Science News in Brief

The discovery of a 4.4 million year old fossil skeleton that may have belonged to an early human ancestor was discovered in October.  Now, this discovery is hailed by the journal Science, as the greatest scientific breakthrough of the year.

Poll:

The Copenhagen Climate Summit has come to a close and here are some of the stipulations the loose agreement includes:

1. recognition to limit temperature rises to less than 2 degrees Celsius.
2. promises to deliver 30 billion dollars of aid for developing nations over the next three years, and 100 billion by 2020.
3. includes a method for verifying industrialised nations’ reduction of emissions.

Turd Polishing: Making something crappy look better than it actually is.  That is how I define the above agreement.  It doesn’t look as if it will help much at all.  We are willing to admit there is a problem (the first step), but not willing to change.

Members of the European Space Agency have given final approval to plans to explore Mars.  The mission is to depart in 2018.

Mars Attacks: There have been 15 rovers sent to Mars.  There have been 6 manned missions to the moon.  One seems to interest scientists more than the other.

Cool Creature

The Northern blue-tongued skink, or Tiliqua scincoides intermedia, grows to 24 inches long, making it the largest of the blue tongued lizards.  These azure tongued beasties live in forests, woodlands, and grasslands of Northern Australia.  It is diurnal, and hunts for insects, snails, fruits, berries and wildflowers during the day.  At night, they are much less active and can be found resting in the hollows of logs.

Don't stick your tongue out at me.

Feature Story

Sorry I have once again neglected to post for a week, but exams take precedence.

Anyway, I have decided to post about the Copenhagen Climate Summit: formerly known as Hopenhagen, now seen as Nopenhagen.

I will now admit that I don’t really think that I should blog about this.  So much has already been said about Copenhagen that I will probably just wind up repeating what you have heard.  So, I just want to share with you what I consider an excellent assessment of the Summit.

By Amy Goodman

Denmark is the home of renowned children’s author Hans Christian Andersen. Copenhagen is dotted with historical spots where Andersen lived and wrote. “The Little Mermaid” was one of his most famous tales, published in 1837, along with “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

As the United Nations’ climate summit, called “COP 15,” enters its final week, with more than 100 world leaders arriving amid growing protests, the notion that a binding agreement will come from this conference looks more and more like a fairy tale.

The reality is harsher. Negotiations have repeatedly broken down, with divisions between the global North, or industrialized countries, and the global South. Leading the North is the United States, the world’s greatest polluter, historically, and a leader in per capita carbon emissions. Among the Southern nations are several groupings, including the least-developed countries, or LDCs; African nations; and nations from AOSIS, the Alliance of Small Island States. These are places where millions live on the edge, directly impacted by climate change, dealing with the effects, from cyclones and droughts to erosion and floods. Tuvalu, near Fiji, and other island nations, for example, are concerned that rising sea levels will wipe their countries off the map.

New conceptions of the crisis are emerging at COP 15. People are speaking of climate justice, climate debt and climate refugees. Indian scientist and activist Vandana Shiva was among those who addressed a climate justice rally of 100,000 Saturday in Copenhagen. Afterward, I asked her to respond to U.S. climate negotiator Jonathan Pershing, who said the Obama administration is willing to pay its fair share, but added that donors “don’t have unlimited largesse to disburse.” Shiva responded, “I think it’s time for the U.S. to stop seeing itself as a donor and recognize itself as a polluter, a polluter who must pay. … This is not about charity. This is about justice.”

Shiva went on: “A climate refugee is someone who has been uprooted from their home, from their livelihoods, because of climate instability. It could be people who’ve had to leave their agriculture because of extended drought. It could be communities in the Himalayas who are having to leave their villages, either because flash floods are washing out their villages or because streams are disappearing.”

Both inside and outside the summit there is a diverse cross section of nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, from indigenous-peoples delegations to environmental and youth groups. Their separate but connected efforts have been coalescing into a new movement, a movement for climate justice. Broad consensus exists among the NGOs and the global South that any agreement coming out of the U.N. process must be fair, ambitious and binding, or as they put it, “FAB.”

The Bella Center itself, where the summit is being held, is said by the U.N. to be at capacity. Thousands of people line up daily in the cold, vainly hoping to get in to the Bella of the Beast. Thousands more, from the NGOs, are having their access stripped, ostensibly to make room for visiting heads of state, their entourages and security.

Outside, Copenhagen is seeing an unprecedented police crackdown, with the largest and most expensive security operation in Denmark’s history. More than 1,200 people were detained over the weekend, and as this column goes to press, targeted arrests of protest organizers and police raids of public protest convergence spaces are being reported. Heavy-handed police tactics give another meaning to “COP 15.”

After South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu spoke at a candlelight vigil for children, I asked whether he thought President Barack Obama was following through on climate change. He responded: “We hope he will, yes. He has given the world a great deal of hope. I have said he’s now a Nobel laureate—become what you are.”

Last week, as a polar bear ice statue melted downtown, revealing the dinosaur skeleton hidden within, a small ice replica of Copenhagen’s famous Little Mermaid statue sat outside the Bella Center, melting. She is now gone. Obama is making his second attempt to win a prize in Copenhagen, after the Chicago Olympics embarrassment. Unless he uses the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new determination that carbon dioxide is a public health hazard and nails down a fair, ambitious and binding agreement, we may see Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes” played out on the global stage.

The Cosmic Perspective

When will we ever learn?  I will be the first to admit that we cannot “prove” that global warming is occurring.  But, there are two problems with doing nothing.  First, we have very strong evidence to support that assessment.  The so-called “Climategate,” has been largely debunked as overblown sensationalism and nitpicking on the part of climate change deniers.  At this point, countless studies have been done and the most of the ones not backed by large corporations indicate that the climate is most definitely warming:

Second, we don’t have time to wait and see.  We need to act now if we wish to avert the worst that could occur.  I like to use the precautionary principle.  The precautionary principle states that if an action or policy has suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of a scientific consensus that harm would not ensue, the burden of proof falls on those who would advocate taking the action.  If I see a mushroom in the forest, I will not eat it if I am not sure that it is safe.  Likewise, we should not continue on our track of aggressively using up fossil fuels to power our excess.

The entire Copenhagen summit was a debate between developed and undeveloped nations.  Developed nations decry developing nations for using dirty energy to advance their states, while developing nations yell back that developed nations use much more fossil fuels per capita and are already developed, so who are they to say others should not.  After much back and forth nothing much has been done. The developed accord is toothless, and not even binding at that!  It looks unlikely to contain temperature rises to within the 2 degree Celsius  climate change threshold that UN scientists say is needed to avert serious climate change.  Nor will it bring back the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere to 350 parts per billion, the level that scientists believe is the maximum to avert the aforementioned 2 degree change.  Unfortunately, since we are insulated by the bubble of wealth, we do not yet feel the effects of this oncoming storm.  But eventually, every bubble pops.  Will we be ready to deal with it?  Perhaps the one silver lining that I can draw from this meeting is that globally, we have recognized that there is a problem.  Now, we must act and make actual attempts to fix it.

