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/Thu, 02 Sep 2010 07:35:31 GMThttp://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rsshttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201009.htm#20100902aSept 02, 2010 — James J. Lee took hostages today at the Discovery Channel headquarters in Maryland, but was killed by police before he harmed anyone (see New York Times). Lee, who authored a website called SaveThePlanetProtest.com, left a manifesto with a list of demands, calling humans “filth” and demanding the Discovery Channel inform viewers that humans were ruining the planet. His rants included demands to saturate the public mind with indoctrination into Darwinian ideas: “Talk about Evolution. Talk about Malthus and Darwin until it sinks into the stupid people’ brains until they get it!!” The Discovery Institute (no connection to the Discovery Channel) used this incident to highlight the deleterious effects of Darwinian thinking. David Klinghoffer on Evolution News and Views listed other killers who used Darwinian ideas for their rampages, and Robert Crowther on Evolution News and Views followed up with a quote from Bruce Chapman, Discovery Institute Director, on the disparity in news coverage between religious madmen and this Darwinist one: “Oddly missing from initial news accounts was any mention of Darwin,” he said; but James J. Lee made it clear that Malthus and Darwin were prime motivators of his mental anguish, as was Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth. John West in Evolution News and Views compared the silence of major newspaper coverage about the Darwin connection to what would happen if an anti-abortion vigilante took hostages at an abortion clinic: “you can be sure the newsmedia would tenaciously track down and publicize every anti-abortion association and comment of the criminal in question,” he remarked. Thu, 02 Sep 2010 07:35:29 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201009.htm#20100901aSept 01, 2010 — The living world is an endless source of wonder and inspiration. There’s an octopus that does a convincing imitation of a flatfish (Science Daily, Live Science), and a red crab species that emerges from its lethargic life around Christmas and migrates miles to the sea by the millions (PhysOrg). There’s a tiny frog that can fit on the tip of a pencil (PhysOrg) and a whale with perfect pitch (Science Daily). National Geographic released a gallery of sea creatures newly discovered deep in Indonesian waters that is as colorful as it is bizarre. Some scientists get so excited about what animals they study, they want to imitate them. (10 examples from recent literature) These articles are part of an increasing flood of reports about biomimetics – the imitation of nature. Whether biologists look high or low, large or small, at plants or at animals, they find amazing feats in the living world that amaze and inspire. And if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the designs in life are getting rave reviews.Wed, 01 Sep 2010 06:40:18 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201008.htm#20100831aAugust 31, 2010 — Before the first extrasolar planets were discovered, astronomers had high confidence that other solar systems would resemble ours. We have rocky planets close to the sun, and gas giants farther out. Planetary scientists were pretty sure the pattern would hold up around other stars. Now that we have hundreds of examples to compare, the reality has been far different from expectations. The number of surprises in real exoplanet systems underscores the potential flaws in building models based on a sample size of one. In Caltech’s latest Engineering and Science magazine,1 John Johnson was interviewed about the state of extrasolar planet hunting. Johnson has been involved with leading planet-hunting pioneers. A recurring theme in the interview is the surprise that planetary systems were found to be radically different from predictions. What are some of the current big questions that you guys are trying to tackle? We’re interested in how the solar system formed. We’re interested in our immediate environment and describing its origins. And beyond that, we’re interested in general in how planetary systems formed. There are some very specific questions that arise at every turn. There are so many surprises in this field—almost nothing is turning out as we expected. There are Jupiter-mass planets in three-day orbits. There are planets with masses that are between those of the terrestrial planets in our solar system and the gas giants in the outer part of our solar system. There are Jupiter-mass planets with hugely inflated radii—at densities far lower than what we thought were possible for a gas-giant planet. There are giant planets with gigantic solid cores that defy models of planet formation, which say there shouldn’t be enough solids available in a protoplanetary disk to form a planet that dense. There are planets with tilted orbits. There are planets that orbit the poles of their stars, in so-called circumpolar orbits. There are planets that orbit retrograde—that is, they orbit in the opposite direction of their star’s rotation. There are systems of planets that are in configurations that are hard to describe given our understanding of planet formation. For instance, some planets are much too close to one another. But a lot of those surprises have to do with the fact that we have only one example of a planetary system—our solar system—to base everything on, right? What’s interesting is that we’ve found very little that resembles our example. Johnson went on to say that the leading theory of planetary migration to explain how the so-called hot Jupiters get so close to their star has “gone into the dustbin” now that so many inclined and retrograde examples have been found. “We’re scrambling to find a new way of describing how these gas giants can move in that also causes their orbits to be tilted,” he added. Although Johnson reaffirmed the old Laplace nebular hypothesis with a “2.0” upgrade, but the number of “wacky” things his team has discovered belies any attestation of confidence. “We’re going out into the solar neighborhood, where there are things that we thought were just familiar, things that we thought we understood,” he said. “But just the wackiest stuff comes up—and it’s sure keeping me busy.” He compared it to going on safari and discovering a blue lion. “That might be the level of wackiness I would attach to it.”Tue, 31 Aug 2010 07:54:29 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201008.htm#20100830aAug 30, 2010 — Your doctor’s religious beliefs – or lack of them – might have a lot to do with how soon you exit this world when elderly or infirm. Science Daily reported, “Atheist or agnostic doctors are almost twice as willing to take decisions that they think will hasten the end of a very sick patient’s life as doctors who are deeply religious, suggests research published online in the Journal of Medical Ethics.” The press release from the British Medical Association concluded, “the relationship between doctors’ values and their clinical decision making needs to be acknowledged much more than it is at present.” Wed, 01 Sep 2010 05:29:02 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201008.htm#20100826aAugust 26, 2010 — It’s been around a few months now, but OK Go’s music video of their song “This Too Shall Pass” featured an elaborate Rube Goldberg set. What many viewers may not know about the backstory of the production is that several JPL rocket scientists helped design and operate the contraptions that filled a good-size warehouse. The NASA Wiki post from June 1 includes interviews with the JPL'ers about their participation, and all the trials and fun of getting the dozens of finely-tuned contraptions to operate in sequence so that the entire number could be shot non-stop by a single hand-held video camera. “More than 40 engineers, techies, artists, and circus types spent several months designing, building, rebuilding, and re-setting a machine that took up two floors of a Los Angeles warehouse,” the blog said. Thu, 26 Aug 2010 10:58:19 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201008.htm#20100825aAugust 25, 2010 — If you envision science in terms of white-coated lab chemists holding flasks, field biologists gathering bird eggs, astronomers peering through a telescope or geologists chipping rocks with hand picks, think again. Today’s science sweeps everything into its domain, including the human mind, intellect, emotions, will, creativity, and our most sincere beliefs and actions. When not explained in terms of evolutionary impulses from some animal past, they are often described in sterile, dispassionate terms, reducing our sincerely held beliefs, choices and partnerships into matters of neurotransmitters in the brain or impulses little different than the behavior of ants. Humanities departments should beware letting scientists in the door. They come in and take over. (10 examples and an encore).Thu, 26 Aug 2010 10:17:16 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201008.htm#20100824aAugust 24, 2010 — Science articles often go beyond the data. A jumble of bones found on an island is boring; people want a story of what they were, and how they got that way. Many scientists and reporters are only happy to fulfill that curiosity. But are the stories they tell, usually presented as fact, the only way to interpret the context? 