Archive: Arctic Dinosaurs, Hearing, Birds, Multiverse, Caveman Diet, School Boards, More

Here are some of the stories we were reporting in early February 2002, restored from archives.

Note: some embedded links may no longer work.

Third Eye Sets Biological Clock   02/08/2002
A third light-detecting mechanism in the eye, independent of rods and cones, has been discovered, reports Feb 8 Science. The cells and their photoreceptors appear to send their signals to the brain’s clock that governs circadian rhythms and day/night cycles. The surprising finding is the culmination of a “burst of papers published in the past 2 months” that resulted in two reports in the current issue.

The system responds primarily to the luminance, or brightness, of the light, rather than the details of an image, as do the rods and cones. The scientists believe this new light-detection system not only affects the body’s biological rhythms, but also controls pupil constriction and emotions: “The impact of this light-sensing system may go far beyond pupil size and the clock. In humans, light levels can modulate mood and performance. ‘This photoreceptor system may be incredibly important in our general physiology and well-being,’ says [Russell] Foster” of Imperial College, London.

The study of biological clocks is just coming into its heyday. The field is not getting any less complex. If scientists are just now finding about new “eyes”, what other wonders remain to be discovered?

Dinosaur Bones Abundant in Arctic   02/08/2002
Finding dinosaur bones in the frozen north is a job for Roland Gangloff of the Alaska Museum, who says, “These dinosaurs were doing quite well in high latitudes in both hemispheres 110 – 65 million years ago. They were well adapted and the evidence is so overwhelming it cries out to be understood.” His paper published in the Feb 8 Science puzzles over how allegedly cold-blooded creatures survived in such a habitat. He sees deposits along the Colville River as most promising for research.

There have been reports of unfossilized dinosaur bones found in Alaska, some even with blood protein traces in them that should long have decayed. If true, they could not be as old as claimed by evolutionary theory. Keep your eye on the anomalies, not on the conventional wisdom, which assumes evolution and geological time scales.

How Your Ear Electronic Organ and Mixing Console Works   02/07/2002
The cover article in the Feb 8 issue of Cell describes a new motor found in your ear. Inside the ear is a very complex and sophisticated system that, for all practical purposes, can be described as an electronic organ and mixing console. Have you ever been at a meeting where the sound system went berserk and feedback sent a shriek through the room? Well, the ear has a mechanism to prevent that, and a motor called myosin is apparently involved, according to Jeffrey R. Holt and a team of eight cell biologists.

The inner ear needs to convert (transduce) mechanical signals to electrical signals – pressure waves in the fluid of the inner ear to nerve pulses that go to the brain. The way it does this is to use “hair bundles” of about 50 hairs that look for all the world like organ pipes (a picture is on the cover). These hairs are tied together and bend over in response to vibrations (sound). This bending opens up channels in the cell to which they are attached, allowing electrical ions to flow in and start nerve signals. This is the act of transduction. But there has to be a way to shut off the flow or tame it down, else you would have a stuck note: a flood of irritating messages hitting the brain.

That’s where adaptation comes in. The ear has two kinds of adaptation: fast and slow, and they involve very different mechanisms. In fast adaptation, a calcium ion enters the channel and blocks the flow; this happens within a few thousandths of a second. A few tens of milliseconds later, slow adaptation kicks in. In this process, a motor climbs up the hair cells and adjusts the tension of “gating springs” and relaxes the tension so that the ion channels close.

These scientists proposed myosin-1c, a member of the the myosin superfamily of motor proteins, as the probable motor that climbs up the actin filaments. Their diagram shows actual springs (not that they are like metal springs we know, but proteins that function like them) with myosin-1c like a little ratchet motor that can climb up the hairs and adjust the tension in the springs, to relax the hair and close the channel. In effect, the myosin acts like a mixing board operator with his fingers on sliders, adjusting the volume level on each line. … only even more elaborate, and quicker. Another analogy would make this like an automatic compressor-limiter.

And this study was done on mice, turtles and bullfrogs. Human ears are no less wonderful; probably more so. When you listen to speech or music, two million of these hair cells go into operation, with the mixing console adapting to intensities of 10 billion to one. You can distinguish up to 300,000 pitches, far more than needed for mere survival, but abundantly adequate to enjoy music.

The motorized compressor-limiter described by these scientists is just one part of an elaborate system that converts nearly infinitesimal pressure waves in the air into the joy of music. Inside your head right now is one of the most complex and sophisticated sound systems imaginable: a combination microphone, electronic organ, mixing console, sound processor and stereo receiver, all automatic, all self-adjusting, able to respond to a jet takeoff or the footsteps of a cat, able to pick out a familiar voice in a crowd, able to pinpoint the direction of a sound, all self-servicing for up to a lifetime. Don’t be deaf to the shouts of “Design!”

