2014

It has been more than a year since I posted Nick Matzke – Book Burner?  Which I reproduce here: Nick Matzke famously got the publishing company Springer to suppress the publication of the papers of a conference held at Cornell.  See here. He did this without having seen, much less read, any of the papers.  Obviously, his motivation could not have been the content of the papers.  He was motivated by the mere fact that several of the conference participants were well-known ID proponents. Let us do a little thought experiment.  Suppose that Nick had published his famous piece on Panda’s Thumb a few days later, and the head of Springer had called him up and said, “Hey, Nick, I’ve got some bad Read More ›

Before biomimetics, there was little interest in studying biological materials to gain inspiration for human invention. This is because researchers assumed that living things originated via “blind watchmaker” mechanisms. Since most researchers had discarded any thoughts of intelligent agency, it seemed only natural to think that living things would not help the human quest for improved or innovative designs. However, this stance has been almost completely replaced by a much more positive perspective. Somehow the “blind watchmaker” has morphed into an immensely skilled craftsman. Now it is realized that life forms display structures with design elegance, the watchmaker is considered to behave as though he is not only sighted, but also astoundingly intelligent. “Biological materials such as the feather are Read More ›

Are you what you eat? Or what’s eating you?
Novel virus discovered in half the world’s population

A new study led by researchers at San Diego State University has found that more than half the world’s population is host to a newly described virus, named crAssphage, which infects one of the most common types of gut bacteria, Bacteroidetes. This phylum of bacteria is thought to be connected with obesity, diabetes and other gut-related diseases. . . .It’s unknown how the virus is transmitted, but the fact that it was not found in very young infants’ fecal samples suggests that it is not passed along maternally, but acquired during childhood. The makeup of the viral DNA suggests that it’s circular in structure. Further laboratory work has confirmed that the viral DNA is a singular entity, but it’s proven difficult to isolate. . . .
Some of the proteins in crAssphage’s DNA are similar to those found in other well-described viruses. That allowed Edwards’ team to determine that their novel virus is one known as a bacteriophage, which infects and replicates inside bacteria—and using innovative bioinformatic techniques, they predicted that this particular bacteriophage proliferates by infecting a common phylum of gut bacteria known as Bacteriodetes.
Gut punch
Bacteriodetes bacteria live toward the end of the intestinal tract, and they are suspected to play a major role in the link between gut bacteria and obesity. What role crAssphage plays in this process will be a target of future research.. . .

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