For all of you not up to date, I suggest you check out Democracy Now! for unbiased news and real journalism:

http://www.democracynow.org/

I really don’t think it’s possible to write a boring post on bed bugs. The way in which they reproduce is simply one of the most bizzarre…and brutal…methods of insemination in the animal kingdom. One of my favorite webcomics, Dinosaur Comics described their reproduction quite well:

I also like writing about the biological basis behind sexual orientation. Although I am unabashedly heterosexual, I am quite adamant that homosexual couples should be afforded any benefits I have, should I ever marry. I get quite angry when people say that homosexuality is a choice or is un-natural for two reasons…because we see homosexual pairings in other species and also because we don’t know everything about how sexual orientation is figured out. We know it’s biological because we can create gay Drosophila by making them splice a gene called fruitless differently.

Now I get to combine these two subjects…now that’s just plain cool. A friend sent me a link to this article and I wanted to write about this right away because I thought it was *just* that awesome. After looking at the article, I found her results very convincing. Animal behavior research generally has small sample sizes, but her results were very unambiguous.

You see, we know a lot about how insects work genetically. We know more about Drosophila melanogaster than we know about ourselves…and a lot of what we know about ourselves actually comes from Drosophila melanogaster and works just the same. A lot of what’s been learned about in Drosophila also has been applied to other insects. However, we shouldn’t assume that everything works the same way in other animals. A recent paper in the journal Animal Behavior shows us why this is.

You see, where male recognition in Drosophila is done by recognizing physical characteristics of the female, phermones and through mating dances (amongst other things) male recognition in Cimicids is done through the bugs essentially yelling ‘I’m a dude, damnit!’

Insects communicate through the use of pheromones. Some tell insects ‘there’s an AWESOME breeding ground/food over here, guys’ and others tell members of the same species ‘I’m ready to get laid’. However, another class of pheromones appropriately named ‘alarm pheromones‘ tell other members of the same species ‘We’ve got to fucking leave. NOW!’ You’d be amazed how many insects communicate with one another. Cockroaches do it. Bees do it. Lightening bugs do it, too. Well, bed bugs release alarm pheromones just like other insects.

A lot of pheromones revolve around sex…but here’s the interesting thing: bed bugs don’t have sex pheromones. Instead, male bed bugs run up to any other individual which has recently fed and stab them with their penis. They really can’t tell the boys from the girls and will hook up with just about everyone which looks to be well fed. However, they tend to back off males after a few seconds.

There’s been an increased interest in bed bug biology lately because of their recent insurgence back into our dwellings. They’re a nuisance, so some of this is to look for new ways to control them. Evolutionary biologists are looking at them as model organisms to study sexual conflict. Everybody’s interested in them for various reasons.

Camilla Ryne wanted to figure out how male bed bugs sorted the boys from the girls. We’ve known about alarm pheromones for awhile, and that they cause these guys to scatter. When the boys mount the boys, they release these pheromones…but when the boys mount the girls this isn’t released. Could be correlation…could be causation. Time to experiment.

As mentioned earlier, for this to work one male (the pitcher) needs to be starved and the other male (the catcher) needs to be fed. So this is exactly what she did…any of the ‘victims’ male or female were fed right before this happened and a starved male was introduced to the enclosure. To prevent the release of the alarm pheromone, she blocked the glands with nail polish. To simulate the pheromone, she applied bed-bug extract to females which were being mounted and properly controlled for the effects of the solvent.

She found that males who had their alarm pheromone glands disabled were more susceptible to being stabbed by other males. Her control groups had about 2 instances of male-male pairing during the experiment, but the groups which had their glands disabled routinely had 3-5 pairings as well as longer pairing times in the groups with blocked glands.

In the groups with the blocked glands…there was also sperm transfer. They actually ejaculated into the hemocoel as if this were a female and not a male. This wasn’t observed in the male-male control pairings. For all intents and purposes, they were completely unable to tell they were having sex with a male.

Interestingly, the female-male interactions were similar to the male-male interactions. When the alarm pheromone was applied to the female, the time that it took the male to…*ahem* desert his post…was about the same as it took for a homosexual pairing to end. A little longer, but not statistically significant.

Even though there’s not much romance in the bed bug world, there are very good reasons to be able to differentiate boys and girls. Although this doesn’t really apply to us, wasting sperm is a big deal in the animal kingdom…as is wasting time. Insects generally don’t want to waste their time with sex that isn’t going to give them offspring. Neither of these problems really apply to us and are relatively minor problems in the grand scheme of things. Instead, where bed bugs run into problems is the fact that their mode of sex creates some pretty grievous injuries in the course of this whole thing.

Just like we see in female bed bugs, male-male mating creates some pretty serious wounds and it decreases survival time. It’s not exactly romantic…and it’s not exactly a bath house.

Ryne, C. (2009). Homosexual interactions in bed bugs: alarm pheromones as male recognition signals Animal Behaviour, 78 (6), 1471-1475 DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2009.09.033

Claire Tully, the Irish page three model has had her weekly column with the Irish Sun dropped. The reason, well it’s a recession and the Irish Sun allegedly says it’s because of budget cutbacks. The outrage amongst the male readers of the Irish Sun has reached fever pitch with a group started on Facebbok.com to get the Irish Sun to change their mind to the email system at the Irish Sun being inundated with requests to get them to change their mind.

In case you don’t know who Clare Tully is well here are a few facts about our Irish girl. In 2003, she got 600 points in her leaving cert. She then went to study Biochemistry and Immunology in Trinity College, where she graduated with a first class honours degree in 2007. The following year she became the first Irish page three model to pose topless for the Irish Sun Newspaper.

Claire’s column in the Irish Sun was a light hearted view with everything from President Obama to violence against women to football, one of her favourite’s passions. Many readers bought the Irish Sun for Claire’s column in the Irish Sun and she will be missed very much by all her fans. Although the Irish Sun’s loss, it may be someone else’s gain as we are sure that another Irish newspaper will want to snap up our Claire and bring her loyal legion of fans with her. If you disagree with the Irish Sun dropping Claire’s column vote with your pocket and buy another newspaper.

This is the response we got from the Irish Sun today by email after we asked why Claire’s column was gone.

Dear Keith,

Blank Blank sent me your email. Thanks for taking the time to write to us and I really appreciate your loyalty to the Irish Sun and that you care enough to write in.

Claire Tully is still very much part of our team. We use her on p3 and she is heavily involved in promotional work and other photo shoot jobs. We pay close attention to feedback on all our columns and it showed hers was not what the majority of our readers wanted. However she does have a loyal army of fans – and she will keep on contributing. I can assure you Claire will continue in the Irish Sun – just not in a column.

