Engineering

I work for a great company. I frequently ask for permission to be sent away for training in state-of-the-art computational technology — computer simulations that involve finite element analysis (FEA), Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian/Fluid Structure Interaction (ALE/FSI), and Navier-Stokes Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). Today I spent the day with a group of brilliant students and a great instructor in a CFD class. What one learns with hands-on experience with such technology is the following: You can’t just make stuff up. You can’t assume stuff, write a computer program based on those assumptions, and expect to get a valid result. In fact, if such an approach is pursued, a totally invalid, and most likely a catastrophically invalid result is guaranteed. An intimate Read More ›

… it doesn’t evolve.

Remember when AVIDA proved Darwin right?

These results provide evidence that low-impact mutations can present a substantial barrier to progressive evolution by natural selection. Understanding mutation is of primary importance, as selection depends on the mutational production of new genotypes. Numerous changes that would be beneficial may nevertheless fail to occur because mutation cannot produce them in the time available.

Further, it is important for biologists to realistically appraise what selection can and cannot do under various circumstances. Selection may neither be necessary nor sufficient to explain numerous genomic or cellular features of complex organisms [2-4].

PDF and poster here:

Nelson CW, Sanford JC (2011) The effects of low-impact mutations in digital organisms. Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling 8:9.

Nelson CW (2011) Selection threshold constrains adaptive evolution in computational evolution experiments. Great Lakes Bioinformatics Conference. F1000 Research 2:A13. Read More ›

Judge Robert W. Sweet has turned the biotech patent industry into turmoil.

See: After Patent on Genes Is Invalidated, Taking Stock By ANDREW POLLACK, March 30, 2010

Although patents are not granted on things found in nature, the DNA being patented had long been considered a chemical that was isolated from, and different from, what was found in nature.

But Judge Sweet ruled that the distinguishing feature of DNA is its information content, its conveyance of the genetic code. And in that regard, he wrote, the isolated DNA “is not markedly different from native DNA as it exists in nature.” . . . Read More ›

Graduate Student Challenges Avida in Scientific Paper   Click here to listen. On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin interviews Winston Ewert, a graduate student in computer science at Baylor University who recently co-authored a paper titled, “Evolutionary Synthesis of Nand Logic: Dissecting a Digital Organism,” in Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics. Ewert shares how reading Richard Dawkins led him to his current research in evolutionary computation and his criticisms of the Avida Simulation. Listen in as Ewert explains the scientific research behind his paper, and find out why intelligent design is attracting the interest of graduate students. For more on intelligent design research, visit The Evolutionary Informatics Lab and Biologic Institute.  

TED granted Jill Tartar her wish to: “empower Earthlings everywhere to become active participants in the ultimate search for cosmic company”. TED and Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has set up SETIQuest.org to:

. . . make vast amounts of SETI data available to the public for the first time. It will also publish the SETI Institute’s signal-detection algorithm as open source code, inviting brilliant coders and amateur techies to make it even better. . . . You are officially invited to join the search for extraterrestrial life. . . .With available cloud storage and processing resources, we can prov de digital signal processing experts and students with a lot of raw data … and invite them to develop new algorithms that can find other types of signals that we are now missing,”

The Challenge for ID
1) Is SETI’s methodology valid? Read More ›