Evolution News & Views February 1, 2012 12:20 PM | Permalink

Darwin Day and Evolution Weekend overlap this year, providing an extra special opportunity to celebrate Charles Darwin’s 203rd birthday on February 12 and promote Darwinian theory in a variety of venues, including colleges and universities, churches and synagogues. We wanted to do something appropriate to add our own note to the hallelujah chorus. What do you give to an exhausted relic of antique 19th-century scientific materialism that has everything but genuine credibility?

How about a revised and updated list of pro-intelligent design peer-reviewed scientific papers, showing among other things that the 50th such paper was published in 2011? In a series of upcoming articles, we’ve asked Casey Luskin to note some highlights.

While intelligent design research is a new scientific field, recent years have been a period of encouraging growth, producing a strong record of peer-reviewed scientific publications. New publications continue to appear, now listed at our updated page.

The current boom goes back to 2004, when Discovery Institute senior fellow Stephen Meyer published a groundbreaking paper advocating ID in the journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. There are multiple hubs of ID-related research.

Biologic Institute, led by molecular biologists Doug Axe and Ann Gauger, is “developing and testing the scientific case for intelligent design in biology.” Biologic conducts laboratory and theoretical research on the origin and role of information in biology, the fine-tuning of the universe for life, and methods of detecting design in nature. That’s Dr. Gauger at the Biologic lab pictured above.

Another ID research group is the Evolutionary Informatics Lab, founded by senior Discovery Institute fellow William Dembski along with Robert Marks, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor University. Their lab has attracted graduate-student researchers and published multiple peer-reviewed articles in technical science and engineering journals showing that computer programming “points to the need for an ultimate information source qua intelligent designer.”

Other pro-ID scientists around the world are publishing peer-reviewed pro-ID scientific papers. These include biologist Ralph Seelke at the University of Wisconsin Superior, Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig who recently retired from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Germany, and Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe.

Researchers have published their work in a variety of relevant technical venues, including peer-reviewed scientific journals, peer-reviewed scientific books from mainstream university presses, trade-press books, peer-edited scientific anthologies, peer-edited scientific conference proceedings and peer-reviewed philosophy of science journals and books.

These papers have appeared in scientific journals such as Protein Science, Journal of Molecular Biology, Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling, Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics, Quarterly Review of Biology, Cell Biology International, Rivista di Biologia/Biology Forum, Physics of Life Reviews, Annual Review of Genetics, and many others. At the same time, pro-ID scientists have presented their research at conferences worldwide in fields such as genetics, biochemistry, engineering, and computer science.

This body of research is converging on a consensus: complex biological features cannot arise by unguided Darwinian mechanisms, but require an intelligent cause.

Despite ID’s publication record, we note parenthetically that recognition in peer-reviewed literature is not an absolute requirement to demonstrate an idea’s scientific merit. Darwin’s own theory of evolution was first published in a book for a general and scientific audience — his Origin of Species — not in a peer-reviewed paper. Nonetheless, ID’s peer-reviewed publication record shows that it deserves — and is receiving — serious consideration by the scientific community.

The purpose of ID’s research program is not to convince the unconvincible, critics and naysayers who repeat over and over in the media that there is no such thing as ID research, that ID has not produced a single peer-reviewed paper. (And they call us “science deniers”!) Rather, ID research seeks to engage open-minded scientists and thoughtful laypeople with credible, persuasive, peer-reviewed, empirical data supporting intelligent design.

And this is happening. ID has already gained the kind of scientific recognition you would expect from a young (and vastly underfunded) but promising scientific field. The scientific progress of ID has won the serious attention of skeptics in the scientific community, who engage in scientific debate with ID and attend private scientific conferences allowing off-the-record discussion with ID proponents.

As noted, the new revised and updated listing of pro-ID peer-reviewed papers can be viewed here. We provide an annotated bibliography of technical publications of various kinds that support, develop or apply the theory of intelligent design. The articles are grouped according to the type of publication.

Happy Darwin Day!

Judaism believes that asking questions and welcoming questions is a necessary part of education and growth. The time of the Exodus is a case in point.

From Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks, January 27, 2012

It is no accident that parshat Bo, the section that deals with the culminating plagues and the exodus, should turn three times to the subject of children and the duty of parents to educate them. As Jews we believe that to defend a country you need an army, but to defend a civilization you need education. Freedom is lost when it is taken for granted.

Unless parents hand on their memories and ideals to the next generation – the story of how they won their freedom and the battles they had to fight along the way – the long journey falters and we lose our way.

What is fascinating, though, is the way the Torah emphasizes the fact that children must ask questions. Two of the three passages in our parsha speak of this:

And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.’” (Ex. 12: 26-27)

In days to come, when your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ say to him, ‘With a mighty hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. (Ex. 13: 14)

There is another passage later in the Torah that also speaks of question asked by a child:

In the future, when your son asks you, “What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the Lord our God has commanded you?” tell him: “We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. (Deut. 6: 20-21)

The other passage in today’s parsha, the only one that does not mention a question, is:

On that day tell your son, ‘I do this because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.’ (Ex. 13:

These four passages have become famous because of their appearance in Haggadah on Pesach. They are the four children: one wise, one wicked or rebellious, one simple and “one who does not know how to ask.” Reading them together the sages came to the conclusion that

[1] children should ask questions,

[2] the Pesach narrative must be constructed in response to, and begin with, questions asked by a child,

[3] it is the duty of a parent to encourage his or her children to ask questions, and the child who does not yet know how to ask should be taught to ask.

There is nothing natural about this at all. To the contrary, it goes dramatically against the grain of history. Most traditional cultures see it as the task of a parent or teacher to instruct, guide or command. The task of the child is to obey. “Children should be seen, not heard,” goes the old English proverb. “Children, be obedient to your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing to the Lord,” says a famous Christian text. Socrates, who spent his life teaching people to ask questions, was condemned by the citizens of Athens for corrupting the young.

In Judaism the opposite is the case. It is a religious duty to teach our children to ask questions. That is how they grow.

