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Scifi and Fantasy Forum: Off-Topic Conversations: Evolution. Is it just a theory.:
Archive through May 23, 2003
Archive through May 23, 2003
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The New Science of Gastrophysics 05/02/2003
Never heard of gastrophysics? It’s a new subset of cosmology defined by Max Tegmark (U. of Pennsylvania) as “A stomach-churning realm in which tiny errors that were once too small to matter suddenly gain the power to make or break a theory.” Charles Seife relays the joke in his Cosmology perspective in the May 2 issue of Science. The gastric pain is partly due to results from WMAP survey that pose trouble for “hundreds of rival models“ of inflation theory, that “bulwark of modern cosmology” that “posits that the tiny universe expanded extremely rapidly for a tiny fraction of a second after the big bang.” If the analysis of WMAP results by Uros Seljak of Princeton is correct, “almost all inflationary theories can be ruled out right away.” Others, of course, are skeptical and want to use different assumptions to preserve their models. But the new observations are causing alarm; “People are seriously worrying whether inflation theories are making sense or not,“ says Tegmark.
Other data generating ulcers include the rapid dissipation of the neutral hydrogen fog assumed to predate the first stars until it was absorbed by the cosmic microwave background (CMB). “To their surprise, their calculations showed that the fog began to burn off when the universe was a mere 200 million years old and then lifted rapidly,” says Seife. “That implies that stars and galaxies must have been forming hundreds of millions of years earlier than most astronomers thought.” If so, then “star formation in the early universe must have been radically different from what it is today.” Some propose the earliest stars were much more massive and hotter; others like Lam Hui of Fermilab propose two periods of re-ionization.
While cosmologists wait for more data to resolve controversies, many are impatient to interpret the data available. Tegmark thinks “cosmology is becoming more and more fun,” but the fun may be inversely proportional to the gastric juice concentration as the cosmological stomach churns. Seife ends his story describing a session at Davis where Princeton cosmologist David Spergel was pulling the reins on his frenzied colleagues, warning them not to overinterpret his proposal. “Don’t obsess on this. Don’t obsess on this. Don’t obsess on this,” he warned. Seife adds, “It remains to be seen whether anyone was paying attention.”
Remember this story the next time you watch so-called educational TV showing a big bang illustration, with all the fragments neatly falling into spiral galaxies and brilliant stars. Cosmologists have been proposing the ad-hoc, counterintuitive, bizarre belief in inflation for two decades to get around the evidence of the flatness problem. Were you told there were hundreds of competing models? That’s like having hundreds of versions of Alice in Wonderland. Now the WMAP survey, hyped to the public as dramatic confirmation of big bang theory, is undermining this “bulwark of modern cosmology” by showing the universe is more scale invariant than inflation demands. Then there is the problem of early star formation (the lumpiness problem). Cosmologists are pouring in cupfuls of metaphysical Pepto-Bismol to get relief for those lumps in their gastrophysical tracts.
Certain Christians think the big bang is the scientific explanation for the Creation Event. They seem to feel that embracing big bang theory will earn them the respect of unbelieving cosmologists (i.e., the Alice in Wonderland authors guild). Based on today’s report in Science, we prescribe: to avoid gastrophysical discomfort, don’t obsess on this (repeat 2x).
WMAP
http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev0303.htm#cosmos53
from http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
Miller and Frankenstein: A 50-Year Old Icon Revisited 05/02/2003
Prebiotic soup, spark-discharge flasks – who has not seen these ubiquitous terms and images depicting the origin of life from simple chemicals? 50 years ago this month, on May 15, 1953, shortly after Watson and Crick published their famous paper on the structure of DNA, Stanley Miller (student of Harold Urey) published in Science his work on the formation of a few amino acids with his now-familiar spark apparatus. It caught the public imagination. Almost every biology textbook has the obligate diagram of Miller’s experiment, and the concept of a chemical soup zapped by lightning continues to show up in popular culture, even in cartoons: drawings of Campbell’s Primordial Soup or a modern Frankenstein creating life with electricity.
In the May 2 issue of Science, Dr. Jeffrey Bada (an active origin-of-life researcher in the Miller tradition) looks back at the impact the Miller experiment has had for five decades. Even though scientists no longer believe the atmosphere contained the reducing chemicals Miller used, “it was the Miller experiment, placed in the Darwinian perspective provided by Oparin’s ideas and deeply rooted in the 19th-century tradition of synthetic organic chemistry, that almost overnight transformed the study of the origin of life into a respectable field of inquiry.”
Bada feels that the reactions may have occurred in localized reducing environments on the primitive earth, “especially near volcanic plumes, where electric discharges may have driven prebiotic synthesis,” rather than in a lightning-zapped atmosphere as Miller and Urey supposed (and numerous artists have portrayed). An elaboration on this new proposal was a featured story in the recent Science News (163:17, April 26, 2003). Michael J. Russell and William Martin presented their new hypothesis in the January issue of the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions B. It proposes that honeycomb-shape pockets in the rocky walls of hydrothermal vents served as temporary incubators for cell membranes. These compartments presumably overcome the dilution problem, allowing favorable chemicals to be concentrated till true membrances could evolve out of lipid molecules. Furthermore, differences in ionic concentration across the walls might have created an electrical potential, supplying energy for chemical reactions that otherwise would go the wrong way. Do they feel they are onto something better than Miller’s scenario? “All you need is rocks and water, and everything else happens by itself,” boasts Martin. “There’s no magic here.”
We’ve all seen magicians do something natural and claim it is magic. That’s entertainment. But what do you think when a scientist claims to be able to do something natural, that if true, would require real magic? That’s entertainment of a different sort. Despite their disclaimer, there is magic here: it’s getting information out of chemicals. Since we have dealt with this subject numerous times before, we refer the reader to the chain links on Origin of Life for detailed reasons why this cannot happen, rocky honeycombs or not. Start here, (http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev0203.htm#abiogenesis85 ) or if short of time, read this headline (http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev0502.htm#abiogenesis57 ) and especially this definition of life (http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev1202.htm#abiogenesis77 ). On to another lesson from today’s articles.
