May 27, 2009
Science!
(Tim Jones)
Hey, Tim Jones here, again.
Some British scientists have done some research that appears to solve one of the problems of a particular theory of RNA synthesis that makes this theory more plausible as a possible explanation of the origins of DNA and organic life on earth. That is all.
FOX News runs the headline "Scientists May Have Found How Life Began", which is positively pedestrian compared to the source article from Agence France-Presse, "Chemists See First Building Blocks to Life on Earth".
That's the problem with most science reporting...
---------------
In more fun science news, they're handing out awards for optical illusions, now;
The winning entry, from a Bucknell University professor, may help explain why curve balls in baseball are so tricky to hit.
There are a couple of other cool illusions shown, as well as the design of the award trophy, which is clever.
Posted by Tim Jones in Science | Permalink | Comments (8)
April 26, 2009
Remember This Post 10 Years From Now
(Jimmy Akin)
The gentleman on the left is Fr. Georges Lemaitre, a Belgian priest, physicist, and astronomer who happens to be "the father of the Big Bang." He was one of the first to publish in support of the idea of an expanding cosmos that took its start in a highly compressed state that Lemaitre referred to as a "primeval atom."
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.
3 Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.
I think that's what the ancient author meant the original audience to understand by the text, as a careful reading of it shows.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Apologetics, Science | Permalink | Comments (168)
April 20, 2009
What is cooler than this?
(SDG)
Every day new cool stuff gets invented. But today's coolest news is going to hold the "coolest thing going" record for a few days at least:
Twitter Telepathy: Researchers Turn Thoughts Into Tweets
What is cooler than that?
Once upon a time, "locked-in" Jean-Dominique Bauby had to blink his one eyelid as a therapist pointed at letter groups in order to painstakingly spell out words and write the book that became the movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
Soon patients in his condition will be able to think words onto a computer screen without any direct assistance at all.
Coming soon: Iron Man–like cerebral computer interfaces allowing humans to control robotic devices with a thought? (Note the red color of the helmet in the YouTube video above: Coincidence?)
Posted by SDG in Science | Permalink | Comments (9)
Energy Secretary Chu: "Run in Circles! Scream and Shout!"
(Tim Jones)
Now, aren't you glad that the Obama administration is taking politics out of science? That's what enables energy secretary Steven Chu (nicknamed "Big League" by Obama) to make sober and coldly rational assessments like this;
So,
everyone, run out and buy an electric car right now! Form a drumming
circle, ceremonially break all your conventional light bulbs and
replace them with fluorescents! Drink your own bathwater! Most
importantly, though, be sure not to do anything reckless and
irresponsible like having children, because they will suck up resources
that could be better spent on spotted owls and snail darters and such.
Now, it's true that none of these actions will impact global warming at all, but they will make you feel better - will give you a vague sense of having contributed to something - and anyway, that's the way the herd is going. Polls show that people are concerned about recent polling on attitudes toward global warming. The voters have spoken!... and as we know, democracy is never wrong... just look at Palestine, and the Weimar Republic... and lemmings (an example from nature, which is also never wrong).
Unfortunately, while President Obama and his sycophantic minions cabinet valiantly attempt to keep reason science and politics in completely separate, hermetically sealed envelopes, there are still divisive and radical voices trying to ruin everything;
"Secretary Chu still seems to believe that computer model predictions decades or 100 years from now are some sort of 'evidence' of a looming climate catastrophe, said Marc Morano, executive editor of ClimateDepot.com and former top aide to global warming critic Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla.
"Secretary Chu's assertions on sea level rise and hurricanes are quite simply being proven wrong by the latest climate data. As the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute reported in December 12, 2008: There is 'no evidence for accelerated sea-level rise.'"
Morano said hurricane activity levels in both hemispheres of the globe are at 30 years lows and hurricane experts like MIT's Kerry Emanuel and Tom Knutson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration "are now backing off their previous dire predictions."
He said Chu is out of date on the science and is promoting unverified and alarming predictions that have already been proven contrary.
Posted by Tim Jones in Current Affairs, Science | Permalink | Comments (24)
March 16, 2009
Addendum on ESCR and slippery slopes
(SDG)
Update 2: Link to Saletan’s “Drill Babies, Drill” article corrected.
Update: Hat tip to a friend for reminding me to link to this one (also added to the previous post): Why Embryonic Stem Cells Are Obsolete (U.S. News & World Report)
Following my post on embryonic stem cells and Bill Clinton's double debacle, a couple of quick follow-ups from recent headlines.
