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ScienceDaily (Sep. 22, 2008) — Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, together with American colleagues, have decoded the genome of the Pristionchus pacificus nematode, thereby gaining insight into the evolution of parasitism.
In their work, which has recently been published in Nature Genetics, the scientists from Professor Ralf J. Sommer’s department in Tübingen, Germany, have shown that the genome of the nematode consists of a surprisingly large number of genes, some of which have unexpected functions.
These include a number of genes that are helpful in breaking down harmful substances and for survival in a strange habitat: the Pristionchus uses beetles as a hideout and as means of transport, and feeds on the fungi and bacteria that spread out on their carcasses once they have died. It thus provides the clue to understanding the complex interactions between host and parasite. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Evolutionary Biology, Recent Posts, Science on September 23, 2008 - כ"ג אלול תשס"ח at 6:34 pm
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By Melinda Wenner, Scientific American Magazine , September 18, 2008
It afflicts every creature on this planet, and everyone dreams of an antidote. But even after decades of research, aging largely remains a mystery. Now new research findings suggest there is a good reason for this impasse: scientists may have been thinking about the causes of aging all wrong. Instead of being the result of an accumulation of genetic and cellular damage, new evidence suggests that aging may occur when genetic programs for development go awry.
The idea that stress and reactive forms of oxygen—“free radicals” that are the normal by-products of metabolism—cause aging has dominated the field for 50 years. Studies on the worm Caenorhabditis elegans have shown that reducing exposure to reactive oxygen species increases life span, and worms that have been bred to live longer are also more resistant to stress. But few studies have definitively linked oxidative damage to altered cellular function.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Nutrition & Fitness, Recent Posts, Science on September 18, 2008 - י"ח אלול תשס"ח at 11:06 pm
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By H.J. CUMMINS, Star Tribune, September 15, 2008
With oil costing about $100 a barrel, nuclear energy is enjoying a public-opinion comeback. But not everyone is warming to nuclear as the new ‘green’ energy.
Once the stuff of disaster movies and picket lines, nuclear energy is enjoying a renaissance.
But for 30 Minnesotans in a Red Wing public library last week, at the first public meeting over Xcel Energy’s proposed expansion of its nearby Prairie Island nuclear power plant, it was clear they want no part in the revival.
Many stood to tell state regulators and Xcel executives that they oppose any expansion of the plant. Even after living next to it for 35 years they don’t feel safe, they said. Charlotte Eastin of Lake City even suggested it’s time to shut it down, “before the unthinkable happens.”
They were harsh words for a plant that has operated without a major problem since it started up in 1973. And Xcel’s director of nuclear regulatory policy, Terry Pickens, said afterward that all the concerns raised about the expansion will be addressed through the long application process.
But some version of the evening’s exchange — between skeptics and utilities that are increasingly calling nuclear power the clean, carbon-free energy of the future — is going to play out in many more communities around the country as the push for nuclear grows.
After 30 years without a single application to build a new plant, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission received 12 over the past 12 months, and expects another five by year-end, said spokesman Scott Burnell in Washington. And while those wouldn’t come online for years — adding to the 104 reactors operating today — federal regulators point to another, current phenomenon: “upratings,” when utilities get permission to push more output from their existing nuclear reactors — part of Xcel’s plans. Over the years, these have added 5,200 megawatts of electricity, the equivalent of more than five new reactors.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Alternative Energy, Nuclear Energy, Recent Posts, Science on September 17, 2008 - י"ז אלול תשס"ח at 10:54 pm
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From the smallest of cells to the largest of planets, evolution tries to prove everything, yet proves nothing. More holes are revealed.
By Bradford G. Schleifer, The Real Truth, September 5, 2008
Author’s Note: This series investigates the theory of evolution, revealing that there is much more to the story than what is commonly taught. After laying a truthful foundation and building upon it, the reader will see that the theory collapses, and that the confusing series of explanations, definitions and suppositions supporting it are weak and shallow. Each part builds upon the previous, and the entire series should be read to grasp the fullest picture—and the vital implications that flow from its conclusions.
Is it possible for a rock to come to life? Could a chicken grow from a lump of coal? Such questions are silly. However, this is in essence what the theory of evolution teaches. It stands or falls on whether non-living matter can transform, through a series of random events, into organic—living—matter. This concept is called by many names and explained by many theories, but most of the time, it is referred to as “spontaneous generation, chemical evolution, abiogenesis” or “biopoiesis.”
Do not allow evolutionists to dodge the “origin of matter” question. Many assert that the origin of life is in no way related to the appearance of living matter.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Evolutionary Biology, Recent Posts, Science on September 8, 2008 - ח' אלול תשס"ח at 10:03 am
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Published on Scientific Blogging (http://www.scientificblogging.com)
Submitted by Michael White, Aug 27 2008 Evolution
Most people probably think of change when they hear the word evolution, but some of evolution’s most amazing molecular inventions have stuck around hundreds of millions, even billions of years. The complex protein machinery needed to express genes, metabolize energy sources, reproduce sexually, and lay out body plans has remained in place largely unchanged in spite of the tremendous variety we see in the living world. These constant core cellular processes are why biologists could crack the universal genetic code by experimenting with bacteria, and why we gain insight into cell division and cancer by studying yeast.
