computer imaging techniques, and concluded that the artifacts indeed date from the pre-exilic period. The international team used some advanced digital imaging techniques at Jet Propulsion Laboratory to bring out hitherto undetectable fine details in the artifact. This is a small but important piece in a large puzzle of archaeological evidence that supports the historicity of the Pentateuch (the books of Moses). Liberal scholars and skeptics have claimed that Moses could not have written such books; they assumed the books were compiled much later, after the Babylonian exile. Artifacts like this show that quotations from the Pentateuch were in common knowledge and circulation centuries earlier.Human Common Ancestor Lived 3500 Years Ago 09/29/2004 Nature Science Update reported on a surprising find by Joseph Change (Yale) and Douglas Rohde (MIT). They claim, based on computer modeling of human breeding and migration, that we are all related to the same common ancestor, not millions, but just thousands of years ago, possibly just 1500 BC in Asia, and that perhaps a couple of thousand years before that, everyone alive at that time was an ancestor of all of us living today. The results are published in Nature Sept. 30.1 The finding is not entirely new; it is more a refinement of simpler models taking better account of migration and geographical isolation. It does not mean people didnt exist before that, but only that the current population is genealogically related. Jotun Hein (Oxford) cautions in the same issue2 that genealogical questions are distinct from questions about the history of our genetic material, which are estimated by different methods: Universal common ancestry (in the pedigree sense) and genetic common ancestry thus occur on different timescales, he says. If you think about it, its not all that surprising that in relatively few generations, a populations family trees will overlap. Think of inverted pyramids that overlap slightly; as they grow (going back in time), they will all eventually converge, unless the populations are completely isolated, which does not seem to be the case for any people group. Simple models that assumed random mating converged in just 33 generations, or 800 years ago, which is clearly unrealistic. By taking geography and history into account, Hein says, Rohde has tried to arrive at a more credible date for the MRCA (most recent common ancestor). Even more surprising, Hein says, the models predict that before the MRCA, anyone alive would have been an ancestor of everyone alive today. Rohde, Olsen and Chang explain: Given the remaining uncertainties about migration rates and real-world mating patterns, the date of the MRCA [most recent common ancestor] for everyone living today cannot be identified with great precision. Nevertheless, our results suggest that the most recent common ancestor for the worlds current population lived in the relatively recent pastperhaps within the last few thousand years. And a few thousand years before that, although we have received genetic material in markedly different proportions from the people alive at the time, the ancestors of everyone on the Earth today were exactly the same. (Emphasis added in all quotes.)The implication is that the entire human race today, no matter the continent, culture, skin color, language or lifestyle, is a member of one big family: Further work is needed to determine the effect of this common ancestry on patterns of genetic variation in structured populations. But to the extent that ancestry is considered in genealogical rather than genetic terms, our findings suggest a remarkable proposition: no matter the languages we speak or the colour of our skin, we share ancestors who planted rice on the banks of the Yangtze, who first domesticated horses on the steppes of the Ukraine, who hunted giant sloths in the forests of North and South America, and who laboured to build the Great Pyramid of Khufu.For another summary, see the report on EurekAlert, Most recent common ancestor of all humans surprisingly recent. Few other popular science news sources are reporting the story not New Scientist, Scientific American, National Geographic, the BBC News or MSNBC as eagerly as they typically do with discoveries of hominid fossils alleged to be human evolutionary ancestors. 1Douglas L. T. Rohde, Steve Olson, and Joseph T. Chang, Modelling the recent common ancestry of all living humans, Nature 431, 562 - 566 (30 September 2004); doi:10.1038/nature02842. 2Jotun Hein, Human evolution: Pedigrees for all humanity, Nature 431, 518 - 519 (30 September 2004); doi:10.1038/431518a. Notice the model converges on a few thousand years ago, not millions. Such a date is closer to Noah than Lucy. Care should be exercised interpreting what this means, because it is somewhat of a counterintuitive artifact of a mathematical model that makes certain assumptions. Another counterintuitive result, Hein claims, is that not many generations ago (about six), members of our pedigree existed that did not contribute to us genetically. The authors are not claiming that humankind popped into existence a few thousand years ago, but only that everyone alive today had the same ancestors. Can the same models be applied to guppies, tigers and oak trees? Hein points to additional interesting questions that will require further refinement of models and the combining of pedigree and genetic ancestry information. One question he asks is, In the idealized models, how far back would one have to go to find a single couple