1. Wight wash: The Isle of Wight is “one of the most important dinosaur sites in the world,” reported PhysOrg. On this British isle, a great variety of dinosaur bones and other species are found in a “chaotic jumble” showing signs of fire and drowning. Something dramatic happened here, and two UK paleontologists are quick to tell their tale: “Rainfall occurred all year round but during the summer months, when temperatures soared to between 36-40°C, evaporation exceeded rainfall causing drought conditions. At these times vegetation became parched leaving it vulnerable to fires caused by lightning strike. “Occasionally very heavy rain would follow electrical storms and wild fires causing flash floods. These swept up all loose objects in their path, swallowed complete dinosaur skeletons and eroded floodplain sediments. The more debris and sediment the water collected the thicker and thicker it became until eventually it was like mixed concrete.” Can this tale be untangled from the data? According to one of the paleontologists, “On the Isle of Wight you get a complete muddle of the smallest fossils blended with the biggest, nothing quite like it has been seen anywhere else in the world.” The article claims that the Isle of Wight once lay farther south at the latitude of Gibraltar. The new study, it claims, “revealed” that “the island’s once violent weather explains why thousands of tiny dinosaur teeth and bones lie buried alongside the huge bones of their gigantic relatives.” Why the violent weather, lightning fires, floods and concrete muddle did not happen on the mainland simultaneously was not explained. 2. Arctic reptiles: One does not normally envision alligators and tortoises roaming on Arctic ice, but according to Science Daily, these cold-blooded animals “thrived” there on Ellesmere Island 50 million years ago, despite being relegated to very little sunlight six months of the year. University of Colorado scientists are certain they have figured it out. Back in the Eocene, they surmise, it never got below freezing on Ellesmere. It was a balmy forested swamp back then, like Louisiana. It’s still a bit north, Dr. Jaelyn Eberle admitted: “the existence of large land tortoises in the Eocene High Arctic is still somewhat puzzling, said Eberle, since today’s large tortoises inhabit places like the Galapagos....” Interesting that bowfin fish were also found mixed in with the fossils, which including a surprising assortment of animals like “giant tortoises, aquatic turtles, large snakes, alligators, flying lemurs, tapirs, and hippo-like and rhino-like mammals” in a “lush landscape.” Interesting, also, that the paleontologists are concerned about coal miners disrupting the fossil beds. Coal – in the Arctic? Eberle managed to make her research politically relevant by describing the Eocene as a “a deep time analogue” to modern concerns about global warming. 3. The early sponge: In an attempt to show that animals started their emergence long before the Cambrian Explosion, some Princeton scientists have described traces in Australian rocks said to be 650 million years old as the first sponges – among the simplest of multicellular animals. The BBC News shows the squiggly lines in rock from the Flinders Ranges as a kind of Rorshach test for visualizing animal life. After all, based on Darwin’s tree, the Geologic Column and molecular phylogeny, sponges should have appeared about that time. Problem is, we have no idea what they would have looked like. Are they really animals? A skeptical Aussie scientist described the traces as “coco-pop breakfast-cereal-like forms” that anyone could use to claim were the “oldest sponge-grade fossils.” It’s doubtful many readers would be attracted to a story about a chaotic jumble of dinosaur bones, a chaotic jumble of reptile and mammal bones, and a chaotic array of lines in rock from the Aussie Outback. Seeing into the bones, using them as a crystal ball to envision deep time, provides more satisfaction for scientist and reader alike. Whether the data will bear such phantasmagoric scenarios is another question. Wed, 25 Aug 2010 07:17:32 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201008.htm#20100823aAugust 23, 2010 — The old story of our moon was that it was geologically dead. Except for the occasional meteor impact, not much happens there; the interior had cooled down long ago, leaving it an inert, battered sphere. That was before the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter showed scientists evidence that it has continued to shrink and form new surface features recently. In fact, the activity may still be occurring today. Science Daily reported that analysis of lobate scarps and small craters is changing scientists’ ideas about the moon. Small craters should be erased in relatively short time, but some scarps, thought to be due to lunar shrinkage, run right through them – indicating the scarps are younger than the craters. Such lobate scarps were known from the Apollo missions but it was uncertain whether they were a peculiarity of the equatorial regions. LRO has shown them all over the globe. Whatever causes them must be a global phenomenon. Furthermore, the moonquakes detected by Apollo instruments might be due to ongoing shrinkage rather than impacts as earlier thought. One of the scientists put his error bars far apart. “We estimate these cliffs, called lobate scarps, formed less than a billion years ago, and they could be as young as a hundred million years,” Dr. Thomas Watters (Smithsonian) speculated. But since “the scarps look crisp and relatively undegraded” why couldn’t they be as young as 1,000 years, or 10 years? After all, “The moon cooled off as it aged, and scientists have long thought the moon shrank over time as it cooled, especially in its early history,” the article said. “The new research reveals relatively recent tectonic activity connected to the long-lived cooling and associated contraction of the lunar interior.” The article also spoke about Mercury’s lobate scarps, which are much larger than the moon’s despite its smaller volume. On Mercury they can be 100 miles high and snake across the surface for hundreds of miles. Without explaining why, the article said, “the team believes the moon shrank less.” On a related note, Science Daily reported that the mountains on Titan, rising nearly two kilometers, may be due to shrinkage, too. “Since the formation of Titan, which scientists believe occurred around four billion years ago, the moon’s interior has cooled significantly,” the article said, stating tradition. “But the moon is still releasing hundreds of gigawatts of power, some of which may be available for geologic activity.” Lessons being learned there, however, cannot be generally applied. Jonathan Lunine opined, “These results suggest that Titan’s geologic history has been different from that of its Jovian cousins, thanks, perhaps, to an interior ocean of water and ammonia.” And speaking of activity, Cassini bagged another close-up view of the geysers on Enceladus, Science Daily reported. The photos (see Imaging Team site) shows the hot jets are still going strong, years after their discovery in 2005. The JPL press release includes photos it also took of Dione and Tethys on this, the 11th close flyby past Enceladus. Tue, 24 Aug 2010 06:34:36 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201008.htm#20100822aAugust 22, 2010 — Astronomers have decided the universe will expand forever, growing colder and darker, till it ends in a heat death. According to the BBC News, a study of gravitational lensing by a huge galactic cluster named Abell 1689 determined that dark energy will push galaxies apart till they burn out. One researcher remarked that the study proves “exactly what the fate of the Universe will be” – which the article desribed, “Eventually it will become a cold, dead wasteland with a temperature approaching what scientists term ‘absolute zero’.” Mon, 23 Aug 2010 05:33:21 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201008.htm#20100813aAugust 13, 2010 — Evolution takes credit for a lot of things other scientists might think say nothing about evolution. Are the statements in these articles about evolution warranted by the observations? 1. Do the RNA: Scientists at Yale University found an RNA complex that helps proteins to infect cells. That’s interesting as far as it goes, but Science Daily embellished the observation with a story about the distant past: “Yale University researchers have discovered an ancient but functioning genetic remnant from a time before DNA existed,” it said. Ron Breaker of Yale elaborated the reasoning behind the claim: This is the sort of RNA structure would have been needed for life exist [sic] before the evolution of double-stranded DNA, with its instruction book for proteins that carry out almost all of life’s functions today. If proteins are necessary to carry out life’s functions, scientists need to explain how life arise without DNA’s recipe. The answer to the chicken or egg question is RNA machines such as the one identified in the new study, Breaker said. A lot of sophisticated RNA gadgetry has gone extinct but this study shows that RNA has more of the power needed to carry out complex biochemistry,” Breaker said. “It makes the spontaneous emergence of life on earth much more palatable.” Incidentally, even though the observation showed this RNA helping a bacterium infect a cell, the RNA probably had a more beneficial function: “They were though to be molecular parasites, but it is clear they are being harnessed by cells to do some good for the organism.” 