Judaism is the rarest of phenomena: a faith based on asking questions, sometimes deep and difficult ones that seem to shake the very foundations of faith itself. “Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?” asked Abraham. “Why, Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people?” asked Moses. “Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease?” asked Jeremiah.

The book of Job is largely constructed out of questions, and God’s answer consists of four chapters of yet deeper questions: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? … Can you catch Leviathan with a hook? … Will it make an agreement with you and let you take it as your slave for life?”

In yeshiva the highest accolade is to ask a good question: Du fregst a gutte kashe. Rabbi Abraham Twersky, a deeply religious psychiatrist, tells of how when he was young, his teacher would relish challenges to his arguments. In his broken English, he would say, “You right! You 100 prozent right!  Now I show you where you wrong.”

Isadore Rabi, winner of a Nobel Prize in physics, was once asked why he became a scientist. He replied, “My mother made me a scientist without ever knowing it. Every other child would come back from school and be asked, ‘What did you learn today?’ But my mother used to ask: ‘Izzy, did you ask a good question today?’ That made the difference. Asking good questions made me a scientist.”

Judaism is not a religion of blind obedience. Indeed, astonishingly in a religion of 613 commandments, there is no Hebrew word that means “to obey.” When Hebrew was revived as a living language in the nineteenth century, and there was need for a verb meaning “to obey,” it had to be borrowed from the Aramaic: le-tsayet. Instead of a word meaning “to obey,” the Torah uses the verb shema, untranslatable into English because it means [1] to listen, [2] to hear, [3] to understand, [4] to internalise, and [5] to respond.

Written into the very structure of Hebraic consciousness is the idea that our highest duty is to seek to understand the will of God, not just to obey blindly. Tennyson’s verse, “Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or die,” is as far from a Jewish mindset as it is possible to be.

Why? Because we believe that intelligence is God’s greatest gift to humanity. Rashi understands the phrase that God made man “in His image, after His likeness,” to mean that God gave us the ability “to understand and discern.” The very first of our requests in the weekday Amidah is for “knowledge, understanding and discernment.” One of the most breathtakingly bold of the rabbis’ institutions was to coin a blessing to be said on seeing a great non-Jewish scholar. Not only did they see wisdom in cultures other than their own. They thanked God for it. How far this is from the narrow-mindedness than has so often demeaned and diminished religions, past and present.

The historian Paul Johnson once wrote that rabbinic Judaism was “an ancient and highly efficient social machine for the production of intellectuals.” Much of that had, and still has, to do with the absolute priority Jews have always placed on education, schools, the bet midrash, religious study as an act even higher than prayer, learning as a lifelong engagement, and teaching as the highest vocation of the religious life.

But much too has to do with how one studies and how we teach our children. The Torah indicates this at the most powerful and poignant juncture in Jewish history – just as the Israelites are about to leave Egypt and begin their life as a free people under the sovereignty of God. Hand on the memory of this moment to your children, says Moses. But do not do so in an authoritarian way. Encourage your children to ask, question, probe, investigate, analyze, explore.

Liberty means freedom of the mind, not just of the body. Those who are confident of their faith need fear no question. It is only those who lack confidence, who have secret and suppressed doubts, who are afraid.

The one essential, though, is to know and to teach this to our children, that not every question has an answer we can immediately understand. There are ideas we will only fully comprehend through age and experience, others that take great intellectual preparation, yet others that may be beyond our collective comprehension at this stage of the human quest.

As I write, we don’t yet know whether the Higgs’ boson exists. Darwin never knew what a gene was. Even the great Newton, founder of modern science, understood how little he understood, and put it beautifully: “I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

In teaching its children to ask and keep asking, Judaism honoured what Maimonides called the “active intellect” and saw it as the gift of God. No faith has honoured human intelligence more.

www.israelnationalnews.com

Photo by: YouTube / Al Jazeera

Film shows Palestinians, Jews saving lives

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
Jerusalem Post, 27/01/2012

Film shows cooperation between Jewish and Palestinian volunteer paramedics in United Hatzalah.

No one believed it could happen, but it has: An Israeli living in England has made a politics-free film about cooperation between Jewish and Palestinian volunteer paramedics for the Orthodox Jerusalem organization United Hatzalah, who save lives together in the capital’s western and eastern neighborhoods.
The 25-minute program has been broadcast four times this month by the global Arab TV network Al Jazeera in English, which has also put it online for all to see.
It is an unusual sight: Arabs wearing orange vests printed with the red Star of David team up with haredi (ultra- Orthodox) Jews wearing black kippot, their sidecurls and tzitzit (ritual fringes) blowing in the wind. And the partners have only praise for each other.
“I don’t care which person I’m saving. I even go to [the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of] Mea She’arim on Shabbat,” says Fadi, one of 100 Arabs currently volunteering for UH.
“Saving lives is a religious act for me. Forget all the politics and the mess. People need to live.”
“The Arabs are so devoted,” says a haredi paramedic.
“Their chest compressions are incredible. They respect Jewish sensitivities, especially on Shabbat.”
Eli Beer, the haredi founder and head of the lifesaving rescue organization, commented Thursday, “It’s amazing to see how well we all get along together, without conflict.
Everybody knows and respects each other.”
In a phone interview from London on Thursday, the filmmaker, Keren Ghitis, told The Jerusalem Post how the piece came together.