First, this morning The New York Times posted an editorial on "The Rules on Stem Cells" that, as First Things's Ryan T. Anderson points out, officially endorses cloning "without calling it that."
Second, on Friday Slate's William Saletan posted an editorial provocatively titled "Drill Babies, Drill," subtitled with the unavoidable question, "If harvesting embryos is OK, how about fetuses?" (Hat tips to Dreher and First Things, among others.)
Rider: Don't miss Krauthammer's response to Obama's ESCR speech, linked to previously at the end of my previous post.
Posted by SDG in Science | Permalink | Comments (9)
Embryonic stem cells: Bill Clinton's double debacle
(SDG)
Update:Jill Stanek link corrected.
I know there's already been some coverage of this, but the full scope of the issue is bigger than most of the coverage out there indicates (hat tips and additional links below).
Within the last month, former president Bill Clinton has done two jaw-dropping interviews at CNN on the subject of embryonic stem-cell research — one with Larry King and one with Sanjay Gupta — that indicate a stunning level of confusion on the basic biological facts of what an embryo is, what stem cells are, what "fertilization" in reproductive biology refers to, and even what can be fertilized or used to fertilize something.
While attempting to reflect on the moral and ethical implications of the issue, Clinton's apparent ignorance of the basic biological facts was so total as to make his comments incomprehensible even on the level of biology, let alone morality and ethics.
In the first interview, from the February 17 broadcast of Larry King Live, Clinton spoke, almost in the same sentence, about "stem cells" becoming "fertilized" and being used to "fertilize eggs." And he claims to "feel strongly about this"!
From CNN's transcript (emphasis added):
But let me say, I feel very strongly about this. I think that I worked hard on the sequencing of the human genome. We finished it when I was president. Now there are all these practical applications being spun out of it. We've identified the genes that were high predictors of breast cancer. We're getting close on Parkinson's. We're even making headway on Alzheimer's. But this stem cell research, if the stem cells are frozen embryonic stem cells, if they are never going to be used to be fertilized, to bring a life into being, then I think making them available for medical research is the pro-life position and I honestly don't understand — I would understand it if we were going and raiding stem cell banks, where these stem cells were going to be used to actually fertilize eggs and have babies. But it's not going to happen. I think it's very wrong to just throw these things in the trash can.
This excerpt alone is so bewildering as to defy explanation. In the first bolded section, Clinton talks about "stem cells" becoming (or not becoming) "fertilized" (suggesting that a "stem cell" is "unfertilized," but could be "fertilized" at some future point). But in the second bolded section he refers to stem cells being used to "fertilize eggs!"
Which does he think it is? Are the "frozen embryonic stem cells" he thinks we're talking about agents or subjects of fertilization? That is, do you "fertilize" stem cells, or "fertilize eggs" with them? (In reality, of course, neither is the case.)
"Raiding stem cell banks, where these stem cells were going to be used to actually fertilize eggs and have babies?" Raise your hand, please, if you have ever heard of anyone having a baby, or even trying to have a baby, by going to a "stem cell bank" to get "stem cells" to "fertilize eggs."
This strange comment almost makes it sound as if he's confusing "stem cell banks" with sperm banks — but the earlier comment about stem cells being (i.e., becoming) fertilized makes it sound as if he's confusing "stem cells" with eggs, or ova.
Where does Clinton think the "stem cell bank" gets its embryonic stem cells? Does he not understand, or is he deliberately obfuscating, that the moral issue with using embryonic stem cells is not "what would happen" to them (i.e., whether they might be used to "bring a life into being", whether by becoming "fertilized" or being "used to fertilize eggs") in the future, but how we get them, i.e., by destroying an already existing embryonic life growing from a fertilized egg?
But that's only the beginning, Last week, Clinton compounded the issue in a second CNN interview with Dr. Sanjay Gupta, in which he refers to conducting embryonic stem cell research using only "embryos" that will never become "fertilized" — six times. What's more, Gupta let all six references pass without comment!
Here's the video (excerpts below):
Excerpts from CNN's transcript (emphasis added):
CLINTON: If it's obvious that we're not taking embryos that can — that under any conceivable scenario would be used for a process that would allow them to be fertilized and become little babies … then I think the American people will support this. …
GUPTA: Any reservations?
CLINTON: I don't know that I have any reservations, but I was — he [Obama] has apparently decided to leave to the relevant professional committees the definition of which frozen embryos are basically going to be discarded, because they're not going to be fertilized. I believe the American people believe it's a pro-life decision to use an embryo that's frozen and never going to be fertilized for embryonic stem cell research, especially since now, not withstanding some promising developments, most of the scientists in this field and the doctors will tell you they don't know of any other source as good as embryonic stem cells for all the various things that need to be researched.
