Nature generates more data than the internet … for now

From PopSci.com (Sept. 22, 2023):

Is Earth primarily a planet of life, a world stewarded by the animals, plants, bacteria, and everything else that lives here? Or, is it a planet dominated by human creations? Certainly, we’ve reshaped our home in many ways—from pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to literally redrawing coastlines. But by one measure, biology wins without a contest.

In an opinion piece published in the journal Life on August 31, astronomers and astrobiologists estimated the amount of information transmitted by a massive class of organisms and technology for communication. Their results are clear: Earth’s biosphere churns out far more information than the internet has in its 30-year history. “This indicates that, for all the rapid progress achieved by humans, nature is still far more remarkable in terms of its complexity,” says Manasvi Lingam, an astrobiologist at the Florida Institute of Technology and one of the paper’s authors.

But that could change in the very near future. Lingam and his colleagues say that, if the internet keeps growing at its current voracious rate, it will eclipse the data that comes out of the biosphere in less than a century. This could help us hone our search for intelligent life on other planets by telling us what type of information we should seek.

To represent information from technology, the authors focused on the amount of data transferred through the internet, which far outweighs any other form of human communication. Each second, the internet carries about 40 terabytes of information. They then compared it to the volume of information flowing through Earth’s biosphere. We might not think of the natural world as a realm of big data, but living things have their own ways of communicating. “To my way of thought, one of the reasons—although not the only one—underpinning the complexity of the biosphere is the massive amount of information flow associated with it,” Lingam says.

Bird calls, whale song, and pheromones are all forms of communication, to be sure. But Lingam and his colleagues focused on the information that individual cells transmit—often in the form of molecules that other cells pick up and respond accordingly, such as producing particular proteins. The authors specifically focused on the 100 octillion single-celled prokaryotes that make up the majority of our planet’s biomass.

“That is fairly representative of most life on Earth,” says Andrew Rushby, an astrobiologist at Birkbeck, University of London, who was not an author of the paper. “Just a green slime clinging to the surface of the planet. With a couple of primates running around on it, occasionally.”

As all of Earth’s prokaryotes signal to each other, according to the authors’ estimate, they generate around a billion times as much data as our technology. But human progress is rapid: According to one estimate, the internet is growing by around 26 percent every year. Under the bold assumption that both these rates hold steady for decades to come, the authors stated its size will continue to balloon until it dwarfs the biosphere in around 90 years’ time, sometime in the early 22nd century.

What, then, does a world where we create more information than nature actually look like? It’s hard to predict for certain. The 2110s version of Earth may be as strange to us as the present Earth would seem to a person from the 1930s. That said, picture alien astronomers in another star system carefully monitoring our planet. Rather than glimpsing a planet teeming with natural life, their first impressions of Earth might be a torrent of digital data.

Now, picture the reverse. For decades, scientists and military experts have sought out signatures of extraterrestrials in whatever form it may take. Astronomers have traditionally focused on the energy that a civilization of intelligent life might use—but earlier this year, one group crunched the numbers to determine if aliens in a nearby star system could pick up the leakage from mobile phone towers. (The answer is probably not, at least with LTE networks and technology like today’s radio telescopes.)

On the flip side, we don’t totally have the observational capabilities to home in on extraterrestrial life yet. “I don’t think there’s any way that we could detect the kind of predictions and findings that [Lingam and his coauthors] have quantified here,” Rushby says. “How can we remotely determine this kind of information capacity, or this information transfer rate? We’re probably not at the stage where we could do that.”

But Rushby thinks the study is an interesting next step in a trend. Astrobiologists—certainly those searching for extraterrestrial life—are increasingly thinking about the types and volume of information that different forms of life carries. “There does seem to be this information ‘revolution,’” he says, “where we’re thinking about life in a slightly different way.” In the end, we might learn that there’s more harmony between the communication networks nature has built and computers. [source]

Interesting. I guess the data race is on.

Octopus punches fish in the head (just because it can)

From Live Science.com (Dec. 23, 2020):

Why do octopuses have eight arms? The better to punch fish with, new research reveals.

These brainy cephalopods sometimes team up with fish to find food; hunting collaboratively like this allows them to cover more area, and it increases their chances of catching prey. However, when big blue octopuses (Octopus cyanea), also known as day octopuses, are displeased with their fish partners, they demonstrate their ire by suddenly punching the fish in the head.

The octopus lashes out using "a swift, explosive motion with one arm," in an attack "which we refer to as punching," scientists wrote in a new study.

Temporary hunting alliances between octopuses and coral reef fish have been documented for decades and can involve multiple participants of various species, the study authors reported Dec. 18 in the journal Ecology.

Sometimes, fish and octopuses will work together for more than an hour, with different species scouting different locations. Octopuses pursue prey that dart around rocks and into tight spaces in the reef, while bottom-feeding fish such as the yellow-saddle goatfish (Parupeneus cyclostomus) scour the seafloor, and other fish species patrol the water column, according to the study.

But those collaborations don't always work out so well for the fish, the new study shows. Between 2018 and 2019, researchers observed eight incidents while diving in Eilat, Israel, and in El Quseir, Egypt, in which octopuses suddenly punched out their supposed partners.

"I laughed out loud, and almost choked on my own regulator," said lead study author Eduardo Sampaio, a Ph.D. student at the University of Lisbon and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. His later reactions were more subdued, "but I still marveled at it every time I saw it," he told Live Science in an email.

"The fish would get pushed to the edge of the group, or would actually leave the group. Sometimes after a while it would return, other times it would not return at all. The octopus would leave the fish alone after displacing it," he said. Though octopuses were previously known to throw defensive punches when attacked by damselfishes or while fighting over food, this is the first time their punching has been scientifically described and linked to collaborative hunting, Sampaio said in the email. [read more]

Maybe, the octopus was annoyed by the fish. Then again, maybe the octopus was just being mischievous. Who knows.

Sheep binge on 600 pounds of pot: ‘They found green stuff to eat’

From NY Post.com (Sept. 25, 2023):

They’ve been very baaaad.

A flock of sheep near the town of Almyros in Thessaly, Greece broke into a greenhouse and devoured 600 pounds of medical cannabis, reported Newsweek.

The sheep were seeking refuge from flooding after the aftermath of Storm Daniel.

