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"It has long been believed that the main force of natural selection on protein-coding genes is the need to maintain a working protein," says Drummond, a Bauer Fellow in Harvard's FAS Center for Systems Biology. "Our work suggests that another force may be equally important: the need to avoid misfolded proteins resulting from errors in translation."

Crushing scientific dissent By Christopher CookI have a dualistic and conflicted view of science and scientists. One the one hand, I respect greatly the rigor and honesty with which most scientists conduct themselves. I respect the field's idealized desire for the truth, no matter where it leads.On the other hand, I realize that while there is an idealized desire for truth, the unfortunate fact is that science, like every other human field of endeavor, is run by humans. And scientists, like all humans, run the gamut: Some are honest. Some are honest but lazy. Some are honest but do the...

Creationism is much more specific and much less plausible. Its central claim is that the precise mode of creation has been revealed in the Bible, and follows the pattern set out in the first chapter of Genesis. In thus identifying God’s action with a particular series of events and a particular timetable, rather than as the ultimate mystery underlying all reality, it lays itself open to the possibility of direct conflict with alternative scientific explanations. The main motive for risking this potential conflict has been to uphold belief in the verbal inerrancy of the Bible, and the literal interpretation of...

DINOSAURS were running out of evolutionary steam during their last 50 million years on Earth, scientists have learned. The reptiles were left behind in the "Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution", 100 million years ago, that saw the massive proliferation of vegetation and many animals. While flowering plants, lizards, snakes, birds and mammals all evolved swiftly, dinosaurs plodded behind. A short time later, they were extinct. Researchers made the discovery after using computer programs to produce a "super-tree" of dinosaur lineages. The results showed the most likely pattern of evolution for 440 of the 600 known species of dinosaur. The findings, published in...

Global warming and kittens. While it may seem hard to see the connection between the two - a climate phenomenon that melts glaciers and acidifies oceans, and cuddly, 4-ounce balls of fur - experts say there could be one. Each spring, the onset of warm weather and longer days drives female cats into heat, resulting in a few months of booming kitten populations known as "kitten season." "The brain receives instructions to produce a hormone that basically initiates the heat cycle in a cat," said Nancy Peterson, feral cat program manager of the Humane Society of the United States, "and...

Field mustard. Between 2000 and 2004, southern California had a severe drought. For many plants, including field mustard (a scrawny annual plant with little yellow flowers), a drought means a shorter growing season. A shorter growing season means that plants that flower earlier are more likely to leave seeds than plants that flower later — which are in danger of dying before they’ve finished reproducing. Since flowering time has a large genetic component, a drought — by favoring plants that flower earlier — could cause an evolutionary shift towards early flowering. Has it? Yes. The beauty of plants is that...

Here we go again in Kansas, haggling about evolution. In the mean time evolution keeps on happening and in unexpected ways. For example, you may be familiar with the infectious cancer that is threatening the Tasmanian Devil (AKA Taz) with extinction. This cancer is spread when the Devils bite each other's faces during mating leading to spread of cancer cells from animal to animal. The infectious cancer cells are genetically identical and their spread is believed to be made possible because inbreeding has led to a loss of genetic diversity so that the animal's immune systems are not able to...

A dinosaur 'supertree' has been created that provides the most comprehensive picture ever produced of how dinosaurs evolved. The tree shows the most likely pattern of evolution for 440 of the 600 known species of dinosaur and allows scientists to look for unusual patterns across the whole range of dinosaurs for the first time. A study published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B claims the picture challenges opinions on how quickly dinosaurs expanded during the last 50 million years of their existence. It has long been debated whether dinosaurs were part of the 'terrestrial revolution' that...

Many scientists believe that life started out as nothing more than strands of proto-genetic material known as RNA. A new device automates studies of RNA evolution and could lend insights into the origin of life on Earth. “This is testing evolution – real evolution, not a simulation. The molecules are evolving a new function before your eyes,” says Joyce.