2. Moses oar: One of the most complete skeletons of the mosasaur Platecarpus, an extinct marine reptile that was a dynamite swimmer as well as a fierce predator, was announced by Science Daily. The article said that earlier beliefs about it swimming like an eel have had to be revised, as analysis shows it probably swam more like a shark. That’s interesting as far as it goes, but it has evolutionary implications, as Luis B. Chiappe of the Los Angeles National History Museum explained: The findings underscore how these adaptations for fully aquatic existence evolved rapidly and convergently in several groups of Mesozoic marine reptiles, as well as in extant whales. “This fossil shows evolution in action, how a successful design was developed time after time by different groups of organisms adapting to life in similar environments,” said Chiappe. “It highlights once again the potential for new discoveries to challenge well-established interpretations about dinosaurs and other animals that lived with them.” “From this beautifully preserved specimen it seems that advanced, shark like swimming began in mosasaurs millions of years earlier than we previously thought,” said Dr. Kevin Padian, a paleontologist at the University of California, Berkeley, not involved in the paper. The article praised the curators and workers on the fossil, and remarked that new discoveries can challenge well-established interpretations about dinosaurs and other animals, but was strangely silent about how evolution produced complex adaptations time and time again in different groups of animals. Incidentally, the fossil was exceptionally well preserved: “It retains traces of a partial body outline, putative skin color markings, external scales, a downturned tail, branching bronchial tubes, and stomach contents (fish).” Most sea creatures decay in the ocean. The article did not explain how this specimen was preserved so delicately. 3. Reasoning about irrationality: People say and do dumb things. That’s interesting as far as it goes, but Sharon Begley at Newsweek used her powers of reason to argue “why evolution may favor irrationality.” Putting herself in the mindset of a hunter-gatherer in prehistoric times, Begley explained, “Forms of reasoning that are good for solving logic puzzles but bad for winning arguments lost out, over the course of evolution, to those that help us be persuasive but cause us to struggle with abstract syllogisms.” She said this very persuasively, if not logically; for if evolution favored irrationality, how would she know the difference? The habit of drawing evolution into explanations for observations has a long history. Darwin took credit for bat sonar, symbiosis, insect size, and even lack of evolution as an evolutionary strategy in the 08/24/2007, and for all kinds of things, as 1430 chain links on “Darwin and Evolution” over 10 years reveal. http://creationsafaris.com/crev201008.htm#20100812aAugust 12, 2010 — SETI might well stand for “Sci-Fi of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence” with its ROI (return on investment) of zero in 50 years of searching. In his latest piece for Space.com Seth Shostak did the best he could to distinguish SETI as science, not science fiction, though plenty of the latter will be evident at a conference in Santa Clara this weekend called SETIcon (SETI Conference), sponsored by the SETI Institute of which Shostak is “Senior Astronomer.” The conference will feature a who’s who of SETI glitterati, including Frank Drake, Jill Tarter, and Shostak himself, accompanied by Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweikart, planet hunter Mike Brown, Alex Filippenko and other astronomers. Mixed in with the “science” category are plenty of “science fiction” people, like Robyn Asimov (the daughter of noted atheist science fiction writer Isaac Asimov), sci-fi screenwriters, actors from sci-fi movies, and book authors, making this a blend of views “all dealing with the science and science-fiction of extraterrestrial life.” What did Shostak offer up as the science of SETI? Without a subject, is it really right to call it science? There has been astrophysical progress in theories about the lifetimes of various star types, habitable environments, and a growing roster of extrasolar planets. The search tools have become much better, with the Allen Telescope Array coming online. But much of his material is in future tense – what scientists can expect is possible, given the constraints of physics. Scientists help inform overactive screenwriters’ imaginations with a dose of realism. The dinner in honor of Frank Drake is more a celebrity toast than a science presentation, since Drake never found anything. Shostak insisted that “there’s never been a time when the search for life beyond Earth – a staple of the [science fiction] genre – was more informed by real science.” But the only scientific achievements he listed deal with stars, planets, radio waves, and the like – the usual astronomy – not matters of sentient beings. Fri, 13 Aug 2010 03:59:11 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201008.htm#20100810aAugust 10, 2010 — Biblical creationists believe in a global flood, but did you know secular geologists have a global catastrophe, too? Both groups converge on evidence at a certain layer of rock. To get there, we begin at a “a compelling story about the distant past” that emerges from a look at rocks near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Leslie Mullen, writing for the online Astrobiology Magazine (a NASA website), told the story of an ancient impact. No crater was left, because this impact is assumed to have occurred “sometime between 1.2 billion and 330 million years ago” – but no earlier. Why? Because a boundary layer forms the point of convergence of two global catastrophe stories. Her article focused primarily on the alleged craterless impact of a body 5 to 12 times larger than the stone that formed the more recent Barringer Crater near Winslow Arizona. The mountains near Santa Fe, by contrast, look like a “random jumble of different shapes and colors,” Mullins said; but they “can tell a compelling story about the distant past” to trained geologists. As evidence for an impact, she cited the discovery of “shatter cones,” which are “cone-shaped rocks each have distinctive wavy patterns, as though the rock itself briefly became a flowing liquid before re-solidifying.” Similar structures have been found at underground nuclear blast sites. The only other force that can make these, she said, is the “instantaneous hypervelocity force of a meteorite impact.” At the end of the article, though, she admitted that to tell the story of what happened will require “an army of scientists and graduate students studying this site, over many, many years.” – indeed, according to Horton Newsom of the University of New Mexico, an expert in meteor impacts, “It could take several lifetimes to do all the necessary work.” But why the upper limit of 1.2 billion years? It’s not just that volcanoes or erosion tend to erase craters over time. Something happened at that point in the evolutionary timeline that affected the entire planet: Complicating the question is the “Great Unconformity”, an event that wiped about a billion years of history out of the geologic record of this region. The disappearance of these tons of rocks was due to erosion – seas receded, and the newly exposed rocks wore away through wind, rain and other weathering processes. Then the seas flooded in again and sediments began forming new layers. The result is that a 330-million-year-old rock layer now lies directly on top of rocks that vary between 1.2 and 1.6 billion years old, depending on the location. But was the Great Unconformity limited to the region around Santa Fe? It is very obvious throughout the Grand Canyon, where underlying rocks, even tilted sediments, were planed flat as a pancake over a vast area. New sediments (beginning with the Tapeats Sandstone) lie on top of this clear boundary, sometimes with huge boulders embedded in the sandstone. Whatever caused a violent shearing force to underlying igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks covered a wide area. A search on “Great Unconformity” shows that this break in the sediments extends wider still. A journal article posted at Cliffshade.com claims it is found in throughout Colorado, too: “Any volcanism or surface topography developing in Colorado during or before this time had been thoroughly erased by the close of the Great Unconformity.” Wikipedia (no friend of Biblical creationism) states, “Geologist John Wesley Powell called this major gap in the geologic record, which is also seen in other parts of the world, the Great Unconformity.” Clicking on the link elaborates further: “The Great Unconformity is a geologic feature that exists across the world at a relatively consistent rock strata (or depth relative to sea-level).”1 Any unconformity worldwide in its extent would seem to require to a global catastrophe. Creationists confidently point to this layer as the onset of the worldwide Flood described in Genesis 6-9, when the rising, violent floodwaters sheared off the surface of the antediluvian world, destroying the world as it was (II Peter 3:3-9), then began depositing new sedimentary layers that became reworked as the floodwaters subsided (subject to post-Flood erosion and volcanism). What else could have caused the Great Unconformity? (See Canyon Ministries for arguments in favor of the Flood.) An sample pro-evolutionist site responded with a different kind of catastrophe. A writer at the Milwaukee Evolution League in 2005 answered the creationist claim with a counter-claim that glaciers did it. “Only a glacier can plane off rugged, jagged mountaintops with such level precision,” the writer, who calls himself “SaganJr,” said. “A massive enough glacier can literally bulldoze over rock, leveling off everything in its path.” He claimed this also coincides with a time geologists believe glaciers covered the planet: “we know from other geologic evidence that the world was virtually covered in glaciers in the largest ice age the planet had ever seen,” he said. “It makes perfect sense that a glacier planed off the angled, mountainous layers over 250 million years, before the earth warmed, oceans rose, and sedimentary deposits began to accumulate once again. Certainly, this makes much more sense than claiming that a global flood did it.” Either way, a global catastrophe occurred to form the Great Unconformity seen at Sante Fe, Grand Canyon, Denver, and other continents around the world. Dates and mechanisms may differ, but creationists and evolutionists can’t dispute that flat, worldwide layer in the rocks. Tue, 10 Aug 2010 04:48:25 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201008.htm#20100809aAugust 09, 2010 — Reports continue to show that vital cell processes depend on finely-tuned proteins and RNA molecules. Most of the papers that discuss these specialized molecules fail to mention how they might have evolved, as shown in three papers in the recent issue of Science. 