Of General Interest

Today at Phys.Org, this press release and linked paper can be found. Now, listen to this: A research team led by Bristol’s Professor Paolo Madeddu exposed human heart pericytes, which are cells that wrap small blood vessels in the heart, to SARS-CoV-2 Alpha and Delta variants, along with the original Wuhan virus. Surprisingly, they found the heart pericytes were not infected. Intrigued by this finding, in a second test-tube experiment, the researchers challenged the cardiac pericytes with the spike protein alone, without the virus. The spike protein made pericytes unable to interact with their companion endothelial cells and induced them to secrete inflammatory cytokines, suggesting the spike protein is harmful to human cardiac cells. Interestingly, the team found that antibodies Read More ›

From the beginning of our Corona Virus madness, I’ve been saying that the flu season of 2017-2018 was horrible–and we did nothing. But now we’ve lockdown our economy and somehow have lost the key. Heaven help us. I noticed this article at Powerlineblog.com that compared total deaths in the US from the start of the year in 2019 to those of the start of this year, 2020. Here’s a takeaway from the article: According to the CDC, as I read the spread sheet, there were 809,704 deaths in the U.S. over the same time period last year. That’s right: through the first 14 weeks of the year, through April 3 or April 10, however the CDC counts the weeks, there Read More ›

News has posted on this recent technological development. It is worth taking a couple of minutes to watch the video describing and imaging what was done using AI technologies: Fascinating, what 3-d scanning can do. It also of course corroborates the known result from the main Dead Sea Scroll finds, that the OT text was faithfully transmitted to posterity from remote times. END PS: Chain of custody for the NT message and by extension its texts: PPS: HT NewScientist, a case of Lead-based ink pigment detected in a papyrus manuscript written in Greek uncials:

David Berlinski, who lives down the street from Notre Dame, writes, “The pompiers were in their glory last night, and, when I was allowed to return home as dawn was breaking, they were still there, red-eyed, exhausted, grim. The police, too. The great cloud of smoke had drifted to the west and south. Later that day, I saw the front of the cathedral. Its towers were still standing, but its great bells, which I had heard every day, were silent.” From Mark Steyn: “Twenty-four hours after Notre Dame de Paris began to burn, there is better news than we might have expected: More of the cathedral than appeared likely to has, in fact, survived intact – including the famous rose Read More ›

Not just to zap prey, apparently. From Ed Yong at the Atlantic: It’s a remote control. It’s a tracking device. It can deliver shocks of up to 600 volts. But then you did want to stay awake, didn’t you? You think the electric eel is shocking? You haven’t seen anything yet. In this episode of Animalism hosted by The Atlantic science writer Ed Yong, we investigate the subtle and sinister ways of the electric eel. More. See also: Bumblebees judge flowers via electric fields

A few days ago, frequent commenter Dionisio noted: >>http://www.ranking.com/ Web Rank Biblegateway.com 168 MIT.edu 7,280 HARVARD.edu 7,246 Nature.com 7,449 Desiringgod.org 10,105 Answersingenesis.org 11,865 Gty.org 15,018 Icr.org 19,037 Religionnews.com 22,188 Rzim.org 35,858 Samaritanspurse.org 40,274 Truthforlife.org 49,862 Royalsociety.org 53,686 Evolutionnews.org 58,755 Jamesmacdonald.com 60,164 Reasons.org 65,259 Uncommondescent.com 80,763 Pandasthumb.org 106,377 Kodugamelab.com 668,032>> I took a look, especially at the question of how many web sites are out there. That is a hard question, but the reasonable and somewhat conservative number looks like about the billion, with 75% inactive in one way or another, i.e. the active web overall is 250 million sites or so, maybe up to several times more depending on how you count and when. I then responded: “[T]here are over Read More ›

Just now, I responded to a point JM made in the current James Tour thread. I think the comment chain is worth headlining: KF, 14: >> why debate someone when instead: [a] you can ignore, marginalise and rob of publicity? [b] you can caricature, smear, slander and poison the well? [c] you dominate institutions and are utterly ruthless in imposing a crooked yardstick as the standard for straightness and accuracy? (If you doubt me, see the Wiki article on ID. Resemblance to current trends in discussing political issues, policy alternatives and personalities is NOT coincidence.)>> D, 15: >>you have described very accurately the pathetic situation in this world. Facing the strong arguments of a scientist like Dr Tour, the still Read More ›

This just in from PhysOrg: We had no idea that we would discover that transcription factors operated in this clustered way. The textbooks all suggested that single molecules were used to switch genes on and off, not these crazy nano footballs that we observed.” The team believe the clustering process is due to an ingenious strategy of the cell to allow transcription factors to reach their target genes as quickly as possible. Professor Leake said: “We found out that the size of these nano footballs is a remarkably close match to the gaps between DNA when it is scrunched up inside a cell. As the DNA inside a nucleus is really squeezed in, you get little gaps between separate strands Read More ›

Despite being an ID advocate for several years now (and having an authors account on this forum), I haven’t really taken the time to put pen to paper and write about it, apart from a few lengthy exchanges I had with a close friend and critic of ID. He has since stepped away from the online world, and so the exchange has ended. You can still view my responses to him here, here, here, here, and here. I also published one article where I highlighted various atheists and agnostics who are critical of neo-Darwinism and supportive of ID here. The last thing I wrote on the subject was two years ago now, however this last year I’ve been wishing to start up a Read More ›

  From Elizabeth Howell at Space.com: November’s full moon on Monday (Nov. 14) will be the biggest and brightest one since 1948, making it a great time to get outside and marvel at the lunar sight for stargazers around the world. But if it happens to be cloudy in your area, don’t despair. You can still watch the so-called “supermoon” online in several live webcasts, starting tonight (Nov. 13). More.

From Kate Becker at Nautilus: Before arXiv, preprint papers were available only within small scientific circles, distributed by hand and by mail, and the journals in which they were ultimately published months later (if they were published at all) were holed up in university libraries. But arXiv has democratized the playing field, giving scientists instant access to ideas from all kinds of colleagues, all over the world, from prestigious chairs at elite universities to post-docs drudging away at off-brand institutions and scientists in developing countries with meager research support. Paul Ginsparg set up arXiv in 1991, when he was a 35-year-old physicist at Los Alamos. He expected only about 100 papers to go out to a few hundred email subscribers Read More ›