We do have 11 Irish columnists already as it stands. These are: Ben Dunne, Xpose, Dustin the Turkey, David O’Leary, Joe Kinnear, Tony Cascarino, Mick O’Dwyer, Graham Geraghty, Babs Keating, Sinead Desmond, Dermot Keely,

It has been our aim to give our readers a much more local paper. And the sales and reader interaction with the Ben Dunne column has proved a great success. We aim to let our readers know this great new package we have over the coming months with a big TV, radio and billboard campaign.

I hope you continue to buy the Irish Sun and I thank you for caring about what we produce every day.

Paul Clarkson

Deputy Editor

Irish Sun

If you would like to help the campaign to bring back Claire Tully’s column in the Irish Sun, leave a comment below or visit the Groups section on www.facebook.com and search for ‘Bring Claire Tully’s column back to the Sun Newspaper’

I have a key stuck in the drivers’ door of my car. It’s not a car key. It kind of looks like one, and it sure slid into the keyhole(put there by a roommate while I was gone), but the thing will not come out. I even had one of those lock picking companies take a look at it. They said that, in order to get the key out, the lock would have to be removed from the car, disassembled, the key removed, and the lock reassembled. I promise, this plays in.

I am a college senior, studying pre-medical coursework as part of my health sciences degree. I don’t entirely plan on using my degree as I once intended, but I am completing the course work. This past semester that included a course in Biochemistry.

While staying at IHOP-KC over the Thanksgiving holiday, I had it weighing on my mind that a large biochemistry exam was looming shortly after I was to return home. That probably had something to do with this little bit of insight.

Poisons.

As part of my biochemistry coursework, the professor, who walks in relationship with Jesus, wanted to teach us application of the material. He often talked about how when he was an undergraduate student, he viewed his biochemistry material as a devotional in learning about the brilliance and creativity of the Lord, and His hidden wisdom. I guess I got a trinket of that… in the way some poisons work.

Who here has heard of enzymes? The basic idea is that there are a LOT of processes in our bodies just to make them live. These would be kind of slow, as they are based largely on chemical interactions that require lots of energy to occur, and some aren’t really favored on their own. Enzymes are a type of catalyst that make it a bit easier, kind of “jump start” those reactions. Something key about enzymes is their specificity – it’s not exactly lock-and-key, but close enough. Enzymes are typically for a specific substrate (the chemical compound that binds to it.)

As I said, these enzymes are crucial to key processes to make us live – such as metabolism, the process by which energy is made for our cells to function (maybe you remember learning glycolysis in biology class? Krebs/Citric Acid cycle, Electron Transport Chain..). Using that as an example, the entire system utilizes specific enzymes to do specific things to the substrates, each time creating a different product that then goes and reacts with the next enzyme, like a sort of Goldberg Machine.

Ok. So I mentioned poison earlier.

Poisons work by kind of lookin’ like they could be the right substrate. They fit into the “keyhole” of the enzyme. Kind of like that key stuck in my car door, they fit in, but then they can not proceed with the rest of the reaction (like that key can’t unlock my car door…) and then they just stay there, never leaving. They take up the free enzymes and thus, reactions cannot proceed as normal. I can’t unlock my car on the driver’s side. Imagine if there were a key stuck in both my driver’s and passenger’s side… then I’d just be stuck out of my car (I don’t have a clicker, and neither do our cells.) So, if there was a key stuck in all of the doors of my car, and the only way to unlock it was to use a key, then my car would be rendered effectively useless. That’s what poisons do. They come in, they look like they’d work, but then they just shut everything down and kill cells.

Here’s the thing, though. They only work because they look like the right thing. That key only ended up in my door because it’s a key, it looks like a key, if it was a nail file or a twig or a candy cane or something, it wouldn’t have been confused as something that was supposed to be in my car door. Ye savvy? Poisons only work ’cause they look like the substrate that’s supposed to bind. If it’s another compound that looks nothing like it, it ain’t gonna bind.

So where’s the revelation here?

Scriptural truth, and lies.

There’s those crazy folk out there doing things that just absolutely are off the wall. Maybe a small select few catch on, but it’s not really making waves. You know, like holding rattlesnakes, drinking kool-aid, picketing soldiers’ funerals, locking themselves up in bunkers, etc. That stuff automatically sends up red flags for most.

But when I read the words of Jesus, He talks about those who will come in His name, to lead astray even, if possible, the elect. He warns us to take heed of what we hear. The book of Jude, the letters to the churches in Revelation, the letters to Thessalonica, most of the New Testament, it’s all addressing those who came in the name of Jesus but without the Truth of Jesus. Like the sons of Sceva, they come in His name but without knowing Him, and they are powerless. But we are warned to be careful of those who use His name in vain. It’s possible to spread His name ineffectively! He said so. Why else would there be a command against taking His name in vain? He wants us to use His name in alignment with His character. When we accept the lie that is in His name (looks like a good thing,) but it’s not really of Him, then we poison ourselves, we poison our walk.

You know, I just have to say, we need to stop defining our theology by what the music on Christian radio says, by what our pastor says. We need to, like the Bereans, start looking at what Scripture says, and checking the teachings we are given against the Word of God. How can I say I am a Christian and not be consumed by the Word of God? I so love how Misty Edwards put it in a recent podcast:

There is no such thing as being a Christian without total allegiance to every word that Jesus said

He is NOT the God described in the trendiest song, if that song does not line up with Scripture. Just because it mentions His name does not mean it is talking about Him. Just because Christian radio picks it up and plays it, does NOT mean it is about Him. If it does not line itself up with Jesus as He is portrayed in the Word of God, it is not about Him, and it needs to be thrown out, or it is a poison that will kill your worldview and your walk with Him, and probably of those around you if you accept it and begin teaching it.

Any teaching, any and every teaching, that does not line itself up with the heart of God as expressed in the Word of God needs to be thrown out. It is the most dangerous thing. It is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It is not ok. It’s simply not. What is greater wickedness than to misrepresent the heart of a Holy God? What is more fearful than to think you know Him, but to be wrong? There are so many instances of the people thinking they know God, but walking after their own way.

I so often hear people quote Paul  from Philippians 1, speaking of those preaching Jesus to increase his chains. Now, I’m just guessing here, but I am thinking that if Paul is saying they are preaching Jesus, then what Paul would mean by “preaching Jesus” is that these people are actually spreading the truth about Jesus in order to get Paul in more trouble, because if they were not spreading the same message as Paul, I find it doubtful that it would then be associated with Paul and thus used as a testimony against Paul. Does that make sense? I really doubt those who were preaching Jesus to increase the chains of Paul, those of whom Paul spoke, saying

“whether in pretense or truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in this I rejoice”

I highly doubt Paul would say the same thing of those preaching Jesus’ name for personal wealth. I highly doubt he’d rejoice so much over those talking of Jesus and ignoring the cross.