1. Walker with muscle: A paper by Kaya and Higuchi from the University of Tokyo discussed how myosin motors, the active force-generating machines in muscle, adjust their walking steps with non-linear elasticity.1 Myosins work together in muscle. Their ability to reduce stiffness and adjust their walk is essential: “the load-dependent changes in the step size are an essential property of skeletal myosin,” the authors said. Their last sentence explained why this contributes to their effectiveness: “Such molecular properties may be inherent in the assembly of molecular motors and may reduce molecular interference, leading to the high mechanical efficiency of muscle contraction.” You have your myosins to thank for every simple move you make. 2. Junk with control: It wasn’t long ago when any non-coding region of the genome was considered junk. No longer; lincRNAs are emerging as stars of regulation and control. Another finding to that effect was published in Science by an international team from Stanford, Harvard and the Weizmann Institute in Israel.2 They studied one lincRNA called HOTAIR that has two specific binding domains for making histone modifications. Histone is the protein on which DNA winds. It contains molecular tags that affect translation – the “histone code.” The team found that HOTAIR, an RNA generated from non-coding DNA, is intimately involved with the regulation of histone by forming a scaffold for PRC2 and LSD1 proteins: “The functional consequence of coordinate targeting of PRC2 and LSD1 by HOTAIR is gene repression,” they said. What they found may apply to other cases: “Some lincRNAs may be ‘tethers’ that recruit several chromatin modifications to their sites of synthesis while other lincRNAs can act on distantly located genes as ‘guides’ to affect their chromatin states,” the concluded. “On the basis of their dynamic patterns of expression, specific lincRNAs can potentially direct complex patterns of chromatin states at specific genes in a spatially and temporally organized manner during development and disease states.” 3. Repairmen with teamwork: A team at Zheijiang University in China studied the partners in DNA interstrand cross-link repair, one of many repair pathways active in the genome. Fanconi anemia is a disease caused by mutations in 13 Fanc genes.3 “Here, we characterize a previously unrecognized nuclease, Fanconi anemia–associated nuclease 1 (FAN1), that promotes ICL repair in a manner strictly dependent on its ability to accumulate at or near sites of DNA damage and that relies on mono-ubiquitylation of the ID complex,” they said, referring to the tagging of a repair site with ubiquitin, a “ubiquitous” cellular tag signaling a site for repair or demolition. “Thus, the mono-ubiquitylated ID complex recruits the downstream repair protein FAN1 and facilitates the repair of DNA interstrand cross-links.” These three papers are examples of many that are continuously being published in leading journals that (1) explore highly-specific molecules involved in vital cellular processes and (2) say nothing about evolution. Examples could be easily multiplied. Mon, 09 Aug 2010 15:02:39 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201008.htm#20100808aAugust 08, 2010 — Stories of human ancestors around campfires evolving larger brains by eating meat or caring for animals often sound themselves life campfire stories. For example, Jeremy Hsu in Live Science speculated that “Caring for Animals May Have Shaped Human Evolution.” A cute girl with a puppy adorns the article. “Our love of all things furry has deep roots in human evolution and may have even shaped how our ancestors developed language and other tools of civilization.” Paleoanthropologist John Hawks has had enough of this tale-telling. “‘Just-so stories [are] driving me crazy,” he exclaimed in a rare outburst against those in his own field on his John Haws Weblog. Responding to one such story, the idea that eating meat gave humans bigger brains, he showed how to ask skeptical questions: “How did meat make us smarter? Is it a magical meat property? If I fed enough meat to the local deer, would they get smarter?” He did not reject the evolutionary tales outright: “These are serious hypotheses with literature and evidence supporting them,” he claimed. “I just wish that they could be reported in a way that made it sound like paleoanthropologists are skeptical scientists!” Mon, 09 Aug 2010 15:02:15 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201008.htm#20100807aAugust 07, 2010 — Helen Hansma likes being a grandmother and studying the origin of life, according to a video on PhysOrg. To show she’s not over the hill, though, she came up with a sexy new hypothesis for how we got here: life emerged “between the sheets” – of mica. Her video clip explains three parts to her hypothesis: (1) Mica sheets provide safe havens for molecules to evolve; (2) Mica has potassium, and life uses lots of potassium; and (3) Mica sheets can rise and fall as waves of water intrude the thin layers, providing a source of mechanical energy to keep things thrusting between the sheets. Smiling with money from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to dream this up, she summarized it thus: “mica would provide enough structure and shelter for molecules to evolve but also accommodate the dynamic, ever-changing nature of life.” In the video clip, she suggested that it might be possible some day to get good evidence for her ideas on the origin of life, implying that evidence has not yet been a primary concern. She also welcomed diversity, boasting that her hypothesis can work alongside other theories, like the Lipid world (09/03/2004, 12/11/2006) and RNA World (02/15/2007, 07/11/2002). The article, based on a press release from the NSF, presented her new ideas cheerfully. PhysOrg embellished the new hypothesis further with by claiming that “That age-old question, ‘where did life on Earth start?’ now has a new answer,” titillating readers with a flashy headline, “The Secret of Life May Be As Simple As What Happens Between the Sheets – Mica Sheets.” Sat, 07 Aug 2010 04:39:15 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201008.htm#20100806bAugust 06, 2010 — Is it legal? Can a public school take kids to a creation zoo? Environment reporter Michael Marshall at New Scientist just about had a fit when he heard that “A UK zoo that pushes a creationist message has been approved as a destination for school trips by the government.” That could never happen in America, could it? That zoo, called the Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm, appears to be doing everything right; it earned a quality badge by the “Learning Outside the Classroom” program; it’s educational resources appear “absolutely fine” according to Marshall himself, it has lots of animals (including big ones like rhinos and giraffes), and it accepts school parties with kids of all ages. But... creationism? Marshall quoted the zoo’s website making this statement: Darwinism has no explanation of how the atoms and all the laws of nature should just come to “be there”, no adequate theory of how life with its highly complex DNA suddenly appeared, and no evidence to show that single-celled life forms evolved into the much more complex forms of the later fossil record. It also cannot explain how consciousness, instinct, free will, and sexual reproduction came into being. Marshall retorted, “Life’s too short to go through and debunk all that,” pointing readers instead to an “Evolution Myths” page at New Scientist. He also noted that in America, “education authorities” have balked at using AiG’s Creation Museum for field trips, handing that hot potato to local boards. Even though the kid-friendly Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm does not appear to be focused on promoting creation, the Noah story or even criticisms of evolution (see the news page, Michael Marshall began his short report with words that could only be described as mean-spirited: “Criticising a family-run zoo that introduces small children to the wonder of animals feels a bit like kicking a puppy – but in this case we might have to.” Fri, 06 Aug 2010 05:14:31 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201008.htm#20100806aAugust 06, 2010 — Stem cells are still hot. Most of the significant findings are coming from adult stem cells (AS) or induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) rather than embryonic stem cells (ES). For example, a PhysOrg article described progress at the University of Michigan in predicting what cell types stem cells will become. Nothing was said in the article about embryonic stem cells. Here are more news reports since the 07/20/2010 entry on the lead of adult stem cell discoveries over ES findings. RNA is a rising star in stem cell research. For instance, according to Science Daily, Caltech found that micro-RNAs, once of unknown function or considered cellular junk, are intimately involved with stem cells. It appears they control the function of mammalian stem cells in the blood, determining what types of blood cell they will become. Similarly, PhysOrg reported on work at Massachusetts General Hospital that found micro RNAs are involved in controlling the number of blood cells in the body. Science Daily reported on work at MIT that finds RNA provides a safer way to reprogram stem cells (iPS cells). Research at Stanford found that purifying the stem cells from bone marrow increase the chances for successful bone marrow transplants, according to PhysOrg. Adult stem cells continue to show promise for healing broken hearts. According to PhysOrg mesenchymal stem cells injected into pigs with heart disease made their hearts “good