2013

Above: Ludwig van Beethoven in 1804. Below: The opening of Beethoven’s Fifth. Among St. Thomas Aquinas’ celebrated five proofs of the existence of God, the Fifth Way holds a special place: it is the only one which explicitly attempts to show that the cosmos is dependent on some Intelligent Being, Who directs all natural objects towards their built-in ends. In this post, I’m going to critically analyze Aquinas’ Fifth Way – or more specifically, Professor Edward Feser’s reconstructed version of this argument by Aquinas. On Feser’s account, the argument proceeds from a set of very simple facts about the natural world, and then demonstrates that the only way to explain these facts is by positing an intelligent being (or beings) Read More ›

To facilitate discussion, we are publishing the abstracts and conclusions/summaries of the 24 papers from the Cornell Conference on the Origin of Biological Information here at Uncommon Descent, with cumulative links to previous papers at the bottom of each page. You can get from anywhere to anywhere in the system. Note: A blow-by-blow account of the difficulties that the authors experienced from Darwin lobby attempts to censor the book by denying it publication with Springer are detailed here. Fortunately, the uproar resulted in an opportunity for readers like yourself to read the book online. That said, the hard cover version is now shipping. An excerpt from “Biological Information and Genetic Theory: Introductory Comments” by John C. Sanford: Given all the Read More ›

New researchout of the University of Pennsylvania reveals yet another fascinating aspect of gene expression regulation. In the higher species genes are not one continuous DNA segment. Instead there are intervening segments within genes known as introns (intervening regions). Many introns are quite long and some are short. After a gene is copied by the transcription machinery (known as RNA polymerase), resulting in an mRNA transcript, these major and minor introns are spliced out of the mRNA by the major and minor spliceosomes, respectively. The new research shows that the minor spliceosomes can be turned off, thus turning off the expression of that gene.  Read more

[precursor to Denyse’s post Darwin in the School’s Lobby has a new]From the Ultraman Series we have the Science Patrol: From DC Comics, we have the Justice League of America: So what do you get when you put together these two fictional ideas? The NCSE’s latest: NOTES:1. And the NCSE might even have a march to go along with their latest offering: 2. Denyse will post on the NCSE latest shortly 3. Photo Credits:http://www.chrisroberson.net/uploaded_images/Science-Patrol-710762.jpghttp://ncse.com/files/blog-images/blogLogo.jpghttp://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100310031007/superfriends/images/f/f7/Justice_League_of_America_(FOUNDERS).jpg

YECs are very interested in mechanism of accelerated nuclear decay. Ironically, so is the mainstream in order to find better methods of dealing with nuclear waste instead of burying it underground (or worse putting it in containers and tossing it in the sea). Here is a breaking development published in a peer-reviewed article in 2013: Accelerated alpha-decay of uranium isotopes induced by exposure of aqueous solution of uranium salt with gold nanoparticles to laser radiation a pre-print of the work is available here: Accelerated alpha-decay of 232U isotope achieved by exposure of its aqueous solution with gold nanoparticles to laser radiation One notable highlight was that nuclear decay was accelerated by a factor of 6-trillion! In other words, the half-life Read More ›