And even with Paul’s words in mind, even if I am wrong here in my interpretation of Paul’s situation, I have to say that we ought to stop interpreting Jesus’ words through the lens of Paul’s writings, that instead we ought to look at Paul’s writings through the lens of Jesus’ words. I don’t think we can take this one part of one letter of Paul and use it as an excuse to rejoice over those who preach His name without His character. We are still told by Jesus to discern against false prophets who come in His name. Many many times He warned this! Matthew 24!!! Mark 13! John 8 and John 10 show the character of Jesus, as He really is. John 16. Luke 17, Luke 21.

Jude. 2 Timothy 3, 2 Timothy 4.

We need the logos, the John 1 revelation of Jesus. We need to know Him as He is portrayed in the Word, in Truth. We need to clear our system of poison, and to stop ingesting it.

In John 17 Jesus said that eternal life is to know Jesus Christ. In Matthew 7, He says that many will come to Him and call Him Lord, and He will say

“depart from Me, I never knew you…”

We need to have The Master Locksmith come and take the lock out of our car door, and disassemble the entire thing, remove the key, and reassemble the lock so it is receptive to the Real Key. Fast from the outside influences. Fast from media, even Christian music, fast from TV, from magazines, from movies, from those voices telling you ideas about God, to take time to step away from those things, and to get with God and let Him show Himself as He is, but also to take the Word of God and to read with fresh eyes. To read it and cast off what you’ve been told about it, but instead to let Him tell you about it. To read the entirety of the Word, and to learn who He really is. To love the Psalm 2 God, the Isaiah 42 God, the Psalm 45 God, the book of Revelation God just as much as the Song of Solomon God, the Jesus on the Cross God… to realize He is Judge, the One who Justifies, He is Prince of Peace who is coming to make war on wickedness, that He loves righteousness and with the same fervency He hates wickedness, that He weeps over sin and yet He is anointed with the oil of gladness, that He is fearful yet His love casts out fear…

We need to be full of the Word of God, in Spirit and in truth… and to accept no lie… we need to define our belief about Jesus and the songs we will sing to Him and the way we will speak of Him based on the Word, NOT to define our interpretation of the Word based on the songs we hear or the things people have told us.

The Word must come first.

This is my first researchblogging post in awhile…so I figured I’d make it worthwhile by writing a really, really long post and actually deconstructing a scientific paper.

I’ve seen the video of the tool using octopus…and it is neat. Here’s a science daily article, and here’s the video below:

Using tools is something which is actually complicated to define. Do you, for example, consider directed defecation as the use of a tool? How about throwing feces? Throwing rocks? The definition of tool use varies and just like everything else in biology, any definition will generally start a debate. I generally use the term ‘tool’ to mean something which has been obviously re-purposed.

There’s a variety of things insects do that could rightly be considered tool use. Some ants will drop liquid in sand and carry the sand to the nest. Others will use their larvae to construct their leaf-houses…they essentially use their children as oversized glue-guns. If you live in Iowa, those big black wasps which you see flitting around on flowers (Sphecid wasps of the genus Sphex, which are understandably confused with Pompillids) will actually close their nests by pounding them in with stones. However, there’s a really good example that first year entomology students are taught as an example of how complex insects can be which goes above and beyond any of these.

Assassin bugs are members of the order hemiptera (family Reduviidae), which means they have peircing-sucking mouthparts and digest their prey while it’s still in the exoskeleton. If you’ve never seen an insect eaten by an assassin, it’s little more than a very thick shed-skin after it’s through with it.

One South-American assassin, Salyavata variegata is a specialist on termites. It hangs out outside their nest and camoflauges itself with bits of dirt and dead bodies from recent meals (kind of like Jigguratta…if you’re a fan of very strange sci-fi shows). However, this isn’t necessarily tool use…and it certianly doesn’t compete with our cephalopod friend up there.

Instead what makes this bug different from your run-of-the-mill hermit crab is what it does with those empty husks. When it’s done feeding, it uses it’s mouthparts to dangle the husk inside the holes the termites use to enter and exit the nest. A termite comes to see if this is a threat to the nest, and becomes the assassin’s next meal.

This assassin bug…whose entire body is much smaller than the brain of the cephalopod in the video…fishes for insects. Pretty cool, huh?

This finding was controversial for a number of years, until it was documented in the 80s. Although the behaviors insects exhibit are generally very simple and stereotyped, they do exhibit some behaviors which are very complex. Nobody thought they could exhibit this type of behavior because of this.

I’ve included a review paper on tool-use in insects. Most of the stuff is pretty simple, but there are some gems in there if you’re able to dig it up. It’s an older paper, but I’ve seen some of these examples cited in textbooks which are relatively modern. They’re generally one or two line ‘look at this’ type passages which focus more on the novelty aspect of the behavior than an actual discussion of the tool-building aspect as it relates to the ecology of the insect in question at the time. However, we’ve got to be careful about letting the tool use in Salyavata variegata bias our opinions. Even the best researchers are prone to misinterpreting facts when faced with a potentially cool hypothesis.

Some insects have been thought to use medicine. The caterpillars you probably know better as woolly bears, these guys:

Image courtesy Wikipedia Commons

are pretty awesome critters in their own rights. When they’re grown up, they use sonar to confuse bats and screw up their echolocation by pinging their sound back at them through use of modified air sacs in their thorax. However, their larvae have been known to munch on toxic plants when parasitized with tachinid flies. You can read more about tachinid development at that link, but these are flies which kill caterpillars by eating them from the inside out. Gruesome, horrible death.

There are other insects which parasitize these guys and also cause gruesome, horrible deaths. These are parasitic wasps. The problem with testing this hypothesis on these guys is that they also inject polydnavirus particles into the caterpillars…and these screw with development in a multitude of ways and would make the results impossible to interpret.

Singer et. al did an interesting experiment. They parasitized caterpillars and then gave them food choices.They used food which had been laced with toxic chemicals found occasionally in plants they’re found on and food which was contaminant-free. Caterpillars found on plants which secrete certain chemicals in past studies showed decreased mortality from parasitism. So like any decent scientist, this piqued their curiosities and caused them to experiment.

In short, they found that these chemicals reduced the amount of parasitoids that emerged from the caterpillars. However, they also discovered that these chemicals made the caterpillars very sick…about 20% mortality. This is far from the nearly 100% mortality that parasitoids cause, so it’s all good.

My gripe with the paper was that it didn’t really show that caterpillars use medicine, only that the potential is there. Here’s what I mean…take a look at this graph. Let’s divide the different categories of how the insects were parasitized into heavy (3), medium (2) and light (1) groups. This is from a feeding choice experiment where the caterpillars were allowed to choose between a laced and an unlaced block.

