Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Happy Academic Freedom Day!

Denyse O'Leary
February 12, 2013
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Today is academic freedom day (February 12th). Share this graphic on your facebook page or blog and help raise awareness of academic freedom issues in the US and elsewhere.

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OT: Darwinian prediction of the appendix being a vestigial organ is proven wrong more than 30 times! Evolutionists Multiply Miracles - February 12, 2013 Excerpt: For the appendix: Science Now trumpeted this improbable headline without blushing: “Appendix Evolved More Than 30 Times.” In so doing, the article undercut another old evolutionary notion: vestigial organs. The appendix may not be useless after all. The worm-shaped structure found near the junction of the small and large intestines evolved 32 times among mammals, according to a new study. The finding adds weight to the idea that the appendix helps protect our beneficial gut bacteria when a serious infection strikes. The article proceeded to show that Darwin’s belief the appendix was a useless (vestigial) remnant is no longer considered valid. After all, animals as diverse as beaver, koalas and porcupines have them; “in other words, the feature is much more common among mammals than once thought.” Now, an international team of researchers that includes Heather F. Smith, an evolutionary biologist at Midwestern University in Glendale, Arizona, and William Parker, a surgeon who studies the immune system at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, says it has the strongest evidence yet that the appendix serves a purpose. In a new study, published online this month in Comptes Rendus Palevol, the researchers compiled information on the diets of 361 living mammals, including 50 species now considered to have an appendix, and plotted the data on a mammalian evolutionary tree. They found that the 50 species are scattered so widely across the tree that the structure must have evolved independently at least 32 times, and perhaps as many as 38 times. Randolph Nesse (U of Michigan) had an interesting take on this conclusion. “The conclusion that the appendix has appeared 32 times is amazing,” he said. “I do find their argument for the positive correlation of appendix and cecum sizes to be a convincing refutation of Darwin’s hypothesis” (about the appendix being vestigial).,,, http://crev.info/2013/02/evolutionists-multiply-miracles/bornagain77
February 13, 2013
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Of related interest: Humans Glow in (Emit) Visible Light - July 2009 Excerpt: Past research has shown that the body emits visible light, 1,000 times less intense than the levels to which our naked eyes are sensitive. In fact, virtually all living creatures emit very weak light, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32090918/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/humans-glow-visible-light/ Image - This first image shows one of the test subjects in full light. The middle image shows the body giving off weak emissions of visible light in totally dark conditions. The rightmost image of the subject, captured in infrared wavelengths, shows the heat emissions. http://msnbcmedia1.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/090722-body-glow-1p.grid-6x2.jpg Coast to Coast - Vicki's Near Death Experience (Blind From Birth) part 1 of 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e65KhcCS5-Y Quote from preceding video: 'I was in a body and the only way that I can describe it was a body of energy, or of light. And this body had a form. It had a head. It had arms and it had legs. And it was like it was made out of light. And 'it' was everything that was me. All of my memories, my consciousness, everything.' - Vicky Noratuk It is also very interesting to point out that the 'light at the end of the tunnel', reported in many Near Death Experiences(NDEs), is also corroborated by Special Relativity when considering the optical effects for traveling at the speed of light. Please compare the similarity of the optical effect, noted at the 3:22 minute mark of the following video, when the 3-Dimensional world ‘folds and collapses’ into a tunnel shape around the direction of travel as a 'hypothetical' observer moves towards the ‘higher dimension’ of the speed of light, with the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ reported in very many Near Death Experiences: (Of note: This following video was made by two Australian University Physics Professors with a supercomputer.) Approaching The Speed Of Light - Optical Effects - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5733303/ Ask the Experts: What Is a Near-Death Experience (NDE)? - article with video Excerpt: "Very often as they're moving through the tunnel, there's a very bright mystical light ... not like a light we're used to in our earthly lives. People call this mystical light, brilliant like a million times a million suns..." - Jeffery Long M.D. - has studied NDE's extensivelybornagain77
February 13, 2013
