Science & TechnologyS


Beaker

Scientists attempting to revive woolly mammoths look for alternate methods


PhysOrg
Tue, 12 Mar 2019 17:59 UTC
frozen carcass mammoth
The frozen carcass of a female mammoth on display in Yokohama a few years ago.
A team of scientists in Japan has successfully coaxed activity from 28,000-year-old cells from a frozen mammoth implanted into mouse cells, but the woolly mammal is unlikely to be walking among us soon.

The project by an international team took cell nuclei from a well-preserved mammoth discovered in 2011 in Siberian permafrost and placed them into several dozen mouse egg cells.

Of those, five displayed the biological reactions that happen just before cell division begins, said Kei Miyamoto, a member of the team at Kindai University in western Japan.
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Book 2

Another shoddy review of Behe's new book on the limits of Darwinian evolution shows the limits of the Darwinian intellect

Michael Behe
Evolution News
Tue, 12 Mar 2019 18:04 UTC
jerry coyne
© YouTubeJerry Coyne on The Dave Rubin Show
As noted here earlier, University of Chicago evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne reviewed Darwin Devolves for this past Sunday's Washington Post. As you might expect, it's written in the venerable style of Richard Dawkins's review of The Edge of Evolution for the New York Times back in 2007: long on sneering, smearing, and assertion; short to nonexistent on telling readers what the book's actual arguments are. Alas, Coyne's piece has too little intellectual content to sustain any real engagement. So I'll simply proceed from its beginning to its end, with lines from his review in bullet points and italics. My comments follow directly after each.
  • "intelligent design" arose after opponents of evolution repeatedly failed on First Amendment grounds to get Bible-based creationism taught in the public schools. ... : intelligent design, which scientists have dubbed "creationism in a cheap tuxedo."
Good idea - let's link the author to a scorned group right at the start and smear his motives.
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Info

Tiny insect uses plant stems to communicate

Andrew Masterson
Cosmos Magazine
Wed, 13 Mar 2019 17:42 UTC
Planthopper
© WIKIPEDIAA happy-snapping planthopper.
A small-sized but common group of insects known as planthoppers - comprising the order Fulgoromorpha - advertise their presence to potential mates by deploying a unique, and only now discovered, organ to send long-distance messages along plant stems.

There are more than 12,000 species of planthopper worldwide, and their secret communication device - dubbed the "snapping organ" - was found by researchers led by zoologist Leonidas-Romanos Davranoglou from the University of Oxford in the UK while examining one of them, Agalmatium bilobum.

Locating the organ answered a key question about the group. How could each insect produce a sustained thrumming vibration along plant stems when its musculature was simply not capable of moving fast enough to produce it?

The answer, Davranoglou and colleagues found, lies in the mechanics of the snapping organ.

It functions through the explosive release stored elastic energy. A catapult provides a reasonable approximation, except that for the planthoppers the release forms one half of a high-speed cycle of capture and release that results in a shaking movement of the abdomen and the narrowcast of mating signals.
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Chalkboard

Best of the Web: Scientists see how bone marrow treatment for cancer can also benefit individuals with symptoms of schizophrenia

Moises Velasquez-Manoff
The New York Times
Fri, 28 Sep 2018 00:00 UTC
man graphc
A bone-marrow transplant treated a patient's leukemia - and his delusions, too. Some doctors think they know why.

The man was 23 when the delusions came on. He became convinced that his thoughts were leaking out of his head and that other people could hear them. When he watched television, he thought the actors were signaling him, trying to communicate. He became irritable and anxious and couldn't sleep.

Dr. Tsuyoshi Miyaoka, a psychiatrist treating him at the Shimane University School of Medicine in Japan, eventually diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia. He then prescribed a series of antipsychotic drugs. None helped. The man's symptoms were, in medical parlance, "treatment resistant."

A year later, the man's condition worsened. He developed fatigue, fever and shortness of breath, and it turned out he had a cancer of the blood called acute myeloid leukemia. He'd need a bone-marrow transplant to survive. After the procedure came the miracle. The man's delusions and paranoia almost completely disappeared. His schizophrenia seemingly vanished.

Comment: See also:

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Info

Blood holds key to liver regeneration says new study


Michigan State University
Fri, 08 Mar 2019 03:24 UTC
Blood and Liver Regeneration
© Michigan State University
The liver is the only organ in the body that can regenerate. But some patients who undergo a liver resection, a surgery that removes a diseased portion of the organ, end up needing a transplant because the renewal process doesn't work.

A new Michigan State University study, published in the journal Blood, shows that the blood-clotting protein fibrinogen may hold the key as to why this happens.

"We discovered that fibrinogen accumulates within the remaining liver quickly after surgery and tells platelets to act as first responders, triggering the earliest phase of regeneration," said James Luyendyk, a professor of pathobiology in the College of Veterinary Medicine. "But if fibrinogen or platelets are inhibited, then regeneration is delayed."

Platelets are blood cells that help form clots and stop bleeding. When they receive information from fibrinogen, they go into action and accumulate in the remaining part of the liver to help restore it, increasing the chances of a fully functional liver and successful recovery.

Using samples from patients undergoing liver resection and a comparable model in mice, Luyendyk and his team noticed that when fibrinogen was low, the number of platelets in the liver decreased.

"This shows that fibrinogen deposits are extremely important and directly impact regeneration in both mice and humans," Luyendyk said.
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Beaker

Researchers 'surprised' to find viruses evolve by... devolving!


