Here is an interesting story:

Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AEC) have found evidence that certain fungi possess another talent beyond their ability to decompose matter: the capacity to use radioactivity as an energy source for making food and spurring their growth.

the researchers measured the electron spin resonance signal after melanin was exposed to ionizing radiation and found that radiation interacts with melanin to alter its electron structure. This, they believe, is an essential step for capturing radiation and converting it into a different form of energy to make food. Until now, melanin's biological role in fungi - if any - had been a mystery. Interestingly, the melanin in fungi is no different chemically from the melanin in our skin, leading Casadevall to speculate that melanin could be providing energy to skin cells.

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Lately there has been a rash of anti-religion books by the likes of Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, and Stenger. The one thing that the New Atheists just don't seem to get is that most people on the planet have a compelling sensibility that there is an underlying ultimate purpose to the cosmos. This sensibility may not be "scientific" as traditionally defined but it is still extremely compelling. What is this sensibility? It can come in infinite varieties. The anecdotes abound. Many find it in their experience of nature. Or in the beauty of love, art, mathematics, music, reason, scientific discovery, etc. And even the horrors of life. When it comes, it comes with power. A power that is not easily dissuaded. Now the materialists will claim that this sensibility is just an adaptive feature or a coincidental byproduct of evolution, but for those who have it that doesn't convince.

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Stanley L. Miller, a scientist known for his landmark origin of life study, died Sunday of heart failure at the age of 77. His name is associated with Harold Urey, a geochemist who worked with Miller, on what many subsequently referred to as the Miller Urey experiment.

"Dr. Miller was known for a classic experiment that he performed as a graduate student and published in 1953. The experiment showed how amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, could easily be generated from the simple chemicals assumed to have been present on the primitive earth."

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This story is going around the blogosphere. The article entitled New genetic data overturn long-held theory of limb development is consistent with a theme notably advanced at Telic Thoughts. When I first started following threads at TT I was struck by a particular criticism of front loading, namely that it was indistinguishable from standard theories and likely to be cut down to size by Occam's razor. But would standard theories predict that a developmental toolkit for biological structures would appear in species who are ancestors rather than descendents of species in whom the structures are expressed? On the other hand would this not be exactly what one would expect to see predicted by a theory holding that the nature of subsequent evolution was loaded at the outset? From the article:

The paper, "An autopodial-like pattern of Hox expression in the fins of a basal actinopterygian fish," shows that the genetic and developmental toolkit that builds limbs with fingers and toes was around long before the acquisition of limbs, according to the scientists, and that this toolkit exists in some primitive form in a living primitive bony fish, the paddlefish.

"We found that the genetic capability seen in tetrapods to build limbs is present in even more primitive fish," said lead author Marcus Davis, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in Neil Shubin's lab at the University of Chicago.

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I wanted to take one more look at the Gonzalez case. Most of us ID proponents believe that Guillermo Gonzalez' tenure denial was largely based on his belief in ID. That may not be the real reason. It may be a lack of bringing in research grants. It may be other factors that we don't know about. But it appears to us that ID was at least one of the reasons, if not the main reason.
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An article in USA Today entitled 'Resistance to science' has early roots begins with a pair of psychologists considering this question:

Stem cells, global warming, evolution, vaccination –­ why do some scientific ideas push political and societal hot buttons?

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Let me remind you of two recent postings. First, the RNA world has played a crucial role in the evolution of the human brain. Second, as I have hinted, evolution by gene duplication echoes a teleological essence to evolution. Let me now unite these two themes with another phenomenon "“ functional pseudogenes.

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