Jeffrey Bada, an advocate of chemical evolution with the passion of an evangelist, reveals an embarrassing fact about the Miller scenario: it’s not true, but it’s useful. Nobody in the know believes the Miller myth any more, not even Bada. Earth’s atmosphere was not reducing, Miller ignored the destructive cross-reactions and harmful salts, and the oceans would have been far too dilute for any hope of corralling the highly improbable ingredients together so they could interact. It doesn’t matter that any of the other scenarios have similar problems, or that recent findings have made origin-of-life speculations extremely more difficult today than they were in 1953 (now that we know much more about the complexity of DNA and proteins). What matters is that the Miller experiment made chemical Darwinism “a respectable field of inquiry.” Bada and his type no longer have to apologize when asked at the party what they do for a living; they can hold up a diagram of the Miller spark-discharge glassware and say, “Why thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Refined-Society, I am involved in research on synthesis of organic compounds relevant to life’s origin,” and he will get a polite nod and friendly conversation, instead of a being looked at as if he were a crackpot. Dr. Frankenstein is a respectable scientist now; he can put his Jacob’s Ladder right up alongside Pasteur’s swan-necked flask in the science lab.
The Useful Lie Strategy is the way Darwinists gain membership in scientific societies. It’s identity theft. The demons of Darwinism come alongside scientists with the proper credentials, and tell the guard, “I’m with him.” Even when an alert guard asks, ’Where’s your badge?”, the demon just holds up a picture of the icon and bamboozles him with jargon, so the flummoxed guard lets him pass, thinking “He sounds like he knows what he’s talking about.” It just takes a little adroit misdirection, a little faked evidence, a little extrapolation (finch beaks, peppered moths, etc.) and pretty soon the demons are mixing with scientific society, and there will no one checking their ID, because the guards are in cahoots with the scam.
Astrobiology was born out of a Useful Lie, the Martian meteorite. Hardly anybody still believes that rock ever had fossils in it, but it served its purpose, because now Astrobiology has gained the status of respectable science (almost). Astrobiology conferences are held around the world, there is a journal of astrobiology, there are Congressional hearings, there are graduate programs in astrobiology, there are astrobiology websites, and NASA artists can again be gainfully employed drawing DNA spiraling out of spiral galaxies.
Thumb’s Second Postulate states, “An easily-understood, workable falsehood is more useful than a complex, incomprehensible truth.” The follow-up question is, “Useful to whom?”
from http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
DK: If you have been read my posts then I have covered "getting information out of chemicals", in the past....(I think)
Genetic engineers unwind species barrier—but have they reversed evolution?
by Philip Bell
Imagine hearing that scientists had managed to genetically engineer one species of living creature so that it could now successfully breed with a totally distinct species; i.e. whereas the offspring of this union are usually sterile, they are now fertile. Well that is exactly what a team of scientists from several British academic institutions have done (reported in the journal Nature)—albeit with the humble baker’s yeast.This yeast is one of a group of six related species (all Saccharomyces) that are able to cross-breed, but form sterile hybrids. By ingeniously tinkering with the genome of this single-celled fungus, the scientists managed to ‘create’ a new strain that was able to form fertile crosses with a distinct, but similar species.This is the first time that this has been observed in these yeasts.
In this cousin of the baker’s yeast, portions of its sixth and seventh chromosomes have apparently swapped places at some point in the past.This change did not involve the input of any new information—just a reshuffling of what already existed. Nevertheless, the researchers concluded that it contributed to reproductive isolation between the yeast species, once they had formed.Believing this rearrangement of genetic information was ‘wrought by evolution’ one science writer claimed that the genetic engineers had actually succeeded in undoing what evolution had achieved!She even quoted a Ph.D. scientist from the brewing industry, claiming that fermentation failures were similarly due to ‘evolution in the vat’! Apparently, when yeasts with new chromosome arrangements arise during the brewing of beer,they drop uselessly to the base of the vat. Now, this is hardly evidence for evolution. Who benefits? It’s certainly not the yeasts, which are now less fit to survive. As far as the brewers themselves are concerned, these mutant yeasts are useless and they have to start over with new yeast cultures.
Evolutionists often delight in pointing to such speciation as an example of evolution in action, thinking that this contradicts the Creation account recorded in Genesis. Actually, far from supporting evolution, this example of speciation in yeasts confirms the accuracy of the Bible. Nowhere does Scripture teach the fixity of species, an erroneous belief that was held by several early biologists but which we know to be false today.Believing the Genesis account of Creation, the Flood and the Babel dispersion to be historically trustworthy, we would expect variation in living creatures. In fact, a Biblical model of the history of life would seem to require that speciation not only happens, but does so rapidly. The horse kind coming off the Ark, for example, would need to have been able to rapidly diversify into the different species today such as zebras, horses, and asses (these can interbreed, indicating that they were once the same created kind). So known examples of rapid speciation in modern times are in perfect accord with the Bible—just variation within the created kinds—but a surprise to the evolutionists, who are wedded to the millions-of-years dogma.In addition, evolution from molecules to man would have had to involve massive net additions of new information. However, all known examples of modern-day speciation (and the assumed speciation that occurred in the past in the case of these yeasts) involve a loss or reshuffling of existing information.
So if speciation is not evidence for evolution, reversing it obviously has nothing to do with undoing evolution. If all it takes to cause two species to become one is a reshuffling of genes, then a gene reshuffle presumably caused the original Saccharomyces species to split into isolated species. Since this involves no new information, it cannot legitimately be used as evidence that yeasts can become yaks, given enough time.
Examples like this one show that evolutionists are really clutching at straws. Past events are unobservable and unrepeatable, so trying to reconstruct vanished history is (for the evolutionist at least) rather like investigating a crime for which there are no witnesses. Ironically, in a commentary on the yeast speciation paper (same issue of Nature), the author said, ‘Research into evolution is a bit like forensic detective work. Because it’s impossible to carry out million-year experiments, we instead look at what evolution has produced and try to figure out what happened and why.This reveals the faith of the evolutionist, which can be summarized as follows: ‘We cannot go back in time to observe evolution happening, but although we weren’t there, we’re sure evolution happened. We just don’t know how or why!’ In stark contrast, the person who accepts that the Bible is the Word of God can say: ‘I wasn’t there but I know Someone who was and He has given me His Eyewitness account of what He did and when He did it. Furthermore, He has revealed why He created, particularly, His purpose in creating mankind.’