“I started teaching people how to make videos in Latin America and Africa so they could tell their own stories. I made this video as part of the Ir Amim Initiative, which solicited ideas for films from Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers.
We were asked to tell things that usually do not get attention,” she said.
She submitted it to Al Jazeera, which, she said, was very interested in broadcasting it. Nothing was censored or dictated to toe any line. The first showing was on January 16 at prime time.
“The comments from around the world, including the Arab world, have been very positive. There has also been a lot of mention of it on Facebook. A Palestinian community in the US even asked us for permission to use it for educational purposes,” she said, adding, “It broke a lot of stereotypes.”
The Al Jazeera Network has more than 65 bureaus around the world, with a staff of 3,000 – including more than 400 journalists from more than 60 countries. There is a bureau that hires Israeli Jews and Arabs. The English station has more than 1,000 experienced staffers of more than 50 nationalities and broadcasts to some 220 million households in more than 100 countries.
“I wanted to reach people and see more collaboration between Arabs and Jews,” Ghitis explained when asked why she chose the subject. “More support is needed for medical services in east Jerusalem.”
The UH-trained Palestinian paramedics note in the film that there are often delays in Magen David Adom reaching the sick and wounded in east Jerusalem because no ambulance can get there without being accompanied by a police or military escort. UH Arabs and Jews often get there first on their ambucycles. In addition, many streets are unnamed, and houses have no identifying numbers.
Beer said Al Jazeera had set no conditions for the broadcast.
Speaking to the Post from Davos, he said he had just met Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh, who received the Nobel Prize.
“He was amazed,” he said.
“He and lots of people from all over the world tell me that the fact that I am a proud Jew and Israeli makes Israel look very good.”
Beer wants to have Arabs all over the country working hand-in-hand with haredi, religious and secular Jews for his rescue organization. “I want about 3,000 volunteers, about 15 percent of of them Christian and Muslims.”
Jews and Muslims do not oppose working together, he says, despite the invisible boundaries and suspicions that separate their communities.
“In the beginning, I met a few who were surprised about working together, but after they saw that they are great people and really professional, they all like it,” said Beer.
The Jews also work on Shabbat and festivals in an emergency, and the Muslims on Fridays and Ramadan.
The film follows volunteers like Hezi – a former yeshiva student who works in a fishmonger’s shop and has volunteered with UH for 15 years – and Fadi, a security guard at Al-Aksa Mosque.
Fadi, presented as a loving father hugging his young children at home, has been an assistant to the Jewish owner of a Mea She’arim hardware store since the age of 14. His family encourages him to go any time he gets an emergency call, as does Shlomo, the shop owner. “He is like a son to me,” says the Mea Shearim retailer.
Hezi is not worried when dispatched to the Damascus Gate in east Jerusalem, and works with Red Crescent medics.
“Since they started working together in 2010, hundreds of lives have been saved,” Ghitis concluded.

If you miss the events listed below, there will be more next month when airfares are still low.

By SHAWN RODGERS,  01/27/2012

Catch Portuguese fado singer Ana Moura with Idan Raichel at the World Music concert series.

FILM
1.THE DESCENDANTS
Native islander Matt King (George Clooney) lives with his family in Hawaii. Their world shatters when a tragic accident leaves his wife in a coma. Not only must Matt struggle with the stipulation in his wife’s will that she be allowed to die with dignity, but he also faces pressure from relatives to sell their family’s enormous land trust.
At selected cinemas throughout the country.
MUSIC
2. ANALYZING AYA
Aya Korem is considered one of the country’s most promising singer-songwriters, composing both the music and the lyrics of her songs. She continues to prove her songwriting ability with punchy songs about daily life, love and Israeli reality. Catch her as she performs her many hits, as well as songs from her latest album, Le’alef et Hasusim (Taming Horses).
Tonight, 9:30, Cafe Bialik, Tel Aviv, (03) 620-0832
Music
3. MOURA’S UNIVERSE
Appearing for the first time in Israel, Portuguese fado singer Ana Moura will be joined by Idan Raichel in opening the 2012 World Music concert series at the Israeli Opera. Moura, who is one of the most popular fadistas in Portugal, is gaining a global reputation due to her moving performances and stunning vocal talents. She has also collaborated with such artists as Prince and The Rolling Stones.
Friday, 10 p.m., Opera House, Tel Aviv, www.israel-opera.co.il
FESTIVAL
4. THE WORLD’S A STAGE
For the fifth consecutive year, the ever-new Clipa Theater presents Clipa Aduma, its cutting-edge performance art and visual theater festival that takes place over three weeks from February 2 to 22 in all three performance spaces at the Clipa Theater. Highlights include two extraordinary Butoh artists from Japan; Mestoslav, an object theater piece from Russia; and Pieces of Paradise from Brazil. The local pieces, many multimedia and multidisciplinary, include Diamedia, a TV-human love story, and Gindaor, created and performed by Born to Dance winner Arthur Astman.
For more info, visit www.aduma.co.il

THEATER
5. THE IMPORTANCE OF WILDE WIT
The Haifa English Theater presents Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest. In this classic farce about mistaken identity, Jack (Rory Cunningham) and his freeloading friend Algernon (Jordan Mandell) pursue the hearts of Gwendolen (Theresa O’Toole Kipp) and Cecily (Mary Okonkwo). The disapproval of Gwendolen’s mother Lady Bracknell (Sylvia Lippa) adds to the drama as the men complicate matters by using imaginary alter egos in their attempt to woo the women.
Tonight and Saturday, 8:30 p.m., Beit Hagefen Auditorium, 33 Hatzionut St., Haifa, www.h-e-t.org
KIDS
6. SEARCHING FOR CLUES
This colorful stage version of Erich Kastner’s children’s novel Emil and the Detectives takes young audiences on a fun-filled adventure together with Emil and his friends in search of the robber who stole Emil’s money on the train. The children in the audience become the actors’ accomplices as they turn to them for advice. In Hebrew.
Saturday, 11 a.m., Holon Mediatheque, www.mediatheque.org.il
MIXED BAG
7. IT’S BURNS NIGHT
Celebrate the birthday of Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns, with the best of Scottish cuisine, music, songs and whisky at the Scots Hotel in Tiberias. The evening will be hosted by Israeli actor and comedian Guri Alfi. Following a roast beef dinner with traditional haggis, there will be performances by the Bodhran Ensemble.
Tonight, Scots Hotel, 1 G’dud Barak Street, Tiberias, (04) 671-0710 or www.scotshotels.co.il
EXHIBITION
8. MIXING BUSINESS WITH PLEASURE
The Jerusalem International Convention Center is playing host to Israel’s first kosher wine exhibition. Some 30 wineries will present their products at this event. This is a great opportunity for wine enthusiasts to explore the new flavors, bouquets and colors of products introduced by the big estates, as well as the boutique wineries. A highlight is Cooking in Wine workshops conducted by chef Shaul Ben-Aderet.
Runs Monday and Tuesday, 3 p.m.-11 p.m., (02) 633-4950
EDUCATIONAL
9. CATCHING THE EARLY BIRD
The new Ramat Hanegev Birding Center is offering accommodation, bird-watching trips around the region, and other assorted ornithological activities on four weekends until the end of February. The trips take in a number of locations around the Negev, such as Sfinat Hamidbar, the Ben-Gurion Field School at Sde Boker and the region between Nitzana and Ezuz. The programs also include sunset trips through the desert, bird ringing and lectures about the species of birds that pass through the region at this time of year.
For more info visit www.weekend.co.il/negev/sfinatamidbar
UPCOMING FESTIVAL
10. BEST OF THE BRITS
A combination of classics and cuttingedge films makes up the 12th British Film Festival. Highlights include Ralph Fiennes’s directorial debut of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (pictured) starring himself, Gerard Butler and Vanessa Redgrave, as well as Paddy Considine’s Tyrannosaur, which won the Directing Award and Special Jury Prize at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. This aside, the festival offers everything from documentaries and animated films to shorts from the British Isles.
The BFF takes place February 4 through 12 at cinematheques in Haifa, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Much the way the Nazis assigned their strategic national assets to the destruction of a people, the rulers of Iran are focusing their considerable national resources on creating and fielding nuclear weapons. They do so while publicly embracing time and again a foreign policy that calls for literally wiping Israel off the map.

