No need to write a commentary about this. Just read it. Shit me.
Category Evolution
In evolutionary biology, there is a deeply rooted supposition that you can’t go home again: Once an organism has evolved specialized traits, it can’t return to the lifestyle of its ancestors.There’s even a name for this pervasive idea. Dollo’s law states that evolution is unidirectional and irreversible. But this “law” is not universally accepted and is the topic of heated debate among biologists.
A scanning electron microscope image of an American house dust mite. (Credit: G. Bauchan and R. Ochoa)
Now a research team led by
As ever, divesting the news from Science Daily for your perusal: Feb. 19, 2013 — Understanding how and why diversification occurs…
Oh shit. UPDATE: On February 19, HB1674 passed through the Oklahoma Common Education committee on a 9-8 vote. In biology class, public…
As if any was needed.
Science Daily – Feb. 14, 2013 — A genome-wide analysis searching for evidence of long-lived balancing selection — where the evolutionary process acts not to select the single best adaptation but to maintain genetic variation in a population — has uncovered at least six regions of the genome where humans and chimpanzees share the same combination of genetic variants.
Here is a concise synopsis from Smilodon’s Retreat, here at SIN. I am fascinated with endogenous retroviruses (ERVs). It seems that they are simply not adequately explained on a creationism thesis. This usually entails trying to debunk them since they have no other answer!
Mwah! In light of Darwin Day… I love this one:
Feb. 1, 2013 — We’ve all heard examples of animal altruism: Dogs caring for orphaned kittens, chimps sharing food or dolphins nudging injured mates to the surface. Now, a study led by the University of Colorado Boulder suggests some plants are altruistic too.
The researchers looked at corn, in which each fertilized seed contained two “siblings” — an embryo and a corresponding bit of tissue known as endosperm that feeds the embryo as the seed grows, said CU-Boulder Professor Pamela Diggle. They compared the growth and behavior of the embryos and endosperm in seeds sharing the same mother and father with the growth and behavior of embryos and endosperm that had genetically different parents.
Oh dear. The Guardian reports:
Four US states are considering new legislation about teaching science in schools, allowing pupils to to be taught religious versions of how life on earth developed in what critics say would establish a backdoor way of questioning the theory of evolution.
Fresh legislati
Jerry Coyne, on his excellent blog, has detailed his opinions, whilst recounting critiques of other thinkers, on atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel’s controversial anti-evolution book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. Well, the title is enough to make one sigh. I am including here a review / critique by one of Jerry Coyne’s first students, Allen Orr, for your delectation. This appeared in The New York Review of Books. I suggest heading over to Coyne’s piece for more detail.
More than 850 delegates flocked to a seminal conference in London on Saturday about the compatibility of modern evolutionary theory and Islamic theology – despite scaremongering and the refusal of Islamic student societies to participate. Determined organisers had overcome pressure to cancel by changing the venue from Imperial College toLogan Hall at the University of London. The event was the brainchild of the Deen Institute, which runs courses to promote critical thinking among Muslim students and kindle rational dialogue within Islam. The need for dialogue is urgent, because to date there has been little open discussion within British Muslim communities on this divisive subject. Recent debates in the US suggest that evolution is not as much of a problem theologically to Muslims as it is to Christian creationists, but there is work to be done to clarify the situation.
Recently, I ran a couple of posts sharing some of the utterly awesome work of Canadian science rapper Baba Brinkman. He is a fascinating guy who has kindly agreed to an interview which I am sharing with you here. Before I get down to the interview, let me remind you of his truly great work:
I am writing this piece in response to a recent exchange that has come to involve a growing number of people in some particular corners of the blogosphere. Most of you who will be reading this will not need me to go into great detail as you will probably have already read the exchanges. This is how, effectively, the process took place.
Sorry, /i know I have posted a lot of news articles recently, but this one from the British Humanist Association has made…
Oh dear.
Fifth graders in some state-sponsored schools in Louisiana study both creationism and evolution as competing theories. “Fact or Theory?”
In their FAQ, the Discovery Institute write in response to the question “Is intelligent design theory the same as creationism?”:
“No. Intelligent design theory is simply an effort to empirically detect whether the “apparent design” in nature acknowledged by virtually all biologists is genuine design (the product of an intelligent cause) or is simply the product of an undirected process such as natural selection acting on random variations. Creationism is focused on defending a literal reading of the Genesis account, usually including the creation of the earth by the Biblical God a few thousand years ago. Unlike creationism, the scientific theory of intelligent design is agnostic regarding the source of design and has no commitment to defending Genesis, the Bible or any other sacred text. Honest critics of intelligent design acknowledge the difference between intelligent design and creationism.”
Well, I am an “honest critic” and I will acknowledge the difference between ID and the restrictive definition of Creationism that they choose to use but I will not acknowledge the difference between ID and Creationism in general. Creationism is the belief that some being outside nature (as we know it) created everything, as opposed to everything arising naturally without any causal agent or intervention. This totally encompasses ID.
Now that Sandy has exacted a steep toll in lives and property, the question is unavoidable: why do so many people in America refuse to take climate science seriously?
Rick Santorum at the RNC, in August 2012: the former presidential candidate has voiced Christian Dominionist ideas. Photograph: Eric Thayer/Reuters
I am not assuming that Sandy was the direct consequence of human-caused climate change. But with this fresh evidence of the impact of climate issues on real people, how is it possible for anyone to think that thousands of scientists around the world are engaged in an elaborate hoax?
The standard reply is that some powerful organizations – above all, in the fossil fuel industry – think that they can benefit from misleading the public, and have funded a successful disinformation campaign. There is a lot of truth to this answer, but it isn’t the whole truth.
I have been reading the first chapter of Neil Shubin’s Your Inner Fish recently and it really struck me again how strong, persuasive nay indomitable, the predictive powers of evolution are. The simple idea that a paleontologist can think that the first fish fossils were found at time A and the first limbed land animal fossils were found at time C, and so to find the transitional fossils for animals in between fish and limbed land animals should be found at time B (in this case, the late Devonian period). But this is already dependent upon the prediction that the fish should transform over time to limbed land animals.
Evolution, often perceived as a series of random changes, might in fact be driven by a simple and repeated genetic solution to an environmental pressure that a broad range of specieshappen to share, according to new research.
Princeton University research published in the journal Science suggests that knowledge of a species’ genes—and how certain external conditions affect the proteins encoded by those genes—could be used to determine a predictable evolutionary pattern driven by outside factors. Scientists could then pinpoint how the diversity of adaptations seen in the natural world developed even in distantly related animals.
This is an interesting article from the New York Times. I like it – it is well written and thoughtful, making us ponder the reality of the selfish gene, and the idea that we could, at any time, be being manipulated by other organisms, unbeknownst to our humuncular selves.