PaV

There’s a Science Magazine article on research into hidden biases in the language that AI systems use. The authors write: Our work has implications for AI and machine learning because of the concern that these technologies may perpetuate cultural stereotypes (18). Our findings suggest that if we build an intelligent system that learns enough about the properties of language to be able to understand and produce it, in the process it will also acquire historical cultural associations, some of which can be objectionable The ID position on almost every, if not every, Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) program written with the hope of simulating evolution, drags into it certain information that is essential in that program arriving at any appearance of high Read More ›

As new techniques arise in sequence analysis, as well as in genetic engineering, new frontiers open up to test the direction and power of natural selection. A new such experiment has been performed by a team including Joe Thornton. Here’s the opening sentences from the paper: We generated a large alignment of ADH sequences, determined the best-fit evolutionary model, inferred the maximum likelihood phylogeny and calculated the posterior probability distribution of amino acid states at key ancestral nodes. We synthesized coding sequences for the maximum a posteriori sequence of AncMS, which was inferred with high confidence and only one ambiguously reconstructed amino acid (Fig. 1b, Supplementary Fig. 1), and for an alternative version of AncMS (Alt-AncMS), which contained the other plausible Read More ›

Over at PhysOrg they have a story about how certain bacteria, when under stress conditions, shut themselves down and put themselves into a persistent state. They do it by modifying the chemicals involved in t-RNA. No, it’s not a “point mutation”—which is tauted as an icon of Darwinian evolution, but the utilization of an “alternate genetic code.” IOW, it’s regulated and ‘directed,’ and is ready-at-hand when needed. So, with this new information, the whole story of bacterial resistance now needs to be rethought. And, guess what, instead of pointing to “point mutations” (no pun intended), it points rather to “design.” Oh, those poor Darwinists/evolutionists. Another day; another bad day for Darwinism. From the press release: Dedon suspects that other families Read More ›

Source: Biologists first to observe direct inheritance of gene-silencing RNA This is a really remarkable discovery, which throws all of population genetics into question. It will have to be rethought. Here’s part of the author’s own surprise: “It’s shocking that we can see dsRNA cross generational boundaries. Our results provide a concrete mechanism for how the environment in one generation could affect the next generation,” Jose said. “But it’s doubly surprising to see that a parent can transmit the information to silence a gene it doesn’t have.” Oh, my. Another day, and another bad day for Darwinism. From the abstract: These results demonstrate the transport of extracellular RNA from one generation to the next to regulate gene expression in an Read More ›

Here’s a graph from the IPCC. I just happened upon it. Notice that, historically, global temperatures were, cyclically, about 4 degrees warmer than now. Just look at the repeated cycle! It’s been getting warmer for the last 15,000 years plus. AGW is just a farce. And the IPCC itself makes this point.

Scientists have examined the ability of the human eye to detect single photons. It turns out that they can. Previously it was thought that the eye could detect as few as five to seven, but the present study shows that they human eye is capable of detecting a single photon: this is really a remarkable feat. Here’s what one of the authors had to say: “If you imagine this, it is remarkable: a photon, the smallest physical entity with quantum properties of which light consists, is interacting with a biological system consisting of billions of cells, all in a warm and wet environment,” says Vaziri. “The response that the photon generates survives all the way to the level of our Read More ›

At Phys.Org there is an article describing the work of some scientists with the “chordate” Oikopleura dioica which does not have the genes for Retinoic Acid (RA), which all other chordates have. RA is a form of Vitamin A and is needed in the development of the heart. In this organism, the heart develops but without the presence of RA. How can this happen? Answer: “Regressive Evolution.” All the genes for RA have been lost, and lost in a non-random fashion. You would be hard-pressed to identify the above organism (a planktonic organism) as a “chordate,” but developmentally, it is one—you know, the chordate “body-plan” allows it to be identified as one. Now, this O. dioica cannot be the LCA Read More ›

Here is a press release via phys.org. They applied “biological evolution” to the history of cars and car makers in order to predict the future of electric car technology. It sort of makes you chuckle. “Cars are exceptionally diverse but also have a detailed history of changes, making them a model system for investigating the evolution of technology,” Gjesfjeld said. The team drew data from 3,575 car models made by 172 different manufacturers, noting the first and last year each was manufactured. “This is similar to when a paleontologist first dates a particular fossil and last sees a particular fossil,” Gjesfjeld said. And a little bit more: Alfaro said applying an evolutionary biology approach worked so well because the automotive Read More ›

Here is the abstract from a Nature Review: Genetics paper:

The recent increase in genomic data is revealing an unexpected perspective of gene loss as a pervasive source of genetic variation that can cause adaptive phenotypic diversity. This novel perspective of gene loss is raising new fundamental questions. How relevant has gene loss been in the divergence of phyla? How do genes change from being essential to dispensable and finally to being lost? Is gene loss mostly neutral, or can it be an effective way of adaptation? These questions are addressed, and insights are discussed from genomic studies of gene loss in populations and their relevance in evolutionary biology and biomedicine.