Of course, this will not prevent claims that a greater understanding of speciation mechanisms will show how evolution happens—in spite of the scientific and logical objections to the contrary. Ultimately, if a person chooses a worldview that redefines science to say that only natural processes have ever occurred, that person will be forced to the irrational conclusion that any change in the genome (even if it is downhill) is evidence of big-picture (uphill) evolution, the sort that supposedly changed cells into scientists.
For References and notes: (and article):
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2003/0505genetics.asp
DK: so who's for a beer?
Variable Constants Update 05/05/2003: Two articles on whether constants vary over time have appeared recently:
According to Nature Science Update, “If the fundamental constants of physics change, they do so too slowly for us to detect.” This claim is based on work by Marion et al Marion et al and Bergquist et al published in the current Physical Review Letters. Using atomic clocks, they claim to have ruled out any change greater than 7x10-15 per year.
In the June issue of Astronomy (p. 94), Michael Turner (U. Chicago) reviews Faster Than the Speed of Light by Joao Magueijo (Imperial College, London), whose “risky and bold” theory that the speed of light was faster in the past is a “paradigm-challenging idea” yet, Turner feels, has not been sufficiently developed to make sharp predictions. Is Magueijo the heir apparent of Einstein, or a young iconoclast with a crazy new idea? Turner apparently leans toward the latter, but grants him some hearing; “VSL [variable speed of light] is risky and bold; time will tell if it is correct.”
Regarding the Physical Review Letters papers, someone needs to check whether there is circularity in the argument: i.e., would changing constants also change the tools they are using to measure the effects?
Michael Turner’s review has some choice comments about science. You may want to skip this if you are a positivist or member of the L.A. Skeptics Society, or at least take some aspirin. Here are some excerpts (emphasis added):
But then, crazy new ideas – and iconoclastic individuals – are needed when confronting the toughest puzzles in science. ... The leaders of the field are, more often than not, too skeptical, having seen so many ideas fail, while newcomers are blinded by their own enthusiasm. Even mathematical beauty often invoked as a guide, is faulty: The rubbish heap of ideas is piled high with beautiful theories killed by ugly facts (take, for example, Fred Hoyle’s steady-state cosmology).
The motivation behind the theory is to find an alternative to inflation for why we live in such an orderly universe. ... just as striking and more puzzling is the CMB’s [cosmic microwave background’s] remarkable evenness – it is uniform to 99.9999 percent. That’s like finding a pebble smooth to ball-bearing curvature, and it raises a deep question – why is our universe so uniform? ...
In theoretical physics, as in other realms, risk and reward are related – to solve big problems you need bold ideas.
Turner describes how inflation theory was invented to circumvent this difficulty (the horizon problem). He claims inflation also makes predictions that VSL does not. But he does grant a small piece of evidence that the fine structure constant might have been smaller in the past. If true, this might be a smoking gun for VSL theory, because “If the speed of light varies with time, it is likely that some of nature’s constants do, too.”
It seems like the jury is still out on varying constants. Some creationists have postulated that a faster speed of light in the past may explain how light from distant galaxies arrived on earth in a much shorter time. Notice they are not the only ones proposing VSL to solve a problem. Whatever the merits or faults of the idea, it cannot be considered any crazier than inflation, which was invented by materialists purely out of the need to explain the smoothness of the universe from a random, chaotic explosion. A ball bearing on the beach by chance; yeah, right. Crack it open and find an encyclopedia inside; tell me about it.
from http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
Protein Has Its Own Private Dressing Room 05/05/2003
Any star of stage and screen has her own private dressing room, and so does the star of cellular activity, the protein. But the protein’s dressing room would make the actress envious; it has a powered double door.
In the May 2 issue of Cell, a team of Stanford scientists studied the ATP-powered lid on one of these dressing rooms, called chaperonins, or chaperones from their role as supervisors of protein folding. Chaperonins are large, complex proteins shaped somewhat like a barrel with a lid. When a newly-joined chain of amino acids comes off the ribosome assembly line, it is subject to damage from the beehive of activity going on in the cytoplasm. It needs a quiet place to fold. The chaperone lid opens, the polypeptide enters, the lid closes, and safe inside, the chain collapses into its precise shape it needs to function. Then the lid opens and the protein exits, ready to go onstage.
Any action in the cell needs power. The lid on the chaperone is powered by ATP, the common energy currency in the cell. But ATP alone was not enough; As near as these scientists could tell, the camshaft (gamma subunit) on the ATP synthase motor is what triggers the lid to close. The Stanford team found that prokaryotic chaperones have lids that snap on from the outside, but eukaryotic chaperones have a built-in lid. In either case, the lid closing encapsulates the protein chain inside, and is essential for the chain to complete its folding operation; chaperones without lids could not produce folded proteins. Instead, like an actor getting the hook, a guard named protease takes the misfolded protein to the unemployment desk.
Some proteins, like actin, require the help of this secure room to fold; others fold spontaneously inside. The next turn of the cycle opens the door, and out pops the protein for the production, complete with hook resistance.
The authors use the word striking or strikingly three times, and interesting or interestingly four times. This really is interesting and striking information. Here you have a sophisticated, secure electronic shelter with power doors where a fragile, delicate polypeptide chain can safely fold into a molecular actor, ready to play its part in the cellular production. The power doors, if operated in tandem with ATP synthase, are cooler than any prop in a Star Trek movie.
If you have seen the movie Unlocking the Mystery of Life, you saw a very simplified computer animation of the chaperone, which looked like it was floating in mid-air. Actually, all the machinery of protein synthesis is safely tethered together in a factory-like assembly line, so that the protein is never left unprotected from its initial assembly deep within the safety of the ribosome to its final destination, which might require shipping down the intracellular railroad clear across the cellular city. The scientists do not mention the speed at which this all happens, but most likely it is all very fast, since some proteins can fold in microseconds. This only underscores the point of the film, that such complexity is the signature of intelligent design. What a great show! Give a standing ovation to the Designer!
Of course, some think the props got together and created their own show without help. The authors provide no scenario how this might happen. They just say it did, somehow. Here are the two (ho-hum) obligatory references to evolution:
1.“Understanding the distinct mechanisms governing eukaryotic and bacterial chaperonin function may reveal how TRiC [one of the eukaryotic chaperones] has evolved to fold specific eukaryotic proteins.”