who are the lone ancestors of everybody? to which we might add, and did their names start with A and E?Solar Wind Erodes Mars Atmosphere 09/28/2004 Physics Web has a summary of a report that appeared in Science Sept. 24.1 First results from an experiment on ESAs Mars Express called Analyzer of Space Plasma and Energetic Atoms (ASPERA-3) are in. They show that the solar wind penetrates deep into Mars atmosphere, as far as 270 km above the Martian surface. Since Mars has no global magnetic field, the energy of the solar wind strips away hydrogen and oxygen ions. This means Mars appears to be slowly dehydrating. Nature Science Update summarized a paper that indicates Mars once had acid rain and briny seas. Surprisingly it calls this climate ideally suited to life, presumably because liquid water narrows the temperature. A warm planet is good news for the prospect that life once existed there, it says. Meanwhile, back on the surface, the Mars Exploration Rovers have been given another six months of work, reports New Scientist. Spirit and Opportunity are warming up again now that the peak of Martian winter has past. Mars Global Surveyor took a remarkable image from orbit, showing Spirit and its tracks on the surface. 1Lundin et al., Solar Wind-Induced Atmospheric Erosion at Mars: First Results from ASPERA-3 on Mars Express, Science, Vol 305, Issue 5692, 1933-1936, 24 September 2004, [DOI: 10.1126/science.1101860]. Astrobiologists are filled with vibrant faith that life emerged from the bowels of hellish conditions, on Earth and on Mars both. It was a constant theme on the PBS Origins program (see 09/13/2004 headline). No evidence is required for this religion, just lots of maybes. Thats why we need these spacecraft and rovers to keep patiently, silently gathering data. Data have a way of putting dampers on wild speculations.Clean-Air Laws and Tree-Planting Cause Increased Air Pollution? 09/24/2004 A major source of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), precursors of ozone pollution, is tree leaves, says a report in EurekAlert. Surprisingly, the increase in trees due to abandoned farms has worsened the pollution. Industry-caused nitrogen-oxygen (NOx) compounds also lead to ozone, and it is not clear how these sources interact. Nevertheless, it appears that reductions in man-made pollutants in the area from Alabama to Virginia, thanks to cleaner fuels and clean-air laws, may have been outweighed by VOC emissions from increasing density of forests reclaiming abandoned farms. It seems ironic that plantation foresting, a bio-friendly industry, could be contributing to air pollution. Researchers from Princeton investigating these cause-effect relationships could not help recalling President Ronald Reagans 1980 remark about hydrocarbons from trees accounting for about 80% of our air pollution, but they reasoned that the evidence does not prove that responsibility for pollution can be or should be shifted from humans to trees. The authors state that the distinction between what is natural and what is human-caused is disappearing. (See also 03/17/2003 headline.) This story goes to show that even observable, measurable, present-day processes can be complex and can give rise to counterintuitive interpretations. How, then, can Darwinists write so glibly about prehistoric events and processes? Conventional wisdom would say the more trees the better. Maybe not; maybe it depends on the tree. The article states that certain species, like sweet gum and fast-growing pines, give off more VOCs than others, and suggest that old-growth forests are not as polluting. Many other factors could be involved: temperature, parasites, ground cover, sunlight, geography, fire history, or even the presence or absence of animals and fungi or other ecological relationships. Los Angeles was described as hazy long before the automobile arrived. No one can say for sure at this point how much humans are to blame for influencing the complex factors that contribute to VOCs, Nox, ozone production and air pollution. Beware the either-or fallacy: i.e., trees are all good, humans are all bad. Recall the proverb that complex problems can have easy-to-understand, common-sense, simple, wrong answers. We still have much to learn. Maybe VOCs are not all that bad for health. There must be a reason why the sweet smell of a forest makes us want to breathe in slow and deep, close our eyes, and say Aahhhhh.Big Science Portrays Embryonic Stem Cell Issue as Political Litmus Test 09/27/2004 The number of articles in scientific journals on embryonic stem cell research (also called therapeutic cloning) has been on the rise, particularly those referring to Britains or John Kerrys support of it (see 08/11/2004 editorial), and Germanys or Bushs opposition to it. Though science journals are expected to be above politics, on this issue their desire for political leaders with liberal policies on embryonic stem cell research is palpable. How do they justify it morally? (For the alternative, see 09/03/2004 headline.)