as new.” Want a renewed, all-natural joint? PhysOrg reported that adult stem cells coming along in experiments well. It appears from experiments on rabbits that “failing joints can be replaced with a joint grown naturally using the host’s own stem cells.” Researchers foresee a future with “naturally grown joints that would last longer than currently used artificial joints.” Another study announced by PhysOrg found that, for patients with deadly brain tumors called glioblastomas, survival time was doubled if radiation therapy was directed at parts of the brain known to harbor stem cells that perhaps had become cancerous. The radiation apparently targets the source of proliferating cancer cells. Overall, PhysOrg reported, adult stem cell therapies are “far ahead” of embryonic experiments. “For all the emotional debate that began about a decade ago on allowing the use of embryonic stem cells,” the article said, “it’s adult stem cells that are in human testing today. An extensive review of stem cell projects and interviews with two dozen experts reveal a wide range of potential treatments.” The score for ES cells is still zero. While according to New Scientist the first embryonic stem cell test on humans has gotten a green light, PhysOrg said that “in the near term, embryonic stem cells are more likely to pay off as lab tools, for learning about the roots of disease and screening potential drugs,” An ethicist quoted in the article, however, dubbed all the efforts for a decade to use ES cells for therapy as “fruitless.” But perhaps the most significant news was announced by Science Daily. The Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research has added strong evidence that ES and iPS stem cells are “virtually identical,” apparently removing any need for embryonic stem cells with their “ethical hurdles.” Garrett Frampton, co-author of a paper in Cell Stem Cell about this comparison, commented, “Billions of dollars have been invested in the idea that we will use ES cells at some point in the future as therapeutic or regenerative agents, but for ethical and practical issues, this may not be possible. But if they work out therapies with ES cells, and iPS cells are equivalent to ES cells, then the idea is that those therapies could be used with iPS cells as well.” In light of this scorecard, why was the dominant theme in the past decade focused on the promise of embryonic stem cells? PhysOrg reported on a study at the University of Arizona that found who drove the issue. It wasn’t public demand. It wasn’t even the media. According to the study, President Bush had little influence holding back the tide of ES research because of the demands of scientific elites. The scientific community held the ball on the issue, and the media followed them – not the President. “They also found that while two-thirds of the sources included in the stories were ‘elites,’ such as experts and politicians, not one story used the president as a dominant source.” When President Obama voiced support for ES research, that all changed. The media, the scientific community and the President were then all on the same team. One of the study authors remarked, “I think it is time for us to see whether the same pattern occurred during the debate for health care reform under the new Obama administration.” Fri, 06 Aug 2010 04:48:03 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201008.htm#20100805aAugust 05, 2010 — Some scientists are looking into the folds of a sponge for clues about the Cambrian Explosion – the sudden emergence of all the major body plans in the geological blink of an eye. What they are finding is more complexity than a first glance at the simple creatures would expect. A draft genome of a demosponge named Amphimedon from the Great Barrier Reef has just been published. Adam Mann wrote about this in Nature News,1 hinting at the divination going on: “Researchers wring evolutionary clues from gene sequence.” One result so far, he said, is “Telltale molecular fragments teased out of ancient sediment1 show that sponges existed some 635 million years ago – the oldest evidence for metazoans (multicellular animals) on Earth.” The sponge has some 18,000 genes. This “represents a diverse toolkit, coding for many processes that lay the foundations for more complex creatures.” What kind of tools? “These include mechanisms for telling cells how to adhere to one another, grow in an organized fashion and recognize interlopers.” In what may sound very surprising for such a lowly creature, “The genome also includes,” Mann continued, “analogues of genes that, in organisms with a neuromuscular system, code for muscle tissue and neurons.” Why would a sponge have such genes without having a neuromuscular system or central nervous system? Mann suggested that this complexity forces the evolution of complexity back in time: “such complexity indicates that sponges must have descended from a more advanced ancestor than previously suspected.” He quoted Douglas Erwin of the Smithsonian responding with alarm that “This flies in the face of what we think of early metazoan evolution.” Charles Marshall, the master of Cambrian Explosion disaster (see 04/23/2006), added, “It means there was an elaborate machinery in place that already had some function. What I want to know now is what were all these genes doing prior to the advent of sponge.” The sponge genome was published by Srivastava et al in the same issue of Nature.2 Mann summarized its conclusions as an invocation of the power of emergence by unknown powers of evolution operating in a critical window of time. During that time, nefarious processes that would plague humans 635 million years later, like a kind of ruthless communism, were being laid: The analyses of Srivastava and her colleagues suggest that there was a crucial window, some 150 to 200 million years in duration, when the basics of multicellular life emerged. Nearly one-third of the genetic alterations that distinguish humans from their last common ancestor with single-celled organisms took place during this period. These changes would have occurred within our sponge-like forebears. The researchers also identified parts of the genome devoted to suppressing individual cells that multiply at the expense of the collective. The presence of such genes indicates that the battle to stop rogue cells — in other words, cancer — is as old as multicellularity itself. Such a link was recently hinted at by work showing that certain ‘founder genes’ that are associated with human cancers first arose at about the same time as metazoans appeared. The demosponge genome shows that genes for cell suicide – those activated within an individual cell when something goes wrong – evolved before pathways that are activated by adjacent cells to dispatch a cancerous neighbour. By saying that nearly one-third of the genetic toolkit “emerged” in a blank period before the fossils of the first actual sponge, and that the changes “occurred” in undescribed “sponge-like forebears,” Mann shielded the fact that there is not only no evidence for such an ancestor, but no known mechanism by which genes with foresight would have emerged in single-celled creatures. Srivastava et al were no help explaining how this emergence occurred. A search on evolution in the paper reveals these circumlocutions: * Comparative analysis enabled by the sequencing of the sponge genome reveals genomic events linked to the origin and early evolution of animals, including the appearance, expansion and diversification of pan-metazoan transcription factor, signalling pathway and structural genes. This diverse ‘toolkit’ of genes correlates with critical aspects of all metazoan body plans, and comprises cell cycle control and growth, development, somatic- and germ-cell specification, cell adhesion, innate immunity and allorecognition. * The emergence of multicellular animals from single-celled ancestors over 600 million years ago required the evolution of mechanisms for coordinating cell division, growth, specialization, adhesion and death. * Sponges are diverse and their phylogeny is poorly resolved17, 18, 19, allowing for the possibility that sponges are paraphyletic20, which implies that other animals evolved from sponge-like ancestors. * Although the diversity of sponges and their uncertain phylogeny make it doubtful that any single species can reveal the intricacies of early animal evolution, comparison of the A. queenslandica draft genome with sequences from other species can provide a conservative estimate of the genome of the common ancestor of all animals and the timing and nature of the genomic events that led to the origin and early evolution of animal lineages. * We find 235 animal-specific protein domains and 769 animal-specific domain combinations that evolved along the metazoan stem (Supplementary Note 9). Additionally, lineage-specific changes to these animal domain architectures occurred in early metazoan evolution. * The Myc oncogene illustrates how intramolecular regulation has also evolved. * This lack of phylogenetic resolution may reflect a period of rapid evolution and diversification of ligand/receptor molecules in sponge and eumetazoan lineages. * ...the expression of orthologues of post-synaptic structural and proneural regulatory proteins in Amphimedon larval globular cells suggests an evolutionary connection with an ancestral protoneuron. In the Conclusion section, the question of how this complexity originated was asked directly. But the answer was shrouded in passive voice verbs and unstated mechanisms: Whereas the eumetazoan lineage produced a wide diversity of body forms [i.e., the Cambrian Explosion], the sponge body plan has been stable for over 600 million years. What can explain this disparity in evolved morphological complexity? Although we have seen that sponges and eumetazoans share many common pathways related to morphogenesis and cell-type specification, there are notable genomic differences, including