2.“Notably, folding of several eukaryotic proteins, such as actin, exhibits a strict requirement for TRiC/CCT, which cannot be substituted by the bacterial chaperonin [references provided]. This suggests that TRiC/CCT has distinct features that allowed the evolution of novel eukaryotic proteins.”
Let’s translate that into our theater analogy. David Copperfield needs special stage lighting, trap doors and electrical power requirements for his show, so he can’t do it at the smaller theater on 2nd Street. Conclusion: if we study these requirements, we will figure out how no planning was required to put the production together. If we continue our reasoning, we hope to explain how Copperfield, the white tiger, the stage hands and technicians and props and the theater itself all arose spontaneously out of slime.
Now you tell me who really believes in magic.
from http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
Army Ants Haven’t Evolved for 100 Million Years 05/06/2003
Sean Brady at Cornell has studied army ants on two continents and concluded that “they pay no attention to the conventional wisdom for evolutionary biologists,” says a press release at Cornell News. “The common scientific belief has been that army ants originated separately on several continents over millions of years. Now it is found there was no evolution, says the article (emphasis added). “Using fossil data and the tools of a genetics detective, a Cornell University entomologist has discovered that these ants come from the same point of origin, because since the reign of the dinosaurs, about 100 million years ago, army ants in essence have not changed a bit.” Brady found that genetically, both old-world and new-world army ants all have the same pattern of mutations. “If they share those mutations, we can infer they evolved from the same source,” he says.
We’ll just let the evolutionists stew on this one for awhile.
Press release at Cornell News:
http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/May03/ArmyAntBrady.bpf.html
from http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
DK: Just another one to add to the list of things that have not been evolving....
Enzyme Speeds Up Slow Reaction by 1021 05/06/2003
The slowest known biological reaction would take a trillion years on its own, but an enzyme does it in 10 thousandths of a second. Richard Wolfenden of the University of North Carolina discovered this amazing fact by studying the reaction time of phosphate monoesters that are commonly used in cell signalling. The earlier record he had published in 1998 was 78 million years for an uncatalyzed biological transformation that is “absolutely essential” for creating the building blocks of DNA and RNA. This new record means that you could only expect the reaction to occur once in 100 times the assumed lifetime of the universe without the help of the enzyme. Paraphrasing Wolfenden, “that information would allow biologists to appreciate what natural selection has accomplished over the millennia in the evolution of enzymes as prolific catalysts,” says EurekAlert where this story can be found.
One cannot “appreciate the accomplishments” of the impersonal. This article illustrates again that evolutionists are pantheists. They personify Mother Nature as a good witch, waving her wand named Natural Selection to accomplish any miracle required to explain the phenomenon under investigation. If Mother Nature would have taken 78 million years just to have one chance to create the building blocks of RNA (which is one of the “absolutely essential” steps in the evolution of life, and without which there is no hope at all of using the Magic Wand, how could she get by without cell signalling for another trillion? There are thousands of enzymes, made by DNA, many of which are essential for DNA to make the enzymes. The reaction rates without the enzymes are also hopelessly slow. It is an impossible hope to get Mother Nature to build even a fraction of this system in the time available with the tools available to her, even if “she” wanted to. Here we are in the strange position of categorizing this story as both Amazing and Dumb; amazing for what enzymes do, dumb for the evolutionary conclusion.
EurekAlert report:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-05/uonc-wec050503.php
from: http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
Shock and Awe at Fruit Fly Ears 05/07/2003
Fruit flies have ears, too, and they possess some high-tech acoustical properties similar to those in humans. One amazing ability known to exist in the mammalian ear resides in the hair cells of the cochlea. These tiny cilia-projections have molecular motors that can amplify weak signals and suppress strong ones, providing a non-linear acoustic response. This means you can hear very faint sounds but not be rattled to deafness by loud ones. Lo and behold, fruit flies have similar non-linear response in their ears, too. In a recent Commentary, Richard G. Walker of Oregon Hearing Research Center talks about this, and concludes, (emphasis added):
The list of improbable similarities between vertebrate hair cells and Drosophila mechanoreceptors continues to expand. In addition to several developmental paradigms and physiological properties that hint at a conserved [i.e., unevolved] relationship, a nonlinear active process to amplify incoming sound as well as spontaneous acoustic emissions are now characteristics that appear to be intrinsic to the process of sensing a mechanical stimulus like sound. As scientists, we should not necessarily be shocked by the similarities in the hearing of such disparate creatures as dipterans and mammals, but we should certainly be awed.
Walker’s comments are in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences online preprints for May 5. (here: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/1232224100v1 (needed a sub))
Fruit flies are like specks in the air, yet they possess muscles, wings, circulatory systems, legs, mouths, digestive systems, and ears. How did a tiny fly learn how to evolve non-linear acoustic response? When you ask them for details, the silence of the evolutionists is deafening.
from http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
Computer Speeds Up Evolution, Produces Complexity 05/08/2003
What takes biological evolution millions of years can take just minutes in a computer, thinks a team of four publishing in the May 8 issue of Nature. Richard Lenski, Charles Ofria, Robert T. Pennock and Chris Adami used a program called Avida and watched it generate logic and complexity among “digital organisms.” Their model followed the guidelines of Daniel Dennett: “evolution will occur whenever and wherever three conditions are met: replication, variation (mutation), and differential fitness (competition).”
Here they go again. This is so disconnected from the real world, why does Nature print it? Of course they are going to get results, because they programmed success into their code. They defined this nebulous quantity called “fitness” (equivalent to Skinner’s Constant) as success at reproducing. So whatever reproduces, is fit! They say some of the organisms generated logic functions, but they rewarded those that did. As such, they played the role of Mother Nature, the smiling goddess loooking down and encouraging the little digital organisms that meet her expectations, however vague. This was an experiment in intelligent design, not Darwinian evolution. In Darwinian evolution, one cannot sneak information in the back door.