But those committees need to be really careful to make sure if they don't want a big storm to be stirred up here, that any of the embryos that are used clearly have been placed beyond the pale of being fertilized before their use. There are a large number of embryos that we know are never going to be fertilized, where the people who are in control of them have made that clear. The research ought to be confined to those. …
But there are values involved that we all ought to feel free to discuss in all scientific research. And that is the one thing that I think these committees need to make it clear that they're not going to fool with any embryos where there's any possibility, even if it's somewhat remote, that they could be fertilized and become human beings.
Once again, it's hard to know where to begin. Almost as stunning as Clinton's apparent radical confusion on Biology 101 is Gupta's failure to comment on the factual misuse of a critical scientific term (from someone "who studied this" in Gupta's own words) cropping up six times. Once or possibly even twice an interviewer might let a word go, if he thought it was just a slip of the tongue, but six times? (This — Gupta — was Obama's pick for Surgeon General?)
In passing, I have to note the sheer condescension toward pro-lifers of Gupta's opening salvo: "First of all, let me just ask you, as someone who studied this, is this going to always be as divisive an issue as it is now? Is this going to be the abortion of the next generation? Or are people going to come around?" Does he have any idea what he's talking about?
If we had only this interview, one might possibly speculate that Clinton simply meant to say "implanted" rather than fertilized. Six times. Of course, even on that speculation, Clinton would still be dead wrong, on several levels.
For one thing, it is not true that "most of the scientists in this field and the doctors will tell you they don't know of any other source as good as embryonic stem cells for all the various things that need to be researched." Especially now that cell reprogramming no longer requires viral integration to create pluripotent stem cells — and evidence continues to mount that adult and cord-blood stem cells, not embryonic stem cells, have all the practical promise and yield the effective therapies — embryonic stem cell research is effectively obsolete.
Beyond that, the idea of frozen embryos lying around (whether in stem cell banks or elsewhere) for which there is no possibility "under any conceivable (sic!) scenario", "even if it's remote," of implantation and childbirth, is dodgy at best. Frozen embryo adoption may be controversial, but the fact that it's possible at all and does occur makes Swiss cheese of Clinton's "under any conceivable scenario/even if it's remote" rhetoric. (The Church is still up in the air on frozen embryo adoption, but she hasn't rejected it, and she certainly does reject destroying innocent life.) No wonder Clinton acknowledges the question of the "definition" (always a key word with him, isn't it?) of "which frozen embryos are basically going to be discarded."
Going further, while it's not impossible — especially if Americans generally are at least as ignorant on the biological facts as Clinton seems to be — that many Americans would agree that a frozen embryo with no immediate prospects of being allowed to implant and grow might acceptably be destroyed for spare parts and used for research, it is certainly not "pro-life." (Though it is true that some who might call themselves "pro-life" on abortion, e.g., Mormons, don't view ESCR in the same light, because they view implantation rather than fertilization as the beginning of personhood. They may even say that life begins "at conception," but by "conception" they mean implantation, not fertilization. For this reason many pro-lifers prefer to say specifically that life begins "at fertilization" rather than "at conception." Of course, if most people understand "fertilization" no better than Clinton, it probably doesn't make things any clearer.)
I could go on, but it's a moot point, since combined with the Larry King interview it's clear that Clinton's confusion goes way beyond mixing up fertilization and implantation. In fact, the similarities of the comments in the two interviews may even suggest that Clinton is using "frozen embryonic stem cells" (in the Larry King interview) and "frozen embryos" (in the second interview) more or less synonymously. That's right: I suspect Clinton may not understand that an "embryo" is anything more than a collection of "embryonic stem cells," or that you have to destroy the one to obtain the other for research purposes. He certainly doesn't seem to understand what is being destroyed, or what stem cells once obtained might be good for (since he seems to think you can "fertilize eggs" with them).
This is a Rhodes scholar and a two-term president, a man who claims to have thought seriously about life issues — who has signed (and vetoed) legislation on life issues?
Having said all that, it must be noted that in one important respect Clinton's thoughts on ESCR are actually superior to President Obama's: At least Clinton realizes that ESCR raises serious moral and ethical issues. President Obama's recent address shows a complete dearth of similar insight.
