Category: Biology
An interesting way of visualizing cell design
| October 31, 2011 | Posted by News under Biology, News |
“The algorithms organize the intertwined 3D surface-contour data into simplified orthogonal cell abstractions and the components can be sorted to emphasize particular comparisons with proximity. ” more
Cash awards available for research or essays on the uses and abuses of biology
| October 10, 2011 | Posted by News under Biology, Culture, News |
Preliminary application form deadline October 31, 2011 more
Wanted: Developmental biology postdoc. Your mission: produce a chicken-a-saurus
| October 8, 2011 | Posted by News under Biology, Evolution, News |
From Thomas Hayden, “How to Hatch a Dinosaur” (Wired September 26, 2011): Human beings are almost indistinguishable, genetically speaking, from chimpanzees, but at that scale we’re also pretty hard to tell apart from, say, bats. Yeah, it figures. Batman. Hints of long-extinct creatures, echoes of evolution past, occasionally emerge in real life—they’re called atavisms, rare… more
Retroviruses and Common Descent: And Why I Don’t Buy It
| September 15, 2011 | Posted by Jonathan M under 'Junk DNA', Biology, Evolution, Evolutionary biology, Genetics, Genomics, Human evolution |
Those of you who have been following this blog, as well as Evolution News & Views, for some time, will be aware that I have previously discussed, across multiple articles, the phenomenon of endogenous retroviral inserts into the genomes of primates. Those familiar with the debate over origins will also be familiar with the various… more
ID guys greeted at biology meeting with “friendly, open-ended questions, curiosity, and meaningful exchanges”?
| July 25, 2011 | Posted by News under Biology, Intelligent Design |
ID guys greeted at biology meeting with “friendly, open-ended questions, curiosity, and meaningful exchanges”? more
Another Mars Mystery – Design, Natural or Hoax?
| June 6, 2011 | Posted by DonaldM under Biology, Design inference, Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design, Science fiction |
Fox news reports that an armchair astronomer, David Martine, claims that he’s discovered evidence of intelligent life on Mars. In this YouTube video Martine speculates that it could be a bio lab, or a dwelling or garage (he hope’s its not a weapon. NASA is investigating. So, is this evidence of intelligent design? Is it… more
Another windy day in the junkyard …
| May 31, 2011 | Posted by News under Biology, Darwinism |
From Jason Palmer at BBC News (19 May 2011), we learn, “Protein flaws responsible for complex life, study says.” This time mistakes produce more functional proteins: Tiny structural errors in proteins may have been responsible for changes that sparked complex life, researchers say.A comparison of proteins across 36 modern species suggests that protein flaws called… more
Fashion is usually “as if biology wasn’t real” …
| May 23, 2011 | Posted by News under Biology, Culture |
… and, despite best intentions, this doesn’t feel like an exception. The effort to meld developmental biology and fashion statements may be doomed in the chrysalis: Helen and Kate collaborated in 1997 to create a series of fashion/textile designs, spanning the first 1,000 hours of human life. Producing these at London College of Fashion, Helen… more
Born again evolutionary biologist critiques Gauger-Axe paper
| April 14, 2011 | Posted by News under Biology, Chemistry, Evolutionary biology |
In “Protein evolution in BIO-Complexity”(Todd’s Blog , April 13, 2011), Todd C. Wood comments on the recent BIO-Complexity paper by Ann Gauger and Doug Axe. He finds their work puzzling because they proceed as biochemists rather than evolutionary biologists, and summarizes: In the larger scheme of things, I am sensing a discouraging pattern to BIO-Complexity publications.… more
Coffee!! Can biology be rid of language that implies design?