Insects which weren’t parasitized had a tendency to die after consuming the block. The caterpillars which were lightly parasitized didn’t show any real change in behavior. Heavily parasitized caterpillars didn’t eat any more of the block on average than their unparasitized counterparts and died about the same rate. The caterpillars which had a medium level of parasitism ate more of the block and died less…this almost seems like self-medicating. However, because the behavior isn’t correlated with parasitism, I really don’t see any reason to think so. I’m not denying that further testing could elucidate some sort of relationship, but I’d like to see a better experiment before I’d buy it. They only did one repitition, and used 40 caterpillars…which means 10 per group.

Our results demonstrate three essential components of self-medication predicted by adaptive plasticity theory: 1) self-medication behavior improves fitness of animals infected by parasites; 2) self-medication behavior decreases fitness in uninfected animals; and 3) infection induces self-medication behavior.
Predictions 1 and 2 are supported by the survival and resistance experiment and, to a lesser extent, the feeding choice experiment. The expected fitness trade-off of PA ingestion in the presence and absence of parasitism was most clearly seen in the survival and resistance experiment.

The authors have a very good definition of self-medication which I won’t duplicate here. I agree with these first two points, but I don’t agree with their third. First, I’m going to chide them on something I saw in the materials and methods under the ‘no-choice’ experiment.

This experiment was designed to compare precisely the power of PA-feeding stimulation in unparasitized and parasitized caterpillars. One hundred late instar G. incorrupta caterpillars were collected from Harshaw Canyon, Patagonia Mountains, Santa Cruz Co., Arizona on 14 April 2005. Most of the field-collected caterpillars were penultimate instars or early final instars. They were brought back to the laboratory and given the standard rearing food for eight days.

They essentially grabbed larvae from someone’s back yard and used them in the experiments. No dietary history…what they were seeing could have been correlated with the parasitoids but caused by something else. Also, any decreases in the viability of the parasitoids could have been caused by something the caterpillars ate in the wild before being transferred to the lab. This didn’t really show anything as far as I’m concerned.

Instead, what I found convincing was this:

This shows about a 20% increase in viability of larvae which had been fed on those plant chemicals (pyrrolizidine alkaloids) in a decent sample size (a little over 80 caterpillars). I find it convincing.

Together the feeding choice and no-choice experiments lend support to prediction 3, that parasitism induces self-medication. However, the evidence from the feeding choice experiment is relatively weak, being complicated by extensive variation in PA feeding responses among individuals within parasitism treatments.

And with any feeding experiment, you’re going to see variation in feeding. This is why baculovirus researchers prefer to force-feed caterpillars viral broth whenever possible…because you need to cite the initial dose that you gave them. In this experiment, they used caterpillars at the instar next to maturity so they might have really been seeing some which were preparing to pupate and thus didn’t eat as much as they normally would.

So in short (ironic to put at the end of a 1500 word post, no?)…insects can display some incredibly complex behaviors. However, we must be very, very, very careful to not assume that some of the things we see are complex behaviors just because they resemble something we do. I’m willing to bet that the reason caterpillars which are brought in after feeding on the plant survive better because they’re feeding on that plant. However, I don’t see sufficient evidence to indicate to me that they are feeding on that plant because they’ve been parasitized. Similar reductions in parasitoid fitness have been observed in other parasitoid-host complexes…scale insects and their parasitoids are notorious for this…and that’s what I see going on here.

Pierce, J. (1986). A Review of Tool Use in Insects The Florida Entomologist, 69 (1) DOI: 10.2307/3494748

Singer MS, Mace KC, & Bernays EA (2009). Self-medication as adaptive plasticity: increased ingestion of plant toxins by parasitized caterpillars. PloS one, 4 (3) PMID: 19274098

Great site for medical biochemistry students and also those doing general biochemistry.Aside from the more serios side it also features fun puzzles,crosswords and trivia sections!

http://biochemistryquestions.wordpress.com/

A celebrity in the field of Biochemistry, and a knight to boot,

this man X created a technique which has something to do with pic1. The technique is thusly, named after him. Let’s call it X1.

sir_biochemist

structure_pic1

Now, the prankster scientists in the field started naming other techniques as a pun on X1.

So, a technique based on pic2 was called Y ( which had some relevance in naming, in fact)
and one based on pic3 was called Z ( no connection whatsoever, done just for kicks) and so on.
The list continues for some 2 more techniques.

structure_pic2

structure_pic3

hints:
1. pic1, pic2, and pic3 are generic representations.
2. pic2 has three subtypes, one of which is a courier of sorts.

X, X1.
Y, Z, please.

Dr. Eriberta Nepomuceno Navera

Dr. Eriberta Nepomuceno Navera is a native of As, Albay.  At an early age, the girl who loved collecting butterflies, concocting solutions and putting all sorts of things together was already determined to become a scientist and inventor.  Dr. Navera took up Biochemistry at the Univeristy of Sto. Tomas.  Then, in 1987, she was accepted as a Monbusho scholar at the University of Tokyo Research Center of Advanced Science and Technology.  She was the first Filipino and the first non-Japanese ever to be accepted in the said university.  Dr. Navera graduated with a Doctoral Degree in Engineering, specializing in biosensors and bioelectronics.

One of Dr. Navera’s most popular contributions to science was her invention and development of the Hydro Early Warning Device, which won the 1993 National Science Award.  Her pioneering work on the Acetyl Choline Sensor was likewise lauded worldwide.

Dr. Navera was not only confined inside the laboratory.  After her studies abroad, she went back to her hometown and taught Biochemistry at the Bicol University.  Later on, she was appointed as Assistant Director of the University’s Research Center and Director of the Institute for Peace and Security Studies.

In 1999, she was appointed as the Regional Director of the Department of Science and Technology Regional Office No. V (DOST V).  As Regional Director, Dr. Navera’s thrust was the use of science and technology to improve the region’s living conditions.  She worked to strengthen the region’s exportable resources and products according to global standards, through the use of science and technology. – Allen A. Liberato

Cells recognize one another because of the saccharides attached to cell surfaces. 

They  are present usually as oligosaccharides associated through covalent links to lipids and/or proteins forming Glycoconjugates. The lipid or protein part is integrated into the cell membrane structure, with the saccharide part towards the external membrane surface.

Membrane carbohydrates  (2-10% of the membranes) are on the extracellular surface bounded to lipids or proteins of the membrane, forming glycoconjugates that serve as docking sites in cell recognition, adhesion and receptor action. These sugars include mainly glucose, galactose, mannose, fucose, N-acetyl galactosamine and  N-acetyl glucosamine.

The different kinds of Glycoconjugates include:

Proteoglycans: In the Proteoglycans, the Glucosaminoglycan moety forms the greater fraction of the molecule (tipically a proteoglycan consists of 95 % of carbohydrates) and is the main site of biological activity, providing multiple binding sites. They are found mainly in the extracellular matrix. They are major components of connective tissue.