different microRNA assemblages, lineage-specific domains and domain architectures, and the differential expansions of gene families. Although there has been minimal characterization of cis-regulatory architectures in non-bilaterians, we note that as most classes of bilaterian transcription factors are also present in sponges, cnidarians and placozoans, it may be that quantitative rather than qualitative differences in cis-regulatory mechanisms were needed to produce more diverse body plans. The sexually-reproducing, heterotrophic metazoan ancestor had the capacity to sense, respond to, and exploit the surrounding environment while maintaining multicellular homeostasis. Although sponges lack some of the cell types found in eumetazoans, including neurons and muscles, they share with all other animals genes that are essential for the form and function of integrated multicellular organisms. With these genomic innovations enabling the regulation of cellular proliferation, death, differentiation and cohesion, metazoans transcended their microbial ancestry. They just said, in brief, that all the genetic toolkit was there in the sponge ancestor. The Cambrian Explosion was due to “quantitative rather than qualitative differences” in the tools. But does this explain a trilobite, a segmented worm, shellfish, crabs, the predator Anomalocaris, and all the other amazing creatures found at the point of the Cambrian explosion? And why would a microbe come up with these tools in the first place, even to produce a sponge? The news media, notably Science Daily and New Scientist, dutifully reproduced these sentiments without critique. For instance, Mann in Nature said, “As an added benefit, this genome may shed light on how primitive animal cells first learned to cope with the enduring hazard of collective existence: cancer,” to which New Scientist echoed, “Figuring out how sponges get by without them may shed light on their role in human cancers.” New Scientist put the solution to the Cambrian explosion in terms of hope and change: “Now that their genetic make-up has finally been sequenced, it could explain one of the greatest mysteries of evolution: how single-celled organisms in the primordial oceans evolved into complex multicellular animals with the spectacular diversity of body plans we see today.” Like the Nature articles, though, the explanation consisted of saying little more than complexity was already there: “This means that all the key genetic prerequisites for modern animals made up of trillions of cells were in place well before sponges split from other animals 600 million years ago.” Somehow, we are told, sponges moved up from microbes be becoming inventors: “To this basic set of genes, sponges and other multicellular animals add a small suite of master-control genes which may allow the greater coordination needed when several cells are dividing together.” Science Daily, likewise, admitted that “how this differential complexity is encoded in the genome is still a major question in biology.” A coauthor of the study, Bernie Degnan, a professor of biology at the University of Queensland, Australia, engaged in ancestor worship. “This incredibly old ancestor possessed the same core building blocks for multicellular form and function that still sits at the heart of all living animals, including humans. It now appears that the evolution of these genes not only allowed the first animals to colonize the ancient oceans, but underpinned the evolution of the full biodiversity of animals we see today.” They evolved because they evolved. Moreover, Degnan told Science Daily that “all the genomic innovations that we deem necessary for intricate modern animal life have their origins much further back in time that anyone anticipated, predating the Cambrian explosion by tens if not hundreds of millions of years.” He was stunned by the revelations coming from the genetic crystal ball: “Remarkably, the sponge genome now reveals that, along the way toward the emergence of animals, genes for an entire network of many specialized cells evolved....” However they evolved, Degnan admitted that human engineers look to the sponge for inspiration for their own designed innovations. “Sponges produce an amazing array of chemicals of direct interest to the pharmaceutical industry,” the quote in Science Daily continued. “They also biofabricate silica fibers directly from sea water in an environmentally benign manner, which is of great interest in communications. With the genome in hand, we can decipher the methods used by these simple animals to produce materials that far exceed our current engineering and chemistry capabilities.” (See 11/20/2008 and its embedded links for descriptions of the exquisite fiber-optic structures produced by some sponges.) Tantalizing glimpses of a primordial sponge blob were revealed by PhysOrg: “Ancient blob-like creature of the deep revealed by scientists.” Scientists at Imperial College London generated a 3D image of Drakozoon, the only known fossil specimen of a “cone-shaped, blob-like creature with a hood” that “probably had a leathery exterior skin.” “We think this tiny blob of jelly survived by clinging onto rocks and hard shelled creatures, making a living by plucking microscopic morsels out of seawater,” said Dr. Mark Sutton, another diviner. “By looking at this primitive creature, we also get one tantalising step closer to understanding what the earliest creatures on Earth looked like.” But wait – Drakozoon was dated to 425 million years old, making it far too late to be the mysterious 635-million-year-old proto-sponge with all the tools needed to build a human. The clever innovator remains shrouded in the presumptions of a long-lost evolutionary past. Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:34:49 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201008.htm#20100804aAugust 04, 2010 — The universal energy currency in living things is ATP. To produce the vast quantities of this molecule required by life 24 x 7, cells employ banks of rotary engines called ATP Synthase, which we have reported on previously in these pages many times. ATP synthase has become somewhat of a mascot of intelligent design, because there are no known precursors to this multi-faceted, exquisitely efficient motor that is so tiny, 120,000 of them could fit on the head of a pin (07/16/2002). Scientists continue to glimpse finer details of these engines using X-ray crystallography and other techniques. A new finding, published in PLoS Biology,1 found that water molecules play a crucial role in the rotor. The findings were summarized on PhysOrg, “Cells use water in nano-rotors to power energy conversion.” The international team (primarily at Max Planck Institute for Biophysics, Frankfurt, Germany) investigated the ATP synthase motors in an unusual bacterium that lives in highly-alkaline water. “This bacterium prefers alkaline environments where the concentration of protons (H+) is lower outside than inside the cell – the inverse of the situation usually found in organisms that prefer neutral or acidic environments,” the authors said. These cells have a special challenge. Many cells live in neutral or acidic waters, providing no obstacles for the free flow of protons (hydrogen ions) through the membranes and into the rotors they help turn. In alkaline conditions, the protons would tend to leak out to neutralize the environment. These special ATP synthase motors, therefore, need to maintain a gradient that is not as alkaline as the outside. “The extreme alkaliphile [alkali-loving] Bacillus pseudofirmus OF4 grows by oxidative phosphorylation with cytoplasmic pH values maintained 1.5-2.3 pH units below the high external pH (up to 11) of the medium,” they explained. “The existence of this reversed [delta]-pH poses a major thermodynamic problem, with which these cells must cope.” This species has some modifications to its engine design to help it cope with its special conditions. It has a modified a-subunit, latent activity, and – especially – a modified c-ring with more subunits and different shape (the c-ring is the primary rotor). In most organisms, the c-ring has 10 subunits; in B. pseudofirmus, there are 13 (some other organisms have 11 or 15). Though similar in many respects to the c-rings in other species, this one has an altered shape, somewhat like a “tulip beer glass,” they said soberly. Although the ways in which these modifications serve to function in the alkaline environment of this bacterium are not yet clear, the authors are convinced that the cooperation of the water ion in the center of each subunit is a key: This work shows a new type of proton coordination in an F1F0 synthase rotor ring.... It is evident that the coordination network of the water itself... is a stabilizing and therefore a structural part of this c-ring. The presence of the water has been shown to enhance the Na+-binding affinity in the Na+-binding c11 ring [in organisms with 11 c-subunits). Given this observation we propose that the water in the c13 ring binding pocket also enhances the proton affinity. High affinity rotor binding sites are of central importance for all ATP synthases but are especially important for ATP synthases of bacteria that grow in alkaline environments.... Perhaps the novel manner in which a water participates in proton binding is also a consequence of adaptation of the ATP synthase to alkaliphily [adaptation to alkaline environments]. They speculated that this observation applies to a wider class of specialized c-rings, too. Further comparative studies of c-rings are needed to determine the precise role of these ion-binding pockets in the c-ring subunits. They speculated that they may have to do with “ion affinity and selectivity during torque generation” of the rotors. The authors mentioned evolution four times, but three of them were assertions that the motors evolved; the other was a passing suggestion: “The smf-driven [sodium motive force] ATP