Many years ago, I predicted that modern genome sequencing would eventually prove one side of the argument to be right. This review article indicates that ID is the correct side of the argument. What they describe is essentially what ID scientist, Michael Behe, has termed the “First Principle of Adaptation.” (Which says that the organism will basicaly ‘break something’ or remove something in order to adapt) This paper ought to be the death-knell of Darwinism, and, of course, “neo-Darwinism,” but, even the authors who report this new “perspective” have not changed their Darwinian perspective. Somehow, they will find a way to tell us that the Darwinian ‘narrative’ always had room in it for this kind of discovery. As Max Planck said, and I paraphrase, “a theory does not prove itself right; it’s just that the scientists who opposed it eventually die.” Read More ›

Here’s a link to an article from American Thinker that details how, in Ohio, the Univ. of Cincinnati did a three year study on the effects of oil-well “fracking,” the results of which demonstrate no contamination of ground water had occurred because of “fracking.” And then the study was quashed. Read More ›

Scientists have discovered that the tiny, single cells show the hallmarks of intelligence. At Phys.Org they report on a study conducted by a Belgian and French team. Here’s a snippet from Phys.Org: A slime made up of independent, single cells, they found, can “learn” to avoid irritants despite having no central nervous system. “Tantalizing results suggest that the hallmarks for learning can occur at the level of single cells,” the team wrote in a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Further: The team wanted to see whether an organism without a nervous system could similarly “learn” from experience and change its behaviour accordingly. They chose a very humble life form indeed—Physarum polycephalum, also known as Read More ›

For the delight of programmers here at UD, I include this post. Over at the “Reference Frame,” a blog by Lubos Motl, string theorist, and physicist extraordinaire, he has this post on a new game for “gamers” calledQuantum Moves. I don’t have time for any in-depth comment; however, for the programmers among us, here is a titillating quote from Motl’s blog: In the paper, the authors remarkably demonstrated that using their intuition and heuristic approaches, the human players were able to find solutions to tasks in which the well-known classical optimization algorithms don’t work well – but the quantum computers would. The well-known classical optimization algorithms fail especially near the “quantum speed limit”, when the shortest process duration is combined Read More ›

Over at PowerlineBlog, there’s a post about the newly released analysis of the diet proposed 40 years ago as the one to lead us to good health. But guess what? It turns out it wasn’t all that good for us. And the data pointing this out didn’t appear until just recently, but, instead, appeared years ago. But why publish data that conflicts with your beloved theory? They include these quotes from the Washington Post: “Incomplete publication has contributed to the overestimation of benefits and underestimation of potential risks” of the special diet, they wrote. But Broste suggested that at least part of the reason for the incomplete publication of the data might have been human nature. The Minnesota investigators had Read More ›

In collaboration with Joe Thorton and his group, Eric Ortlund has come out with a new paper on GR. I’ve just very quickly looked at the news summary. We’ll want to wait until Michael Behe gives us an analysis of what these latest findings mean, but until such time, we can enjoy this quote: “What this highlights is how proteins that end up evolving new functions had those capacities, because of their flexibility, at the beginning of their evolutionary history,” says lead author Eric Ortlund, PhD, associate professor of biochemistry at Emory University School of Medicine. Although almost tautological, this, however, nicely links Aristotle’s ‘efficient’ and ‘final’ causes—as it should be in things teleological.

Here’s a Nature article about “active matter.” There’s excitement on the part of physicists (not for biologists, apparently) about this new breed of experiments that physicists are conducting and exploring. No more “dead matter” for them. So, how did they conduct this experiment in “active matter”? Let’s listen: First, Zvonimir Dogic and his students took microtubules — threadlike proteins that make up part of the cell’s internal ‘cytoskeleton’ — and mixed them with kinesins, motor proteins that travel along these threads like trains on a track. Then the researchers suspended droplets of this cocktail in oil and supplied it with the molecular fuel known as adenosine triphosphate (ATP). To the team’s surprise and delight, the molecules organized themselves into large-scale Read More ›