Glycoproteins: Membrane bound glycoproteins participate in a wide range of cellular phenomena, including cell recognition, cell surface antigenicity, etc. In the glycoproteins, the majority of the molecule consist of proteins; they have one or more oligosaccharides attached to a protein, and they usually are branched and do not have serial repeats, so they are rich in information, forming highly specific sites for recognition and high affinity binding by other proteins

Glycolipids: are membrane lipids in which the hydrophilic head groups are oligosaccharides.

 As in glycoproteins, glycolipids  act as specific sites for recognition by carbohydrate binding proteins.  The four types of human RBC have different oligosaccharides (antigens) in their cell membranes. Blood groups depends on the gangliosides (a kind of sphingolipid) in the surface of the RBC .

Alaskan beetle Upis ceramboides produces a non-protein "antifreeze" molecule. Photo: Kent Walters, University of Notre Dame

Researchers have discovered a new class of biological antifreeze molecules: the first that do not contain proteins. The antifreeze, extracted from a freeze-tolerant Alaskan beetle, is made of a combination of sugars and fatty acids.

Dr. Kent Walters (University of Notre Dame) and colleagues report in the Nov. 24 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) the successful isolation of a freeze-tolerant Alaskan beetle’s anti-freeze molecule. The beetle from which the antifreeze was extracted is capable of surviving at -60°C (-76 F).

This discovery, which was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), could assist future efforts at preserving cells or whole tissues by cooling them to low sub-zero temperatures, a process known as cryopreservation.

“Potential applications for this new class of antifreeze molecules are abundant,” said Walters in a release. “In terms of cryopreservation, we may be able to increase viability and enhance survivorship of cells and tissues from other organisms under freezing conditions.”

This specific antifreeze molecule is a combination of saccharides and fatty acids. As a consequence, it is smaller than most proteins and its chemical composition could be replicated in a lab for easier commercial production. Small chains of sugars can be readily synthesized in the laboratory, making them cheaper and easier to manufacture than biologically assembled molecules like proteins.

A multitude of organisms such as fish, insects, plants, fungi and bacteria contain antifreeze molecules. Past efforts at isolating the antifreeze molecules have been unsuccessful, in part because those molecules may show up only when triggered by extreme environmental factors.

Meet Dr. Brent Lipke DC

“Simply put, I was a skeptic.  I would never have let those ‘bone crunchers’ touch my spine.”

But after sustaining a serious injury in High School football and conventional medicine failing to help me, I was referred to a Chiropractor, Dr. Paul Meyers. 

Dr. Brent Lipke DC

When I first entered his clinic I was shocked.  I had never seen such a vibrant healthy place.  Most clinics I had been to were dismal, miserable places full of sick people.  This place was different.  Seniors, babies and people of all ages were lining up for adjustments and loving the process!  Patients were ‘high-fiving’ the staff and laughing out loud. Dr Paul was transforming people’s lives and having a blast doing it!  

I sat through one of Dr Paul’s “Doctor’s Reports” and was amazed as he explained how the body worked and how it broke down, what Health really was, and how Chiropractic focused on correcting the CAUSE of health problems instead of just patching them up. 

I’ll never forget the very first adjustment Dr Paul gave me.  I could feel blood return to my back and the spasms in my legs subside.  It was as if a huge weight had been lifted off of me. It was incredible!  That’s when I knew that this is what I was meant to do for the rest of my life!  I just HAD to become a Chiropractor!”

Dr Brent began his pre-Chiropractic education at the University of Western Ontario where he studied biology, physiology, organic chemistry, anatomy and physics.  After completing his study there he was accepted into the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College in Toronto.  During his four years at CMCC, courses included biochemistry, a major emphasis on anatomy, neurology and human physiology, x-ray, diagnosis, nutrition, Chiropractic adjusting techniques and patient care in the CMCC Outpatient Clinic.

After graduating in 1995, Dr Brent returned to Guelph (his wife, Jody’s hometown) to practice.

 ”We love skeptics,” smiles Dr Brent.  “I still remember the concerns and apprehension I had when I went to the Chiropractor for the first time.  So we make a point to explain everything in advance and educate our patients fully so they can make their own informed choice about the care they want.  Patients appreciate that.”

Our focus on education gives our patients a much deeper understanding of how their bodies work, how they break down, what Health really is, and what it is not.  We teach them to look to answer the “Why?” question.  The question “Why do I have the problems that I do?” goes right to the source and handles what is CAUSING their health problems.  Once the cause is identified, patients can then take back control of their health, instead of simply patching up symptoms.

We also have a focus on Corrective Spinal care.  Like braces for teeth, we offer Corrective Spinal care as a opportunity to stabilize the structural cause of your problems, preventing on-going spinal degeneration and a relapse of symptoms.  Like wearing a retainer following braces, many patients choose to get on-going Maintenance adjustments on a less frequent basis to maintain the correction they have made, protecting their health investment and preventing a relapse.  The choice is always up to you.

Dr Brent met his lovely wife Jody while they studied at the University of Western Ontario.  She went on to practice as a Registered Dietician for 14 years, who now practices through the clinic as a Nutritional Cleansing coach, focusing on cleansing, detoxification and weight management. 

Together they have been blessed with 5 beautiful children – Tyler, Jordan, Jessy and the twins, Jacob and Brooklyn. They are all competitive dancers, all sing or play instruments, the boys love football, and the girls love gymnastics.  All of their children were born at home, except the twins, none have been vaccinated or have received antibiotics.  With mom as a Dietitian and dad as a Chiropractor they are healthier than most of their friends and have been checked-out and adjusted since birth. 

In his spare time Dr Brent enjoys running, weightlifting, waterskiing, wakeboarding, mountain biking and golf.  Playing with his 5 kids or having a date-lunch with his wife are special times when he is so in the moment that time just flies by.

Dr Brent gets adjusted weekly to maintain a high level of nerve system function. He has a personal trainer (Taylor Beech of Vitality Fitness Studios) and works-out 3 times a week to maintain excellent health as an example for his patients, and to keep up his physical strength for adjusting them.  He maintains a healthy diet, stretches weekly, takes vitamins and minerals daily, and enjoys running.  He believes the body’s natural state is one of health and that medications are meant for emergencies only, for use when the body is overwhelmed. As such he doesn’t vaccinate his children or give them non-emergency medications, rather he ensures his family have healthy immune systems through proper nutrition and uninterrupted nerve supply.

 ”Enough about me!  How can we help you with today’s safe and effective Chiropractic care?  Give us a call so we can help you take the first step towards better health.”

Meet Dr. Frank Dallan DC

“As a child I suffered from intense migraines at least once every two weeks.” Dr Frank recalls. 