by Lawrence Kadish
January 24, 2012 at 5:00 am

http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2779/planning-genocide

When a group of high-ranking Nazi bureaucrats sat down 70 years ago today (Jan. 20, 1942), they didn’t plot the death of 6 million Jews; they aimed at 11 million.

Dubbed the Wannsee Conference, after its location, it was chaired by SS Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich, who brought together some of the most efficient managers of mass murder history has ever seen.

The 90-minute agenda was direct, having been transmitted by Hitler to his deputy, Reich Marshal Herman Goering, and then onto Heydrich: “Make all necessary preparations” for a “total solution of the Jewish question” in all territories under German influence, coordinate the role of all government organizations in accomplishing that goal — and then submit a “comprehensive draft” for the “final solution of the Jewish question.”

In other words, for the first time, the administrative, industrial and transportation resources of an entire nation would be deployed for the purpose of genocide.

While history records that a staggering 6 million Jews would ultimately be destroyed as a result, one of the more chilling documents retrieved from the massive archives of the Nazi regime is a simple list of all European nations with Jewish populations as small as 200. Prepared for the Wannsee meeting by Heydrich’s notorious SS assistant, Adolf Eichmann, it assumed that at some point soon the Nazis would control countries from Ireland to Turkey.

The genocidal census was designed to anticipate the organizational structure required to retrieve and ship those 11 million Jews to the Nazi murder factories, regardless of how distant they were from Auschwitz or Treblinka. The Wannsee conferees met to ensure that all participants would meet their quotas (under Heydrich’s centralized authority) to complete “the final solution.”

It would take untold blood, treasure and sacrifice from the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union to bring the Third Reich to an end. Seventy years later, the ruthless, brutal and unrelenting struggle against one of the darkest regimes ever to plague mankind serves as an eternal reminder that there remain forces that would destroy humanity.

Much the way the Nazis assigned their strategic national assets to the destruction of a people, the rulers of Iran are focusing their considerable national resources on creating and fielding nuclear weapons. They do so while publicly embracing time and again a foreign policy that calls for literally wiping Israel off the map.

Elsewhere, the racial hatred practiced by the Third Reich is echoed in the Taliban revulsion of our Western democracies — and in policies in areas it controls that include burning to death young girls for the high crime of attending school.

On this grim 70th anniversary of Wannsee, let us contemplate how a disbelieving world can stand idly by as evil regimes coolly harness their bureaucracies to methodically achieve horrendous goals. Whatever the double speak (as the Wannsee crowd used the phrase “final solution” to mask its program of mass extermination), the outcome is clear to all who wish to see it. Had they been invited, the Iranian regime and the Taliban would have been enthusiastic participants in the Wannsee Conference.

This Third Reich milestone should serve as a cautionary tale for every 21st-century democracy. Middle East expert Bernard Lewis has observed that Islamist leaders like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are little concerned with the mutual-destruction strategies that kept the Cold War from becoming hot. Instead, they welcome the martyrdom of their subjects.

History consistently reminds us that indifference in the face of an implacable enemy invariably leads to disaster. Further, more often than not, our enemies tell us exactly what they mean to do before they do it. Acting on their warning requires our collective insight, personal courage and national will.

Lawrence Kadish is chairman of the advisory board of the American Airpower Museum in Farmingdale, L.I. Originally published by the New York Post, January 20, 2012, and reprinted by gracious permission of the author.

Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch

Senior Rabbi, Stephen Wise Free Synagogue

Posted: 01/25/2012 4:38 pm

In early Jan. 15 senior rabbis, ministers and imams traveled together to Israel and the Palestinian territories. We are from among New York City’s leading religious institutions. Collectively, our houses of worship are home to tens of thousands of prominent New Yorkers.

Anyone who appreciates the hectic schedules and unique demands upon congregational clergy realizes that it is no small matter to bring 15 spiritual leaders together for five days. So why did we leave our congregations for a week? Why did our congregants insist that we go and even pay for our mission?

In the post 9/11 world, religious rapprochement is no longer a luxury; it is a necessity. To ignore dialogue is to invite destruction. If we do not find ways to live together in dignity we will die together in agony. Religious moderates must build new bridges of coexistence or religious extremists will burn the last bridges of peace.

Our presence in the Middle East was intended to broadcast that we can live together, work together, travel together, dream together and build together. In a world awash in religious conflict, we wish to model a different way: the way of coexistence, respect and peace.

It was a tough trip. We did not paper over our differences. We visited the heart of the conflict. There were moments of despair. We met with presidents, prime ministers, members of parliament and mayors on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide. We met with priests, imams and rabbis. We met with journalists, academics, students, villagers and farmers.

Daily headlines do not begin to tell the story. None of the people we met — not one — believed that the Middle East is closer to peace today than ten years ago. If this is the truth, we need to hear it. Progress rests upon the solid rock of reality, not the shifting sands of fantasy.