Macroevolution Demonstrated?   02/07/2002
Scientists at UC Davis, publishing in the upcoming issue of Nature, claim to have discovered how major changes in body plans take place. They describe how mutations in regulatory genes during embryonic development could change a multi-legged arthropod into a six-legged insect-like body plan. They claim this answers the arguments of creationists that macroevolution has never been observed, and that it would be too improbable to get major leaps in evolutionary change.

The evolutionists are overplaying their card. Read this brief response by Don Batten that Hox genes are not macroevolution’s savior. They only switch on functions; they do not create them. Read also this paper by Wells and Nelson that each mutation has to contribute not just novelty but improved fitness to be heritable. The PBS Evolution program pushed this idea of rapid transformations; for responses see Answers in Genesis and Discovery Institute. 

New Images of Western U.S. from Space Released   02/06/2002
Several dazzling images of Utah and the Western United States were released at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory website today. In time for the Winter Olympics are several shots of the Wasatch Mountains and Salt Lake City rendered from the highly successful 2000 Shuttle Radar Topography Mission [SRTM], which continues to release newly-processed high-definition images each month. Also, of special interest is a wide-sweeping view of the Western United States composited from data from the Multi-Angle Imaging Spectro-Radiometer on board the NASA Terra orbiting spacecraft. Click here for the full hi-resolution image, in which volcanoes, mountains, lakes, faults, the Colorado Plateau and the Grand Canyon stand out in unprecedented detail.

Take a moment to peruse these images. They are not only beautiful, but are sure to provide food for thought about the forces that shaped this varied and colorful part of our planet.

Evolutionists Tease Bird Family Trees from DNA   02/06/2002
The Royal Society Proceedings: Biological Sciences for Feb. 7 has two papers on the origin of passerine birds (which includes songbirds). One postulates they radiated from Gondwana, based on molecular evidence: “A Gondwanan origin of passerine birds supported by DNA sequences of the endemic New Zealand wrens” by Ericson et al. The other, “A phylogenetic hypothesis for passerine birds: taxonomic and biogeographic implications of an analysis of nuclear DNA sequence data” by Barker, Barrowclough and Groth, rearranges earlier theories with its own evidence.

These papers are valiant attempts to bring order out of chaos, but they utilize techniques and assumptions that have so much wiggle room, it’s hard to expect any confidence that their ideas will not be overturned by the next. For instance, they assume the geological column, which is circular reasoning (using the assumption of evolution to build the column, then using the column to support evolution). They also assume the molecular clock dating method, which we reported earlier is unreliable. So you know right off the bat that any theorizing about evolution is going to beg the question. Then, they compare just a few hundred or thousand base pairs of genomes that have millions of base pairs, so the evidence is selective. Yes, they come up with models that appear to match some form of phylogenetic trees (with a lot of room for error), but it appears the very same data could be matched up equally well with other trees, or with none. There are similarities that could as well be explained in a creation paradigm.

What’s really instructive about these papers are the admissions of doubt and uncertainty by the authors. First, in the Barker paper (emphasis added),

• Passerine birds comprise over half of avian diversity, but have proved difficult to classify. Despite a long history of work on this group, no comprehensive hypothesis of passerine family-level relationships was available until recent analyses of DNA-DNA hybridization data. Unfortunately… [They go on to describe how previous studies had not been adequately tested, but their analysis contradicts previous work…]
• In contradiction to previous DNA-hybridization studies, our analyses suggest paraphyly…
• The phylogenetic hypotheses inferred here from our sample of passerine nuclear-DNA sequences support some previous notions of passerine phylogeny, contradict others and offer novel insights into relationships among passerine groups.

Excerpts from the Ericson paper (emphasis added):

• There is an apparent anomaly between these estimates and those based on the fossil record…
• If the molecular datings are correct, the fossil record of both birds and mammals is severely biased.

• The details of these radiations are difficult to correlate with the fossil record…

It should be apparent, in the most conservative terms, that evolution does not just “jump out” of the data. This is not to say that the authors don’t make a case; no author is going to get published just throwing up his hands in despair. But every solution breeds new problems. Their resulting diagrams of family trees appear contrived, and as unsteady as a house of cards. As we have seen many times with other groups of plants and animals, molecular phylogeny is not clarifying family trees, it is confusing them, often contradicting both the fossil evidence and the morphology. It’s time to allow alternative hypothesis, without the requirement to force-fit contradictory data into assumptions of evolution.

Universe or Multiverse?   02/05/2002
In a series on “Five Great Cosmic Mysteries” on Space.Com, Andrew Chaikin asks, “Are there other universes?”