Listen to how they begin their paper by whining about the lack of biological evidence to justify their silly SimDarwin computer game. If you are a regular reader, you should be skilled now in detecting where the information was snuck in to guarantee what they wanted (emphasis added):
A long-standing challenge to evolutionary theory has been whether it can explain the origin of complex organismal features. We examined this issue using digital organisms-computer programs that self-replicate, mutate, compete and evolve. Populations of digital organisms often evolved the ability to perform complex logic functions requiring the coordinated execution of many genomic instructions. Complex functions evolved by building on simpler functions that had evolved earlier, provided that these were also selectively favoured. However, no particular intermediate stage was essential for evolving complex functions. The first genotypes able to perform complex functions differed from their non-performing parents by only one or two mutations, but differed from the ancestor by many mutations that were also crucial to the new functions. In some cases, mutations that were deleterious when they appeared served as stepping-stones in the evolution of complex features. These findings show how complex functions can originate by random mutation and natural selection.
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, including its intertwined hypotheses of descent with modification and adaptation by natural selection, is widely regarded as one of the greatest scientific achievements of all time. From the outset, Darwin realized that "organs of extreme perfection and complication", such as the eye, posed a difficulty for his theory. Such features are much too complex to appear de novo, and he reasoned that they must evolve by incremental transitions through many intermediate states, sometimes undergoing changes in function. There now exists substantial evidence concerning the evolution of complex features that supports Darwin’s general model (2-16). Nonetheless, it is difficult to provide a complete account of the origin of any complex feature owing to the extinction of intermediate forms, imperfection of the fossil record, and incomplete knowledge of the genetic and developmental mechanisms that produce such features.
So presumably they overcome these difficulties in their computer games. First off, notice two blatant cases of bluffing:
1.“Darwin’s theory is widely regarded as one of the greatest scientific achievements of all time.” This is pure subjective opinion. Other secular scientists have called it the biggest myth of the all time, and a fairy tale for grownups. The authors’ opinion about Darwin’s idea carries no weight; it is pure bandwagon.
2.After their bluff that “there now exists substantial evidence concerning the evolution of complex features” they supply 15 references, which looks impressive, because few are likely to read them. But scan the list, and you find highly biased books like Ken Miller’s Finding Darwin’s God, atheist Richard Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker. Various other papers are listed that make a stab at explaining eyes, proteins and other biological functions. We have a pretty good track record here at Creation-Evolution Headlines at finding the baloney in such claims. If it were so clear, why do the authors admit up front that it is difficult to detect? And why do we need their computer game?
Now onto their main thesis. To understand the problem, you must think in consistent evolutionary terms. That means ridding your mind of all purpose, all hope, all wishing, all direction, all success, and carrying not one whit whether anything happens or not. They start with a population of organisms, so fine; let’s start with a sea of one species of “primitive” bacteria (a major concession), and see if it will evolve enough complexity to warrant belief that in a few hundred million years you will get giraffes and orchids and people by the same process. Ready? Compare their algorithm with the real world. We’re going to hit the buzzer [BUZZ] whenever they cheat or commit a logical fallacy.
According to Dennett, all you need is “replication [BUZZ], variation (mutation), and differential fitness (competition) [BUZZ].” Foul! First, if you have a replicating organism, you already have intelligent design on a high level. Unless you can explain how random nonliving molecules achieved accurate self-replication without the help of natural selection, it is cheating to start there. Second, if you define success as “differential fitness (competition)” you have committed two logical fallacies: equivocation and tautology. Since we have explained this elsewhere, see our Oct 29, 2002 headline about what a nebulous, meaningless term fitness is, and why it is a tautology if you define fitness in terms of reproductive success. That is exactly what Lenski, Adami and this team has done here.
They claim that their little digital organisms developed all kinds of logical skills and complexity on their own. They just set them loose, and let them evolve without help. But like the magician at the circus getting his horse to do math, they prompted and rewarded the organisms according to their preconceived notions of what constitutes success. They wrote the program with this built in: if an organism satisfies a pre-established criterion of success (a preselected fitness function), it is rewarded with more energy [BUZZ]. Outside reward or guidance is prohibited in Darwinian evolution. They must close all the back doors and dumbwaiters where stage hands are sneaking in the information. Make them get their organisms to evolve without outside intelligence, and everything will randomize and decay. The No Free Lunch algorithms explained in Dembski’s book of the same name prove mathematically that no fitness function from a non-intelligent source is superior to blind search. Therefore, this team must use blind search, really blind search, to simulate the real world. An analogy would be a blind man working a Rubik’s cube without external help. An even better analogy is to have him care nothing whether he succeeds or not, because “success” is a meaningless term.
They claim their computer game confirms Darwin’s hypothesis that “complex features generally evolve by modifying existing structures and functions,” but then they try to pre-dispose of an objection (guilty conscience?): “Some readers might suggest that we 'stacked the deck' by studying the evolution of a complex feature that could be built on simpler functions that were also useful. However, that is precisely what evolutionary theory requires, and indeed, our experiments showed that the complex feature never evolved when simpler functions were not rewarded. [BUZZ] Well, so there! Thanks for making the point.
Their concluding paragraph states, “Of course, digital organisms differ from organic life in their genetic constitution, metabolic activities and physical environments. However, digital organisms undergo the same processes [BUZZ] of reproduction, mutation, inheritance, and competition that allow evolution and adaptation by natural selection in organic forms” [BUZZ] They admit these digital organisms are not real-world. They mistakenly assume the processes are the same. To understand why, see Steven Benner’s comment about digital organisms in our January 9 headline.
Now notice the last sentence and its damaging admission: “In closing, digital organisms provide opportunities to address important issues in evolutionary biology [BUZZ]. They are particularly well suited [BUZZ] to problems that are difficult to study with organic forms owing to incomplete information, insufficient time and the impracticality of experiments” (emphasis added).
Conclusions: (1) Their experiments are irrelevant to Darwinian evolution. They are mere computer games, imaginary simulations of fantasyland, rigged to produce outcomes that give them warm fuzzies about their beliefs. Get real. (2) But they cannot get real because of the difficulties they just stated. That means Darwinian evolutionary theory relies on incomplete information, cannot be observed due to insufficient time, and cannot be tested because of the impracticality of experiments. And this is one of the greatest scientific achievements of all time?
def and LinkS:
equivocation: Confusing the issue by using vague terms or shifting the definitions of words.
http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevbd.htm#equivocation
Circular Reasoning (begging the question, special pleading, petitio principii, a priori reasoning)
Definition: Assuming what needs to be proved.
