September 2011

Just in at PhysOrg.com. Non-dividing brain cells quickly undergo epigenetic changes. “It was mind-boggling to see that so many methylation sites — thousands of sites — had changed in status as a result of brain activity,” Song says. “We used to think that the brain’s epigenetic DNA methylation landscape was as stable as mountains and more recently realized that maybe it was a bit more subject to change, perhaps like trees occasionally bent in a storm. But now we show it is most of all like a river that reacts to storms of activity by moving and changing fast.” So much for the view that the genome is rather static, and that the major dynamical changes to it involve random Read More ›

From Rachel Kaufman, National Geographic News (September 29, 2011): The planet Mercury is dotted with holes that appear to be unlike any other landform yet seen in the solar system, new pictures show. And just think, that little fryball is the last place you’d expect the unexpected, too …

As readers of UD know, Elizabeth Liddle is convinced that in any population there are neutral versions of the genome that have every needed variation an organism must have. Change the environment, and, lo and behold, the organism changes. But what has happened here? Let’s quote the article: H5N1 evolved in poultry in east Asia and has spread across Eurasia since 2004. In that time 565 people are known to have caught it; 331 died. No strain that spreads readily among mammals has emerged in that time, despite millions of infected birds, and infections in people, cats and pigs. Efforts to create such a virus in the lab have failed, and some virologists think H5N1 simply cannot do it. Where Read More ›

Here’s an article from New Scientist that will be open for the next seven days to registered viewers. It’s about the “metamorphosis” of species from larval to adult stages, and brings in the views of Donald Williamson. Here’s a link to his 2006 paper, and the entire abstract (it’s worth it!): Examples of animal development that pose problems for Darwinian evolution by ‘descent with modification’ but are consistent with ‘larval transfer’ are discussed. Larval transfer claims that genes that prescribe larval forms originated in adults in other taxa, and have been transferred by hybridization. I now suggest that not only larvae but also components of animals have been transferred by hybridization. The ontogeny of some Cambrian metazoans without true larvae Read More ›

Here. A riposte to that Doonesbury cartoon. Yeah, over a year ago. But now that Einstein is down in flames (?), we decided to stop thinking that it even matters. Follow UD News at Twitter!

The essay stimulating this blog emerged from the Darwin Bicentennial year, when surveys of “educated lay people” in Switzerland revealed that only 20% had any clarity of thinking about Darwin’s theory of evolution. About half explained it in a circular way, another 20% implied some form of Lamarckism and the remaining 10% talked about evolution being a flow towards complexity. These responses evidence “poor understanding” and two major reasons are suggested to explain the observations. The first is “The theory of evolution is counterintuitive” and the second is “The theory of evolution opposes most people’s worldview”. The worldview issues are of considerable importance to the issues considered here. It is worth asking: what is a Darwinian worldview? and why do Read More ›

(Globe of Science and Innovation at CERN. Courtesy of Adam Nieman and Wikipedia.) Dr. Victor Stenger is a physicist who worked for 30 years with neutrinos until his retirement in 2000. He is also an outspoken New Atheist and a leading critic of Intelligent Design. In a recent Huffington Post article (No cause to dispute Einstein), Dr. Stenger has some very sensible things to say about the latest CERN experiments suggesting that neutrinos can travel faster than the speed of light, and not surprisingly, his verdict on the CERN results is negative: “[I]f I were a wagering man, I would bet the effect will go away because of some systematic error no one has yet been able to think of.” Read More ›