1Editorial: Time to look to the future, Nature 431, 385 (23 September 2004); doi:10.1038/431385b. 2Michael Gross, UK cloning moves prompt questions abroad, Current Biology, Volume 14, Issue 18, 21 September 2004, Pages R732-R733, doi:10.1016/j.cub.2004.09.002. 3Gretchen Vogel, California Debates Whether to Become Stem Cell Heavyweight, Science, Vol 305, Issue 5690, 1544-1545, 10 September 2004, [DOI: 10.1126/science.305.5690.1544]. 4Gretchen Vogel, Stem Cell Claims Face Legal Hurdles, Science, Vol 305, Issue 5692, 1887, 24 September 2004, [DOI: 10.1126/science.305.5692.1887a]. 5Giuseppe Testa and John Harris, Ethical Aspects of ES Cell-Derived Gametes, Science, Vol 305, Issue 5691, 1719, 17 September 2004, [DOI: 10.1126/science.1103083]. 6David Baltimore, Science and the Bush Administration, Science, Vol 305, Issue 5692, 1873, 24 September 2004, [DOI: 10.1126/science.305.5692.1873]. The advice of the politically-savvy voter holds true here: follow the money trail. The advocates of ES research are straining to find moral rationalizations for creating human beings for the purpose of destroying them, while the underlying drumbeat is always money, priority and prestige. Big Science is concerned about who will be first, not who will be right. Individual scientists who promote it have Nobel Prize dollars in their sights.Darwinian Just-So Story Criticized 09/27/2004 When Young and Brodie & son published their article How the Horned Lizard Got its Horns, (see 04/01/2004 headline), they apparently meant it as a bit of April-fool joke, not a real Kipling-style just-so story. Several respondents in the Sept 24 issue of Science,1 however, either didnt think it was funny or concluded the story was just-so after all:
1Letters to the editor, Science, Vol 305, Issue 5692, 1909-1910, 24 September 2004, [DOI: 10.1126/science.305.5692.1909b]. Here was a rare, valiant attempt at providing just one clear, unambiguous association between a trait and a survival advantage, and even their fellow evolutionists were not convinced. So what are the rest of us supposed to think about the validity of adaptive stories in the Darwinian tradition?Big Pieces Missing in Darwins Theory, Says USC Scientist 09/27/2004 A USC professor of gerontology has explored a new way to look at aging that directly opposes principles set forth by Darwin in his theory of natural selection, reports EurekAlert (Emphasis added in all quotes). Valter Longos theory of aging employs group selection instead of individual selection (see 05/31/2004 headline). He thinks that in a population, individuals are programmed to die altruistically to conserve resources for the good of the group: In research published in the Sept. 27 edition of the Journal of Cell Biology, Longo proposes that aging is programmed so that the majority of a population dies prematurely to provide nutrients for the sake of a few individuals who have acquired the genetic mutations that increase their chances of reproduction.In his view, aging is programmed and altruistic, not due to chance. Though his experiments were done with yeast, he thinks the principles could be applicable to humans, although we dont know whether its true yet or not, he admits. Longo said he realizes that this theory goes against the fundamental theories of evolution, which is why he took 10 years to publish, combing through scientific papers dating back to the 1870s to learn about the genesis of the theory of natural selection and speaking with prominent evolutionary biologists about his ideas.Life is programmed, he says, but he does not yet know if death is programmed, too. Sargent Williams, discipline Private Longo; he has stepped out of line (see 05/31/2004. No disrespect for General Charlie is permitted.Does Psychology Find Anything New Under the Skull? 09/25/2004 Two recent psychological reports seem to either state the obvious or underscore teachings of old-time religion.
The only value in the science of psychology seems to be the gathering of statistics, but even those can be biased. These researchers could have saved a lot of time by just reading the Bible. The good book teaches us to love our enemies and turn the other cheek, and warns against vindictiveness. It stresses the need for forgiveness and looking to the Lord for hope. Jesus said that our life does not consist in the abundance of our possessions. None of these things requires a scientific research program, but it is unlikely they would have received grant money for looking up Scripture passages. Anyone who thinks a psychologist will provide better therapy than time spent with the Wonderful Counselor and Prince of Peace should get his head examined.Update: Intelligent Design Paper 09/24/2004 The controversy over Stephen Meyers intelligent design paper (see 09/16/2004 headline) continues. Science printed a brief but dismissive news item claiming its publication was a mistake, but journal editor Rick Sternberg has answered the charges on his personal website. Meyer has responded to criticisms leveled by Richard Monastersky in the Chronicle of Education. The Discovery Institute has provided materials to reporters due to the unprecedented attention this publication has raised. This is a good chance to study both sides of an issue and do some baloney detecting.Name-Calling at the Human Evolution Meeting 09/23/2004 As predicted earlier this month (see 09/03/2004 commentary), Lucys lovers were not going to take her demotion lying down. Proponents of Orrorin claim their 6 million year old rival walked upright millions of years before the 2-4 million year old australopithecines, and even had a gait more human-like than Lucy. To Ann Gibbons, reporting in Science1 on a meeting at the French Academy of Sciences last week, this is a serious charge: If so, australopithecines would be bumped off the direct line to humansa dramatic revision of our prehistory. Tempers flared at the meeting of paleoanthropologists in Paris. The sweltering heat outside was matched inside as scientists hotly debated the attributes of anthropologys