These migraines were so unbearable that my mother would put me to bed in a darkened room, where even the faintest light caused me great pain.  She decided to do some research, and came across some information suggesting that Chiropractic care could possibly relieve migraines. She was skeptical in the beginning but didn’t want to rely on Tylenol or Advil as a source of relief so she decided to give Chiropractic a try. 

 I started going to a Chiropractor and over the course of the next year the occurrence of my migraines diminished drastically. 

Since then, I have been fascinated with the field of Chiropractic.  However, it was not until my experience volunteering at my brother in-law (Dr. Brent Lipke’s) clinic, that my desire to become a Chiropractor was solidified. 

At this point in time I was impressed with a Chiropractor’s vast knowledge base in the health sciences, and the art and precision with which they assist the body to heal naturally, to truly help the sick become healthy.  It was this excitement about becoming a Chiropractor that motivated me to focus more time and energy on my studies.  I knew then that I was truly destined to become a Chiropractor, and that I had found my calling, and made a commitment to myself that I would do whatever it took to realize my dream.  Like Dr. Brent, I have found purpose and passion in helping people unleash their own ability to lead a vibrantly healthy, and fulfilling life.”

Dr. Frank began his pre-chiropractic education at the University of Guelph, where he attained his degree in the Honors Biological Science program.  There, he studied biology, physiology, organic chemistry, mammalian physiology, biochemistry, physics and human nutrition. 

After completing his study at the University of Guelph he was accepted into a variety of Chiropractic programs and chose to receive his Doctorate in Saint Louis Missouri, at Logan College of Chiropractic.  During his stay at Logan, courses included, biochemistry, microbiology, embryology, X-ray physics, with a major emphasis on human physiology, human anatomy, neuro-anatomy, human neurology, differential diagnosis, diagnostic imaging, human nutrition, chiropractic adjusting techniques, physical rehabilitation, and patient care in the Logan satellite clinics. 

After graduating in 2007, Dr. Frank returned to his hometown of Guelph to practice at the Family Chiropractic Centre. 

In his spare time you can find Dr. Frank golfing, working out, wakeboarding, waterskiing, downhill skiing, mountain biking, hiking, rock climbing, or walking his black lab “Rocky.”

Dr. Frank also maintains peak performance through weekly adjustments, a healthy diet, regular exercise, restful sleep, and stress coping techniques.

Dr. Frank feels a moral obligation to reach out to his community, and educate people about Chiropractic care and the ways in which it can literally transform their lives one adjustment at a time.  He is looking forward to becoming a mentor and leading by example to promote a healthy drug free lifestyle throughout his community.

I would like to leave you with one very powerful quote, used by one of the pioneers of Chiropractic, Dr. B.J. Palmer which he used in his book The Big Idea (1944) “So, the adjustment of the subluxation to release pressure upon nerves, to restore mental impulse flow, to restore health, is big enough to rebuild the thoughts and actions of the world.  The idea that knows the cause of dis-ease, is one of the biggest ideas known.  Without it, nations fall; with it, nations rise. ”

Doug Axe got his Ph.D from Cambridge University, and published some of his findings in the peer-reviewed Journal of Molecular Biology. He was trying to see whether it is easy or hard to shuffle amino acids randomly in order to make functional proteins. Those JMB publications show that the number of functional amino acid sequences is tiny, compared to the number of possible sequences.

Doug Axe’s research likewise studies genes that it turns out show great evidence of design. Axe studied the sensitivities of protein function to mutations. In these “mutational sensitivity” tests, Dr. Axe mutated certain amino acids in various proteins, or studied the differences between similar proteins, to see how mutations or changes affected their ability to function properly. He found that protein function was highly sensitive to mutation, and that proteins are not very tolerant to changes in their amino acid sequences. In other words, when you mutate, tweak, or change these proteins slightly, they stopped working. In one of his papers, he thus concludes that “functional folds require highly extraordinary sequences,” and that functional protein folds “may be as low as 1 in 10^77.”

And now let’s see what he was up to in Stuttgart, Germany.

Story here from Evolution News.

Excerpt:

While there have been many events to discuss intelligent design sponsored by the scientific establishment this year, few have dared to invite an actual design proponent.

But on the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species, Biologic Institute Director Douglas Axe was invited to the National Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany, for a panel discussion titled Design without a Designer? where “the ‘bold generation’ of young thinkers turned up in droves, listening intently as the discussion went well beyond its advertised ninety minutes.”

Here’s the official description of the event (in German), and a translated excerpt:

On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the first publication of Darwin’s theory, this high-caliber panel discussion between evolutionists and Darwin critics will consider the question of whether the evolution of life on Earth is based solely on blind and unguided natural processes, or whether there is non-religiously based, verifiable evidence of meaningful and purposeful acts of creative intelligence in the natural world. This meeting at the Stuttgart Museum of Natural History aims to contribute constructively and with clarity and objectivity to this important debate. A public debate between evolutionary biologists and evolutionary critics at this high level is very rare in Germany, and therefore can be expected to be a very exciting evening.

You can read more at the Biologic Institute. They even have excerpts from Doug’s opening statement. It’s short and to the point.

Excerpt:

William Dembski and Stephen Meyer have both framed the design argument in terms of functional information, meaning information that specifies a significant functional outcome.  Since this fits well with my own understanding, I offer the following three-statement summary of the design argument:

First: Living things contain within their genomes large amounts of functional information.

Second: The only cause known to be capable of generating large amounts of functional information is intelligence.

And third: It is therefore reasonable to infer that the functional information in living things must have an intelligent source.

Here we have not a pronouncement but an argument based on evidence and logic.  It is perfectly fair to argue against it, of course, but it is hardly fair to dismiss it as dogma.

I like this, because I am a software engineer. This is what we do.

Online Biochemistry Hypertext Book:

http://themedicalbiochemistrypage.org/

MIT OpenCourseWare material:

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Biology/7-014Spring-2005/VideoLectures/index.htm

Online Biochemistry Book:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/13595802/USMLE-Road-Map-Biochemistry

Medical Biocehmsitry Book:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/18252344/Medical-Biochemistry

Magazine on Biopharmaceutical manufacture:

http://biopharminternational.findpharma.com/

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Science News in Brief

Turns out that the Iron Curtain helped isolate Eastern Europe from more than the Western world.  It also blocked the import of alien bird species.  Restrictions on the movement of people and trade in Soviet bloc countries prevented invasive birds being imported, a problem which has plagued much of Western Europe.

There is a difference: An introduced, alien, exotic, non-indigenous, or non-native species is one found outside its native range, having been brought their by humans through deliberate or accidental means.  Invasive species are introduced, but also have a detrimental effect on the environment.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a statement that the emails hacked from scientists’ computers did not contain information which indicated that human created greenhouse gases were not a factor in global warming.