The storm hit parts of the central and eastern Mediterranean, leading to extreme flooding in Libya as well as Turney, Bulgaria, and Greece, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

In spite of the floodwaters, the sheep appeared to have found greener pastures. Although, the sheep were unable to pull the wool over their Shepard’s eyes. The Shepard said that after consuming Mary Jane, his sheep started exhibiting jumping higher than goats

The owner of the legal cannabis plant was dumbfounded by the event.

“I don’t know if it’s for laughing or crying. We have the heat; we lose a lot of production. We have the floods; we lose the rest. And the best: After all this, a herd of sheep, which I don’t know how to get back, entered the facility and started eating what was left,” he told TheNewspaper.gr.

“I don’t know what to say, honestly,” he added.

Farm owner Yannis Bourounis told a local radio producer: “They found green stuff to eat” and “jumping higher than goats, which never happens,” Newsweek reported.

Weed has been legal in Greece for medicinal purposes since 2017 and the country welcomed their first medical cannabis plant this year. While weed can have medicinal uses for humans, it’s dangerous for animals.

Cannabis poisoning among dogs is on the rise — especially in the US. There was an 11% percent uptick in cases last year and a 300% increase in the last five years, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Ever since pot dispensaries opened up in NYC, dogs have been poisoned after eating stoners’ stray joints and edibles. [source]

Jumping higher than goats? I bet. The rumors aren't true that afterwards the stoned sheep wandered into a Frito Lay factory.

Scientists discover new organ in the throat

From Live Science.com (Oct. 20, 2020):

Scientists have discovered a new organ: a set of salivary glands set deep in the upper part of the throat.

This nasopharynx region — behind the nose — was not thought to host anything but microscopic, diffuse, salivary glands; but the newly discovered set are about 1.5 inches (3.9 centimeters) in length on average. Because of their location over a piece of cartilage called the torus tubarius, the discoverers of these new glands have dubbed them the tubarial salivary glands. The glands probably lubricate and moisten the upper throat behind the nose and mouth, the researchers wrote online Sept. 23 in the journal Radiotherapy and Oncology.

The discovery was accidental. Researchers at the Netherlands Cancer Institute were using a combination of CT scans and positron emission tomography (PET) scans called PSMA PET-CT to study prostate cancer. In PSMA PET-CT scanning, doctors inject a radioactive "tracer" into the patient. This tracer binds well to the protein PSMA, which is elevated in prostate cancer cells. Clinical trials have found that PSMA PET-CT scanning is better than conventional imaging at detecting metastasized prostate cancer.

PSMA PET-CT scanning also happens to be very good at detecting salivary gland tissue, which is also high in PSMA. Until now, there were three known large salivary glands in humans: one under the tongue, one under the jaw and one at the back of the jaw, behind the cheek. Beyond those, perhaps a thousand microscopic salivary glands are scattered throughout the mucosal tissue of the throat and mouth, study co-author and Netherlands Cancer Institute radiation oncologist Wouter Vogel said in a statement.

"So, imagine our surprise when we found these," Vogel said.

To confirm the discovery, Vogel and his colleagues imaged 100 patients (99 of them men due to the focus on prostate cancer) and found that all of them had the newly discovered glands. They also dissected that nasopharynx region from two cadavers from a human body donation program and found that the newfound region consisted of mucosal gland tissue and ducts draining into the nasopharynx. [read more]

I guess the biological text books have to be updated now.

Half-male, half-female songbird discovered in Pennsylvania

From Live Science.com (Oct. 19, 2020):

Biologists recently made a "once-in-a-lifetime" discovery of a bird that's male on the right side and female on the left.

Researchers captured the bird, a rose-breasted grosbeak (Pheucticus ludovicianus), at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History's Powdermill Nature Reserve, an environmental research center in Rector, Pennsylvania.

Plumage colors usually signal if a grosbeak is male or female, but this bird has both sexes' signature shades. Scientists who captured the bird saw male coloration — pink wing "pits," a red breast splash and black wing feathers — on the right side of its body. But the bird's left wing was browner and had yellow "pits," a color combination found in females, museum representatives said in a statement.

This condition, in which an animal possesses male and female traits divided down the middle of its body, is called bilateral gynandromorphism. In birds, gynandromorphy is thought to stem from an error during egg formation. Unfertilized eggs typically contain one sex chromosome: a Z or a W (male birds are ZZ, while females are ZW). But very rarely, an egg develops with two nuclei, one containing a Z chromosome and the other a W chromosome. If this egg is fertilized, it unites with sperm that carry the Z chromosome to produce an embryo with some cells that are ZZ, producing male traits, and some that are ZW, producing female traits, Natural History Magazine reported.

"We caught the bird during normal banding operations," said Annie Lindsay, Powdermill's Avian Research Center (ARC) bird banding program manager. "The bird received an individually numbered band just like all birds we catch," Lindsay told Live Science in an email.

The scientists recorded the grosbeak's age, sex and body measurements. They then collected feathers for genetic analysis and took photos and video before releasing the bird.

"Every member of the banding crew expressed delighted surprise and joy in experiencing the banding of this rare bird," Lindsay said. [read more]

Nature can be so weird.

Woman’s mystery illness turns out to be 3-inch snake parasite in her brain

From Ars Technica.com (Aug. 28, 2023):

A neurosurgeon in Australia pulled a wriggling 3-inch roundworm from the brain of a 64-year-old woman last year—which was quite the surprise to the woman’s team of doctors and infectious disease experts, who had spent over a year trying to identify the cause of her recurring and varied symptoms.

A close study of the extracted worm made clear why the diagnosis was so hard to pin down: the roundworm was one known to infect snakes—specifically carpet pythons endemic to the area where the woman lived—as well as the pythons’ mammalian prey. The woman is thought to be the first reported human to ever have an infection with this snake-adapted worm, and it is the first time the worm has been found burrowing through a mammalian brain.

When the woman’s illness began, “trying to identify the microscopic larvae, which had never previously been identified as causing human infection, was a bit like trying to find a needle in a haystack,” Karina Kennedy, a professor at the Australian National University (ANU) Medical School and Director of Clinical Microbiology at Canberra Hospital, said in a press release.

The case, reported in the latest issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, began in January 2021. The woman went to a local hospital in southeastern New South Wales, Australia, with a three-week history of abdominal pain, diarrhea, dry cough, and night sweats. Her blood work indicated an infection of some kind, and scans showed signs of pneumonia in her lungs as well as lesions in her spleen and liver. But tests for known microorganisms and parasites came up negative, as did tests for cancers and autoimmune disease. She was diagnosed with an unexplained case of pneumonia and given a corticosteroid, prednisolone.