Uncommon Descent
Mon, 11 Mar 2019 22:43 UTC
viruses
The main thesis of Behe's new book, Darwin Devolves, surrounds what Behe calls "poison-pill" mutations, which gives an organism a quick fix, but which can run the risk of being incapable of utilizing future needed adaptations. In other words, breaking and blunting genes to adapt to new environments become changes that get locked in due to natural selection's tendency to root out anything but what is the 'fittest' in any environment - and this can include even beneficial mutations being rooted out due to beneficial mutations being so rare and showing up way too late to modify the adapted organism.

So, today at Phys.Org there is a PR (press release) about a study involving viruses. It turns out that even at the level of viruses, the First Rule of Adaptative Evolution applies: a broken gene ends up being beneficial to the virus, allowing it to replicate itself when it has been rendered almost unable to do so by the host's immune system.
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Doberman

Science slander: Scientists link Behe's 'Darwin Devolves' to measles, catastrophic climate change

David Klinghoffer
Evolution News
Sat, 09 Mar 2019 20:23 UTC
American Association for the Advancement of Science, HQ, Washington, D.C.
© Matthew G. Bisanz [CC BY-SA 3.0] / Wikimedia Commons.American Association for the Advancement of Science, HQ, Washington, D.C.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a national group devoted, as Wikipedia says, to "promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, and supporting scientific education and science outreach for the betterment of all humanity." Wow, that's important stuff! Among other endeavors, they publish Science Magazine, the top science journal in the U.S.

All this sounds very serious, very distinguished, very sober. But check this out. Science published the remarkable "train wreck" of a review of Michael Behe's book, Darwin Devolves. As we've demonstrated, that was pretty much an embarrassment. Besides publishing Science, the AAAS also has an "online, global news service." It's called EurekAlert! and it issues press releases for research by universities and other bodies. The media then takes those and runs with them.

A Press Release About a Book Review

Well, EurekaAlert! issued a press release about the Science review of Darwin Devolves. A press release about a book review? Strange to say, but yes. And it's a gem. It was provided by the City University of New York, which employs reviewer Nathan H Lents. (He teaches at CUNY's John Jay College.) There is no named author. It would be interesting to find out who wrote it.

Comment: The AAAS obviously doesn't want you to read Darwin Devolves. So if you value your children, your sanity, and the fate of the poor polar bears (purely products of Darwinian evolution, remember), do your self a favor and absolutely positively do NOT read Behe's book. Do not go to Amazon, do not purchase it for a deceptively reasonable $19, and do not ever question Darwin's dogma.

And make sure not to read either of the following articles either:

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Fire

Volcano in Iceland Is one of the largest sources of volcanic CO2, 'rarely included in calculations'

Terri Cook
EoS
Mon, 11 Mar 2019 10:30 UTC
Katla
© Evgenia IlyinskayaAn airborne view of the massive glacier (600 square kilometers and up to 700 meters thick) that covers Katla, one of Iceland's most active and hazardous volcanoes. New research of Katla's emissions suggests that ice-covered volcanoes may emit greater quantities of carbon dioxide than previously estimated.
High-precision airborne measurements, in combination with atmospheric modeling, suggest that the Katla subglacial caldera may be one of the planet's biggest sources of volcanic carbon dioxide.

The emission rate of carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of the less obvious-but nevertheless significant-measures of volcanic activity. Volcanic CO2 emissions are also important for understanding the preindustrial climate balance. To date, estimates of global volcanic CO2 emissions have been extrapolated primarily from measurements collected at a small number of active sources. Ice-covered volcanic centers are prevalent, but they are often difficult to access, and their vents are difficult to discern, so they are rarely included in these calculations.

Comment: While it's clear that much greater forces are driving our planet's climate, it's notable what global warmists fail to include in their obviously erroneous models.

See: And check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Earth changes in an electric universe: Is climate change really man-made?

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Ice Cube

Researchers solve mystery of Antarctica's emerald icebergs


Sputnik
Sun, 10 Mar 2019 16:51 UTC
green icebergs
© Youtube/ScreenshotWhy are some icebergs green?
Scientists have apparently come up with a new explanation for a phenomenon that has left researchers across the world scratching their heads for over a century.

A team of glaciologists from the University of Washington claim to have solved the enigma of emerald green icebergs floating around Antarctica, and suggested that the reason behind it is iron oxide.

In a study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, they made an assumption that significant amounts of iron oxide in rock dust from Antarctica's mainland are trapped in the ice.
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Music

NASA transforms a Hubble photo into a stunningly eerie musical composition

Jacinta Bowler
Science Alert
Sat, 09 Mar 2019 13:00 UTC
Space - Hubble image
© ESA/Hubble/NASA/RELICSSPACE
The Universe is a wondrous place, full of vast numbers of planets to explore, unsolved mysteries, and even 'superbubbles' blown by black holes.

But there's one thing that space really isn't: loud. Without Earth's air molecules to help you hear, out there in space you'd be listening to a whole lot of silence.

Luckily, that hasn't stopped NASA from figuring out a way to produce sound in the soundlessness of space - by 'sonifying' the above image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Yep, move over music, podcasts, or audio-books- the new thing to listen to is Hubble images.

The image NASA used for this project was taken by the Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide-Field Camera 3 back in August last year.

The guys working with Hubble call the image a 'galactic treasure chest' because of the number of galaxies splattered across it.

"Each visible speck of a galaxy is home to countless stars," NASA explains about the image.

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