There’s a reason some theorists want other universes to exist: They believe it’s the only way to explain why our own universe, whose physical laws are just right to allow life, happens to exist. According to the so-called anthropic principle, there are perhaps an infinite number of universes, each with its own set of physical laws. And one of them happens to be ours. That’s much easier to believe, say the anthropic advocates, than a single universe “fine-tuned” for our existence. But there’s a problem. If these other universes exist, there’s no way for us to detect them.

For this reason, some astronomers dismiss the idea as unscientific. But Chaikin reserves room for hope; based on previous ideas that used to be considered unthinkable, like the existence of atoms, you never know what science may discover some day.

The lengths to which atheists will go to escape the obvious is amazing. In the real universe we inhabit, we see numerous anthropic properties that make life possible. We also see information-rich life, and we know from science that information only arises from previous information. We also know our universe is running down and cannot be infinitely old. We know that chance does not produce specified complexity. Why is it so hard to accept the conclusion In the beginning, God? Why such desperation to escape to anything, including a mystical, untestable belief in multiple universes (which would not be of any help anyway), to avoid facing the Creator? This very attitude helps affirm the truth of Romans 1:28, “They did not want to retain God in their knowledge.” This is not scientific pursuit of truth; it is not even faith. The Apostle Peter called it willful ignorance.

Closer to Life in a Test Tube?   02/05/2002
Nature Science Update reports that David Lynn of Emory University has found a way to make DNA copies without enzymes, then comments, “It may even hasten the advent of synthetic biology: the creation of life from scratch.” Normally a host of enzymes are needed to copy DNA. Lynn was able to get copies made of a DNA template but using amide linkages, like translating English into French. Nature claims they hope to find a way to translate it back into true DNA, like translating it back to English. Lynn’s paper, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, states, “The ability to read a DNA template sequence and chain length specifically represents a critical extension of biology’s template-directed syntheses, represented by its Central Dogma.”

(Central Dogma?) The spin doctoring Nature does on this story is appalling. Lynn’s paper is concerned with techniques for synthetic manufacture of DNA polymers, not with the origin of life. Nature glosses over monstrous problems, like the origin of single-handed sugars in DNA, and the origin of information. Phillip Johnson has said, “The fundamental error of the materialists who rule biology is that they want to explain the chemicals – they want to explain the matter. They don’t have any explanation for the information content. And once that’s realized, then that’s their downfall. Yet they claim, “This might then enable the two kinds of molecule to support their mutual replication, allowing the possibility of molecular evolution and the appearance of life-like complexity.” Hope reigns eternal, but it is a false hope. Complexity alone is worthless. The complexity must be specified, tied to function, or it is just as useless as random alphabetic letters in nonsense chains. ic1qD9i1 uiopasq vqp8iqwerasdp[oi jv.

Cave Man Diet Make Strong Like Bull   02/04/2002
Let’s grab our clubs and go off to hunt wild game. Purdue News reports that “anthropological nutritionist” Bruce Watkins, author of The Paleo Diet (John Wiley and Sons, 2002) thinks the cave man diet is good for you. Reporting in the January European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, wild game like venison and elk (and cattle fed on grass) had a higher proportion of healthy omega-3 fatty acids than grain-fed cattle. He explains that fat is good if in the right proportions of good and bad fatty acids. His paper is entitled, “Fatty acid analysis of wild ruminant tissues: evolutionary implications for reducing diet-related chronic disease.”

What’s evolution got to do with it? That part is all spin, in another vain attempt to make evolution look useful for understanding our physiology. How about a different spin: the Genesis diet. Regardless of angle, this theory is reductionist. Try an experiment. Feed elk-meat Big Macs to a gluttonous couch potato, and feed almost anything to a deer hunter willing to lug rifles and packs all over the mountains, and observe who stays healthier.

Humans Have Reached Evolutionary Utopia   02/04/2002
It’s all downhill from here, says British professor Steve Jones, reports Guardian Unlimited. Because humans have insulated themselves from the dog-eat-dog world of natural selection, this is as good as it’s going to get for our species. Others disagree strongly, claiming humans are still subject to the inexorable force of evolution. Others say that Western civilization is immune, but developing nations still play survival of the fittest.

Survival of the fattest seems to be the trend in Western societies. Anyone who realizes that natural selection is a tautological chance-of-the-gaps fallacy incapable of working the biological miracles it is expected to perform, sees articles like this as humorous. The rantings of these rival prognosticators are no more to be taken seriously than the controversies between Nebuchadnezzar’s soothsayers about who was saying the real sooth, until Daniel walked in.

Ohio School Board Braces for Battle over Origins Teaching   02/04/2002
Phillip E. Johnson in his Weekly Wedge Update for Jan. 31 provides more detail on the controversy developing in the Ohio state board of education over the teaching of origins. The ID Network has several articles on this developing story, including the speech to the board by John Calvert on Jan. 13, who offers $20 to anyone who can prove that the rule requiring Methodological Naturalism in science classes has a secular purpose.