Three weeks later, she was admitted to another hospital for recurrent fever and persistent cough. Again, doctors found the lung, liver, and spleen injuries as well as signs of an infection. Her blood had high levels of eosinophils, white blood cells known to fight off parasitic infections. They treated her for the high eosinophil levels and, out of concern there was a false-negative for a human roundworm infection, treated her with the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin.

From mid-2021 to early 2022, the woman’s liver and lungs improved. With the addition of another drug to help keep her eosinophil counts down, she was able to lower the dose of prednisolone.  [read more]

Glad the doctors got the worm out in time.

Antarctic Monster: Scientists Spot 'Strawberry-Body' Sea Creature With 20 Arms

From In.Mashable.com (Aug. 14, 2023):

In a remarkable revelation, a group of researchers from Australia and the United States came across an "unidentified and unsettling aquatic species" following a sequence of research journeys conducted near Antarctica.

The recently discovered species is being referred to as the Antarctic strawberry feather due to its resemblance to the shape of a strawberry. With approximately 20 arms, this creature can exhibit colors ranging from a "purplish" hue to a "deep reddish" shade.

According to media reports, Between 2008 and 2017, the scientists embarked on multiple expeditions to the Antarctic Ocean with the aim of locating a group of enigmatic marine creatures referred to as Promachocrinus species or Antarctic feather stars. These organisms were described as having "extraterrestrial" movements.

The scientists also mentioned that these are really big animals that can live between 65 and 1,170 meters under the water. The Antarctic strawberry feather star looks like something from outer space when you first see it. But if you look closely at pictures of the underwater creature, you can see that it's shaped like a strawberry and has a bumpy texture. [source]

Weird, indeed.

Wildlife Park Removes a Gang of Parrots for Cussing Out the Customers

From Red State.com (Sept. 30, 2020):

At Lincolnshire Wildlife Park in Great Britain, a bunch of feathers got recently ruffled over five new African grey parrots.

Not long ago, the beaked bunch of Eric, Jade, Elsie, Tyson, and Billy were individually donated to the sanctuary.

They were collectively quarantined.

Evidently, at least one was a bad egg. And that hooligan passed on some switchblade ways to the rest.

Once placed on public display, the crew brandished a crude chorus like street-corner cretins heckling from their nest of naughtiness.

CNN reports:

“It just went ballistic, they were all swearing,” the venue’s chief executive Steve Nichols told CNN Travel on Tuesday. “We were a little concerned about the children.”

The taloned, tawdry talkers were cussing out customers.

“They literally, within a very short period of time, starting swearing at each other. ‘F**k off’ is the most common one.”

Steve noted the F-Bomb send-off is “a very easy one for them to learn,” but they’ll repeat “anything you can think of.”

Amid the cacophony of cursing, it seems a gang war got going:

“The visitors were giving them as much back as what they were giving to them.”

More from CNN:

Nichols said the group of birds would encourage the language “to trigger reaction or a response” from guests, according to BBC.

…

“With the five, one would swear and another would laugh and that would carry on”…

The fowl-mouthed flock spared no one — not even Steve:

“I get called a ‘fat t**t’ every time I walk past.”

Finally, staff broke up the brood.

The CEO hopes with each instigator among better-behaved birds, a more appropriate influence will win out.

It appears the park doesn’t know which parrot was the source of obscenity. Perhaps they all claimed a little birdie told ’em the words.

If faculty search the suspects for clues, my advice is to look for a prison tattoo.

Of course, separating the X-rated ornithological offenders could backfire bigly.

As indicated to the BBC, Steve’s aware:

“I’m hoping they learn different words within colonies – but if they teach the others bad language and I end up with 250 swearing birds, I don’t know what we’ll do.”

If you’re thinking you’ve heard of the park before, you’re probably right.

Earlier this year, one of its colorful caged characters, Chico, went viral with his soaring rendition of Beyoncé's “If I Were a Boy”:

They’d better keep Chico away from the Filthy Five.

Otherwise, spectators could soon be served a crowed cover of Cardi B.

As for reforming the tasteless tropical troupe, hopefully the brightly-bedecked delinquents can swear off their off-color ways.

Indeed, at Lincolnshire Wildlife Park, vulgarity is for the birds. [source]

Crazy birds. Someone taught those birds potty language. Not good.

'Tired' brain cells may distort your sense of time

From Live Science.com (Sept. 28, 2020):

Time in the brain doesn't follow the steady ticking of the world's most precise clocks. Instead, it seems to fly by at one moment and practically stand still at others. This distorted sense of time may be caused, in part, by brain cells getting tired, according to a new study.

When the brain has been exposed to the same exact time interval too many times, neurons or brain cells get overstimulated and fire less often, the study finds. However, our perception of time is complicated, and many other factors may also explain why time moves slowly sometimes and quickly at others.

We have only very recently begun to understand how our brains perceive time. It was only in 2015, that researchers found the first evidence of neurons whose activity fluctuates with our perception of time. But it wasn't clear if these neurons, found in a small brain region called the supramarginal gyrus (SMG), were keeping accurate time for the brain, or creating a subjective experience of time.

In the new study, the researchers used a "time illusion" on 18 healthy volunteers to figure it out. They hooked participants up to a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine that measures brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow.

The volunteers then went through an "adaptation" period, in which they were shown a grey circle on a black background for either 250 milliseconds or 750 milliseconds, 30 times in a row.

After this, the participants were shown another circle for a set period of time as a "test stimulus." They were then told to listen to white noise for a certain amount of time and asked if the test stimulus was longer or shorter than the white noise. (They used white noise as a reference because an auditory stimulus isn't affected by the visual adaptation but the visual test stimulus is.) [read more]

So, if someone is late to an appointment or meeting can they use that as an excuse? You know, “Sorry, I’m late. My brain cells might have been tired.” Probably not. Also, I wonder if tired neurons possibly could effect other senses too. So, do they eventually go to sleep? May explain Sen. Mitch McConnell’s brain freezes. Good thing he is retiring.

Massive genetic study finds genes linked to cannabis addiction

From Nature.com (Nov. 20, 2023):

By analyzing more than one million people's genomes, researchers have identified stretches of DNA that could be linked to cannabis addiction. They also found that some of the same regions in the genome are associated with other health conditions, such as lung cancer and schizophrenia.

The findings are evidence that cannabis addiction "could have substantial public-health risks if the usage increases", says Daniel Levey, a medical neuroscientist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and a co-author of the study, published today in Nature Genetics.

