Velvet worms are cool. They flourished about 520 million years ago, although they are restricted in their distribution today. These worms are carnivorous and the catch their prey by secreting a sticky, glue-like substance. Might this represent a precursor-like state for the spider's web?
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From Here:
Motor proteins perform directed walks on cytoskeletal ï¬?laments and enable fast transport over large intracellular distances along the ï¬?lament-like "˜rails' provided by the cytoskeleton. In addition to their function as nano-tractors, motor proteins are also actively involved in the constant re-organization of the cytoskeleton itself, which is necessary for cell motility and mitosis.
PZ Myers does nothing more than scoff at Sen. Santorum, who apparently said/wrote, "Most scientists unfortunately, those that certainly are advocating for this [embryonic stem cell research], and many others feel very little moral compulsion. It's a utilitarian, materialistic view of doing whatever they can do to pursue their desired goals."
Yet the June 13, 2006 issue of Cell has an article by Paul Root Wolpe, from the Department of Psychiatry and Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
Wolpe's article is entitled, "Reasons Scientists Avoid Thinking about Ethics." Some excerpts from the article are below the fold:
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Acetyl-CoenzymeA (acetyl-CoA) is a central compound of metabolism and an essential building block for the synthesis of fatty acids and amino acids. When cells are growing on glucose, the glucose is broken down to pyruvate, which in turn is converted into acetyl-CoA (by pyruvate dehydrogenase) that is then fed into the Kreb's cycle within mitochondria. An alternative mechanism of generating acetyl-CoA is to use the enzyme acetyl-CoA synthetase, an enzyme that attaches coenzyme A to acetate with the expenditure of ATP.
Yeast have two versions of enzyme acetyl-CoA synthetase, where the 600 amino-acid length proteins share about 60% sequence identity and catalyze the same basic reaction. One version is called Acs1p and when scientists knocked out this gene, nothing much happens. But when the other version, known as Asc2p is knocked out, yeast shut down about 70% of their genes and then die. What's going on?
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Here is a very good essay that skewers all the hysteria about some upcoming theocracy. It is written by Ross Douthat, an associate editor at the Atlantic Monthly.
The article has a couple of brief mentions about Intelligent Design, but that is not the main reason I draw attention to it. I happen to think Douthat has his finger on the Fear that largely fuels the threatiness that characterizes so many critics of ID. Simply browse the many "pro-science" blogs that often critique ID and chances are, you'll find other entries on those blogs that wallow, to one degree or another, in some of the Fear that Douthat writes about. Besides, remember that most critics hear "Religion/God/Bible" when "ID" is spoken or written.
Anyway, it's a long article, but worth the read. It's hard to pick a favorite quote, but here's a juicy one:
The tragedy is that so many religious people have gone along with this revisionism"”out of sympathy for the lifestyle liberalism of the secular Left, or out of disdain for the crudity and anti-intellectualism of some religious conservatives, or out of embarrassment in the face of a culture that sneers at anyone who takes their faith too seriously. In the process, they have become everything they claim to oppose: bigoted and hysterical, apocalyptic and self-righteous. What's worse, they have corrupted themselves for the sake of a politics that cares nothing for their faith"”that would tame it to suit the needs of secular society or do away with it entirely. (emphasis added)
It's time to bring about a sense of closure regarding the Textbook Controversy of 2006. If you will recall, the faculty at VCU were questioned because they chose Sylvia Mader's new introductory biology textbook that was accused of harboring a creationist bias.
We covered this here, here, and here.
Now, Keith Pennock at the Discovery Institute has tracked down the actual text that contains the "˜creationist bias.' Here it is:
Well, the Great Snake Hunt of 2006 began today here at the homestead, a little later than usual. He was a Big Daddy pit viper of the copperhead variety, whose presence within the tended parameters of our carved-out living space demanded attention after he bit my visiting nephew last night. Which required a not-convenient trip to the emergency room even though the boys reported him to be a Big Daddy and the bite through high-top and sock wasn't deep. Today it looks more like he stepped on a wasp for the minimal amount of redness and swelling, so he didn't need antivenin. Two years ago my visiting grandson required not one but two doses of antivenin (at $5,000 a pop), which kills more people than snakebites do. But that was just a little copperhead, and they tend to be more liberal with their venom than the Big Daddies are. Life experience, no doubt. Less venom to waste when you're older, and there's no reason to waste it on something you're not going to eat.
Here is something interesting about the metaphysical roots of abiogenesis research. It is an excerpt from the book, Marxism and the Philosophy of Science: A Critical History, written by Dr Helena Sheehan of Dublin City University.
I think it's an interesting (and tough) task to come up with a short list of the books or papers that have been most important to you. I'm always interested in what people are reading and think is important. In order to keep this list around a dozen what helped me was to look for books in my bookshelves that never seem to end up in the overflow stacks. The following are some books that have been important to me:
Anyone else care to share their list?
P.S. I could have also included various religious scriptures but decided to focus on non-scriptural works.
Mike has offered some interesting posts (here and here) on confirmational and disconfirmational bias. I thought I'd draw into the discussion the work of neuroscientist Antonio Damasio in his book Descartes' Error. Neuroscientist Joseph Ledoux offers similar research in his The Emotional Brain and in another very interesting book by Stanley Greenspan, M.D., shows that children brought up in an emotionally diverse environment develop higher intelligence. The conclusions of these and other researchers are that emotions are not only active in decision making but essential. For skeptics like Shermer these findings may be disconcerting because I suspect that he and other skeptics would reject the idea that their skeptical decisions flow from their emotional biases. The research suggests that they do and even a Darwinist should recognize how compelling it is.
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