Deja vu from Kansas, or a sea change? The board will be voting in March, and the usual foes are lining up their forces. This time the ID folks seem better armed, and they also have the Education Bill backing them up (see next headline).

Santorum Explains Education Bill Language: “Teach the Controversies” Includes Evolution   02/04/2002
The Discovery Institute has posted excerpts from the Congressional Record in which Senator Rick Santorum and Congressman Thomas Petri explain the language in H.R. 1, the Education Bill passed in December, that students should learn about both sides of controversial issues in science. He clearly explains that the intent of this language, albeit revised before final passage, includes Darwinian evolution and alternative views like Intelligent Design. He concludes,

The public supports the position we are taking today. For instance, national opinion surveys show–to use the origins issue again–that Americans overwhelmingly desire to have students learn the scientific arguments against, as well as for, Darwin’s theory. A recent Zogby International poll shows the preference on this as 71 percent to 15 percent, with 14 percent undecided. The goal is academic excellence, not dogmatism. It is most timely, and gratifying, that Congress is acknowledging and supporting this objective.

Thomas Petri added, “Additionally, this conference report makes a strong statement that, where Darwinian evolutionary theory or other controversial scientific topics are taught, students should be exposed to multiple viewpoints. Too often, students are taught only one theory where evolution is concerned, and this language gives support to those at the local and state level who uphold the value of intellectual freedom in the teaching of science.”

Santorum’s and Petri’s unequivocal statements contradict the view of the National Center for Science Education that the H.R. 1 language means that creation or intelligent design is excluded, because only “scientific theories” may be taught. In the first place, evolution is not a scientific theory, and in the second place, Intelligent Design does not specify the identity of the designer, and therefore does not involve itself with religion.

Senator Santorum’s comments are important and worth reading. He apparently was influenced by a paper published in the Utah Law Review (February, 2001) by Stephen Meyer, David K. DeWolf, and Mark E. DeForrest called Teaching the Origins Controversy: Science, Religion or Speech? After decades of triumph by Darwinist propagandists, this is an important development by the Congress that has not received much attention. Though it is only a recommendation and not a mandate, it is highly significant that a majority of both houses, liberals and conservatives, even Ted Kennedy, supported this language. Students and teachers should take this ball and run with it. Why not teach both sides of controversial issues? Who can be against that? Michael Shermer, for one…see next headline.

Stamp Out Creationism…Gradually   02/04/2002
Last month in an essay in Scientific American, professional skeptic Michael Shermer strategized about the best way to help Darwinism triumph over creationism (despite the latter’s popularity in the polls, a finding he calls disturbing). He compares denial of evolution to denial of the Holocaust, and recalls Darwin’s reflection that direct attacks on Christianity seem to have little effect on the public. Shermer agrees with Darwin that the best method is not through direct attacks but by the continued advance of science.

Shermer, who grew up believing the Bible (isn’t it interesting that some of the most vocal atheists are Christian apostates), perpetuates several myths in his essay, (to say nothing of the ridiculous association of denying evolution with denying the Holocaust). First is the myth of scientism, that scientific advance is always upward and onward and can explain everything. Second is the myth that Intelligent Design (what he calls the “recent incarnation” of creationism) is stifling to scientific inquiry (then why did Newton, Boyle, Pascal, Leeuwenhoek, Joule, Maxwell and many other great scientists in history pursue science so vigorously and with such excellence?). The third is that the convergence of evidence from every field supports evolution. He needs to start reading Creation-Evolution Headlines. Regarding Darwinism, Shermer bluffs, “It must stand or fall on the evidence, and there are few theories in science that are more robust than the theory of evolution.” (cough, choke). Well, we agree that it must stand or fall on the evidence. Show us some.

How Cellular Transporter Machines Work   02/01/2002
Your body, and the cells of all living things, are filled with transporters: miniature shuttles called dynein “motor proteins” that move cargo around subway tunnels called microtubules. Dynein consists of two heads that scientists thought move past each other in a hand-over-hand fashion. But now, a team of three biochemists publishing in the Feb 1 issue of Science claim to have found evidence that dynein moves more like an inchworm, in 8-nanometer steps. But it’s a pretty fast and brawny inchworm, transporting cargo molecules much bigger than itself at high speeds down the tracks. In the same issue, Jennifer Couzin describes the excitement and surprise at this new theory of dynein movement. She begins with, “Behind a beating heart, fingers running fluidly across a piano, or a stomach cell shuffling nutrients to its neighbor are hundreds of motor proteins that make such motion possible.”

Like we noted before, the study of molecular machines is the Biology of the Future. Watch for continuing exciting discoveries in this dynamic field.