Taking cannabis recreationally is legal in at least 8 countries, and 48 countries have legalized medicinal use of the drug for conditions including chronic pain, cancer and epilepsy. But one-third of people who take cannabis end up becoming addicted, or using the drug in a way that is damaging to their health. Previous studies have suggested that there is a genetic component, and have shown links between problematic cannabis use and some cancers and psychiatric disorders.

Drug taking and addiction can be in influenced both by people's genes and by their environment, which makes them extremely difficult to study, says Levey. But the team was able to build on data from previous work by including genetic information from additional sources, predominantly the Million Veteran Program - a US-based biobank with a large genetic database that aims to improve health care for former military service members. The analysis encompassed multiple ethnic groups, a  first for a genetic study looking at cannabis misuse.

As well as identifying regions of the genome that might be involved, the researchers saw a bi-directional link between excessive cannabis use and schizophrenia, meaning that the two conditions can in influence each other. This  finding is intriguing, says Marta Di Forti, a psychiatrist-scientist at King's College London. Cannabis use "is the most preventable risk factor" for schizophrenia, she says, adding that the type of genetic data examined in the study could be used in future to identify and support people at increased risk of developing psychiatric disorders through cannabis use.

More information about the biological mechanisms that connect cannabis use with health conditions will provide a better evidence base for policy and medical practice, says study co-author Joel Gelernter, a psychiatric geneticist at Yale University.

He adds that researchers need to continue to build on this knowledge and use the data to understand the health risks of both medical and recreational cannabis use. Di Forti agrees, adding that it will also be important to investigate the specifics of how the drug is administered, and how much of the psychoactive component tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) users consume. [source]

Genetically Engineered Animals and Insects Could Benefit People and the Planet

From Red State.com (Sept. 23, 2020):

Amidst the human tragedy that is the coronavirus pandemic, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that persistent threats to human health and well-being that pre-existed COVID-19 still remain.

Insect borne diseases, hunger, and malnutrition, constantly simmering threats that only rarely get the attention of the pandemic, kill and harm far more people every year than the coronavirus.

Whatever the new post-corona normal will be, we should sustain and increase efforts to reduce premature mortality from starvation and disease.

Thankfully, biotechnology companies are continuing to develop animals that could both help reduce hunger even as world population grows and increasing numbers of people in developing countries are beginning to include more animal protein in their diets, and that could reduce disease by reducing the numbers of illnesses spread by insects.

Among the biotech innovations currently being developed, tested, or marketed that could help reduce hunger and disease are genetically modified cattle, goats, pigs, salmon, mosquitos, and moths.

Reuters recently reported scientists in the United States and Britain are using the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 to create farm animals that could be used as “surrogate sires,” essentially sterile blank slates that could then be transplanted with stem cells producing sperm, carrying desired traits.

The process could allow for widespread dissemination of genetic material with traits that produce healthier, more productive animals using fewer resources such as feed, medicines, and water.

“With this technology, we can get better dissemination of desirable traits and improve the efficiency of food production,” Jon Oatley, a reproductive biologist at Washington State University, who co-led the work, told Reuters. “If we can tackle this genetically, then that means less water, less feed and fewer antibiotics we have to put into the animals.”

Alternatively, if one is worried about climate change, this technology might be used to produce animals that need less land or crops for food, and/or that digest food more efficiently, reducing livestock methane emissions.

One must also remember that seafood accounts for approximately 20 percent of the animal protein consumed annually, yet many fish stocks are in decline. With this in mind, in mid-2019, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the importation of AquaBounty’s genetically modified Atlantic salmon eggs to be raised in the United States.

The bioengineered fish grow to maturity twice as fast as wild salmon, meaning they can be harvested and replenished much more quickly. Raised in controlled, land-based facilities and bred to be sterile, the fish are incapable of affecting wild salmon. Aquabounty’s salmon could become the world’s most sustainable salmon having a smaller environmental footprint than traditional salmon farming or commercial harvesting on the open seas.

Nor have harmful insects been ignored by the biotech industry. For instance, biotech company Oxitec has developed a modified version of the diamondback moth, which could lead to the pest’s extinction. Diamondback moths, the most resistant of all insects to pesticides, can wipe out entire fields of cold weather crops including, broccoli, cabbage, canola, cauliflower, and kale, resulting in billions of dollars in lost crops each year. The Oxitec diamondback moths contain a lethality gene, which when they mate with moths in the wild, prevents the female offspring from developing, so they die as larvae, with half male offspring in each generation inheriting the “lethality” gene meaning the entire population declines over each generation.

Oxitec is also at the forefront of developing genetically modified mosquitos that could reduce the spread of mosquito-borne diseases such as chikungunya, dengue fever, malaria, yellow fever, and the zika virus.

The World Health Organization reports mosquitoes are among the deadliest animals on earth, attributing 438,000 deaths to the insects from malaria alone in 2015. Other mosquito-spread diseases claim thousands more lives each year.

Oxitec’s mosquitos have been modified so when they mate with females, their offspring are incapable of surviving to adulthood. Laboratory tests and field tests have indicated widespread introduction of this mosquito could dramatically reduce the population of the disease-spreading mosquitoes.

Federal government and state regulators in Florida recently approved the introduction of Oxitec’s mosquitos into a small area of the Sunshine State. This follows the actions of the governments of Brazil, the Cayman Islands, Malaysia, and Panama, which have allowed Oxitec to release its bioengineered mosquitos at selected sites. Brazil reported mosquito populations fell by at least 90 percent in the locations Oxitec’s mosquitos were released in the year following their introduction.

Unfortunately, environmental extremists have targeted genetically modified products for extinction, fighting to delay the approval of or suing to block the introduction of bioengineered products, saying genetic engineering is akin to “playing God.”

While caution must be exercised with the introduction of any new technology, genetic engineering carries much promise, and the crops and animals developed using it are the most intensively studied and tested technologies ever to be produced. If the search for a COVID-19 vaccine is teaching us anything, it is that too much caution can be as deadly or even deadlier than too little caution. With millions of lives on the line, research and regulatory approvals should be expedited, not delayed.

If environmental fear-mongers successfully block the use of bioengineered animals, they will be condemning millions of people to unnecessary suffering and early deaths—now that would be playing God (or the devil) with a vengeance. [source]

The genetics of people who need little sleep

From Pop Sci.com (Dec. 15, 2024):

Everyone has heard that it’s vital to get seven to nine hours of sleep a night, a recommendation repeated so often it has become gospel. Get anything less, and you are more likely to suffer from poor health in the short and long term — memory problems, metabolic issues, depression, dementia, heart disease, a weakened immune system.