There's been a lot of commentary on Obama's speech. I'll restrict myself here to a couple of excerpts from Charles Krauthammer, who says that he is "not religious" and does not believe that personhood begins "at conception":
Obama's address was morally unserious in the extreme. It was populated, as his didactic discourses always are, with a forest of straw men. Such as his admonition that we must resist the "false choice between sound science and moral values." Yet, exactly 2 minutes and 12 seconds later he went on to declare that he would never open the door to the "use of cloning for human reproduction."
Does he not think that a cloned human would be of extraordinary scientific interest? And yet he banned it.
In conclusion:
Dr. James Thomson, the pioneer of embryonic stem cells, said "if human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough." Obama clearly has not.
Nuff said.
Some additional links:
Bill Clinton to Gupta on CNN: Ok to research embryos if they're not fertilized (Jill Stanek - Hat tip for the Larry King catch)
Video: Bill Clinton doesn’t understand human biology? (Hot Air - Hat tip for the Jill Stanek link)
American Adults, Presidents, Flunk Basic Science (First Things)
CNN's Sanjay Gupta Fails to Correct Bill Clinton's Multiple 'Embryos Aren't Fertilized' Gaffe (NewsBusters)
Posted by SDG in Science | Permalink | Comments (13)
February 06, 2009
Recurring dreams
(SDG)
SDG here. In my previous post I noted that my new review of Coraline begins with comments about something I've often told my children to reassure them after a bad dream. One thing I've said, again and again, is that the dream is all gone now and they don't have to worry about getting back into it again — they won't, I promise.
To this, someone commented below: "That's a promise you can't keep."
Now, I'm convinced that, in fact, I'm right that they cannot and will not get back into the same dream again, for reasons I'll explain. I would never, ever say something like that to my child unless I were convinced it was the truth. (Strictly speaking, though, it's true that I can't "keep" that promise, and I'm not sure the word "promise" is technically used correctly here. Properly speaking, a promise is ordinarily a commitment about future behavior; I'm not sure you can "promise" that something is true, though the word does get used that way.)
Semantics aside, I'm convinced that fears (or hopes) about getting back into a particular dream after waking up from it are either entirely misplaced, or at least almost entirely so. In fact, I'm pretty skeptical about the whole notion of recurring dreams. Either it doesn't happen at all — whatever we may think we have experienced — or at least is much less common than people think. And I'm very skeptical that the process of waking up from a dream and then going back to sleep could ever produce a continuation of the same narrative.
Now, obviously general themes and motifs recur over time: flying, floating and fantasy dreams; anxiety dreams (being naked in a public place, missing or being unprepared for class, unable to find documents, clothing, children, parents, etc.); physiological dreams (needing to find a bathroom, standing in the cold, etc.); etc. We may also dream more than once of meeting someone who has died, etc.
In any greater specificity than that, though, I'm skeptical about the perception of recurring dreams. My belief is this. When people think they've had a specific dream before -- not just general themes, but the same narrative -- that sense of deja vu is mistaken. What really happens is that the dream itself creates a sense of deja vu, either because you really play through the same scenario more than once in a single dream, or else you play through the scenario anticipating what will happen, since of course what will happen is a function of what's happening in your own head. (In either case the sense of recurrence may carry with it the option of revising the events.)
I used to believe that as a child I had a recurring nightmare about being sucked by rushing wind from my bed and down the stairs to the living room where there was a monster under the coffee table. Looking back, I'm willing to bet that I only had the dream once — but I anticipated the whole dream so clearly that I thought it happened to me again and again.
Even so, as skeptical as I am about recurring dreams in general, I just flat-out don't believe at all that the process of waking up and going back to sleep can ever produce a continuation of the same narrative. If you're anxious about something and you have an anxiety dream, you might fall asleep again and have a different anxiety dream, but not more of the same. Likewise, if you wake up from a wonderful flying dream and try to fall back asleep, you will not, alas, wind up flying again. Some other night, maybe.
Many times I've said to my children, "Trust me, the dream won't come back. Let's see if I'm right. When you wake up in the morning, tell me if the dream comes back." So far it never has. And, Incidentally, I've talked this over with at least one Catholic mental health professional and a number of other people, and I'm convinced I'm onto something. So I'm willing to stake my moral certitude that I'm right for the sake of my child's reassurance.
Now, what I would never tell a kid is that they won't have a different nightmare — another dream just as bad as the first one. That's obviously a live possibility, but strangely at the moment they aren't worried about that. They're worried about that dream: that monster, that scary scenario. In their minds, it's out there waiting for them, like a real place they could find their way back to. I don't believe it. Once they wake up, it's gone. So I reassure them, and it works, and so far I've never, ever had a kid report that the dream came back.
Now, of course, it's quite possible that some readers may write in the combox about their experiences with recurring dreams. Of course I can't rebut what people feel sure has happened to them. But I remain skeptical.