Catch-phrase: Horoscopes prove astrology.
Examples: Tautologies (boys will be boys, a rose is a rose, it’s not over till it’s over, 4 - 2 = 9 - 7, deafness is caused by hearing loss, etc.
http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevbd.htm#circular
Oct 29, 2002 headline:
http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev1002.htm#darwin181
news from: http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
For an EV take go to newscientist....
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993706
How a Mosquito Became Insecticide Resistant 05/08/2003
A French team publishing in the May 8 issue of Nature studied why disease-carrying mosquitoes became resistant to insecticides. It was due to “a loss of sensitivity of the insect’s acetylcholinesterase enzyme to organophsophates and carbamates” that are ingredients of the pesticides. In some cases a single point mutation conferred the resistance.
This is not evolution in the Darwinian sense, nor do the authors claim it is. What they have described is a loss of information. Lee Spetner explains this point in his book Not By Chance. Just like a man who has lost his arms becomes resistant to handcuffs, these enzymes lost a sensitivity they once had. The pesticide used to fit like a key in a lock in the enzyme; a small change in the tumblers, and now the key no longer fits. Has any new information been gained, or any new functionality that leads to higher levels of complexity? Not at all. Other studies on resistance show similar loss of information, and furthermore, show that the resistant strains are less able to survive when having to compete with the wild type. For examples, see the film and the book Icons of Evolution. Even the PBS Evolution series conceded that HIV strains resistant to medicines revert to wild type after the medical pressure is removed.
from http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
Geological Puzzles 05/09/2003
For your weekend amusement, you can pit your wits against the geologists to explain unusual features around the earth. EurekAlert lists newsworthy items each month from the journal Geology of the Geological Society of America. This month’s list has some strange theories and interesting observations. Emphasis is added in quotes, and our comments follow in green:
Magnetic Field: U. of Rochester scientists are studying crystals to try to determine the strength of the earth’s magnetic field. “The study is also of general interest, as we seek to learn more about the present-day field, which is dropping rapidly in strength at an alarming rate.”
How can the magnetic field be that old, if it is dropping at an alarming rate?
Another Impact Extinction Theory: Dr. Kath Grey and an Australian team think an asteroid hitting their continent, not glaciers, led to the rapid diversification of complex life 500 million years ago. The hypothetical Sydney-sized asteroid “played a pivotal role in this evolutionary jump.”
Asteroids are the convenient new smart bombs to target evolutionary conundrums.
Cambrian Explosion: A petroleum geologist in the Sultanate of Oman thinks that an extinction event preceded the Cambrian explosion. His paper “fuels the old model that flattening of ecosystems during times of stress creates opportunities for new adaptive strategies, expressed in this case as the Cambrian radiation.
Death brings transfiguration. The Phoenix myth lives on.
Arctic Redwoods Exquisitely-preserved fossilized Metasequoia tree stumps near 80 degrees N latitude indicate that a rain forest once grew here. Two geologists hypothesize that the Eocene Arctic atmosphere must have had twice the water found in the region today, and maybe ”This water vapor contributed to a greenhouse effect that insulated the polar region during dark polar winters.”
How did a rain forest get in the Arctic? How did a local greenhouse effect protect redwoods up there without affecting climate worldwide?
Sedimentary Diamonds Let these Chinese geologists explain the problem and their solution:
One of the most remarkable geological discoveries in recent years was the presence of diamonds in metasedimentary rocks in old mountain belts. Because the rocks are metasedimentary we know they formed at the surface of Earth; because they contain diamonds we know that they have been taken to depths in excess of 100 km, to produce the enormous pressures required to create diamonds; and now we find these rocks back at the surface of Earth. This geological yo-yo defies the predictions of the conventional plate tectonic cycle, which provides an easy mechanism for deep burial of the rocks ("subduction" ) to produce the diamonds, but lacks a simple explanation of the subsequent uplift. These ultrahigh-pressure rocks are best known from a region of eastern China. Our paper describes new geophysical data from this region that provide a convincing image of the subsurface, and show a narrow channel beneath the center of the old mountain belt through which the ultrahigh-pressure rocks must have returned to the surface.
Welcome to the yo-yo theory of diamond placement. Nothing ad hoc about this. Too bad nobody shot a video of it.
It should be clear that geology is often a storytelling art trying to work its way around evidence while preserving their precious evolutionary ages at all cost.
eurekalert
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-05/gsoa-mgm050803.php
from:
http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
DK: did you know if you put " & ) you get this " the point is I have to put a space in there to get rid of the anyway, just thought I would let you know....
News: Typing monkeys, but no Shakespeare
LONDON, May 9 — Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, the theory goes, and they will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. Give six monkeys one computer for a month, and they will make a mess.
RESEARCHERS AT Plymouth University in England reported this week that primates left alone with a computer attacked the machine and failed to produce a single word.
“They pressed a lot of S’s,” researcher Mike Phillips said Friday. “Obviously, English isn’t their first language.”
In a project intended more as performance art than scientific experiment, faculty and students in the university’s media program left a computer in the monkey enclosure at Paignton Zoo in southwest England, home to six Sulawesi crested macaques.
Then, they waited.
At first, said Phillips, “the lead male got a stone and started bashing the hell out of it.
Read more about it here:
from http://www.msnbc.com/news/911508.asp
link has a picture......
DK: I must say, this story got me laughing....
I must say I feel like "bashing the hell out of" my computer sometimes....
I never knew monkeys like the letter S....
Unborn Knows Mother’s Voice 05/13/2003
A study from Queens University found that an unborn baby can distinguish its mother’s voice from other females, and “the fetus heart races when mom reads poetry,” even when played on tape. This indicates that the foundations for language and speech recognition are laid before birth.
Queens University article: http://qnc.queensu.ca/story_loader.php?id=3ebc016fcd1ec
Bias in Science Journals 05/13/2003:
Michael Behe wrote a short 350-word letter to Nature commenting on the recent finding of a pseudogene with a function, expressing his opinion that this is positive evidence for design instead of Darwinism’s standard negative evidence expressing what a Designer would not have done. Nature declined to print it, citing lack of space, but did not hesitate to print a 468-word letter critical of the intelligent design movement in Germany
Michael Behe is author of Darwin’s Black Box, a widely-read critique of Darwinism that presents evidence for intelligent design in the cell. His rejected letter can be read at Discovery Institute. In the May 9 Nature, U. Kutchera’s letter, that was printed, does not attack Behe’s evidence, or even propose any evidence supporting Darwinian evolution, but urges the journal to write more editorials attacking intelligent design.