But in recent years, scientists have discovered a rare breed who consistently get little shut-eye and are no worse for wear.

Natural short sleepers, as they are called, are genetically wired to need only four to six hours of sleep a night. These outliers suggest that quality, not quantity, is what matters. If scientists could figure out what these people do differently it might, they hope, provide insight into sleep’s very nature.

“The bottom line is, we don’t understand what sleep is, let alone what it’s for. That’s pretty incredible, given that the average person sleeps a third of their lives,” says Louis Ptáček, a neurologist at the University of California San Francisco.

Scientists once thought sleep was little more than a period of rest, like powering down a computer in preparation for the next day’s work. Thomas Edison called sleep a waste of time — “a heritage from our cave days” — and claimed to never sleep more than four hours a night. His invention of the incandescent lightbulb encouraged shorter sleep times in others. Today, a historically high number of US adults are sleeping less than five hours a night.

But modern sleep research has shown that sleep is an active, complicated process we don’t necessarily want to cut short. During sleep, scientists suspect that our bodies and brains are replenishing energy stores, flushing waste and toxins, pruning synapses and consolidating memories. As a result, chronic sleep deprivation can have serious health consequences.

Most of what we know about sleep and sleep deprivation stems from a model proposed in the 1970s by a Hungarian-Swiss researcher named Alexander Borbély. His two-process model of sleep describes how separate systems — circadian rhythm and sleep homeostasis — interact to govern when and how long we sleep. The circadian clock dictates the 24-hour cycle of sleep and wakefulness, guided by external cues like light and darkness. Sleep homeostasis, on the other hand, is driven by internal pressure that builds while you’re awake and decreases while you’re asleep, ebbing and flowing like hunger. [read more]

May explain President Trump.

More articles on sleep: 

• Why do we sleep? The answer may change right before we turn 3.
• Jumping spiders might be able to sleep—perchance to dream

Life on Venus and Why ‘Settled Science’ Is Often Hot Air

From John Stonestreet on Breakpoint.org (Sept. 28, 2020):

Hope for E.T. springs eternal, despite the definitive lack of evidence for his existence. After decades of peering through telescopes, listening with giant radio antennae, and hurling probes to distant worlds, astronomers have yet to find even a hint of life beyond Earth. So, instead of looking for actual evidence of life, some scientists have begun looking for conditions that could theoretically be associated with life. And when they find that, they hold press conferences.

When scientists discovered that liquid water may once have existed on Mars, it was reported with the excitement we’d expect if probes had found Martian guppies. The discovery of a probable ocean under the ice of a Jovian moon is reported as if alien life forms had already been filmed doing backstrokes in there. Just this year, the discovery of an Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting a distant red dwarf star was reported by most articles as if Kepler-1649c were a perfect potential host for life.

The latest episode of astrobiological hype involves our nearest planetary neighbor. Venus has long been dismissed in the search for extraterrestrial life due to its hellish climate. After all, it’s wrapped in sulfuric acid, with a surface temperature hot enough to melt lead.

Then, just a few weeks ago, an international team of scientists from MIT and Cardiff University published evidence of phosphine gas high in the atmosphere of Venus. On Earth, the only two known sources of phosphine are human industry and microscopic life. So, according to this team, the presence of large quantities of this gas on Venus can only be explained by living things.

The press’s reaction was predictable. Every headline featured the word “life.” Clamor to divert space exploration resources to Venus mounted so quickly that NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine had to issue a statement in which, while praising the insight of these astronomers, he noticeably downplayed Venus, pointing instead to other, more promising missions already on the space agency’s docket and in their budget.

Other critics were more measured: “[T]his can hardly be taken as a biosignature,” one biologist said to the New York Times, “…only for anomalous and unexplained chemistry.” Another professor of planetary sciences who was quoted in the Financial Times sounded even more skeptical: “The scientists can’t think of a way of getting these phosphine levels without it being a byproduct of life,” he said. “That doesn’t mean there isn’t another way, and it is a long way from proving that there’s life on Venus.”

So much of the fanfare of stories like this follow a familiar script: scientists rush through the peer-review process and go straight to the press with speculative conclusions. Along the way, “anomalous chemistry” becomes “alien life.” Later, once cooler heads prevail, the same newspapers and websites carrying the fantastical headlines, print a retraction with a less exciting explanation for all that phosphine gas … usually in small print on a back page somewhere.

Of course, proposing and challenging theories is what science is all about. Where science goes wrong is in treating these findings—especially in the early, speculative stages—as if anything is “settled,” much less announcing the speculations as settled conclusion with breathless news reports and demands that NASA rework their budget.

In one of our latest “What Would You Say?” videos, my colleague Brooke McIntire takes on the myth of “settled science.” Proposing and overturning theories is an ongoing part of the process. Even longstanding scientific consensus is vulnerable to new and contrary evidence, and scientists are fallible and biased human beings too. It’s a great video, especially one to share with your kids and grandkids. To watch and share it, just go to whatwouldyousay.org.

None of this means, of course, that life on Venus is impossible. What it does mean is that a pair of papers linking the presence of a particular gas to life doesn’t amount to all the hype it generated. Without more and better evidence, speculation about little E.T.s on Venus is like its sweltering atmosphere … so much hot air. [source]

Science is never settled because unlike God, humans are not omniscience. We are always learning. Seeking the Truth. Always updating our theories with better evidence. Or we should be doing that anyway.

AI that reads brain scans shows promise for finding Alzheimer’s genes

From Nature.com (Nov. 1, 2023):

Washington DC

Researchers have sifted through genomes from thousands of individuals in an effort to identify genes linked to Alzheimer's disease. But these scientists have faced a serious obstacle: it's hard to know for certain which of those people have Alzheimer's. There's no foolproof blood test for the disease, and dementia, a key symptom of Alzheimer's, is also caused by other disorders. Early-stage Alzheimer's might cause no symptoms at all.

Now, researchers have developed artificial intelligence (AI)-based approaches that could help. One algorithm efficiently sorts through large numbers of brain images and picks out those that include characteristics of Alzheimer's. A second machine-learning method identifies important structural features of the brain - an effort that could eventually help scientists to spot new signs of Alzheimer's in brain scans.