most famous thighbone, she reports. More than 100 scholars packed the academys opulent, wood-paneled Grande Salle to witness the first face-to-face gathering of the discoverers of the three oldest putative hominids. In talks and a panel discussion, the researchers discussed whether Orrorin and other contenders for the title of earliest human ancestor walked upright and in what manner. Bipedalism is a traditional hallmark of membership in the human family rather than being an ancestor of chimpanzees, gorillas, or quadrupedal apes. (Emphasis added in all quotes.)Critics denied the measurements of the thighbone ball-and-socket neck that Orrorin supporters used to support the claim it walked upright. The measurements were made incorrectly, they said, or were incapable of accurate measurement. Tim White, whose mysterious specimen Ardipethicus, is a 4.4-million year old contender, grilled Bri-Gitte Senut over Orrorin. The heated arguments came to a climax with White calling Senuts claim a French expletive that provoked an angry reaction: White accepts that Orrorin walked upright and so is one of the first members of the hominid family. But he says Senut has offered little evidence as to Orrorins gait. Was it human, an Australopithecus pattern, or something different? he asked. Even standard x-rays would help answer that question. As the discussion grew more heated, White called Senuts displacement of australopithecines une position créationniste, because it suggests that Orrorins femur was quite modern 6 million years ago, rather than evolving in stages.White responded by showing photos of broken-up fragments of a bashed-in skull that looked like roadkill. 1Ann Gibbons, Paleoanthropology: Oldest Human Femur Wades Into Controversy, Science, Vol 305, Issue 5692, 1885 , 24 September 2004, [DOI: 10.1126/science.305.5692.1885a] Thank you, Ann, for this amusing account of the turf wars in Paris and the demise of evolutionary paleoanthropology. Do you realize how funny this is? It is hilarious partly because they take themselves so seriously. They are fighting over whose fragments of vanity win the prize for best tall tale, and to have it climax in one of them calling the other the C word, well, thats too much. For more whoppers, just follow the chain links on Early Man for the last four years.Cell Exhibits Robust Engineering Design 09/22/2004 An international team of biotechnologists writing in the journal Cell1 thinks biologists need to focus more on the concept of robust engineering design. The abstract sounds like something out of an Intelligent Design Movement paper: Robustness, the ability to maintain performance in the face of perturbations and uncertainty, is a long-recognized key property of living systems. Owing to intimate links to cellular complexity, however, its molecular and cellular basis has only recently begun to be understood. Theoretical approaches to complex engineered systems can provide guidelines for investigating cellular robustness because biology and engineering employ a common set of basic mechanisms in different combinations. Robustness may be a key to understanding cellular complexity, elucidating design principles, and fostering closer interactions between experimentation and theory. (Emphasis added in all quotes.)In another sentence, they say: cellular complexity appears to arise mainly from robustness as a design goal. Any Darwinian worried about this story would quickly be assuaged, however, by the ubiquity of the E word: It has long been recognized that this robustness is an inherent property of all biological systems and is strongly favored by evolution, they claim. How this robustness actually came about, though, they have no idea: Despite this central role in biology, there is still a limited understanding of what robustness precisely is and how it is accomplished at the cellular or molecular level (Hartman et al., 2001). A major reason is that robustness and the apparent complexity of cellular systems are intimately linked and, therefore, both are difficult to understand.The authors investigate mathematical models of robustness, and ways that biologists might get a grip on how robustness evolved in living systems. Surprisingly, they speak of engineering design and evolved design frequently in the same sentence: In both biology and advanced technology, the primary function of a system is usually robust to a wide range of perturbations, yet these systems can show extreme fragility toward other (even seemingly much smaller) perturbations and/or other functions. This coexistence of extremes in robustness and fragility (robust yet fragile) perhaps constitutes the most salient feature of highly evolved or designed complexity. Human-designed technology has well-understood mechanisms, which are deliberately hidden from the user. In contrast, we have little systems level understanding of biological complexity. Here, we argue that by combining the fragmented yet complementary knowledge in both domains, robustness and its associated tradeoffs offer a powerful perspective on biological complexity.Another example: Hence, in design or evolution, robustness, which is adapted to the intended function of a system and the associated uncertainties, must be carefully distributed. They seem in awe at the levels of robustness in biology at times: Perhaps the most astounding property of microbial metabolism is its evolved robustness to sustain survival and proliferation upon extensive environmental or genetic perturbations. Living things employ several strategies to improve robustness: highly optimized tolerance, redundancy, feedback control circuitry, modularity, hierarchy and protocols, and other concepts from engineering. They think robustness as a research tool holds promise for evolutionary biology: What is the tangible outcome of studying this issue for life sciences? Such an overarching concept as robustness will certainly play several roles in biological research. It can be viewed as an overall evolutionary design principle or a scientific approach. More optimistically, it may be the panacea to the ailments affecting large-scale dynamic modeling of biological systems. At the least, in the hands of pragmatic researchers it can function as a tool producing testable biological hypotheses.... 