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Of note to post #4,, having light play a regulatory role in turning specific cell signaling pathways on and off is no small thing to consider since cell signaling pathways are extremely complex with many different proteins involved in each specific pathway,,, Signaling Pathways and Tables http://www.cellsignal.com/reference/pathway/index.html This is another piece of evidence that strongly indicates that light within the cell is communicating a higher level of information (body plan information?) than the sequential information of DNA is communicating: Related notes: An Electric Face: A Rendering Worth a Thousand Falsifications - September 2011 Excerpt: The video suggests that bioelectric signals presage (precedes) the morphological development of the face. It also, in an instant, gives a peak at the phenomenal processes at work in biology. As the lead researcher said, “It’s a jaw dropper.” http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2011/09/electric-face-rendering-worth-thousand.html The (Electric) Face of a Frog - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndFe5CaDTlI What Do Organisms Mean? Stephen L. Talbott - Winter 2011 Excerpt: Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin once described how you can excise the developing limb bud from an amphibian embryo, shake the cells loose from each other, allow them to reaggregate into a random lump, and then replace the lump in the embryo. A normal leg develops. Somehow the form of the limb as a whole is the ruling factor, redefining the parts according to the larger pattern. Lewontin went on to remark: "Unlike a machine whose totality is created by the juxtaposition of bits and pieces with different functions and properties, the bits and pieces of a developing organism seem to come into existence as a consequence of their spatial position at critical moments in the embryo’s development. Such an object is less like a machine than it is like a language whose elements ... take unique meaning from their context.[3]",,, http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/what-do-organisms-mean The mechanism and properties of bio-photon emission and absorption in protein molecules in living systems - May 2012 Excerpt: From the energy spectra, it was determined that the protein molecules could both radiate and absorb bio-photons with wavelengths of less than 3??m and 5–7??m, consistent with the energy level transitions of the excitons.,,, http://jap.aip.org/resource/1/japiau/v111/i9/p093519_s1?isAuthorized=no Proteins Conduct Electricity - November 25, 2012 Excerpt: "The team showed that the protein could carry large currents, equivalent to a human hair carrying one amp. The team also discovered that current flow could be regulated in much the same way as transistors, the tiny devices driving computers and smartphones, work but on a smaller scale: the proteins are only a quarter of the size of current silicon based transistors." The finding represents a leap forward in measurement at the nano scale. “Prior to this work, measurement of millions, if not billions of proteins was only possible, so losing crucial details of how an individual molecule functions.” The team used scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) to read the electronics of a single molecule of cytochrome b562, a protein just 5 nanometers (billions of a meter) long. http://crev.info/2012/11/proteins-conduct-electricity/bornagain77
February 13, 2013
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It is also Abraham Lincoln's birthday! I would much rather remember/celebrate Lincoln's birthday than Darwin's birthday.tjguy
February 13, 2013
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OT: Using light to control protein clustering - February 12, 2013 Excerpt: Results of the study,, show how blue light can be used as a switch to prompt targeted proteins to accumulate into large clusters.,, "Our study shows a new use for using energy, in this case light, as a tool to understand and control cellular function. In this study, we demonstrated a new method for turning specific cell signaling pathways on and off with spatial and temporal precision, and use this to help better understand the dynamics of the pathway. At the same time, our technique can be used to control certain cell functions," Kane and Schaffer said.,,, http://phys.org/news/2013-02-cell-clustering.html Optogenetic protein clustering and signaling activation in mammalian cells - January 2013 Excerpt: We report an optogenetic method based on Arabidopsis thaliana cryptochrome 2 for rapid and reversible protein oligomerization in response to blue light. We demonstrated its utility by photoactivating the ?-catenin pathway, achieving a transcriptional response higher than that obtained with the natural ligand Wnt3a. We also demonstrated the modularity of this approach by photoactivating RhoA with high spatiotemporal resolution, thereby suggesting a previously unknown mode of activation for this Rho GTPase. http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nmeth.2360.htmlbornagain77
February 13, 2013
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Isn't it strange how we often spend more time debating questions than answers.englishmaninistanbul
February 12, 2013
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More worthy then MLK Junior day this canadian says. I support the cause here and day but don't like the word academic. This is a bigger issue of the freedom to seek and teach the truth in public institutions. Its about truth. Then freedom of speech etc that was agrred to my a nation to ensure truth's chances in the marketplace of ideas. So untruth must be put up with to establish freedom to allow truth. Its not just about eggheads. Its about the people's freedom. The people must decide about schools and creationism. They may choose censorship but schools belong to the public and not to the state. The people can decide these things. Censorship is more then suppression of freedom. Its saying the state has decided what is truth on certain matters. They hace decided this because the class subjects etc purpose is to establish the truth or options for what is true. Academic freedom day is too elite or species oriented. One needs freedom from state censorship day or something. We need that in Canada but have a less free history anyways. If i may say so!!!Robert Byers
February 12, 2013
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OT: William Lane Craig on CNN (TheAmazingAtheist's Blunder) - video - 2/11/13 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mmoGYy0UUIbornagain77
February 12, 2013
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