synthases have been suggested to be evolutionary pioneers in the establishment of the modern ATP synthases,” they said, referring to a 2008 paper that suggested the idea. “If this hypothesis is correct,” they continued, indicating the tentative nature of the idea, then perhaps the unusual forms of c-rings “could be derivatives of the c11 basic structure from an evolutionary point of view.” Nothing else from the “evolutionary point of view” contributed to the motivation, investigation, or discovery in the paper itself. On the contrary, the authors praised the elegance of this ubiquitous nanomotor, including the modifications of this particular alkaline-loving species: “The subtle but important differences in the H-bonding network geometry allow a fine-tuning ... and serve to optimize the required solvation energy,” they said. “Fine tuning of these parameters is of crucial importance within the a/c-ring interface, where the rotor binding sites pass a more hydrophilic environment.” Earlier in the Abstract, they used the tuning phrase again: “It appears in the ion binding site of an alkaliphile in which it represents a finely tuned adaptation of the proton affinity during the reaction cycle.” And they certainly did not hesitate to describe of the ATP synthase as a wondrous, functional machine: “Like the wind turbines that generate electricity, the F1F0-ATP synthases are natural ‘ion turbines’ each made up of a stator and a rotor that turns, when driven by a flow of ions, to generate the cell’s energy supply of ATP.” PhysOrg in its coverage of the paper heaped on additional superlatives: ATP synthases are among the most abundant and important proteins in living cells. These rotating nano-machines produce the central chemical form of cellular energy currency, ATP (adenosine triphosphate), which is used to meet the energy needs of cells. For example, human adults synthesize up to 75 kg of ATP each day under resting conditions and need a lot more to keep pace with energy needs during strenuous exercise or work. The turbine of the ATP synthase is the rotor element, called the c-ring. This ring is 63 A [Angstroms] in diameter (6.3 nm, or 6.3 millionths of a millimeter) and completes over 500 rotations per second during ATP production. 500 rotations per second amounts to, in the terminology of more familiar motors, some 30,000 RPM. Since three ATP molecules are synthesized for each rotation, one of these motors can generate just short of 100,000 ATP per minute – and your body has quadrillions of them working all your life, even in your sleep. The best way to see what is going on is through animation. A simplified but effective animation can be found at University of Osnabrueck by Wolfgange Junge; see Movie #2 (QuickTime); the c-ring is at the bottom. DNA-tube has a more detailed animation (rotor at top) showing the reversibility of the engine. Additional animations can be located with an internet search on the phrase, “ATP synthase animation”. Wed, 04 Aug 2010 04:59:08 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201008.htm#20100803aAugust 03, 2010 — Conspiracy theorists will probably have little to say now that the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has taken the clearest photo yet of the alleged “Face on Mars” in Cydonia. For the before and after photos, see PhysOrg. The new photo is clearly an eroded, rocky mesa – that’s all, folks. Read the commentary for how to turn the Face-on-Mars theory into a teachable moment.Tue, 03 Aug 2010 05:57:43 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201008.htm#20100802aAugust 02, 2010 — Scientists are finding that it’s not just having the right parts that makes a body go; it’s having those parts controlled by the right regulators. Recent stories make the case with their headlines: “‘Guardian of the Genome’: Protein Helps Prevent Damaged DNA in Yeast, announced Science Daily. “Scientists find gas pedal – and brake – for uncontrolled cell growth,” reported PhysOrg. Another PhysOrg article about stem cells gave “New insights into how stem cells determine what tissue to become.” Still another on PhysOrg said that “Researchers find key step in body##e's ability to make red blood cells.” Finally, also on PhysOrg, another use was found for large pieces of RNA transcribed from the big stretches of code between genes. In “‘Linc-ing’ a noncoding RNA to a central cellular pathway,” the opening paragraph announced, “The recent discovery of more than a thousand genes known as large intergenic non-coding RNAs (or ‘lincRNAs’) opened up a new approach to understanding the function and organization of the genome. That surprising breakthrough is now made even more compelling with the finding that dozens of these lincRNAs are induced by p53 (the most commonly mutated gene in cancer), suggesting that this class of genes plays a critical role in cell development and regulation.” All that was announced in just 3 days of science news. Mon, 02 Aug 2010 05:44:57 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201008.htm#20100801aAugust 01, 2010 — The imitation of nature – biomimetics – is one of the hottest areas in science these days. Recent reports tell about research teams racing to move natural designs to market, and there’s no end in sight... (6 reports). [On spider silk], The abstract of the paper in Science mentioned the aesthetic as well as practical value of the spider’s product. The opening paragraph serves as a model vision statement for all bio-inspired research: Spiders and silkworms generate silk protein fibers that embody strength and beauty. Orb webs are fascinating feats of bioengineering in nature, displaying magnificent architectures while providing essential survival utility for spiders. The unusual combination of high strength and extensibility is a characteristic unavailable to date in synthetic materials yet is attained in nature with a relatively simple protein processed from water. This biological template suggests new directions to emulate in the pursuit of new high-performance, multifunctional materials generated with a green chemistry and processing approach. These bio-inspired and high-technology materials can lead to multifunctional material platforms that integrate with living systems for medical materials and a host of other applications. Sun, 01 Aug 2010 08:40:47 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201007.htm#20100731aJuly 31, 2010 — Did you know your heart is an electrical appliance? That’s right. Currents of electrical ions are vital to its function as a contractile organ. Now, researchers at the University of California have found another thing electricity does for your heart: it guides the developing heart into the proper shape. This is a key study showing how epigenetic factors – factors above and beyond the genetic code – are essential for the formation of body parts. The research team, publishing in PNAS,1 explained the purpose of their investigation (Note: morphogenesis refers to the origin of shape, and cardiomyocytes are the specialized muscle cells that make the heart beat): Cardiac morphogenesis is a complex process that is mediated by a coordinated set of cellular and molecular as well as environmental factors. Recent studies have shown that epigenetic forces such as cardiomyocyte contractility and intracardiac hemodynamic flow regulate this process. Furthermore, in vitro studies suggest that cardiomyocytes can realign themselves according to electrical conduction directionality. However, because electrical cardiac conduction and mechanical contractile forces are intimately coupled in the intact heart, it is difficult to assess the individual contribution of these influences to overall heart organogenesis. Here, we make use of several zebrafish cardiac mutants to uncouple these two influences, and find that electrical conduction exclusive of contractile influences can directly participate in remodeling and morphogenesis of the vertebrate heart. In other words, electrical conduction guides the individual heart cells into position during heart development. They said in the Discussion part of their paper that it is known that “The direction of growth and orientation of various cell types in tissue culture can be influenced by externally applied electric fields.” They added, “Furthermore, endogenous [inside organism] electric currents exist in a variety of tissues and have been hypothesized to influence cell migration and shape.” This paper announces confirmation of that hypothesis for heart formation: “Our in vivo results [using living zebrafish] indicate that physiologic electric currents can indeed have an impact on cell morphology and overall cardiac organogenesis.” The mutant fish without the electrical conduction working properly developed heart disease. So how does this work? They explained, “These electrical effects might be mediated through intracellular calcium fluxes which can affect cell polarization. Furthermore, a number of cell surface receptors... can also be redistributed in the cell membrane by electric fields.” Does this finding provide hope for heart patients? Patients with electrical conduction disorders get better when the beats are re-synchronized. The researchers explained why that works: “Thus, overall cardiac improvement from the resynchronization of the ventricles in heart failure patients manifesting conduction disorders may be due to beneficial realignment and improved remodeling of the myocardium primarily from proper and synchronized electrical signaling.” Get the electricity right, and the heart shapes up. Now those defibrillation devices and electrical heart stimulators start to make more sense. This means that stem cell therapy (07/20/2010) may need an electrical jumpstart to work properly: “Given that previous cardiac cell-based therapy has provided only a modest improvement in cardiac function,” they ended, pointing therapy in a new direction, “electrical cell–cell communication and stimulation may be required for optimal integration and alignment of engrafted embryonic cardiomyocytes and skeletal myoblasts in the injured myocardium to improve overall myocardial performance.” Live better electrically! Sat, 31 Jul 2010 05:34:31 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201007.htm#20100730aJuly 30, 2010 — The world is a big place, and most animals are small. Yet many animals are found far from where their presumed ancestors lived. Most birds, naturally, can fly long distances, and some sea creatures can cross the oceans with the help of currents. That cannot explain all the cases, however. Here are some attempts by evolutionists to explain how animals got from here to there: 1. Land-locked reptiles: In the evolutionary saga, the first tetrapods invaded the land close to shore. Scientists at the University of London found reptile tracks, though, according to Live Science, found “ancient reptile tracks” in the Bay of Fundy at a location said thought to be 500 kilometers inland. According to New Scientist, the first land colonizers, frogs and amphibians, had to stay near the water. Howard Falcon-Lang gave his speculation on how the reptile track-makers got so far into the dry inland area: “Perhaps the coastal swampy forests were becoming overcrowded and the continental interior were empty spaces just waiting to be filled by pioneers.” 