1Stelling et al., Robustness of Cellular Functions, Cell, Volume 118, Issue 6, 17 September 2004, Pages 675-685, doi:10.1016/j.cell.2004.09.008. Stand back: it wont be a pretty sight when their heads explode. Their whole tale hangs on the belief that natural selection can perform miracles of engineering design on demand, whenever and wherever needed. Wait till they find out it is blind, deaf, dumb, and has no track record (see 08/03/2004 editorial, and the 07/23/2004, 06/09/2004 and 04/15/2004 headlines, for instance). Stand back and turn around. The Engineer is in the opposite direction.Can Naturalism Design Anything? 09/22/2004 Philip Ball in the Sept. 23 issue of Nature1 gave a title to a news feature that might catch a reader off guard and think he is allowing the Intelligent Design Movement to have a voice in a scientific debate: Enzymes: By chance, or by design? Upon further reading, however, it is clear the debate is between materialists and materialists. He has no Intelligent Designer in mind but natural selection. Most biologists would scoff at the idea that their subject is simply applied quantum mechanics. But for some enzymes the catalysts of biology quantum effects may be an important part of the way they work [see 09/16/2004 headline]. This revelation has left chemists and biologists arguing about whether enzymes have evolved to do this, or whether the effect would happen regardless of the enzymes activity. (Emphasis added in all quotes.)So a personal Designer or God is the last thing on Balls mind, despite the title. His debate is whether enzymes take advantage of quantum mechanical efficiencies by chance, or whether natural selection designed them to do so. The debate shows little sign of being resolved quickly. And until it is, we must remain uncertain about the limits of natures ingenuity, he concludes. 1Philip Ball, Enzymes: By chance, or by design?, Nature 431, 396 - 397 (23 September 2004); doi:10.1038/431396a. Its a sign someone is so drunk on his worldview that he has lost touch with reality when he incorporates the lingo of his opponents and fails to see the contradiction. Ball cannot use the word design, nor the word ingenuity. He is a naturalist, a materialist, and the realm of ideas cannot be circumscribed by material substances and remain ideas.New Treatment for Hyperactivity: Nature Walks 09/21/2004 Hiking in the woods seems to alleviate ADHD, say two researchers from University of Illinois, in two studies mentioned briefly in Science News.1 The article begins, Does spending more playtime amid greenery improve behavior in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder? (emphasis added). Apparently, yes. The setting, not just the activity, is part of the equation, the studies indicate. One test took hyperactive children on walks, some in the city and some in the country. After the walk, children who took the nature trail performed better on a test of attention than did their counterparts who strolled in an urban setting. 1Ben Harder, Nature reduces kids signs of attention disorder, Science News, Week of Sept. 18, 2004; Vol. 166, No. 12 , p. 190. Children are too complex for experiments like this to be completely trustworthy, with so many variables to consider, but any parent should instinctively know this makes sense. Stop depriving kids by confining them to zoos of smog, concrete, electronic gadgets and traffic noise, and then punishing them with drugs if they get rowdy. For their health, give them space in the environment they were made for: in touch with the wonders of nature, with time to see beautiful things and reflect on their Creators wisdom. A picture is worth a thousand words. Heres another thousand for a bonus, and some teacher/parent tips for places to go and things to do. What a healthy idea: Creation Safaris for kids.Introducing: The Spinach Cell Phone 09/21/2004 The next spinach sandwich you hear about may not be an item at the health food bar but an electronic device powered by the sun. According to an MIT press release, chloroplasts from spinach leaves have been successfully sandwiched into a solid-state electronic photocell that could be used before long to power cell phones and laptops. 