In a statement submitted to the platform committees of both the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee, the Anti-Defamation League reiterated its position on creationism and intelligent design: Creationism, creation science and "intelligent design" theory are all religious theories of creation offered to explain the origins of the universe and are based on varying interpretations of the Bible. ADL has consistently opposed these troubling initiatives -- including so-called "Academic Freedom Acts," which support the teaching and consideration of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution. Advocating the right of students to learn science independently of religious doctrine honors...

In the State Board of Education races, simple math could start another round in the long-running fight in Kansas about evolution. Five seats on the 10-member board are up for election this year, and of those, three are held by moderates who are not seeking re-election. Moderates now hold a 6-4 advantage over social conservatives on the board, so flipping one of those moderate seats to a conservative would create a 5-5 tie. Flipping two moderate seats would produce a conservative majority and could renew the battle against evolution that has brought attention to Kansas several times during the past...

Neuroscientists at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory found that a previously unsuspected set of genes links nature and nurture during a crucial period of brain development. The results, reported in the July 8 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), could lead to treatments for autism and other disorders thought to be tied to brain changes that occur when the developing brain is very susceptible to inputs from the outside world. Nature--in the form of genes--and nurture--in the form of environmental influences--are fundamentally intertwined during this period. "Our work points to how a disorder...

RESEARCHERS believe they have discovered two genes which allow people to hold their drink. Carriers of one or both genes can process alcohol through the body quickly. One effect is that it halves the chance of developing mouth, throat and oesophageal cancer.

New research into inheritance shows we can alter family traits for better or for worse. Jonathan Leake reports For Beatrix Zwart being young means having fun. She works hard, and out of hours she plays hard — including plenty of nights on the town with her friends. “I lead a similar lifestyle to a lot of young professionals in Britain and I don’t intend to have any children until I’m well into my thirties,� said Zwart, a 25-year-old Belgian who lives in London. “I’ve never really thought my lifestyle now could have any effect on my future children or grandchildren.�...

Many people mistakenly believe evolution concerns only past events. As science unlocks the mysteries of evolutionary processes, it simultaneously unlocks other mysteries, including genetic disorders and birth defects. One example is the human disorder ectodermal dysplasia, which can lead to fewer teeth, missing hair and the inability to sweat. "Eda" is the name of the gene responsible for this rare condition. It directs the production of a protein that works as a signal to modify the activity of other developmental genes during embryonic growth.

Now for the first time two SFI researchers explain these patterns within an elegant statistical framework. "The agreement between our model and real-world data is surprisingly close," says SFI Postdoctoral Fellow Aaron Clauset, who, along with SFI Professor Douglas Erwin, presented the findings in a July 18 Science paper. In Clauset and Erwin's model, descendant species are close in size to their ancestors, but with some amount of random variation. But, this variation is constrained, first by a hard limit on how small a species can become, due to physiological constraints, and second by a soft limit on how large...

Where to begin? Delving into this particularly sordid bit of Failed Academic Dementia is difficult, both because one hardly wants to start the day wading through a sewer, and because there are so many angles and implications to the story that it makes for large and unwieldy blogposts. For those who have been in a cave since last week, PZ Myers, a washed-up academic at a third tier school who takes out his bitterness on Christians, claimed that some human toothache named Webster Cook had received death threats for stealing a Eucharist and threatening to desecrate it. Reader John Farrell...

Richard Dawkins is that rare specimen, a public intellectual, a knight of the mind who goes into battle against the ignorance and foolhardiness of the populace. Unlike the French, who worship their public intellectuals, giving them pet names such as les intellos, and airing them regularly on serious television and in print, the British like to shove academics into a musty corner, or laugh at them. This was not always the case: the Victorians, with their public lectures and royal societies, gloried in debate and celebrated the thrills of fresh knowledge. The nearest we get to this now is celebrating...

It has been established beyond all reasonable doubt that the Moon is not what it appears; that it is not just another satellite orbiting a planet, Earth, but an entity which has thrown the minds of some of the greatest thinkers and scientific brains into a quandary and bewilderment unprecedented in the history of astronomy. Why haven't you heard about this? Another government cover-up? How could Moon mysteries have anything to do with government secrecy, and moreover could it relate to the suppression of the space programme?