Despite it all, many of us returned to New York guardedly optimistic. None of the people we met — not one — felt that the status quo was sustainable. Everyone understood that a way must be found to break out of the suffocating reality. There is broad agreement that the present is not working and that a new future must be forged.

People of faith have a unique role to play. Both Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad urged us to engage. Both of them emphasized that religion could be a source of enormous support as the politicians seek a political solution. We can help to create a context that is conducive to peace.

Religion specializes in hope. We are good at articulating our common humanity and giving voice to the better angels of our nature. We were also cautioned that if we do not step up the forces of religious intolerance will continue to drag the rest of us towards war. Our era has placed a sacred obligation on the forces and figures of religious moderation to speak out and act out.

There are many good people working to build bridges. In Haifa we met Christians, Muslims and Jews who have built a true house of coexistence. In Tel Aviv we met doctors, nurses and hospital staff who treated illness without regard to race, religion or creed. Even on the Gaza border, in Israeli towns that were fired upon in a barrage of missiles, there were people who were reaching out to the other side.

Peace is made piece by piece, from the bottom up. Progress is advanced day by day, person by person, each laboring in their own corner of the universe, connecting with others who together create an irresistible force. We should connect with those people and strengthen their hand. This daily labor is heroic work.

Jewish sages ask: Who is a hero? They respond: He who turns an enemy into a friend.

This is our task: person by person to help turn enemies into friends.

By Ira Sharkansky, Tuesday Jan 24, 2012

We are never far from a reminder that the Israel-Palestinian conflict has a strong element of religious animosity.

Those who aspire to solve this with a simple agreement about lines on a map will be better off refereeing a football match (American or European). The Middle East is not for them.

The latest reminder occurred at an anniversary of the Palestinian political movement Fatah. It currently rules the West Bank, although tenuously, with help from Israel and other outsiders. Hamas and other extremists are nipping at its heels, and may enjoy the support of most residents.

Featured at the “moderate’s” celebration was a master of ceremonies who introduced the Mufti of Jerusalem by saying “His words are necessary because our war with the descendants of the apes and pigs is a war of religion and faith.”

He then introduced the Mufti of Jerusalem, the family member of the Mufti who incited deadly riots in the 1920s and 1930s, and later collaborated with the Nazis.

The present Mufti said, “In both collections of the Hadith . . . Judgment Day will not come before you fight the Jews, and the Jew will hide behind a stone or a tree, and the stone or the tree will say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him, with the exception of the gharqad tree, and this is why it is common to see gharqad trees around the (Jewish) settlements.”

The comments received condemnations from Britain’s Foreign Office, and calls from Israel’s President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu for judicial authorities to open an investigation about incitement. Even the Jewish peace group that typically condemns Israeli actions, Americans for Peace Now, condemned the comments as

“belligerent anti-Jewish . . . We are appalled by these comments, coming from the most senior Muslim cleric on the Palestinian Authority’s payroll . . . What we find particularly disturbing is that these vile comments were broadcast on the Palestinian Authority’s official television channel, amplifying their “inciting” effect . . . People in positions of religious authority, on all sides, bear a heavy responsibility of avoiding incendiary rhetoric. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a dispute between two national movements with conflicting claims to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Clerics on both sides must prevent this conflict from being perceived as a religious conflict and from becoming one.”

The Mufti, for his part, described the Hadith as an end-of-times prophesy, not a political precept. “”There is nothing in my speech that calls for killing. . . I was speaking about my people, its steadfastness and its existence in this land until the hour (of resurrection)”.

According to the PA religious affairs minister, “Our political position remains unchanged. We believe in peace. He (Hussein) was simply quoting a Hadith that talks about destiny, about what could happen in the future.”

For the sake of candor and balance, I should note that the Palestinian News Agency Maan is as good a source as any for the details on this issue. http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=454753

The Mufti of Jerusalem is not alone among those who play on the borders of fanatacism and the endorsement of peace. Also indicative of Muslim extremism are school books that show maps of Palestine from the Jordan to the Mediterranean, and Turkey’s fanatic insistence that Armenian genocide is a reason to break diplomatic relations with France. Those who look at www.memri.org see no end of mad Mullahs who preach the most hateful of doctrines about Jews, as well as indications that large segments of Muslim populations and politicians view The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a legitimate description of history and current reality.

Initial feelings at all these indications  can be intense rage, a wondering if we can co-exist with them, or should employ our military might before it is too late.

Then come thoughts about Jewish equivalents, and the problems of the democratic and rational Jewish state to deal with them. Recent incidents include rabbis who endorsed a text that justifies the killing of Gentiles, including children, and the rabbis of Safed who called on people of the city to avoid renting apartments to Arabs. In both cases, judicial authorities dither about pursuing actions against incitement. (See http://www.irac.org/NewsDetailes.aspx?D=1128;

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/07/05/117043/israels-probe-of-radical-jewish.html; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitzhak_Shapira)

No less troubling then religious extremism hereabouts is the naivite heard from American and European officials and commentators. Simplistic actions, such as don’t build here or there, may be appropriate for local disputes in Omaha, Oxford, or Leiden, but not in the Middle East. Buidling restrictions against Jews would not longer be acceptable in any of those places overseas. Here the explosive material is in the air, capable of being exploded by a traffic accident or a comment.

Beyond cursing their house and our own, there may be no alternative beyond hoping that the religious devil remains well capped in its bottle, and that there is enough sanity in both communities to pursue the paths of politics, compromise, and accommodation.

For our friends elsewhere, best to watch football until someone wiser than the present crowd comes up with a bright idea.

Israelis of all colors and races must join Ethiopian community’s war on racism

Yoel Esteron,  January 22, 2012

Mazi Tazazo was born in Sudan en route to Ethiopians in Israel. Just remember that it’s only a matter of time until they get used to the new color and the most important solution lies in your hands – fit in, don’t look the easy way out and get an education – that’s the tool with which you’ll prevail.”

Mazi did as her parents instructed; she joined the military and served as an observation post commander in Rafah. When she finished her military service, she got a degree in law and business administration from the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya and went on to work for a well-known law firm.