Quirky Quote: “There is an anti-change group. There is an anti-reform group. There is an anti-science group, there is a flat Earth group, if I may say so, over the scientific evidence for climate change.” –Gordon Brown

Researchers have released a study showing that there are large variations in the amount of carbon being absorbed in the North Atlantic: as much as 10%.   They are still doing research to understand what causes these differences.  Currently, the ocean absorbs about half of carbon emissions from human activities.

Apocalypse Scenario: Here’s a nice positive feedback loop for ya: as the climate warms, the ability of liquids to absorb gases decreases (think pop cold vs pop warm), increasing global temperatures, decreasing the ability of the ocean to absorb carbon dioxide…crap.

Cool Creature: Superb Fairywren

Cute Superb Fairywren

The Superb Fairywren, Malurus cyaneus,  is a a small bird found across south-eastern Australia.  The male of the species has a bright blue head, back and tail, with a dark mask, and buff belly.  The female, however are a dull brown colour.  This example of sexual dimorphism is fairly common in the bird world.  The bird is known for its strange mating behavior.  The male wren will pluck yellow flower petals and display them to females.  Although it is socially monogamous, in that they will form fairly regular pairings, but one male will father many chicks with multiple females.  And, he will help raise most, if not all of them.  This causes a rather complex social dynamic.

Feature Story: Cellular Automata

So this is my first post where I talk about what I do as a bioengineer.  People often tell me, “So you mess with genes and stuff, right?”  First, nobody is “messing” with anything.  Second, not really.  I specifically enjoy working with complex ecological systems.  I work to better understand the causes and effects of environmental changes due to natural and human-caused events. Bioengineering allows me to have a holistic look at ecological systems.  Emergent behaviors result from nonlinear interactions between individuals in these ecological systems.  Eventually, I plan to do field research as well as computer modelling to help change the many problems our environment faces.   One of my tools as a bioengineer is cellullar automata.  Have no fear: this is not going to be a trip down molecular biology lane.  Not necessarily anyway.

Networks are built when individuals interact with their local neighborhood, their surroundings.  Thus, range and links are important in a network.  If a system is a complex system with multiple networks, nonlinear interactions among individuals can spontaneously create patterns from an initially random or uniform area. A grid model made up of many individuals represented by cells, or automata (us engineers like to make things complicated sounding), whose possible states are finite and distinct can be updated based on a function which refers to the state of each automata’s neighbors.

Perhaps a good way to explain this is to delve right into an example.  Image a 100 x 100 grid.  This represents a theater.  Each grid space represents a person in the theater.  We want to test the effects of fire on the movie goers.  Let’s say that if 4  people or more around an individual is scared, the middle person is scared.  Otherwise, the cell’s status is normal.  By using a computer program, we can quickly perform multiple iterations of these tests on each of the 10,000 individuals in the test to see if there is any emergent behavior.  Emergent behavior is such that results from nonlinear interactions between autonomous agents in a complex system. That is, it is neither completely random nor completely structured.

So how does this relate to the environment you ask.  Well, I recently completed a project to model ecological succession from bare soil.  Each individual tree species is predisposed to a certain environment.  In turn, each tree affects the environment.  For example, most climax trees are shade tolerant, that is, they grow well in light deficient conditions.  This allows them to grow where there are already a number of pioneer (fast-growing, light-loving) trees.  They in turn create more shade, helping climax trees compete against pioneer trees.  In developing my model, I decided to focus on three main variables which determine plant growth: the soil’s water content, the soil’s pH, and the amount of light in the area.  I also chose the most common trees in an Eastern deciduous forest as my possible states.  To account for the possible variables in the environment, I calculated the amount of trees surrounding a given cell.  The higher the number of trees, the higher the amount of shade, and the less sunlight will reach the trees. I also totaled the number of trees surrounding each cell to calculate water usage.  The more trees there were (as opposed to blank spaces), the less water there was for that area of land.  There are no units for the variables per se, but they can be interpreted as described above.  I then developed a function which would analyze the current state of a cell and compute what the future state of the cell will be.  So, if the current state in the cell is bare soil, then it will either continue to be bare soil or a tree will grow there.  The simulation began with a white field (all blank) as would a piece of land after a disaster leaving bare ground.  In the next time step, pioneer trees came on the scene.  Following this, a few climax trees appeared, and more pioneer trees grew, removing many more of the plots of bare ground.  In the subsequent time steps, more climax trees grew and ultimately dominated the field in the simulation.  By the tenth time step, there was some flux, but most of the trees were of the climax varieties.  There would always be some pioneer trees.  When a tree “died” and resulted in open ground, the first trees to fill the gap would often be pioneer trees, but these are quickly weeded out.  Thus, I used cellular automata to model a biological phenomenon involving emergent behavior.

Secondary Succession: A Cellular Automata Application

Cosmic Perspective

What am I, as a bioengineer, doing with this information?  In my example, I modeled secondary succession, an already understood process.  However, there are other applications.  I know individuals who have used this technique to model forest fires based on forest density.  I have seen the effects of the surroundings on a cell’s (living cell, that is) processes modeled to test new drugs.  The future is truly limitless, but we must understand that we must also ask ourselves whether or not our methods are being applied in such a way to help, rather than harm, the world.  Science is useless without ethics.

Dr. Stephen C. Meyer

There can be only one. (H/T Evolution News)

Excerpt:

From his office Meyer has ventured forth to debate at least nine prominent Darwinians on CNN, NPR, FOX, the BBC, and other venues. In it he has written numerous newspaper and magazine columns in defense of Intelligent Design (ID), as well as an academic article that became notorious five years ago when Richard Sternberg, a Smithsonian-affiliated scientist, agreed to publish it in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington.

[...]When Meyer completed his dissertation, “Of Clues and Causes: A Methodological Interpretation of Origin of Life Studies,” the University of Cambridge in 1991 awarded him its prestigious Ph.D. Meyer, having proceeded through questioning and discernment stages, had to decide whether to enter the courage stage. Everyone knows that microevolution—change within species—occurs, but the critical issue is whether the descendants of dinosaurs become birds through natural selection. Denying macroevolution leaves scientists unprotected even at some Christian colleges.

[...]Courage becomes a determinant once we count the cost and see that it’s great. Meyer’s first inkling came when “talking about my ideas to people at Cambridge High Table settings, and getting that sudden social pall.” But the cost was and is more than conversational ease: San Francisco State University in 1992 expelled a professor, Dean Kenyon, who espoused ID, and other job losses have come since.

I met Dr. Meyer for the first time at the Baylor University conference on intelligent design in 2000. He comes across as extremely genuine and approachable. At other conferences, he even remembered my name! I still hold out hope of one day going for a PhD (I even came up with a great idea this week) and it’s largely because of authentic Christian scholars like Dr. Meyer who inspire me with a vision of what is possible.