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Readers may recall a paper published in 2010 by Wilf and Ewens. A rebuttal to that paper (authors Winston Ewert, William A. Dembski, Ann K. Gauger, Robert J. Marks II) has now been published in Bio-Complexity. From the abstract, Wilf and Ewens argue in a recent paper that there is plenty of time for evolution to occur. They base this claim on a mathematical model in which beneficial mutations accumulate simultaneously and independently, thus allowing changes that require a large number of mutations to evolve over comparatively short time periods. Because changes evolve independently and in parallel rather than sequentially, their model scales logarithmically rather than exponentially. This approach does not accurately reflect biological evolution, however, for two main reasons. First, Read More ›

Our very own James Barham has just published a ranking of “the 50 best colleges in the United States” on his “The Best Schools” website. His list features some ID-sympathetic schools — for example, the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University. The website lists the following five factors as being of particular value: (1) Record of achievement. When you graduate from any of the colleges in our ranking, you’ll have something to show for it. You’ll have a skill-set, a credential, a springboard to new possibilities. This can translate into cash, but it can also translate in other ways. (2) Diversity of study. We think excellence in a college education need not be confined to liberal arts and sciences. Business, engineering, architecture, seafaring, Read More ›

From here: “One of the first, and arguably most important, steps in development is the allocation of cells into three germ layers—ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm—that give rise to all tissues and organs in the body,” explains Mark Mercola, Ph.D., professor and director of Sanford-Burnham’s Muscle Development and Regeneration Program in the Sanford Children’s Health Research Center. In a study published in the journal Genes & Development, Mercola and his team, including postdoctoral researcher Alexandre Colas, Ph.D., and Wesley McKeithan, discovered that microRNAs play an important role in this cell- and germ layer-directing process during development. Click here to read the rest of the article. Or click here to read the paper.

From here: Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are mysterious molecules. They are almost-proteins—transcripts of about 200 or more nucleotides that appear not to encode proteins. Given their noncoding status, it is perhaps surprising that many lncRNAs are expressed in very specific anatomical or developmental patterns, suggesting that their regulation is of biological importance. At the cellular level, most lncRNAs, also called large intergenic noncoding RNAs (lincRNAs), are localized to the nucleus. In addition, most lncRNAs either overlap with genes that encode proteins, are transcribed antisense to genes that encode proteins or are expressed as intergenic or intronic regions. But why spend energy tightly regulating the expression and localization of RNA molecules that don’t eventually end up as proteins? And what do Read More ›

Last night, a few of us from Discovery Institute attended the Seattle Analytic Philosophy Club meetup discussion on “Is Intelligent Design Science?” I’ve never met so many thoughtful and open-minded ID critics! One atheist gentleman even said that he would have to abandon one of the arguments he’s been using against ID and research the ID position more thoroughly. He came to realize that, although dismissing ID out of hand as ‘unscientific’ offered an easy way to reject ID without careful consideration and analysis of its claims, the assertion that ID isn’t science is a very difficult position to defend philosophically. When we adequately addressed objections, our detractors would concede the point. Why can’t all ID-critics be like that? Some Read More ›

Lynn Margulis’s son, Dorion Sagan, co-author of Margulis’s well-known book Acquiring Genomes, has written a book dedicated to his mother’s life and work. The book description on Amazon reads, Tireless, controversial, and hugely inspirational to those who knew her or encountered her work, Lynn Margulis was a scientist whose intellectual energy and interests knew no bounds. Best known for her work on the origins of eukaryotic cells, the Gaia hypothesis, and symbiogenesis as a driving force in evolution, her work has forever changed the way we understand life on Earth. When Margulis passed away in 2011, she left behind a groundbreaking scientific legacy that spanned decades. In this collection, Dorion Sagan, Margulis’s son and longtime collaborator, gathers together the voices of Read More ›

Come along this evening (7-9pm) to the Lake Hills Library in Seattle for a discussion hosted by the Seattle Analytic Philosophy Club on “Is Intelligent Design Science?” Casey Luskin, myself (Jonathan M.) and Josh Youngkin from Discovery Institute will be there. Go here for details!

A new paper has just been published in the journal Genome Biology by John Rinn and David Kelley, identifying a role for transposable elements in gene regulation in stem cells. Science Daily reports on the paper: Over a decade after sequencing the human genome, it has now become clear that the genome is not mostly ‘junk’ as previously thought. In fact, the ENCODE project consortium of dozens of labs and petabytes of data have determined that these ‘noncoding’ regions house everything from disease trait loci to important regulatory signals, all the way through to new types of RNA-based genes. Yet over 70 years ago, it was first proclaimed that all this junk wasn’t so junky. Barbara McClintock discovered the first utility of all Read More ›

David Berlinski has a new post at ENV entitled “The Ineffable Higgs”: Surely its discovery meant something? The Standard Model (SM) of particle physics demanded its existence, after all; and the demand was met. If it took forty years and more than $16 billion to discover the thing, physicists could with satisfaction observe that the public got what it paid for, the first step, of course, in demanding that the public pay for more of what it got. Photographs of Peter Higgs staring tenderly into space, ses yeux perdus, conveyed an impression of appropriate intellectual satisfaction. Click here to continue reading!

The American Humanist Association has launched a new website directed at kids. Few websites on the internet are so ripe for parody. The website perpetuates the common myth that there exists a dichotomy between science on the one hand and belief in a Creator on the other. What about those of us, like myself, who enjoy science and have a scientific education, but who also think there are robust intellectual grounds on which to base belief in a Creator? The website makes no attempt to hide the connection between atheism and Darwinism. Of course, Darwinism must stand or fall with the scientific evidence irrespective of the theistic or atheistic beliefs of its adherents — but it does strike me as Read More ›

Science Daily reports on an interesting new piece of biologically-inspired technology: Drawing heavily upon nature for inspiration, a team of researchers has created a new artificial lens that is nearly identical to the natural lens of the human eye. This innovative lens, which is made up of thousands of nanoscale polymer layers, may one day provide a more natural performance in implantable lenses to replace damaged or diseased human eye lenses, as well as consumer vision products; it also may lead to superior ground and aerial surveillance technology. Click here to read the rest.