100,000 of the protein-based light collectors could fit on the head of a pin. Deborah Halber of the MIT News Office remarked, Plants ability to generate energy has been optimized by evolution, so a spinach plant is extremely efficient, churning out a lot of energy relative to its size and weight. And for that groaner, Deborah is a nominee for Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week. Evolution does not optimize anything. It only can eliminate things that are not already optimized. For an example of how optimized chloroplasts are for photosynthesis, read about how they make use of quantum mechanics to squeeze every bit of energy out of light in the 09/16/2004 entry. No wonder human engineers would like to borrow such intelligent design rather than try to produce it from scratch.Scientists Try to Read Neandertal Minds 09/21/2004 If dead men tell no tales, living ones certainly do. Most of us have trouble reading one anothers minds when staring face to face, but some paleoanthropologists, with nothing but skeletons and a few stone tools and burial sites to look at, have no hesitation in reading the Neandertal mind. Bruce Bower writes in Science News1 about a new controversial tale by Thomas Wynn and Frederick Coolidge from the University of Colorado. Their only critics are other paleoanthropologists, because the Neandertals are no longer present to say what really happened. To begin with, they lay to rest any claims the Neandertals were dumb brutes. Forget the stereotype of these extinct human predecessors, Wynn and Coolidge assert; for tens of thousands of years, Neandertals were as smart as the ancient humans that lived alongside them. The expert Neandertal mind fostered impressive toolmaking and social skills that made survival possible for at least 100,000 years in some of the harshest environments ever inhabited by members of the human evolutionary family, Wynn and Coolidge concluded in the April Journal of Human Evolution.The new twist on the story is that the true Homo sapiens got a lucky mutation that rearranged their gray matter and gave rise to the List of Things To Do Today: Around 50,000 years ago, however, the evolutionary tide turned in a subtle, but ultimately crucial, direction. Members of H. sapiens experienced a slight boost in the amount of information that they could hold in mind at any one time, probably because of a genetic mutation that triggered a modest brain reorganization, Wynn and Coolidge propose. The capacity to remember and mentally manipulate a few more bits of related knowledge led to a series of breakthroughs: innovations in toolmaking, long-range planning for seasonal hunting expeditions, storytelling, and symbolic expression through artwork and personal ornaments.This even gave them the ability to tell jokes and express racism, according to the new theory. The poor Neandertals, stuck with real-life expert knowledge in survival, just couldnt keep up. Bowers does present some alternative views. One view says it was not genetics, but a change in social skills and information sharing that gave modern humans the edge. Others are less tolerant of Wynn and Coolidges hypothesis: Researchers who regard Neandertals as having been no more different from Stone Age H. sapiens than todays Eskimos are from African herders take a skeptical view of Wynn and Coolidges paper.For support, Smith points to the recent reinterpretation of finds at Vogelherd Cave (see 07/08/2004 headline). A German anthropologist agrees that The identity of ancestral groups that achieved late-Stone Age cultural advances throughout Europe is currently up for grabs. Another researcher says that cultural advances throughout Europe were gradual among all the groups, rather than bursting onto the scene solely among late-Stone Age humans, as presumed by Wynn and Coolidge. Bowers gives them the last response: The two Colorado researchers remain unfazed by such skepticism. Amid the din of scientific debate, they continue to ponder ways to peer further into the minds of our ancestors. 1Bruce Bower, In the Neandertal Mind, Science News Week of Sept. 18, 2004; Vol. 166, No. 12, p. 183. This is all going to sound so silly some day, if not evil, much the way we view the phrenological and racist views of Haeckel and the social Darwinists. Why does Bruce Bower give these guys two pages of good press in Science News? Thank goodness for a few halfway clear heads like Smith. Are we supposed to be impressed that Wynn and Coolidge remain unfazed by their critics? These mythmakers need a change of faze. Their speculative silly tale would make a reasonable person blush.Termites: If You Cant Lick Em, Mimic Em 09/21/2004 Termites, despite their bad rap, have something to teach human homebuilders. Their mounds are self-sufficient, air-conditioned, environmentally friendly and cheap to run, according to a story in EurekAlert. The mounds incorporate a complicated network of tunnels and air conduits designed to channel air flow for the control of internal air quality, temperature and moisture levels. A multidisciplinary team of scientists and engineers in the UK is studying termite smart mounds in 3D for ideas on how human habitats could meet all energy, waste management and other needs on site. Maybe the termites in your walls are trying to tell you something: This is no way to build a house! Watch us. We humans tend to build rectangular things. The free-form design of termite mounds strikes us as sloppy or makeshift, when really there is a deeper design that provides more efficiency, if we would only shake off our miter-box chauvinism.Radioactive Dating: Science or Alchemy? 