The goal is to use people's brain images as visual 'biomarkers' of Alzheimer's. Applying the method to large databases that also include medical information and genetic data, such as the UK Biobank, could allow scientists to pinpoint genes that contribute to the disease. In turn, this work could aid the creation of treatments and of models that predict who's at risk of developing the disease.

Combining genomics, brain imaging and AI is allowing researchers to "find brain measures that are tightly linked to a genomic driver", says Paul Thompson, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, who is spearheading efforts to develop these algorithms.

Thompson and others described the new AI techniques on 4 November at the annual conference of the American Society of Human Genetics in Washington DC.

Overwhelmed with data

Thousands of people have had both their genomes sequenced and their brains scanned in the past two decades as part of efforts to build massive research databases. But the rate at which this torrent of information is being produced is outpacing researchers' ability to analyze and interpret it.

"We're very data-rich these days compared with how things were 5-10 years ago, and that's where AI [and machine learning] approaches can excel," says Alison Goate, a geneticist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. In 2020, Thompson launched AI4AD, a consortium of researchers across the United States that aims to develop AI tools to analyze and integrate genetic, imaging and cognitive data relating to Alzheimer's disease. As part of this project, researchers created an AI model trained on tens of thousands of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain scans. These images had previously been reviewed by physicians, who picked out scans that showed evidence of Alzheimer's. From the images, the AI tool learned what the brains of people with and without Alzheimer's look like.

Self-taught algorithm

In one trial, reported in a preprint that has not yet been peer reviewed, the AI classifier detected Alzheimer's in brain scans with an accuracy of more than 90%. The consortium has also used a similar approach to create a classier that can accurately sort scans into separate categories according to specific pathological changes in the brain that are associated with cognitive decline and dementia.

Degui Zhi, a data scientist at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and his colleagues have taken a different approach. Whereas Thompson and his team focused the AI model on areas of the brain that are known to be linked to Alzheimer's, Zhi wanted the tool to learn for itself the structural features of the brain that can help to diagnose the disease.

The researchers' AI tool reviewed thousands of brain scans and chose the features that most reliably differentiated one person's brain from another's. Zhi says that this minimizes the likelihood of human bias influencing the algorithm. Now, Zhi's team is using the algorithm to identify the traits that best distinguish between brain scans of people with and without Alzheimer's.

Thompson and Zhi acknowledge that the AI models are only as good as the data on which they're trained. There is a lack of racial and geographical diversity in individuals who have had their brains scanned and genomes sequenced, especially in databases such as the UK Biobank, so the findings from this AI-guided research might not be applicable to everyone. Furthermore, Goate says it will be crucial to show that the AI models' performance can be replicated in other databases, and that they show consistent results.

Rudolph Tanzi, a neurogeneticist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, says that these biomarkers could one day become part of a set of risk scores for the disease that also integrate blood-based biomarkers and genetics. When all of these bits of data are combined, risk scores can become "exponentially more sensitive", which will hopefully allow people to seek early treatment before the disease progresses, he adds.

Alzheimer's is just the beginning, Thompson says. If this approach works, it could also be applied to other diseases that have a physical presentation on brain imaging, he says. [source]

Nice.

Another article on Alzheimer’s and AI: AI tool detects Alzheimer’s disease with 95% accuracy

A ‘brain organoid’ biochip displayed serious voice recognition and math skills

From PopSci.com (Dec. 12, 2023):

Your biological center for thought, comprehension, and learning bears some striking similarities to a data center housing rows upon rows of highly advanced processing units. But unlike those neural network data centers, the human brain runs an electrical energy budget. On average, the organ functions on roughly 12 watts of power, compared with a desktop computer’s 175 watts. For today’s advanced artificial intelligence systems, that wattage figure can easily increase into the millions.

Knowing this, researchers believe the development of cyborg “biocomputers” could eventually usher in a new era of high-powered intelligent systems for a comparative fraction of the energy costs. And they’re already making some huge strides towards engineering such a future.

As detailed in a new study published in Nature Electronics, a team at Indiana University has successfully grown their own nanoscale “brain organoid” in a Petri dish using human stem cells. After connecting the organoid to a silicon chip, the new biocomputer (dubbed “Brainoware”) was quickly trained to accurately recognize speech patterns, as well as perform certain complex math predictions.

As New Atlas explains, researchers treated their Brainoware as what’s known as an “adaptive living reservoir” capable of responding to electrical inputs in a “nonlinear fashion,” while also ensuring it possessed at least some memory. Simply put, the lab-grown brain cells within the silicon-organic chip function as an information transmitter capable of both receiving and transmitting electrical signals. While these feats in no way imply any kind of awareness or consciousness on Brainoware’s part, they do provide enough computational power for some interesting results.

To test out Brainoware’s capabilities, the team converted 240 audio clips of adult male Japanese speakers into electrical signals, and then sent them to the organoid chip. Within two days, the neural network system partially powered by Brainoware could accurately differentiate between the 8 speakers 78 percent of the time using just a single vowel sound.

Next, researchers experimented with their creation’s mathematical knowledge. After a relatively short training time, Brainoware could predict a Hénon map. While one of the most studied examples of dynamical systems exhibiting chaotic behavior, Hénon maps are a lot more complicated than simple arithmetic, to say the least.

In the end, Brainoware’s designers believe such human brain organoid chips can underpin neural network technology, and possibly do so faster, cheaper, and less energy intensive than existing options. There are still a number of hurdles—both logistical and ethical—to clear, but although general biocomputing systems may be years down the line, researchers think such advances are “likely to generate foundational insights into the mechanisms of learning, neural development and the cognitive implications of neurodegenerative diseases.”

But for now, let’s see how Brainoware can do in a game of Pong. [source]

Interesting and weird. If the biochip can be developed further it could possibly be used for voice authentication for security.

More biochip articles:

• Dystopia: World's first 'biological computer' uses human brain cells that are 'raised in a simulation'
• Lab-grown human brain tissue used to control robot
• Brace yourself: Making computers from human brains is the new environmentalism
• Scientists grow mini human brains to power computers
• Computer run on human brain cells learned to play ‘Doom’
• Scientists seek to create 'biocomputers' using lab-grown, human pseudo brains

‘Biocomputer’ combines lab-grown brain tissue with electronic hardware

From Nature.com (Dec. 11, 2023):

Researchers have built a hybrid biocomputer - combining a laboratory-grown human brain tissue with conventional electronic circuits - that can complete tasks such as voice recognition.