Discovery Institute.
A Functional Pseudogene?:
An Open Letter to Nature
full letter here:
http://www.discovery.org/viewDB/index.php3?command=view&id=1448&program=CRSC
Cosmic Fudge Factor Revives Anthropic Principle 05/15/2003
A few years ago, astronomers and cosmologists were surprised that some observations pointed to an accelerating universe. This revived Einstein’s old fudge factor, the cosmological constant, a parameter in his field equations that gave the universe an outward push so that it would not collapse. More and more astronomers are acquiescing to the belief that this parameter, long thought to be zero, has what appears to be a non-arbitrary value.
In “Cosmology: A just-so story” Lawrence M. Krauss in the May 15 issue of Nature writes that the cosmological constant is reviving questions about the anthropic principle. This principle looks at all the apparently arbitrary values of physical constants, and reasons that if they were not all finely tuned, life could not exist. Another way of stating it is that the constants seem to have the values they do only because we exist to measure them. Krauss admits (emphasis added),
The reason that physicists have been so reluctant to consider the anthropic principle seriously is that it goes against the grain. Most physicists have hoped that an ultimate physical explanation of reality would explain why the Universe must look precisely the way it does, rather than why it more often than not would not.
So are the constants of physics, as diverse as the charge on the electron, the resonances within the triple-alpha process of nuclear fusion, and the gravitational constant restricted to the values they have now based on fundamental theory, or are they just lucky accidents from an infinite range of possibilites? Are they determined, or contingent? Krauss makes it clear that most astronomers would prefer the former, yet acceptance of the accelerating universe due to a non-zero cosmological constant has given them another fine-tuning parameter to wonder about.
Krauss points to a recent paper by James Bjorken that makes a stab at relating the value of the cosmological constant to the de Sitter horizon. This is the distance at which the speed of the expanding universe matches the speed of light. Beyond this horizon, no information can come to us, and we are forever cut off from knowing anything beyond it. Bjorken, a particle physicist, suggests that not only the cosmological constant, but all physical dimensional quantities are determined by the de Sitter horizon of the universe in which they reside.
Krauss considers Bjorken’s proposal interesting but speculative. “In the end,” he concludes, “as with so many anthropic arguments, it is hard to know what to make of this result, especially in the absence of any fundamental theory.” It’s intriguing, he says, and “a possible resolution of what is otherwise the most puzzling fine-tuning problem in all of physics.” But he makes it clear that the mystery remains (emphasis added): As Bjorken stresses, perhaps attempts to connect concurrent problems in particle physics and cosmology in this way – even though these types of argument are very speculative – might ultimately provide some guidance for researchers as we try to understand what otherwise seems at present to be a remarkably inexplicable Universe.
Thus Bjorken provides only a suggestion, a “just-so story,” around the problem. Not only is this stabbing in the dark, it really is not a solution at all. Even if the constants of physics scale to the de Sitter horizon, why is that true, so that complex life is possible? Why is there a universe at all? You cannot get a treasure map by chance. If you have a naturally-produced treasure map that leads you to X marks the spot, you have to ask the follow-up question: what treasure map further up the chain provided the information the first map used?
There appears to be no simplistic way out of the anthropic principle. It’s a cop-out to say, “Well, if the universe were not this way, we would not be here arguing about whether it’s existence were possible.” Since we are here, it demands an explanation. Not even a fundamental theory can answer that. Some nuisance will just come right back with, “So who designed the fundamental theory such that all these lucky constants were determined, so that life could exist?” Warning: too much contemplation on this causes headaches, unless you can tolerate the taste of the antidote.
from http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
How to Keep a Planet from Crashing Into Its Star 05/16/2003
Astrophysicists have their hands full keeping newly-formed planets in balance. The problem is that a dust disk exchanges angular momentum with an accreting planet, making it lose energy and fall inward toward the star (Type I migration). In addition, the interaction sets up spiral waves that draw the planet inward in short order. How quickly? In just a thousand years, a Jupiter could move 1 AU (93 million miles) on this conveyor belt headed for the furnace. Unless the planet clears out a gap in the dust quickly, which slows down the inward pull considerably (Type II migration), the star will gobble it up (the aptly-named “Shiva scenario”). But then again, the growing planet needs the dust disk to grow; once the gap is cleared, no more accretion occurs.
In the online preprint edition of the upcoming May 20 issue of Astrophysical Journal, European scientists Andrew Nelson and Willy Benz attempt to balance the competing forces. They find, unfortunately, that planets less than 30% the mass of Jupiter cannot clear the disk in time to prevent being swallowed. In the same issue, Winters, Balbus and Hawley from the University of Virginia struggle with how quickly a gap can form and what it means to the growing planet. It used to be so simple, they say (emphasis added):
Understanding the process of planet formation in nascent solar systems is a long-standing goal of astrophysical theory. The traditional picture is an orderly one in which planets slowly build up their mass, first by accreting rocky planetesimals and then (if sufficiently massive) gas from the surrounding protostellar disk. The recent multiple detections of extrasolar planets close to the central star, a configuration once thought to be highly improbable, pose a stern challenge to this relatively simple picture of planet formation. In the wake of these discoveries, contemporary theories emphasize the importance of the dynamical interaction between a developing planet and the ambient gaseous disk.
These new models have stern challenges of their own, as described in the preceding paragraph. Now that models show that a a gas giant can form in hundreds of years instead of millions, it’s a race against time. The planet has to form to sufficient size, clear a gap, and avoid the pull of the remaining dust disk or else it will be sucked into stellar oblivion like a speck spiralling down a drain.
In their simulations, the second group had trouble getting the gap cleared of material, and there are other complications, like magnetic fields, spiral density waves, tidal interactions between planet and star, the planet’s own gravitational influence on the surrounding disk, and turbulence. They found that small planets were unable to form a gap at all: in fact, the density of material around them increased. It’s beginning to seem quite a puzzle not only how Jupiter-size planets have been found at vastly different radii around other stars, but how our own rocky planets, including the one we’re standing on, survived the maelstrom.
