Biology

Dear readers, It has been far too long since my last post, occasioned by the fact that I have entirely too many irons in the fire. I hope you will forgive this brief “drive-by” post, with a request for some help and information. One of the common refrains that comes up regarding the fossil record, or regarding claims about biodiversity and the evolution of species more generally, is that the vast majority of species that have ever lived on the Earth have gone extinct. This is often phrased as “99% of species that have ever lived have gone extinct” or similar wording. (Occasionally someone will temper the number to 98% or 95% or some other nearby figure, but 99% seems Read More ›

British physicist John Polkinghorne thinks that biologists see a more disorderly universe: I think two effects produce this hostility. One is that biologists see a much more perplexing, disorderly, and painful view of reality than is presented by the austere and beautiful order of fundamental physics. . . . There is, however, a second effect at work of much less intellectual respectability. Biology, through the unravelling of the molecular basis of genetics, has scored an impressive victory, comparable to physics’ earlier elucidation of the motions of the solar system through the operation of universal gravity. The post-Newtonian generation was intoxicated with the apparent success of universal mechanism and wrote books boldly proclaiming that man is a machine. Dan Peterson, “Why Read More ›

Thanks to Wikipedia, a summary illustration: For reference. END

The mechanome, “the body of knowledge about mechanical forces at work in the molecular, cellular, anatomical, and physiological processes that contribute to the architecture of living structures and their physical properties,” became more prominent this year in discussions of biology (though one story on the physics of biology late last year garnered 354 comments). For so long, the genome ran away with all the interest and publicity but maybe that’s changing. At her blog, science writer Suzan Mazur talks about the way that mechanobiology is becoming mainstream: “When I say mechanobiology is all the rage, I’m not simply referring to lab research and scientific conferences on the subject, although they are, of course, central. But also to: (1) mechanobiology university Read More ›

From at ScienceDaily: Mammals will develop ovaries and become females unless the early sex organs have enough of a protein called SOX9 at a key stage in their development. SOX9 causes these organs to become testes, which then direct the rest of the embryo to become male. The amount of SOX9 produced is controlled initially by the SRY protein encoded by the Sry gene, which is located on the Y chromosome. This is why males, who have an X chromosome and a Y chromosome, usually develop testes while females, who have two X chromosomes, do not. Only 2% of human DNA contains the ‘code’ to produce proteins, key building blocks of life. The remaining 98% is ‘non-coding’ and was once Read More ›

Readers may remember Ask Bret Weinstein who, with his also-biologist wife Heather Heyng, was driven from Evergreen State in Washington during a campus war on science (a side-skirmish in a bigger culture war*). From Debra Soh at Quillette: It’s been almost a year since violent student protests erupted at Evergreen State College—enough time for the “non-traditional” Olympia, WA university to draw useful lessons from a fracas that made it a byword for campus identity politics run amok. Unfortunately, a report from an Independent External Review Panel, tasked by college President George Bridges with finding ways to attain closure on the events of last Spring, provides scant hope this will happen. The Evergreen admin is still placating people it must denounce if Read More ›

I’ve talked to a number of biologists, and it seems like there are a number of important facts that are left out of a standard biological education.

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Of course we knew the PoMos would get round to this. From John Sexton at Hot Air, quoting a now hard-to-find memo from Evergreen College: Earlier this week, some graffiti was spotted on campus that sought to couterpose intersectionality and the sciences, equating the latter with white supremacy. Facilities staff have completed the chore of cleaning up the graffiti. The slur against the sciences, however interpreted, is offensive and disappointing to see given the values we espouse and our shared commitment to equity and interdisciplinarity. Using graffiti to condemn one discipline or summarilty dismiss one group in favor of others runs counter to these values. Evergreen strives to bring multiple lenses into our work, to afford respect to all who Read More ›

From David Snoke at the Christian Scientific Society: On Friday night, Mike Keas and I debated whether and how much human sin could be seen as a reason for animal death. We agreed on many things, for example, that the age of the earth is billions of years, that animals died before Adam and Eve lived, that predatory animals are not “evil” in a moral sense, and that they glorify God. Much of the debate revolved around the interpretation of Romans 8:18-25. Mike feels that the “groaning,” “bondage,” and “corruption” in this passage clearly show a negative aspect placed on creation due to human sin. In his view, before people came along, predatory animals were not “evil” and in fact Read More ›

We typically think of eyes as having one or more lenses for focusing incoming light onto a surface such as our retina. However, light can also be focused using arrays of mirrors, as is commonly done in telescopes. A biological example of this is the scallop, which can have up to 200 reflecting eyes that focus light onto two retinas. Palmer et al. find that spatial vision in the scallop is achieved through precise control of the size, shape, and packing density of the tiles of guanine that together make up an image-forming mirror at the back of each of the eyes. More. The authors dare to use the term “fine-tuned,” with all its career-limiting damage? The pecten scallop uses mirrors Read More ›