| April 7, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Biology |
Of course not. Consider what the biologists at war with language are trying to do: Replace “to accomplish metabolic process X, enzyme Y evolved a specificity for Z” with “ ‘in accomplishing X, Y concomitantly evolved a specificity for Z”. It won’t work because it is not fluent, not even fluid, just stodgy and inconvenient.… more
Biologist goes to war against language
| April 6, 2011 | Posted by News under Biology |
In “The “Newspeak” of Evolutionary Biology Hopes to Banish the term “Design,” by Design”, Evolution News & Views (April 6, 2011) Casey Luskin tells us The anti-ID biologist Richard Dawkins once said, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” Now some ID critics today… more
Recent study: Cancer not necessarily due to long, slow process of mutation
| April 5, 2011 | Posted by News under Biology |
A woman who has had a normal mammogram shortly afterward develops an aggressive tumour? In “Cancer Can Develop in Catastrophic Burst”, Nicholas Wade ( New York Times, January 10, 2011) reports The finding marks a striking exception to the current theory of how cancer develops. Cells are thought to become cancerous over many years as… more
Video: One cell of a collection of animated cell videos
| April 3, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Biology, Video |
Here is a great source of cellular movies, for example “ The Inner Life of the Cell”, courtesy Harvard University. more
The Nature of Nature — sticky
| April 2, 2011 | Posted by William Dembski under Biology, Culture, Darwinism, Design inference, Evolution, Evolutionary biology, Evolutionary psychology, Informatics, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Mind, Multiverse, Natural selection, Neuroscience, Origin Of Life, Philosophy, Physics, Science |
THE NATURE OF NATURE is now finally out and widely available. If you haven’t bought it yet, let me suggest Amazon.com, which is selling it for $17.94, which is an incredible deal for a 7″x10″ 1000-page book with, for most of us, no tax and no shipping charge (it costs over $10 to ship this… more
Coffee? At this time of night? Psst!! Soon lab mice may be out of work, because …
| March 24, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Biology |
Hannah Waters reports at The Scientist (14th February 2011), The mouse is not enough Early embryonic development differs between mice and cows, suggesting mice may not reflect mammalian development as well as scientists had believed [ ... ] Specifically, the mechanism of cell commitment in early embryos differs between mice and cows, suggesting that development… more
Natural Selection Redux
| March 23, 2011 | Posted by DonaldM under Biology, Darwinism, Evolution, Evolutionary biology, Natural selection, Science |
PaV’s recent post Darwinn Step Aside – Survival of the ‘Quickest’ got me thinking again about natural selection and the role it supposedly played in evolution. The conventional wisdom among Darwinists, including Darwin himself, is that NS is a mechanism. The very title of Darwin’s famous tome suggests as much – On The Origin of… more
Hey, new directive from Darwin on High: We all gotta change the way we talk
| March 17, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Biology, Darwinism |
A friend wants me to know about this latest BioEssays editorial, wailing about the use of teleological language in biology (= it happened so that). As in: …It is that innocent little word ‘to’ that transforms the meaning, giving enzyme Y the essence of ‘will’ – ‘to’ being short for ‘in order to ‘, or… more
Coffee!! Intelligent design and evidence
| March 17, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Biology, Darwinism |
Coffee!! Intelligent design and evidence I note where the folks at ENV have been talking about Mike Behe’s still-spun flagellum = a bacterial motor assembly that cannot have been the result of chance. Read the discussion by all means, but first, pause a moment, and ask: So? So what? What kind of agenda does one… more
Coffee!! When science nerds go bad …
| February 17, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Biology |
… nice kids at Baylor begin to sound like Lady Gaga and look like the broom closet before Tidy Up day: “The video contradicts the idea that science is straightforward,” Shim said. “For a lot of jobs, I think, time in equals output, but in science you have to sit there and struggle. Endless troubleshooting… more
Lab rats, take heart! You may be next to get liberated …
| February 16, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Biology |
According to this paper, ScienceDaily (Feb. 14, 2011) — New research shows that all not mammals are created equal. In fact, this work shows that the animals most commonly used by scientists to study mammalian genetics — mice — develop unusually quickly and may not always be representative of embryonic development in other mammals. Hmm.… more