The technology, described on 11 December in Nature Electronics, could one day be integrated into artificial-intelligence (AI) systems, or form the basis of improved models of the brain in neuroscience research.

The researchers call the system Brainoware. It uses brain organoids - bundles of tissue-mimicking human cells that are used in research to model organs. Organoids are made from stem cells capable of specializing into different types of cells. In this case, they were morphed into neurons, akin to those found in our brains.

The research aims to build "a bridge between AI and organoids", says study co-author Feng Guo, a bioengineer at the University of Indiana Bloomington. Some AI systems rely on a web of interconnected nodes, known as a neural network, in a way similar to how the brain functions. "We wanted to ask the question of whether we can leverage the biological neural network within the brain organoid for computing," he says.

Harnessing brainpower

To make Brainoware, researchers placed a single organoid onto a plate containing thousands of electrodes, to connect the brain tissue to electric circuits. They then converted the input information into a pattern of electric pulses, and delivered it to the organoid. The tissue's response was picked up by a sensor and decoded using a machine-learning algorithm.

To test Brainoware's capabilities, the team used the technique to do voice recognition by training the system on 240 recordings of eight people speaking. The organoid generated a different pattern of neural activity in response to each voice. The AI learned to interpret these responses to identify the speaker, with an accuracy of 78%.

Although more research is needed, the study confirms some key theoretical ideas that could eventually make a biological computer possible, says Lena Smirnova, a developmental neuroscientist at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Previous experiments have shown only 2D cultures of neuron cells to be able to perform similar computational tasks, but this is the first time it has been shown in a 3D brain organoid.

Better brain model

Combining organoids and circuits could allow researchers to leverage the speed and energy efficiency of human brains for AI, says Guo.

The technology could also be used to study the brain, says Arti Ahluwalia, a biomedical engineer at the University of Pisa in Italy, because brain organoids can replicate the architecture and function of a working brain in ways that simple cell cultures cannot. There is potential to use Brainoware to model and study neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease. It could also be used to test the effects and toxicities of different treatments. "That's where the promise is; using these to one day hopefully replace animal models of the brain," says Ahluwalia.

But using living cells for computing is not without its problems. One big issue is how to keep the organoids alive. The cells must be grown and maintained in incubators, something that will be harder the bigger the organoids get. And more complex tasks will demand larger 'brains', says Smirnova.

To build upon Brainoware's capabilities, Guo says that the next steps include investigating whether and how brain organoids can be adapted to complete more complex tasks, and engineering them to be more stable and reliable than they are now. This will be crucial if they are to be incorporated into the silicon microchips currently used in AI computing, he says. [source]

Welcome to the brave new world.

Scientists accidentally create 'impossible' hybrid fish

From Live Science.com (July 20, 2020):

It shouldn't have been possible, but it was: The birth of long-nosed, spiky-finned hybrids of Russian sturgeons and American paddlefish.

Hungarian scientists announced in May in the journal Genes that they had accidentally created a hybrid of the two endangered species, which they have dubbed the "sturddlefish." There are about 100 of the hybrids in captivity now, but scientists have no plans to create more.

"We never wanted to play around with hybridization. It was absolutely unintentional," Attila Mozsár, a senior research fellow at the Research Institute for Fisheries and Aquaculture in Hungary, told The New York Times.

Russian sturgeons (Acipenser gueldenstaedtii) are critically endangered and also economically important: They're the source of much of the world's caviar. These fish can grow to more than 7 feet long (2.1 meters), living on a diet of molluscs and crustaceans. American paddlefish (Polyodon spathula) filter-feed off of zooplankton in the waters of the Mississippi River drainage basin, where water from the Mississippi and its tributaries drain into. They, too, are large, growing up to 8.5 feet (2.5 m) long. Like the sturgeon, the have a slow rate of growth and development puts them at risk of overfishing. They've also lost habitat to dams in the Mississippi drainage, according to the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology. The two species last shared a common ancestor 184 million years ago, according to the Times.

Nevertheless, they were able to breed —— much to the surprise of Mozsár and his colleagues. The researchers were trying to breed Russian sturgeon in captivity through a process called gynogenesis, a type of asexual reproduction. In gynogenesis, a sperm triggers an egg's development but fails to fuse to the egg's nucleus. That means its DNA is not part of the resulting offspring, which develop solely from maternal DNA. The researchers were using American paddlefish sperm for the process, but something unexpected happened. The sperm and egg fused, resulting in offspring with both sturgeon and paddlefish genes.

The resulting sturddlefish hatched by the hundreds, and about 100 survive now, according to the Times. Some are just about 50-50 mixtures of sturgeon and paddlefish genes, and some are far more sturgeon-like. All are carnivores, like the sturgeon, and share the sturgeon's blunter nose, compared with the paddlefish's pointy snout.

Most hybrid species, such as the liger (a mix of a lion and a tiger) and the mule (a mix of a horse and donkey), can't have offspring of their own, and the sturddlefish is probably no exception. Mozsár and his colleagues plan to care for the fish, but they won't create more, since the hybrid could outcompete native sturgeon in the wild and worsen the sturgeon's chances of survival.

However, the fact that fish separated by 184 million years of evolution could cross-breed indicates that they're not so different after all.

"These living fossil fishes have extremely slow evolutionary rates, so what might seem like a long time to us isn't quite as long of a time to them," Solomon David, an aquatic ecologist at Nicholls State University in Louisiana, told the Times. [source]

Accidently? Doesn’t sound good. Sounds like the scientists were careless. They lucked out though. Some accidents can be bad especially if you are manipulating genes.

Late-Term Abortion

From Bill O’Reilly on Bill O’Reilly.com (June 3, 2024):

It was interesting to see First Lady Jill Biden say the upcoming presidential vote is about good and evil and, of course, her husband represents good. Dr. Biden firmly believes that not because she has evidence on the subjective statement, but because she derives personal benefit from believing it.

So allow me to point out a great evil that both Bidens embrace: late-term abortion.

China, Russia, Canada, and Spain support no restrictions on destroying the fetus. In the United States, most places do provide protections after fetal viability. But President Biden opposes any constraints whatsoever.

Evil? I think so. In order to terminate a pregnancy after 24 weeks, the fetus must be dismembered in the womb using sharp instruments. The fetus feels pain.

The gruesome practice can be justified if the mother's life is in danger or there is catastrophic damage to the fetus itself.

Absent that, it should NOT be accepted in any moral society.