Recently, Mazi decided to focus on real estate development and together with another young attorney, Efrat Hinitz, established Eitanut – a joint venture for the management of projects in the National Outline Plan 38 for building reinforcement.

I first met Mazi Tazazo when she was a student and had the great pleasure of following her sweet, Hollywood-like success story. However, Mazi Tazazo is not resting on her laurels; last week, she visited the reportedly racism-ridden community of Kiryat Malachi and was appalled by attempts on the part of several neighborhood committees to get flat owners in the city to avoid the selling or renting of flats to people who look like her.

She was also dismayed to see that most of the protestors at the demonstration held in response were people who looked like her. Mazi wants Israelis of all colors and races to fight racism. She hopes the demonstration scheduled for next week in Tel Aviv will have a massive turnout.

Racism did not abate

Mazi fears that her parents might have been wrong after all. Racism did not abate as time went by; rather, it changed its face. Mazi is indignant with the “Unscrupulous, ignorant and cowardly people who insisted that my friend, who has a prefect Israeli accent, come for a job interview because she seemed perfectly qualified for the job but they saw the ‘horrifying sight’ in the office lobby, sent her home in the pretext that the interviewer is busy and they don’t have vacancies at the moment because the position has already been filled and that they apologize for the inconvenience.”

She has already planned what she is going to say to you, to us, at the demonstration in Tel Aviv: “I hope there will be those who stand shoulder to shoulder with me, and at times instead of me, to put in their place all those racist and heartless people who reduced me to tears while callously judging me by the color of my skin and separated me from my friends as I they banned me from entering a night club.”

There are 120,000 Ethiopians living in Israel today, a third of which were born here. There are more than a few organizations that have been supporting the Ethiopian community for years. There are well-intentioned people who occasionally speak up against racism. But it seems that new winds are blowing in the community; determined, talented and fearless youngsters the likes of Mazi Tazazo and Molet Araro – the student from the “United Ethiopians’” movement who has begun his march last week from his Kiryat Malachi home to the demonstration site at the Knesset in Jerusalem and who is calling on his friends to join the large political parties – have come to realize that they will have to stand at the forefront of change.

They believe in themselves. Let’s give them a hand.

The article was originally published by Calcalist:

http://www.calcalist.co.il/local/articles/0,7340,L-3559253,00.html

See Also:

Ethiopian Community

Jerusalem: Thousands protest against racism  / Yoav Malka

Some 5,000 rally in Independence Park after march to protest discrimination against members of Ethiopian community

Full story

Shabbas wants to turn teachers into agents who, in their classrooms, will present Muslim myths as "history," will endorse Muslim religious claims, and will propagate Islamic fundamentalism.

By Janet Tassel

January 15, 2012, American Thinker

It was the first week in October in Newton, an upscale suburb of Boston, and Tony Pagliuso’s daughter, a sophomore at Newton South High School, was visibly disturbed. When Tony asked her the problem, she showed him a passage from the chapter she was assigned in her World History Class. It was a chapter called "Women, an Essay," from a supplemental text called The Arab World Notebook. In a paragraph devoted to women "in the struggle for independence from colonial powers," we find:

Over the past four decades, women have been active in the Palestinian resistance movement. Several hundred have been imprisoned, tortured, and killed by Israeli occupation forces since the latest uprising, "intifada," in the Israeli occupied territories.

Pagliuso assured his daughter that this was "total propaganda," and took the matter up with the young teacher, a Miss Jessica Engel, who couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. The material had been "vetted" and was deemed "appropriate," she said, "and would stay in the curriculum. After all, she continued, the head of the history department had gotten this material at an outreach workshop of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard!

Thence to the principal,  Joel Stembridge, who glared at Pagliuso and asked, "How do you pronounce ‘Pagliuso’?" and dismissing him brusquely with a refusal to apologize, added: "If you’re unhappy with this, you should know that next year we’re planning to teach material that will be even more inflammatory to your sensibilities." (Where is Ferris Bueller when you need him?) Since Miss Jessica Engel had devoted one day each to Judaism and Christianity while spending 2 ½ weeks on Islam, Tony wasn’t sure how much more inflammatory things could get.

A couple of weeks later, nine stalwart Newton citizens presented themselves at the Newton School Committee meeting, where superintendent David Fleischman, and even the mayor, Setti Warren, were present. The citizens were courteously received, and as it happens Fleishman announced shortly thereafter that indeed the chapter "didn’t meet the learning goals of the class" and had been removed from the curriculum.

"Didn’t meet the learning goals" is Eduspeak for "What the hell is this and how the hell did it get in?" The answer to the latter is, as noted, Harvard, which, as it happens, held a seminar on Israel and Palestine at Newton South in April 2011. And Newton is far from the only community to take its lead on matters Islamic from Harvard.  Public and private schools all over Massachusetts send teachers to the Outreach Center at Harvard for guidance and (free) materials. The program, like the Center for Middle Eastern Studies itself, is heavily Saudi-funded.

The answer to what it is can be found in a number of places. In 2005, responding to a complaint from a teacher in Anchorage, Alaska, the American Jewish Committee published a thorough critique of the Notebook (the full report Propaganda, Proselytizing, and Public Education, is available at the AJC website), thanks to which Anchorage stopped using the book. As background, the AJC report explains:

The Arab World Studies Notebook was first published in 1990 under the title Arab World Notebook [apparently Newton was using this edition], but was updated and republished in 1998 with its current title.  The funding for the publication was provided by the Middle East Policy Council, formerly the Arab American Affairs Council….The Notebook was published in conjunction with Arab World and Islamic Resources (AWAIR), founded by Audrey Shabbas, who penned many of the articles…as well as the editorial commentary throughout.

Who is this Audrey Shabbas?  The moving spirit behind AWAIR, she says all she wants from teachers is to "let you step with me to the inside, to see what a Muslim worldview looks like and feels like, so you can bring it back to your students." This from an adoring 2002 interview posted, fittingly, at Saudi Aramco World.

