The newest latest bestest spiffiest edition of the Tangled Bank is now online at From Archaea to Zeaxanthol.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
The newest latest bestest spiffiest edition of the Tangled Bank is now online at From Archaea to Zeaxanthol.
A recent discovery in stem cell research is no minor event: researchers have figured out how to reprogram adult cells into a state that is nearly indistinguishable from that of embryonic, pluripotent stem cells. This is huge news that promises to accelerate the pace of research in the field.
The problem has always been that cells exist in distinct states. A skin cell, for instance, has one set of genes essential for its specific function activated, and other sets of genes turned off; an egg cell has different patterns of gene activation and inactivation. Just taking the DNA from a skin cell and inserting it into the egg cell isn’t necessarily going to create a functional egg cell, because genes essential for egg cells may be switched off in the skin cell DNA, and we don’t know how to specifically switch them on. The process of somatic cell nuclear transfer has been hit or miss for that reason, with very high failure rates—scientists are basically trying to make the right configuration of genes switch on by giving the nucleus a good hard kick, and hoping that something in the cells will reconfigure the pattern of gene activation into something appropriate.
What the discovery by Takahashi et al. accomplishes is to reveal how to specifically switch on the right pattern of genes for a pluripotent stem cell. They have discovered the reset button for mammalian cells: a simple trigger that puts the cells in the right state to become anything else.
Nice t-shirt.
It might confuse people if I wore it, though, since they wouldn’t be aware of the original cartoon.
It’s a little odd to find myself cited in a Polk County, Florida newspaper as evidence that their pro-ID activities have received “national attention.”
Otherwise, it’s an article that testifies to the inevitability of a conflict. A majority of the school board members in Polk want to insert creationism into the curriculum, and they’ve got a few supporters in the schools.
…an eighth-grade science teacher at Union Academy in Bartow spoke in favor of intelligent design, a belief that living organisms are so complex that they must have been created by some kind of higher force.
“When you talk about laws in nature it shows some order or design,” said Lawrence Hughes, who has taught at the academy for 16 years. “The laws of nature don’t support change from one organism to another organism.”
What utter tripe. What we see in nature is that the boundaries are extremely fuzzy, and that there are no “laws of nature” that block change. Perhaps Mr Hughes would like to state what these laws are, exactly?
A few people are arguing strongly on the side of reason, but one gets the impression that the creationists have made up their minds and are spoiling for a fight.
Their usage statistics are a little surprising. Or not.
You’ve got almost a month to get it together: it’s the second annual Carl Sagan memorial blog-a-thon. Write something in honor of Carl Sagan by sometime around 20 December. This event got a huge response last year — it ought to be possible to top it this time around.
One of our Minneapolis Christian talk radio stations, KKMS, is organizing a trip.
Join Jeff & Lee as they travel with Heartland Tours & Travel to the Creation Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio! Jeff & Lee will be doing a live broadcast from the museum, and you can be there to see it all happen! of course, there will be other great stops along the way – Chicago (and famous Chicago pizza), the Wisconsin Dells with it’s huge waterpark, shopping at the Tangier Outlet Mall and more! this is a tour that will inspire your faith and make lasting family memories.
Don’t you think they could really use a scientific guide to go along with them? Call me, Jeff & Lee — I’m willing to waive my usual fee to accompany your bus as a consultant.
I am rather amused that what will inspire their faith is Chicago pizza, a tacky amusement park, and shopping.
(h/t to Eva)
An article in the NYT on surname frequency settles the most important issue of our time:
|
Myers |
83 occurrences/100,000 people, rank 85. |
|
Meyers |
21 occurrences/100,000 people, rank 528. |
Now can everyone please start using the dominant, correct spelling?
Once upon a time, a company named XVIVO put together a beautiful computer animation of molecular activity in the cell — you may have already seen it. I have some quibbles with it — there is no water shown, and the behavior of the molecules is too simplistic, without enough noise (molecular behavior at the scale shown ought to be rich with Brownian phenomena) — but it’s dramatic and spectacular, which was the intent. The whole thing was made to inspire and inform Harvard biology students, so it’s actually owned by Harvard and XVIVO.
Now for the curious and nefarious part of the story. Fellows of the Discovery
Institute love this video. It shows the complexity of the cell, and that there are all kinds of specific functions going on within it, so to them, ignorant as they are of the evolutionary history of any of the molecules involved, it seems to support their contention that cells are full of arcane molecular machines that must have been designed. Never mind that these are proteins and other molecules; never mind that we have identified gene families and patterns of descent within these molecules; never mind that complexity is a hallmark of evolutionary processes and products. This is a movie they can show the rubes and say “Wow! I don’t understand that (always true)! You don’t understand that (usually true)! Therefore, JEEEZUS!” That’s their goal.
So what would a group of good Christians with the aim of renewing American culture do? Simple. Steal the video. They’ve grabbed the video, retitled it, removed the biological explanations for the phenomena, dubbed in a really bad, unprofessional narration on top of it, and stripped off the credits. Now, in their various traveling patent medicine shows, they flaunt this unattributed, modified video ripped off from Harvard Biology, and use it in their generic argument from ignorance for anti-evolutionism.
They are shameless thieves.
ERV has documented one example — Dembski used it in his talk at the University of Oklahoma, at which he profited to the tune of about $10,000. If you find yourself at a DI event and see the video played, you might want to take note and let her know.
I was happily absorbed in my slightly vegetative stupor on the couch when my roommate walked into the room and starting talking about physics. Ugh, physics, I thought, but I politely listened as she began talking about lenses, specifically how they are related to sight. It is common knowledge that the images we see are inverted on the retina, and then further processed. However, my roommate was discussing experiments done on humans that inverted their vision by 180 degrees and found that, though at first they could not function normally, eventually they adapted. I thought this was fascinating, and wondered what the brain had to do with this process. Unfortunately my roommate’s knowledge was pretty limited, so I decided to do some research of my own.
Research on visual distortion of the retina has been going on for quite some time. Devices have been used that invert the retinal image, so that everything is seen upside down. At first subjects wearing this device will reach for things and miss, or will bump into things as they travel about a space. Eventually, they adapt. What I wanted to know is how do they adapt? What changes take place in the brain that allow them to do so? Is it just simply learning to reach a little farther to grab something, or walk a bit differently to avoid bumping into something? What is happening at the neural level?