A few months ago, Sean Hannity asked California Governor Gavin Newsom if he supports any restrictions on abortion. Newsom danced but finally admitted he does not.  Eight states allow abortion at anytime for any reason.

It goes against Christian doctrine to individually judge the Bidens' and Kamala Harris for their aggressive promotion of all abortion procedures. No Bill Clinton pronouncement that abortion should be "rare" for them.

And on the evil front, I can say this: if there is a judgment day, I wouldn't want to be them. [source]

Late-term abortion is evil. It is equivalent to infanticide. Good article.

More articles on abortion:

• Making Abortion as Unthinkable as Slavery
• Sen. Graham Reveals 15-Week National Abortion Ban Bill

'Tiny bug slayer' relative of dinosaurs and pterosaurs would have fit in the palm of your hand

From Live Science.com (July 14, 2020):

Massive dinosaurs and pterosaurs have a newfound cousin: a palm-size pipsqueak of a reptile, a new fossil reveals.

Even the name of the newly described reptile — Kongonaphon kely, or "tiny bug slayer" in Malagasy and Greek — is an homage to its diminutive size, as well as its likely diet of hard-shelled insects, the researchers said.

This tiny beast reveals that the dinosaurs and pterosaurs — which reached the sizes of school buses and airplanes, respectively — originated from teensy creatures, the researchers wrote in the study.

"There's a general perception of dinosaurs as being giants," study lead researcher Christian Kammerer, a research curator of paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, said in a statement. "But this new animal is very close to the divergence of dinosaurs and pterosaurs, and it's shockingly small."

K. kely, a resident of Madagascar about 237 million years ago during the Triassic period, measured just 4 inches (10 centimeters) tall. Its anatomy may help to explain how pterosaurs achieved flight and why both dinosaurs and pterosaurs had a feather-like fuzz covering their skin, the team noted. (As a reminder, pterosaurs are reptiles that lived at the same time as dinosaurs, but they are not actually dinosaurs.)

The pipsqueak's fossils were discovered in the Morondava Basin of southwestern Madagascar in 1998 by a group of researchers, led by study co-researcher John Flynn, the Frick Curator of Fossil Mammals at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City (at the time Flynn worked at the Field Museum in Chicago). An analysis of its anatomy revealed that K. kely belongs to the scientific clade called Ornithodira, whose members are the last common ancestors of the dinosaurs and pterosaurs and their descendants.

The early Ornithodira, however, are poorly known, because there are few known specimens like K. kely that date to the beginning of this lineage.

"It took some time before we could focus on these bones, but once we did, it was clear we had something unique and worth a closer look," Flynn said.

K. kely is one of the smallest non-avian ornithodirans on record. Other known early Ornithodira specimens are also small, but previously these critters were thought to be "isolated exceptions to the rule," Kammerer said. [read more]

Which Theory of Evolution? Toppling the Idol of “Settled Science”

From Breakpoint.org (Aug. 10, 2023):

In 1973, evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky wrote that “nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution.” Almost 50 years later, an increasing number of scientists are asking whether evolution makes any sense in light of what we now know from biology.

A recent long-form essay in The Guardian signals just how urgent the problem has become for the most dominant theory in the history of the sciences. In it, author Stephen Buranyi gives voice to a growing number of scientists who think it’s time for a “new theory of evolution.” 

For a long time, descent with slight modifications and natural selection have been “the basic” (and I’d add, unchallengeable) “story of evolution.” Organisms change, and those that survive pass on traits. Though massaged a bit to incorporate the discovery of DNA, the theory of evolution by natural selection has dominated for 150 years, especially in biology. The “drive to survive” is credited as the creative force behind all the artistry and engineering we see in nature. 

“The problem,” writes Buranyi, is that “according to a growing number of scientists,” this basic story is “absurdly crude and misleading.” For one thing, Darwinian evolution assumes much of what it needs to be explained. For instance, consider the origin of light-sensitive cells that rearranged to become the first eye, or the blood vessels that became the first placenta. How did these things originate? According to one University of Indiana biologist, “we still do not have a good answer. The classic idea of gradual change, one happy accident at a time,” he says, “has so far fallen flat.”

This scientific doubt about Darwin has been simmering for a while. In 2014, an article in the journal Nature, jointly authored by eight scientists from diverse fields, argued that evolutionary theory was in need of a serious rethink. They called their proposed rethink the “Extended Evolutionary Synthesis,” and a year later, the Royal Society in London held a conference to discuss it. 

Along with Darwinian blind spots like the origin of the eye, the Extended Synthesis seeks to deal with the discovery of epigenetics, an emerging field that studies inherited traits not mediated by DNA. Then there are the rapid mutations that evade natural selection, a fossil record that appears to move in “short, concentrated bursts” (or “explosions”), and something called “plasticity,” which is the ability we now know living things have to adapt physically to their environments in a single generation without genetically evolving.

These discoveries—some recent, others long ignored by mainstream biology—challenge natural selection as the “grand theory” of life. All of them hint that living things are greater marvels and mysteries than we ever imagined. And, unsurprisingly, all of these discoveries have been controversial.

The Guardian article describes how Royal Society scientists and Nobel laureates alike boycotted the conference, attacking the extended synthesis as “irritating” and “disgraceful,” and its proponents as “revolutionaries.” As Gerd Müller, head of the department of theoretical biology at the University of Vienna helpfully explained, “Parts of the modern synthesis are deeply ingrained in the whole scientific community, in funding networks, positions, professorships. It’s a whole industry.”

Such resistance isn’t too surprising for anyone who’s been paying attention. Any challenges to the established theory of life’s origins, whether from Bible-believing scientists or intelligent design theorists, have long been dismissed as religion in a lab coat.

The habit of fixing upon a dogma and calling it “settled science” is just bad science that stunts our understanding of the world. It is a kind of idolatry that places “science” in the seat of God, appoints certain scientists as priests capable of giving answers no fallible human can offer, and feigns certainty where real questions remain. The great irony is that this image of scientist-as-infallible-priest makes them seem like the caricature of medieval monks charging their hero Galileo with heresy for his dissent from the consensus.

As challenges to Darwin mount, we should be able to articulate why “settled science” makes such a poor god. And we should encourage the science and the scientists challenging this old theory-turned-dogma and holding it to its own standards. After all, if Darwinian evolution is as unfit as it now seems, it shouldn’t survive. [source]

You can’t call quantum physics settled science. Physicists believe it works but there is no settled theory on how it works.