Author: admin123TerRe

Photo credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Gullieuszik and the GASP team. Around Christian time, I try to crack open On the Incarnation, by St. Athanasius. My edition1 is prefaced with an introduction by C. S. Lewis, who urges the reader to get over the fear of reading old books, noting, “The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism…[T]his mistaken preference for the modern books and this shyness of the old ones is nowhere more rampant than in theology.” (p. 3) Heed…

Photo: A human cell, by Marc Vidal, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons. In a previous article, I discussed the irreducible complexity of the eukaryotic cell division machinery. What makes the origins of the eukaryotic cell cycle particularly resistant to evolutionary explanations is that a wide gulf exists between the mechanism of cell division by eukaryotes and that employed by prokaryotic cells — both in terms of the protein components involved, as well as the underlying logic. There is essentially nothing in common between the two systems. As I noted in my paper, The invagination of the bacterial cell inner…

Photo credit: Compare Fibre via Unsplash. Experts remain skeptical of consciousness ever arising in an artificial intelligence system, but imagining “What if?” adds a layer of caution to even attempting to reach that goal.  AGI is a theoretical pursuit to develop AI systems that possess autonomous self-control, a reasonable degree of self-understanding, and the ability to learn new skills. In the quest of humans to develop artificial intelligence to the level of artificial general intelligence (AGI), the possibility of an AI system acquiring “autonomous self-control” should be carefully considered. Let’s imagine: what if AI became “conscious”? Implicit in the essence of a conscious intelligence…

Fig. 1: Saccus xixiangensis gen. et sp. nov. Credit: Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.palaeo.2024.112635 An international research team has made a notable discovery of fossil embryos belonging to Ecdysozoa, a diverse group of animals including roundworms, velvet worms, insects, and crabs. These fossils, dated to approximately 535 million years ago, were found in the early Cambrian Kuanchuanpu biota in southern Shaanxi Province, China. The research, led by Professor Zhang Huaqiao from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. Fossilized invertebrate embryos are rare, but when preserved,…

Photo source: Wikimedia Commons. Editor’s note: Welcome to an Evolution News tradition: a countdown of our Top 10 favorite stories of the past year, concluding on New Year’s Day. This article was originally published on April 19, 2024. Our staff are enjoying the holidays, as we hope that you are, too! Help keep the daily voice of intelligent design going strong. Please give whatever you can to support the Center for Science and Culture before the end of the year! Since the seminal study by Nobel laureate Svante Pääbo almost 15 years ago (Green et al. 2010), there have been numerous publications supporting…

Fruit flies are generally highly susceptible to parasitic wasps, but some have stolen a gene from bacteria that makes them resistant. This adult fly, Drosophila melanogaster, has two cysts (made dark by melanin) in its abdomen. The cysts are the remains of wasp eggs that the fly successfully suppressed. Credit: Rebecca Tarnopol, UC Berkeley In the continual arms race between parasites and their hosts, innovation was thought to be the key to a successful attack or defense that one-ups the competition. But sometimes, as in the corporate world, outright theft can be a quicker way to achieve dominance. University of…

The WHO Technical Advisory Group on COVID-19 Vaccine Composition (TAG-CO-VAC) continues to closely monitor the genetic and antigenic evolution of SARS-CoV-2 variants, immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 vaccination, and the performance of COVID-19 vaccines against circulating variants. Based on these evaluations, WHO advises vaccine manufacturers and regulatory authorities on the implications for future updates to COVID-19 vaccine antigen composition. In April 2024, the TAG-CO-VAC recommended the use of a monovalent JN.1 lineage vaccine antigen as one approach to induce enhanced neutralizing antibody responses to JN.1 and its descendent lineages. Several manufacturers (using mRNA and recombinant protein-based vaccine platforms)…

Photo: Puget Sound from West Seattle, by David Klinghoffer. On a classic episode of ID the Future, Canceled Science author and physicist Eric Hedin concludes his conversation with host Eric Anderson about the challenge that the second law of thermodynamics poses for purely naturalistic scenarios of the origin of living organisms. The problem, Hedin argues, is generating the reams of exquisitely orchestrated biological information required for even the simplest self-reproducing cell. The fundamental principles of physics mitigate against chemical processes getting the job done.  Some push back with the argument that the Earth is an open system, gaining energy from the sun.…

Heterogeneity is ubiquitous in real-world host populations, yet most theories assume homogeneity. Using a metapopulation model, we examine how host heterogeneities, such as uneven movement patterns and local productivities, affect the evolution of pathogen virulence. Our findings show that increased heterogeneity consistently causes higher virulence compared to more homogeneous conditions. These results suggest that previous models have underestimated evolving virulence, raising concerns that urbanization and increasing mobility imbalances accelerate the emergence of more infectious and lethal pathogens. The evolution of pathogens has received attention in a wide range of scientific fields, such as epidemiology, demography, and evolutionary ecology. Understanding pathogen…

Signals relayed to motor neurons from the brain enable muscle movement, but these signals typically pass through spinal interneurons before they reach their destination. How the brain and this highly diverse group of “switchboard operator” cells are connected is poorly understood. To address this, scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital created a whole-brain atlas visualizing regions of the brain that send direct inputs to V1 interneurons, a group of cells necessary for movement. The resulting atlas and accompanying three-dimensional interactive website provide a framework to further understand the anatomical landscape of the nervous system and how the brain communicates…