Dave Thomas explains Genetic Algorithms and demonstrates that, as usual, the Intelligent Design bigwigs don’t have any idea what they’re talking about.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Dave Thomas explains Genetic Algorithms and demonstrates that, as usual, the Intelligent Design bigwigs don’t have any idea what they’re talking about.
Last week, I received some delusional e-mail from Phil Skell, who claims that modern biology has no use for evolutionary theory.
This will raise hysterical screeches from its true-believers. But, instead they should take a deep breath and tell us how the theory is relevant to the modern biology. For examples let them tell the relevance of the theory to learning…the discovery and function of hormones…[long list of scientific disciplines truncated]
Dr Skell is a sad case. He apparently repeats his mantra that biology has no need of evolution everywhere he goes, and has never bothered to actually crack a biology journal open to see if biologists actually do use the theory. In my reply to him, I did briefly list how evolution is used in every single one of his numerous examples, but today I’m going to focus on just the one I quoted above: hormones.
Declan Butler has a short article in this week’s Nature on the “Top 5 Science Blogs”. This was determined by identifying blogs written by scientists and determining their rank on Technorati. The top five are:
Declan asked each of us to say a little bit about why we were succeeding in this medium, and that’s given in a short summary. It’s seriously edited down, though—I have no complaints at all about what he wrote, but he didn’t use one part I wrote to him. I can’t blame him, since it undercuts the premise of the article, but I wanted to mention it here, at least.
Hmmm, reasons for my “success”…well, first of all, I have to say that I don’t measure success in terms of Technorati rank or traffic. There are great science blogs out there (check out the list at scienceblogs.com) that are more focused than mine and certainly do a better job of more sharply elucidating the niche they occupy. I’d say I have wider popularity because I do tend to wander off into many different topics, so there is a more diffuse field of potential interest, tapping into the broader areas of liberal politics and atheism. I think, also, I’ve tapped into a fair amount of resentment against the reactionary religious nature of American culture—to some, I suspect I’m one representative of opposition to the excesses of our dominant political regime. This country is strongly polarized, and my position makes it easy for many to identify with me…and those who disagree find it easy to characterize me.
Nature has made available a list of the top 50 science blogs, which will make for a useful start for anyone trying to fill up a blogroll. As Sciencebase notes, though, it does have some omissions.
Coturnix turns up a publicly accessible copy of the article.
Butler D (2006) Top five science blogs. Nature 442(7098):9.
Carl Zimmer tells us all about the recent big dodo find, in both the pages of the Grey Lady and a podcast. He’s a master of multimedia, that guy.
Here I am, in the upper midwest, and I still haven’t made it to the Field Museum in Chicago—Chicago is just far enough away that I can’t quite make the trip, and it’s close enough that it doesn’t sound at all exotic. I just have to rely on other people’s accounts. (I’ve also noticed that Megatherium is a spectacular specimen.)
The science blogosphere must be getting big if it can support biology subspecialty carnivals: now you can read collections of posts about just bioinformatics or genetics. And here I thought a general science carnival might be too narrow to draw in a wide readership, way back in the dark ages!
First, I was impressed that homosexuals had such immense power that they could trigger earthquakes, but then, darn it, someone had to actually look at the data.
Once upon a time, as a young undergraduate, I took a course in neurobiology (which turned out to be rather influential in my life, but that’s another story). The professor, Johnny Palka, took pains at the beginning to explain to his class full of pre-meds and other such riff-raff that the course was going to study how the brain works, and that we were going to be looking at invertebrates almost exclusively—and he had to carefully reassure them that flies and squid actually did have brains, very good brains, and that he almost took it as a personal offense when his students implied that they didn’t. The lesson was that if you wanted to learn how your brain worked, often the most fruitful approach was an indirect one, using comparative studies to work out the commonalities and differences in organization, and try to correlate those with differences and similarities in function.
At about that time, I also discovered the work of the great physiologist, JZ Young, who had done a great deal of influential work on the octopus as a preparation for studying brain and behavior. (Young, by the way, went by the informal name “Jay-Zed”, and there you have another clue to my affectation of using my first and middle initial as if it were a proper name.) It was around then that I was developing that peculiar coleoideal fascination a few of the readers here might have noticed—it was born out of an appreciation of comparative biology and the recognition that cephalopods represented a lineage that independently acquired a large brain and complex behavior from the vertebrates. To understand ourselves, we must embrace the alien.
Young’s attempts to understand mechanisms of learning in memory in the octopus were premature, unfortunately—they have very complex brains, and we made much faster progress using simple invertebrates, like Aplysia, to work out the basics first—but it’s still the subject of ongoing research. I was very pleased to run across a general overview of the octopus brain in The Biological Bulletin.
I suppose this is a kind of threat—an archaic and quaint threat, but I’m sure some people take it seriously—but the Catholic church has made a strong statement against embryonic stem cell research.
The Vatican stepped up its fight against embryonic stem cell research on Wednesday, saying that scientists involved in such work would be excommunicated.
Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Vatican department dealing with family affairs, said in a magazine interview that “destroying human embryos is equivalent to an abortion… it’s the same thing”.
“Excommunication applies to all women, doctors and researchers who eliminate embryos,” the cardinal told Catholic publication Famiglia Cristiana.
To which I can only weakly reply, “no, no, don’t drive scientists away from your religion, Catholics!” Bwahahahaha!
Anyway, do read the article. I thought that, while short, it was very informative about the political debate on stem cells in Italy, and actually summarized the situation fairly accurately and pithily.
Embryonic stem-cell research techniques involve destroying human embryos to extract their stem cells. Stem cells are ‘blank’ cells which have the ability to grow into any tissue of the body. Scientists think they could eventually be used to treat a host of ailments including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s and diabetes.
The stem cells of very early embryos are preferred because they can become any kind of cell whereas adult stem cells are less flexible. Despite popular support, embryonic stem cell research is opposed by pro-life groups and many conservative lawmakers because the human embryo must be destroyed before its stem cells can be removed.
I’ve gotten so used to the way American journalists so readily fall for the false claim of the anti-choicers that adult stem cells are better than embryonic stem cells in all ways that I was surprised to see that more accurate short description in there.