Posted by SDG in Science | Permalink | Comments (55)
January 15, 2009
2009 . . . The Year We Make Contact (Sorta . . . Maybe . . . We'll See)
(Jimmy Akin)
The picture on the left is the planet Mars--not as it usually looks (dirty red), but as a false color image to show the presence of something very interesting on the red planet.
Or rather, something very interesting above the surface of the red planet.
The red and yellow patches represent zones of the martian atmosphere in which there is an strong presence of methane.
Why is that significant?
Methane is a compound that is released by life.
And a few other things, such as mud volcanoes. (MUD VOLCANOES! WOO-HOO!)
But there are no known mud volanoes, or active volcanoes of any sort, on Mars.
So that raises the possibility that this stuff is caused by life. Specifically: By underground microbes.
In fact, we see a phenomenon a lot like this on earth. Here on terra firma there are various places where large pockets of underground microbes that produce large plumes of methane in our atmosphere. (Which is one reason why the pluming effect seen above is significant; the stuff isn't even spread throughout the martian atmosphere. Something down on the surface--or below--is generating it.)
In fact, there's one such place not too far up the coast from me in Santa Barbara.
The pattern is also cyclical, with the methane plumes appearing in the martian spring and summer . . . just when the planet is getting warmer and life might be more active . . . and disappearing in the martian fall and winter.
So there are some NASA scientists who are really stoked and talking publicly about this as a possible sign of life.
And it's not the first we've had. In the 1990s there was that meteorite from Mars that showed (debatable) fossils of microorganisms, and back in the 1970s one of the Viking probe tests for life gave a positive result (though other tests didn't).
So . . . who knows? In the photo above you may be looking at the atmospheric signature of life on Mars . . . or not. There are geochemical processes that could produce the same thing.
We'd need to do more tests to know.
I'd love to know the answer on this, but even if there is life, I'd like to know the answer to another question: Where did it come from?
Even if Mars has life, it may not be native to Mars. It may have come from . . . Earth.
As Martian meteorites (there's more than one!) illustrate, matter can pass from one planet to another in the solar system, and here on Earth we have microorganisms that are extremophiles--able to live in very inhospitable environments.
These could be carried to other planets due to impact events that blow chunks of Earth rock into space, or (for all I know) they could be high in the Earth's atmosphere and get carried to other worlds by the solar wind (and Mars is definitely downwind from Earth).
So far as I can tell, we may find extremophile organisms from Earth all over the solar system--living ones where they find a suitable niche and the dead remains of them elsewhere.
So, I've still got questions: (1) Is there really life on Mars? and (2) If there is, where did it come from? Earth? Mars? Or somewhere else?
Thursday NASA had a presser on all this, but they don't have embeddable on-demand video of it on their web site at this point (stupid government agency!) and nobody has yet posted it to YouTube, but
HERE'S A GOOD LIVE-BLOGGING SUMMARY OF IT.
MORE FROM THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Science | Permalink | Comments (30)
December 31, 2008
"The heavens declare the glory of God...
(Tim Jones)
...the skies proclaim the work of his hands."
Psalm 19:1
Cool celestial light show for New Year's Eve.
Posted by Tim Jones in Science | Permalink | Comments (3)
November 18, 2008
A.D. 1879
(Jimmy Akin)
What happened in 1879?
Well, the California Constitution was ratified.
The Anglo-Zulu War began.
Madison Square Garden opened.
Doc Holliday killed his first man.
The apparition at Knock, Ireland occured.
The Pirates of Penzance was first performed.
Thomas Edison demonstrated incandescent light to the public for the first time.
Oh, and something else happened . . .
The light captured in the above photograph was released.
You're looking at a picture of the year 1879--a picture that was only just taken.
How's that?
It's because the light captured in the picture left the star system cataloged as HR 8799, some 129 light years from earth.
Why do I say "star system" instead of just "star"? Because, while the star is the center blob in the picture, the three small dots are actually planets.
This is the first extra-solar planetary system to be observed and photographed directly.
The planets are about 2 to 2.5 times the size of Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, and they orbit the star in periods between 100 and 460 years.
We have this view of them because we're apparently oriented so that we're looking down at the plane of the HR 8799 solar system.
There could be terrestrial planets closer in to the star, but not much chance for life there. The star is too young and too variable, but it's so cool have visible light pictures of another star system.
Oh, and THIS SYSTEM ISN'T THE ONLY ONE TO BE PHOTOGRAPHED.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Science | Permalink | Comments (72)