09/20/2004 Richard Kerr had some surprising things to say about uranium-lead dating in the Sept. 17 issue of Science1 surprising, because as a believer in the method and an evolutionist, he admitted there is a fair amount of unscientific methodology and controversy involved. For years, different laboratories using uranium-lead radiometric datingthe gold standard of geochronologyhave been getting entirely different ages for the P-T extinction, he says. His comments stemmed from a paper in the same issue by Mundil et al.2 that touted a new method for getting the bugs out of U-Pb zircon samples. But the way Kerr worded his subtitle, he sounds at best tentative about its benefits: A new, apparently improved, way to date the greatest mass extinction points to a volcanic cause but fails to resolve geochronologists long-running differences. (Emphasis added in all quotes.) Mundils team, from the Berkeley Geochronology Center, admits right off that The age and timing of the Permian-Triassic mass extinction have been difficult to determine because zircon populations from the type sections are typically affected by pervasive lead loss and contamination by indistinguishable older xenocrysts. In order to date samples from China, they adopted a technique recently developed by James Mattinson of the University of California, Santa Barbara, Kerr says. They baked the southern China zircons at 850ºC for 36 hours and then leached them with hydrofluoric acid under pressure at 220ºC for 16 hours, with the intention of removing the parts most weakened by radiation damage. This harsh treatment of the samples was intended to eliminate some of the picking and choosing that commonly goes on by researchers, who discard samples that dont give them the results they expect. Samuel Bowring (MIT), for instance, got a date for the P-T extinction that, while it seemed to match some dates for massive Siberian lava flows, disagreed with the age Mundil prefers: Mundil, however, doesnt believe that either the eruption or the extinction happened that recently. He thinks Bowring engaged in arbitrary data culling by throwing out more than half his zircon ages before averaging the rest of them together. But Bowring says his choices were judicious, although necessarily somewhat subjective. In some of his zircons, the two different uranium-lead ratios gave different ages, suggesting that lead had leaked out of those zircons during the past quarter-billion years. And other zircon ages looked distinctly old, as if those zircons had crystallized earlier than the rest and had later gotten mixed in with them. By taking into account how volcanic ash beds are stacked around the rock layer that shows the extinction, Bowring believes he can confidently select the reliable zircon ages and discard the rest.Thus the heat, pressure and acid treatments. With this method, Mundil claims he only had to throw out three out of 79 of his zircon samples which were obviously too old. He arrived at a date for the extinction a million years older. It was also coincident with an argon-argon date for the Siberian lava flows made by others, after making a 2-million-year correction to it The goal of this tweaking is to fix the timing: The professional timekeepersthe geochronologistsare trying to place a volcanic catastrophe at the moment of the extinction, thus linking cause and effect to explain an event that wiped out 95% of animal species on Earth, Kerr explains. The challenge is that P-T daters must draw their conclusions from vanishingly small isotopic remains of radioactive decay. Though the antagonists try to keep a positive spin on the controversy, Kerr indicates that geochronology may not be the exact science we have been led to believe: The new preprocessing technique is very promising, says Drew Coleman of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. It appears to be very fruitful. Bowring agrees. This is a step in the right direction, he says. Mattinsons annealing is the big breakthrough, though I have no idea why it works. But Bowring points to the later date that his group estimated for the P-T extinction in China and Kamos group independently got for zircon and other minerals from the lavas of the Siberian Traps. Mundil hasnt explained how subjective interpretation could have produced such a coincidence, he says.All can agree on one thing. Better cooperation might help. Speaking of the geochronologists, Randall Parrish of the British Geological Survey paints them like a secret society: Theyve been competitive and secretive for decades, he said. With a meeting of geochronologists in Boston coming up next month, Kerr hopes for a frank and open discussion of all those little details that dont make it into the literature. 1Richard Kerr, Geochemistry: In Mass Extinction, Timing Is All, Science, Vol 305, Issue 5691, 1705, 17 September 2004, [DOI: 10.1126/science.305.5691.1705]. 2Mundil et al., Age and Timing of the Permian Mass Extinctions: U/Pb Dating of Closed-System Zircons, Science, Vol 305, Issue 5691, 1760-1763, 17 September 2004, [DOI: 10.1126/science.1101012]. Now Im worried. What are all those little details that dont make it into the literature? You can count on it: the picking and choosing that Kerr admitted is only the tip of the iceberg. To be fair, the U-Pb differences between the teams only amount to a small percent. But to arrive at the millions-of-years dates at all, dates that justify the modern consensus for the geologic column (see 05/21/2004 headline), they have to toss out many other dating methods that produce far younger dates by orders of magnitude. Those dates are not interesting because they do not support the Darwinian evolutionary timescale; therefore they are obviously wrong. Obviously. Thats why they must pick and choose.National Geographic Calls Noahs Ark Search a Stunt 09/20/2004 National Geographic News has taken the announcement that McGiverns team failed to get a permit to search Mt. Ararat (see 04/26/2004 headline) as an opportunity to question all searches