2. Aussie gloss: One would think that the unique marsupials characteristic of Australia would have evolved down unda. A new theory by a team at the University of Munster, Germany, believes, instead, that they evolved in South America (see Live Science and PhysOrg, “A hop from South America”). There’s a big ocean in between those locations – at least today. The supercontinent Gondwana is thought to have broken apart 80 million years ago. No wonder that PhysOrg said, “Debates have raged for decades about how to arrange the Australian and South American branches of the marsupial family tree.” According to the new theory, a common ancestor of all the Australian marsupials hopped over before the land bridge became inundated (they based this on measures of retrotransposons in the genes of Australian and South American marsupials, not on fossil evidence). As usual, though, new solutions create new problems. “It is still a mystery how the two distinct Australian and South American branches of marsupials separated so cleanly, but perhaps future studies can shed light on how this occurred.” The BBC News coverage complicated the story by invoking a kind of circular migration pattern over unknown epochs. They envisioned the first marsupial ancestor in China moving across Gondwana South America, then into Australia, and back to Indonesia. It would seem this would allow for quite of bit of genetic mixing during the long periods of migration. One of the scientists is not sure when the genetic signature got locked into the Aussie groups. “It’s now up to other people, maybe from the palaeontology field, to find out when exactly it happened.” For a related story on Australian marsupials, see this Science Daily article about a cave near New South Wales that was found loaded with marsupial bones said to be 15 million years old. 3. One-way birds: Not all birds are capable of long-distance migration. It’s long been unclear how certain species of birds arrived in North and South America. There’s a land bridge now (the Isthmus of Panama), but for a long time before South America bumped into the North American continent, a vast ocean separated the two. Science Daily reported on the thinking of researchers at the University of Nevada that suggests there was one-way traffic: “Avian lineages from the northern Nearctic regions have repeatedly invaded the tropics and radiated throughout South America,” said Brian Tilston Smith (U of Nevada). “In contract [sic, contrast] species with South American tropical origins remain largely restricted to the confines of the tropical regions.” He based his ideas on phylogeny the “molecular clock” hypothesis, because “the relatively poor fossil record has prevented us from understanding how the land bridge shaped New World bird communities.” Smith said, “Our study suggests the formation of the Panama land bridge was crucial for allowing cross continental bird migration.” But it doesn’t explain the one-way traffic, unless for some reason South America had better marketing. Some 50% of species in the South have Northern origins, the article said, but it’s only 10% the other direction. 4. Brazilian elephant: PhysOrg reported the discovery of a 12 cm tooth shows elephants made it to Brazil. They were previously known only as far south as Costa Rica. Maybe it was on vacation. Charles Darwin spent two chapters in the Origin invoking geographical distribution as evidence for his theory of evolution. Modern evolutionists continue the tradition, with ample use of ad hoc reasoning. Sat, 31 Jul 2010 03:01:37 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201007.htm#20100729aJuly 29, 2010 — A history of astronomy and a history of surprise discoveries in space would track pretty well. Recent stories show that the trend continues even today (6 reports from solar system to stars). An article on PhysOrg about early results from the Herschel Space Observatory with its SPIRE camera quoted Ian Smail of Durham University, who analyzes results from the mission: “It is already clear that we live in a changing Universe and, thanks to Herschel and SPIRE, few things are changing faster than our perception of it.” Looking back over 400 years of astronomy since Galileo and Kepler, Joseph Burns of Cornell University surveyed the many surprising discoveries made in space, especially in the last 5 decades of the space program: the Van Allen belts; Venus’s young surface; old, cold moons that proved surprisingly active; old, cold comets that showed evidence of hot formation; asteroids thought to be hard rock that turn out to be rubble piles; remarkable dynamism in Saturn’s rings; chaotic motions of moons; and more. “Few scientists envisaged that the neighbouring worlds explored by space missions would be so diverse, nor how entrancing many are.” Publishing his account in Nature,2, using the word “surprising” a number of times, he quoted a character from Tom Stoppard’s novel Arcadia in his conclusion talking about scientific revolutions: “It’s the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.” Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:46:01 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201007.htm#20100728aJuly 28, 2010 — Most animals come in segments – body plans that are divided into more-or-less similar parts. Arthropods, worms and vertebrates are examples (including humans, with their vertebral segments and rough division into head, thorax and abdomen). Where did the idea of segmentation come from? Some French evolutionists think it just appeared by chance and changed the face of the world. The article in Science Daily makes a number of amazing claims: # (1) Segmentation appeared by chance: “By chance, evolution may have played a winning card with segmentation, which profoundly marked the history of life on Earth.” # (2) Evolution came up with segmentation either once or multiple times by “convergent evolution,” but the French think it happened once, because they found similar retrotransposons in the genes of the different segmented groups: “These similarities led them to conclude that the genes had been inherited from a common ancestor, which was itself segmented.” # (3) Their finding constitutes proof, they think: “This old and controversial idea among zoologists [i.e., that segmented animals had a single common ancestor], had never been proved until now.” (4) Evolution would go the segmentation route because it’s economical: “Over millions of years, and exposure to changing environmental constraints, it is easier for an animal to specialize a segment into a specific tool in response to a need, than to create a whole new organ from scratch.” (5) Humans can play God by using the advantages of segmentation: “If one day we could play God and create artificial animals or even biomimetic robots, perhaps we too should think about it. But this is still within the realm of science fiction.” So when did chance come upon this lucky advantage? They answered this question with a question: “Is it possible that they all inherited this feature from a very distant common ancestor that lived 600 million years ago, before the Cambrian explosion, which produced most of the large animal groups that exist today?” They had to envision an unknown, unseen common ancestor before the explosion, because the Cambrian strata show fully-segmented worms, arthropods (trilobites) and vertebrates doing just fine. Wed, 28 Jul 2010 05:02:13 GMThttp://creationsafaris.com/crev201007.htm#20100727aJuly 27, 2010 — At first glance, the headline sounds absurd: is our world natural? Of course the world is natural. Nature is natural, isn’t it? Often, though, we picture what humans do as unnatural – oil spills, landfills, pollution, nuclear waste, crime, war. But if humans are a part of nature, then whatever they do is natural. Some recent articles show that the definition of natural requires some reflection (4 examples). These and other examples show that defining natural is complex and problematic. Yet the word is important in origins debates. Evolutionists, whether atheistic or theistic, often demand that science restrict its explanations to natural phenomena subject to natural laws. Yet by using their human reason and intellect, they are, in a sense, acting “outside” nature by casting judgment on what nature entails and how it is to be understood. Explanation by its very “nature” is not a natural phenomenon subject to natural laws. It shouldn’t be surprising that this article began with a headline, “Is our world natural?” Sean Carroll, a Caltech cosmologist, asked if the universe itself is natural (see 05/11/2006). Tue, 27 Jul 2010 05:10:18 GMT