A little earlier than the AJC’s report, in 2003, William J. Bennetta, president of The Textbook League, produced a preliminary assessment of the Notebook. He gives a little background:

The Middle East Policy Council, a pressure group based in Washington. D.C…adopted its present name in 1991.  The MEPC’s activities include the sponsoring of "teacher workshops" that allegedly equip educators to teach about "the Arab World and Islam.   AWAIR, which operates from Abiquiu, New Mexico, distributes printed items and videos for "ALL LEVELS-Elementary to College" and runs the "teacher workshops" sponsored by the MEPC."

But on to the meat in Mr Bennetta’s scathing report:

The promotion of Islam in the Notebook is unrestrained, and the religious-indoctrination material that the Notebook dispenses is virulent. Muslim myths, including myths about how Islam and the Koran originated, are retailed as matters of fact, while legitimate historical appraisals of the origins of Islam and the Koran are excluded. [Audrey] Shabbas wants to turn teachers into agents who, in their classrooms, will present Muslim myths as "history," will endorse Muslim religious claims, and will propagate Islamic fundamentalism. In a public-school setting, the religious-indoctrination work which Shabbas wants teachers to perform would clearly be illegal.

Or, in the words of Tony Pagliuso, "total propaganda." What is striking, though, is how amateurish the chapter on women is. Taqiyya — telling falsehoods for Islam — is a well-known tool of Islamic propagandists, but this shoddy merchandise is so riddled with lies and half-truths that no respectable Arab merchant in the shuk would hang it in his market. Just a sample:

Women’s Rights in Islam. There is no basis in Islam for the subjugation of women or their relegation to a secondary role. Far in advance of women’s emancipation in Europe, Islam made revolutionary changes in the lives of women in 6^th-century Arabia.

The alert reader will observe that there was no Islam yet in 6^th-century Arabia, Muhammad himself having been born in about 570, and having been tapped by the angel Gabriel no earlier then about 609. Then too we think of the unpleasantries swept under the Oriental carpet — such as permissible rape, clitorectomies, honor killings, child marriage, indeed the whole sorry gamut of women’s trials under Islam, including those specifically decreed by the Koran.  As Robert Spencer sums up:

–Women are inferior to men, and must be ruled by them: "Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other" (4:34).

–It [the Koran] likens a woman to a field (tilth), to be used by a man as he wills: "Your women are a tilth for you to cultivate so go to your tilth as ye will" (2:223).

–It declares that a woman’s legal testimony is worth half that of a man: "Get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her" (2:282).

–It allows men to marry up to four wives, and also to have sex with slave girls: "If ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one, or (a captive) that your right hands possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice" (4:3).

–It rules that a son’s inheritance should be twice the size of that of a daughter: "Allah (thus) directs you as regards your children’s (inheritance): to the male, a portion equal to that of two females" (4:11).

–It allows for marriage to pre-pubescent girls, stipulating that Islamic divorce procedures "shall apply to those who have not yet menstruated" (65.4).

"Such a verse might have made its way into the Koran," writes Spencer, "because of the notorious fact that Muhammed himself had a child bride." That would be Aisha: As the hadith says, "The prophet married her when she was six years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old, and then she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death)."  Newton’s Notebook chapter mentions Aisha in passing, that she heroically promulgated Islam after the Prophet’s death, but neglects to tell us how old she was when Muhammed found her, as the story goes, playing on a swing.

It turns out, not surprisingly, that most of the Notebook is as slipshod, even farcical, as the chapter on women. But it is no less dangerous for being slovenly. As the AJC report confirms, "Teachers are subjected to heavy propaganda, both in the Notebook and in the teacher workshops sponsored by MEPC and conducted by AWAIR, in which the Notebook is the primary source material….The Notebook critiques other educational materials for being Eurocentric; yet it provides students with a completely Muslim-centered perspective."

Worst of all, educationally speaking, in addition to inventing history, the Notebook is guilty of two cardinal sins, according to the AJC: "It uses no qualifiers to differentiate between fact and interpretation; and it fails to clarify that, like the stories behind many other religions, some of the stories within traditional Islam are disputed or unverifiable."  The all-important qualifier, "Muslims believe," or "Islam teaches that" is entirely eliminated. Imagine all the Miss Engels in the world preaching to the class, "And God chose Abraham." Or "Jesus performed miracles."

Other innovations from the Notebook, these concerning what the author calls "the Israeli ‘fetish of Jerusalem’":

When people talk of Jerusalem and consider the historic rights over the city and claims to it, they are not talking about the European-type colonial suburb-turned-city which foreign Jews built next to the historic religious city-shrine, even though they called it Jerusalem too.  They are talking about the walled city, fully built up, containing a small Jewish quarter, it is true, but almost exclusively a home to Christian and Muslim Palestinian Arabs.

Yet the "Old City," the Jerusalem that most people envisage when they think of the ancient city, is Arab.  Surrounding it are ubiquitous high-rises built for Israeli settlers to strengthen Israeli control over the holy city.

Other colonial suburbs were built by foreigners in Arab countries, but today no one suggests that Algiers, Tunis, Casablanca, etc., may be rightfully claimed by the Europeans who settled there during their colonial period of recent history.  Only in the case of Jerusalem does colonialist thinking still predominate.

How many high-school students would be able to repudiate "facts" like these? Or total falsehoods such as, "In 1948, between 50 and 70 percent of Palestine’s Christians were driven from their ancestral homes with the creation of the Jewish state"?

Moreover, in an earlier version, we are told "that Yasir Arafat was president of a newly declared State of Palestine, that the United Nations General Assembly had voted to recognize this state in 1988, and that the Canaanites were the ancestors of many present-day Palestinians."  Sandra Stotsky, a professor at the University of Arkansas, deals with these gems and others in her 2004 report for the Fordham Foundation, The Stealth Curriculum, which has now been updated for a new book published by Palgrave MacMillan. She points to one article, ascribed to Audrey Shabbas and Abdallah Hakim Quick, titled "Early Muslim Exploration Worldwide: Evidence of Muslims in the New World Before Columbus." The article claims that

Muslims from Europe were the first to sail across the Atlantic and land in the New World, starting in 889… [and that]West African Muslims had not only spread throughout South and Central America, but had also reached Canada, intermarrying with the Iroquois and Algonquin nations so that, much later, early English explorers were to meet Iroquois and Algonquin chiefs with names like Abdul-Rahim and Abdallah Ibn Malik.