We didn’t even mention yet the problem that most dust disks are being rapidly blown away by nearby supergiant stars. Even if a planet survives the chaos in these new naturalistic models, they show it does not require long periods of time. These new papers are speaking of process that operate in thousands of years, not millions or billions. That raises additional questions. After such a quick formation, do we need billions of years? What about all the other phenomena throughout the solar system that appear young?
Laplace claimed he did not need the god hypothesis when he formulated his famous nebular hypothesis for the origin of the solar system. He would have choked on today’s more complicated data. None of the current models work; just when they tie together some loose ends, it comes apart in the middle. Remember what Nature said last month? Don’t believe the simple illustrations any more. The images of calm dust disks neatly condensing into planets over millions of years are out. Now, its peas in a whirlpool.
Since astrophysicists are having trouble getting their own models to condense out of the fog of speculation, we propose a new name for the materialistic Laplace approach: the nebulous hypothesis.
from the same old place:
http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
DK: So "How to Keep a Planet from Crashing Into Its Star?", simple blow it up, now where did I leave that death star parked?
Paleontologist Questions Claims of Four-Winged DinoBird 05/19/2003 For the full report go to here: http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm Part of article below:
Kevin Padian is curator of the UC Berkeley museum of paleontology, and is not sure what to think about the fossil of an alleged theropod with feathers on all four limbs, named Microraptor gui, announced in Nature last January. Writing in the May issue of Bioscience, he thinks it is potentially as important as Archaeopteryx “if the claims pan out” (which he feels are not yet convincing), but he has a number of questions about the authors’ interpretation that the creature was a four-winged flyer or glider. Since few scientists have been able to study the fossils except to look at the pictures, it is not clear if the creature had anything to do with the lineage of birds, or was an oddball that was an evolutionary dead end.
For one thing, Padian is not convinced that the feathers were attached to the rear legs at all, or even if they were, that they were involved in flying or gliding. “A corollary to this point,“ he says, “is that there is no reason to assume that a gliding animal will necessarily evolve powered flight,” because no bird today, not even Archaeopteryx in the past, used hind limbs in a flight stroke (birds tuck up their feet like airplanes do with their wheels). “So the leg feathering in Microraptor has nothing demonstrably to do with the evolution of the kind of flight that more derived birds use,” he notes.
Other problems include the claim the hind legs were splayed out to the side, which would have dislocated the hip joint, and that the tibias were bowed, ”which would be extraordinary for any bird or theropod.” Such an arrangement would be useless, he thinks, and hints at distortion of the fossil, because bowed tibiae “would move it farther from anything to do with the origin of birds.”
It’s kind of fun to watch storytellers argue with each other’s plots. Padian thinks it is incredible that feathered hind limbs would provide any flight benefit to an animal if it were jumping out of trees to learn how to fly, but is it any more credible to claim, without any fossil evidence, that forelimbs used to trap prey would evolve into eagle’s wings? There is much more involved than just limb shape, as he reminds us. There are muscles, nerves, brain software, hollow bones, a different respiratory system, and much more. In fact, just about every biological system would need redesign for a reptile to evolve powered flight. This would require hundreds of Darwin’s “successive, slight modifications,” each of which would have had to provide a functional advantage enough to make the lucky mutant survive and all the others die. Great story, if you have enough faith.
from http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
Don’t believe evolution—just accept it!
by Philip Bell, AiG-UK
19 May 2003
A correspondent to the UK’s leading newspaper for teachers at all levels—the Times Educational Supplement (TES)—recently pointed out the dangers of presenting evolution as fact, drawing a fascinating response from James Williams, the PGCE programme leader at the University of Sussex, Brighton.
In his letter, Mr Williams rues what he sees as a failing of the current National Curriculum for science in England and Wales, namely that it ‘marginalizes this central tenet of biology [evolution] to such an extent that success in achieving the highest grades [in high school exams] can come with little or no study of this important scientific principle.’ He goes on to make some very telling admissions:
‘Examples of evolution used in textbooks are flawed and in need of radical updating.’
‘Our teaching of evolution is poor … ’
Of course, informed creationists have pointed out these things for many years—for helpful, up-to-date information, see Dr Jonathan Sarfati’s two devastating critiques of the currently taught ‘evidences’ for evolution, Refuting Evolution and Refuting Evolution 2. In fact, Mr Williams himself notes that these weaknesses in the education system have been ‘capitalized on by creationists … to suggest that the theory is inadequate and a lie,’ whilst claiming—without supporting evidence or reasons—that we are using people’s misconceptions about what evolution is!
The solution, he says, is not to teach students belief in evolution but rather to get them to accept it. Apparently there is a fundamental difference here: ‘There needs to be acceptance of, not belief in, evolution taught in school science.’ Confused? He goes on to explain that teachers should ‘Teach acceptance of evolution in school science and belief in creation in religious studies’ (emphasis added). Still confused? Unfortunately, the dictionary doesn’t help much, giving the following definition of ‘acceptance’: belief or agreement. About ‘belief,’ the dictionary includes, ‘a principle, etc., accepted as true, often without proof.’
more here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2003/0519believe_evo.asp
Refuting Evolution 1 & 2 are books....
Posted By:  Hyperion May 20, 2003 - 06:36 pm |       | http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3042781.stm
Speeks volumes about how evolution is a cert.
Hyperion out.
News In Brief:
Treasure Found in DNA Junkyard 05/23/2003
“Not Junk After All,” says Wojciech Makalowski of so-called “junk DNA” (a term coined by the late Sozumu Ohno to describe apparently useless, repetitive sequences in the genome that do not code for genes). Writing in the May 23 issue of Science, he says the junkyard was really a treasure mine (emphasis added in all quotes):
Although catchy, the term “junk DNA” for many years repelled mainstream researchers from studying noncoding DNA. Who, except a small number of genomic clochards, would like to dig through genomic garbage? However, in science as in normal life, there are some clochards who, at the risk of being ridiculed, explore unpopular territories. Because of them, the view of junk DNA, especially repetitive elements, began to change in the early 1990s. Now, more and more biologists regard repetitive elements as a genomic treasure.
More on this: http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
Eye Does Image Processing 05/22/2003
To read more about this go to:
http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
For more news go here:
http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
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