The big question, argue the authors of The Plausibility of Life, is not how evolution keeps inventing new genes - it’s how evolution can produce so much variety when the basic processes change so little. Later in the book Kirschner and Gerhart are going to argue that these basic systems have persisted so long because they are versatile, that they posses features which make them well-suited to facilitating the biological diversity we see today. We’ll come to that argument later; today we’ll take a closer look at the core conserved molecular systems that carry out the most basic cellular functions.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Evolutionary Biology, Recent Posts, Science on August 29, 2008 - כ"ח אב תשס"ח at 9:54 pm
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Reprinted from NCSE, August 24, 2008
"A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash" — a story on the front page of The New York Times (August 24, 2008) — examines the creationism/evolution controversy as it plays out in the classroom of David Campbell, a biology teacher in Orange Park, Florida. The Times’s reporter Amy Harmon writes, "in a nation where evangelical Protestantism and other religious traditions stress a literal reading of the biblical description of God’s individually creating each species, students often arrive at school fearing that evolution, and perhaps science itself, is hostile to their faith." Campbell’s students are a case in point, and "their abiding mistrust in evolution, he feared, jeopardized their belief in the basic power of science to explain the natural world — and their ability to make sense of it themselves."
In addition to helping his own students, Campbell also helped to improve the treatment of evolution throughout Florida by co-founding the grassroots organization Florida Citizens for Science blog) and by serving on the committee that revised Florida’s state science standards in 2007. The new standards describe evolution as a "fundamental concept underlying all of biology" — a far cry from their predecessors, which sedulously avoided even using the e-word. Harmon writes, "Campbell defended his fellow writers against complaints that they had not included alternative explanations for life’s diversity, like intelligent design. His attempt at humor came with an edge: ‘We also failed to include astrology, alchemy and the concept of the moon being made of green cheese,’ he said. ‘Because those aren’t science, either.’”
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Evolutionary Biology, Recent Posts, Science on August 25, 2008 - כ"ד אב תשס"ח at 2:21 pm
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Press Release from Weizmann Institute, August 14, 2008
REHOVOT, ISRAEL – August 14, 2008 – Tons of soot are released into the air annually as forest fires rage from California to the Amazon to Siberia and Indonesia. Climate scientists have generally assumed that the main effect of smoke on climate is cooling, as the floating particles can reflect some solar energy back to space as well as increasing cloud size and lifespan. But new research by scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science; the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC); and NASA may cause them to rethink soot’s role in shaping the Earth’s climate.
Airborne particles such as soot – known collectively as aerosols – rise into the atmosphere where they interact with clouds. Understanding what happens when the two meet is extremely complicated, in part because clouds are highly dynamic systems that both reflect the sun’s energy back into space, cooling the upper atmosphere, and trap heat underneath, warming the lower atmosphere and the Earth’s surface. Aerosols, in turn, can have both heating and cooling effects on clouds. On the one hand, water droplets form around the aerosol particles, which may extend the cloud cover. On the other hand, particles, especially soot, absorb the sun’s radiation, stabilizing the atmosphere and thus reducing cloud formation.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Alternative Energy, Climate Change, Recent Posts, Science on August 17, 2008 - ט"ז אב תשס"ח at 10:01 am
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ScienceDaily (Aug. 14, 2008) — Say the word “biofuels” and most people think of grain ethanol and biodiesel. But there’s another, older technology called gasification that’s getting a new look from researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory and Iowa State University.
By combining gasification with high-tech nanoscale porous catalysts, they hope to create ethanol from a wide range of biomass, including distiller’s grain left over from ethanol production, corn stover from the field, grass, wood pulp, animal waste, and garbage.
Gasification is a process that turns carbon-based feedstocks under high temperature and pressure in an oxygen-controlled atmosphere into synthesis gas, or syngas. Syngas is made up primarily of carbon monoxide and hydrogen (more than 85 percent by volume) and smaller quantities of carbon dioxide and methane.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Alternative Energy, Biomass fuels, Recent Posts, Science on August 15, 2008 - י"ד אב תשס"ח at 8:32 am
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By ALBERT LOW, Canada.com, July 25, 2008
Contrary to Christopher Hitchens’s assertion, (”The eyes have it,”July 23), not all who are sympathetic to the idea of intelligent design are creationists.
Indeed, those who support intelligent design range from those who are more or less creationists to those who are more or less Darwinians, with all the gradations between. Unfortunately what could be an interesting debate on the origins of human nature has become an exchange of dogmas amid hurled epithets.
One does not have to reject the main tenets of Darwin’s theory to embrace the idea that intelligence and creativity play a part in evolution. That organisms have evolved, that accident has played a part in this evolution and that natural selection has been the refining agent all seem perfectly reasonable. What does not seem to be reasonable is that human genius and creativity - such as shown by Einstein, Newton, Mozart and Michelangelo - is the result of accidental or random mutation. Neither does human compassion and altruism - again as, for example, shown by Christ, Buddha and Mother Teresa - seem to be simply strategies for survival.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Evolutionary Biology, Monotheistic Religions, Recent Posts, Science on July 25, 2008 - כ"ב תמוז תשס"ח at 5:38 am
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PhysOrg.com, July 18, 2008
“Survival of the fittest” is the catch phrase of evolution by natural selection. While natural selection favors the most fit organisms around, evolutionary biologists have long wondered whether this leads to the best possible organisms in the long run.
A team of researchers at The University of Texas at Austin, led by Drs. Matthew Cowperthwaite and Lauren Ancel Meyers, has developed a new theory, which suggests that life may not always be optimal. The results of this study appear July 18th in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology.
Genetic mutations create the raw material that natural selection acts upon. The short-term fate of a mutation is often quite clear. Mutations that make organisms more fit tend to persist through generations, while harmful mutations tend to die off with the organisms that possess them. The long-term consequences of mutations, however, are not well understood by evolutionary biologists. The researchers have shown that what may be good in the short run, may hinder evolution in the long run.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Evolutionary Biology, Science on July 19, 2008 - ט"ז תמוז תשס"ח at 6:02 am
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