Stotsky interjects,  "The idea that English explorers met native Indian chiefs with Muslim names in the middle of the Northeast woodlands sounds almost like something a Hollywood film writer dreamed up for a spoof." (Mel Brooks, of course.) Interestingly enough, the Algonquin Nation itself demanded a retraction of this "indefensible" farce. But seriously, as Stotsky continues, "What is most astonishing about this ‘historical information’ is that it seems not to have been recognized as fake history by all the satisfied teachers that MEPC claims have participated in its workshops over the years."

Ay, there’s the rub.  Thanks to the Tony Pagliusos of this world, perhaps more parents will rear up on their hind legs and shout, "Who’s teaching my kids? And what in God’s name are they teaching?"

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2012/01/taqiyya_for_kids.html at January 17, 2012 -

Biologists Replicate Key Evolutionary Step in Life on Earth

Follow how single-celled organisms began forming multi-cellular clusters

Green cells are undergoing cell death, a cellular division-of-labor–fostering new life.
Credit and Larger Version

January 16, 2012

More than 500 million years ago, single-celled organisms on Earth’s surface began forming multi-cellular clusters that ultimately became plants and animals.

Just how that happened is a question that has eluded evolutionary biologists.

Now scientists have replicated that key step in the laboratory using common Brewer’s yeast, a single-celled organism.

The yeast "evolved" into multi-cellular clusters that work together cooperatively, reproduce and adapt to their environment–in essence, they became precursors to life on Earth as it is today.

The results are published in this week’s issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

"The finding that the division-of-labor evolves so quickly and repeatedly in these ‘snowflake’ clusters is a big surprise," says George Gilchrist, acting deputy division director of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research.

"The first step toward multi-cellular complexity seems to be less of an evolutionary hurdle than theory would suggest," says Gilchrist. "This will stimulate a lot of important research questions."

It all started two years ago with a casual comment over coffee that bridging the famous multi-cellularity gap would be "just about the coolest thing we could do," recalled Will Ratcliff and Michael Travisano, scientists at the University of Minnesota (UMN) and authors of the PNAS paper.

Other authors of the paper are Ford Denison and Mark Borrello of UMN.

Then came the big surprise: it wasn’t that difficult.

Using yeast cells, culture media and a centrifuge, it only took the biologists one experiment conducted over about 60 days.

"I don’t think anyone had ever tried it before," says Ratcliff. "There aren’t many scientists doing experimental evolution, and they’re trying to answer questions about evolution, not recreate it."

The results have earned praise from evolutionary biologists around the world.

"To understand why the world is full of plants and animals, including humans, we need to know how one-celled organisms made the switch to living as a group, as multi-celled organisms," says Sam Scheiner, program director in NSF’s Division of Environmental Biology.

"This study is the first to experimentally observe that transition," says Scheiner, "providing a look at an event that took place hundreds of millions of years ago."

In essence, here’s how the experiments worked:

The scientists chose Brewer’s yeast, or Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a species of yeast used since ancient times to make bread and beer because it is abundant in nature and grows easily.

They added it to nutrient-rich culture media and allowed the cells to grow for a day in test tubes.

Then they used a centrifuge to stratify the contents by weight.

As the mixture settled, cell clusters landed on the bottom of the tubes faster because they are heavier. The biologists removed the clusters, transferred them to fresh media, and agitated them again.

Sixty cycles later, the clusters–now hundreds of cells–looked like spherical snowflakes.

Analysis showed that the clusters were not just groups of random cells that adhered to each other, but related cells that remained attached following cell division.

That was significant because it meant that they were genetically similar, which promotes cooperation. When the clusters reached a critical size, some cells died off in a process known as apoptosis to allow offspring to separate.

The offspring reproduced only after they attained the size of their parents.

"A cluster alone isn’t multi-cellular," Ratcliff says. "But when cells in a cluster cooperate, make sacrifices for the common good, and adapt to change, that’s an evolutionary transition to multi-cellularity."

In order for multi-cellular organisms to form, most cells need to sacrifice their ability to reproduce, an altruistic action that favors the whole but not the individual, Ratcliff says.

For example, all cells in the human body are essentially a support system that allows sperm and eggs to pass DNA along to the next generation.

Thus multi-cellularity is by its nature very cooperative.

"Some of the best competitors in nature are those that engage in cooperation, and our experiment bears that out," says Travisano.

Evolutionary biologists have estimated that multi-cellularity evolved independently in about 25 groups.

Travisano and Ratcliff wonder why it didn’t evolve more often since it’s not that difficult to recreate in a lab.

Considering that trillions of one-celled organisms lived on Earth for millions of years, it seems like it should have, Ratcliff says.

That may be a question the biologists will answer in the future using the fossil record for thousands of generations of multi-cellular clusters, which are stored in a freezer in Travisano’s lab.

Since the frozen samples contain multiple cell lines that independently became multi-cellular, the researchers can compare them to learn whether similar or different mechanisms and genes were responsible in each case, Travisano says.

The next steps will be to look at the role of multi-cellularity in cancer, aging and other critical areas of biology.

"Multi-cellular yeast is a valuable resource for investigating a wide variety of medically and biologically important topics," Travisano says.

"Cancer was recently described as a fossil from the origin of multi-cellularity, which can be directly investigated with the yeast system.

"Similarly the origins of aging, development and the evolution of complex morphologies are open to direct experimental investigation that would otherwise be difficult or impossible."

-NSF-

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Multi-cellular ‘snowflake’ yeast images with a blue cell-wall stain and red dead-cell stain.
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First steps in the transition to multi-cellularity: ‘snowflake’ yeast with dead cells stained red.
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A multi-cellular yeast consisting of hundreds of cells.
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Multi-cellular yeast individuals containing central dead cells, which promote reproduction.
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Aberrant shapes of multi-cellular yeast’s dead cells: break points for reproduction.
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Last Updated: January 16, 2012