and the historicity of Noahs flood. They questioned the character and motives of the search team and its guide, and quoted a historian who called the search for Noahs Ark fringe archaeology. The article recalled previous claims that turned out to be hoaxes, doubted the ability to detect an artificial structure from space, and discounted the story of a world-wide flood in the Bible (unless the Black Sea Flood fit the bill; see 08/22/2003 and 04/21/2001 headlines). Most geologists seem to agree that it would probably be impossible for a ship to make landfall at an altitude of 15,000 feet (4,570 meters), said Stefan Lovgren, author of the article. This illustrates the damage that can be done by pre-announcing a discovery before any facts are gathered. The satellite photo McGivern had was much too vague. Whether his guide is a man of integrity or not could have been moot if he indeed was able to lead them to a ship on the mountain. Lacking proof, one has no science, just hypothesis and suggestive leads. When the promised evidence doesnt arrive after the media fanfare, the opponents can have a field day. This fiasco could hurt future attempts to explore the mountain.How Precise Is Precision Cosmology? 09/20/2004 When data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) came in, cosmologists heralded it as the era of precision cosmology and immediately began to make claims that resulting data map confirmed some cosmological theories and falsified others (see 02/14/2003 headline). Two papers in the Astrophysical Journal, however, are discounting the precision of the data and questioning its usefulness for confirming cosmological models. Erickson et al.1 studied the method used by the WMAP science team to analyze the data and make cosmological conclusions. They concluded that it had the potential to inform models, but cautioned that great care must be taken both in implementation and in a detailed understanding of limitations caused by residual foregrounds, which can still affect cosmological results. They concluded that the sky map used by the science team was not clean enough to allow for cosmological conclusions. Alternative methods must be developed to study these issues further. David L. Larson and Benjamin D. Wandelt also studied the WMAP data and concluded that the hot spots were too cool and the cold spots too warm to confirm an assumption made by the science team that the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is an isotropic, Gaussian random field. A question of fundamental importance to our understanding of the origins of these primordial seed perturbations is whether the CMB radiation is really an isotropic and Gaussian random field, as generic inflationary theories predict, they note. Yet they compared the actual field to a Monte Carlo simulation of a Gaussian field and were able to rule out Gaussianity in the WMAP data to the 95% confidence level at both the north and south hemispheres. This casts doubt on the theoretical statements based on the data, they say: We find the WMAP data to have maxima that are significantly colder and minima that are significantly warmer than predicted by Monte Carlo simulation. For almost all simulations, we have 95% confidence that the mean of the WMAP hot spots or cold spots is in a 5% tail of the Monte Carlo distribution. In one case, we are 99% confident that the maxima statistic is in a 1% tail. Since we find the same lack of extreme temperature when we use the directly measured WMAP power spectrum, we are not simply restating that the WMAP power spectrum has a lack of power at large angular scales. The effect is independent of the galactic mask or power spectrum used.... 1Erickson, Gorski and Lilje, On Foreground Removal from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe Data by an Internal Linear Combination Method: Limitations and Implications, The Astrophysical Journal, 612:633-646, 2004 September 10. 2Larson and Wandelt, The Hot and Cold Spots in the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe Data Are Not Hot and Cold Enough, The Astrophysical Journal Letters 613:L85-L88, 2004 October 1. Always read the fine print after theMars Methane May Be Geological, Not Biological 09/20/2004 Just when the ESA Mars Express spacecraft was collecting data on methane emissions on Mars, leading some to speculate it might be a biomarker, Science Now reported new findings that indicate methane can form naturally in Earths mantle by heating water, iron oxide and calcite under pressure (see also Physics Web). This demonstrates that hydrocarbons could be produced without the byproducts of life, and that The methane recently detected on Mars ... may not indicate life, because it could have been produced from simple elements. It also indicates there could be vast yet currently inaccessible reservoirs of natural gas in Earths mantle. This means also that future missions such as the Space Interferometry Mission and Terrestrial Planet Finder may not be able to assume that the detection of methane is an indicator of the presence of life on a distant planet. Nor could Cassini scientists assume that methane at Titan was a precursor to biology.Arrow Worms Miss the Mark in Darwins Tree 09/17/2004 Nature this week1 claims that The origins of the arrow worms have long been obscure, but molecular studies are finally bringing the true evolutionary position of these beautiful marine predators into sharper focus. (Emphasis added in all quotes.) Arrow worms, or Chaetognatha, are strikingly beautiful marine anim |