Evolution may provide us with the most abundant phenotypes (observable genetic characteristics) rather than the fittest, according to a new theory published on July 18 in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology. That is, natural selection may be optimal for choosing the most fit organism of the moment, but evolutionary biologists question if the process leads to the optimal organisms in the long run. Researchers from The University of Texas at Austin, led by Drs. Matthew Cowperthwaite and Lauren Ancel Meyers, propose a new theory: life may not always be optimal.

Some bacterial cells can swim, morph into new forms and even become dangerously virulent - all without initial involvement of DNA. Yale University researchers describe July 18 in the journal Science how bacteria accomplish this amazing feat - and in doing so provide a glimpse of what the earliest forms of life on Earth may have looked like.

With a name like T. rex, you'd expect to be safe from even the fiercest paleo-bullies. Turns out, ancient, flying reptiles could have snacked on Tyrannosaurus Rex To uncover these feeding habits, Witton and Portsmouth colleague Darren Naish analyzed fossils of a group of toothless pterosaurs called azhdarchids, which are muchbabies and other landlubbing runts of the dinosaur world. A new study reveals a group of flying reptiles that lived during the Age of Dinosaurs some 230 million to 65 million years ago did not catch prey in flight, but rather stalked them on land. Until now, paleontologists pictured the...

No one knows how life began, but so-called theories of evolution are continually being announced. This book, The Altenberg 16: Will the Real Theory of Evolution Please Stand Up? exposes the rivalry in science today surrounding attempts to discover that elusive mechanism of evolution, as rethinking evolution is pushed to the political front burner in hopes that "survival of the fittest" ideology can be replaced with a more humane explanation for our existence and stave off further wars, economic crises and destruction of the Earth. Evolutionary science is as much about the posturing, salesmanship, stonewalling and bullying that goes on...

What they found was 12 percent of United States high school biology teachers consider creationism a "valid scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species," and believe "many reputable scientists view these as valid alternatives to Darwinian theory."

I've been reading Michael Dowd's Thank God for Evolution, and at the same time reading about what's going on at the Altenberg 16. It is pretty clear where the next wave of science and theology is going, and sadly, it looks like its going to be another 150 years of chasing our tail. As is starting to be admitted, Darwinism got us nowhere. The point of Darwinism was to remove God entirely from the process of diversification of life, and perhaps even from Creation itself. The hope of Darwinism has always been the three pillars of natural selection: * Heredity...

Some 40,000 years ago, Cro-Magnons -- the first people who had a skeleton that looked anatomically modern -- entered Europe, coming from Africa. A group of geneticists, coordinated by Guido Barbujani and David Caramelli of the Universities of Ferrara and Florence, shows that a Cro-Magnoid individual who lived in Southern Italy 28,000 years ago was a modern European, genetically as well as anatomically.

...Near the end of the silly new anti-evolution film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed—in which fellow panelist Steve Meyer appeared—host Ben Stein asks Richard Dawkins, who is arguably the best-known living evolutionary biologist on the planet, if he could think of any circumstances under which intelligent design might have occurred. Incautiously, Dawkins brings up the idea that aliens might have seeded life on earth; so-called directed panspermia. This idea was suggested by biologists Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel back in the 1970s. In the film, Stein acts like this is a great "gotcha," like it's the silliest thing he's ever heard....

Dr. Wilson was not picking a fight when he published “Sociobiology” in 1975, a synthesis of ideas about the evolution of social behavior. He asserted that many human behaviors had a genetic basis, an idea then disputed by many social scientists and by Marxists intent on remaking humanity. Dr. Wilson was amazed at what ensued, which he describes as a long campaign of verbal assault and harassment with a distinctly Marxist flavor led by two Harvard colleagues, Richard C. Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould. The new fight is one Dr. Wilson has picked. It concerns a central feature of evolution,...

Research published in Nature Genetics by a team of international scientists including the University of Melbourne, Department of Zoology, has established an identical mechanism of genetic imprinting, a process involved in marsupial and human fetal development, which evolved 150 million years ago

Sexually deceptive orchids, as biologists have long known, look and can even smell so much like a female insect that males will try to mate with the flower in a sometimes vigorous process that can result in pollination. But scientists now report that the tongue orchids of Australia are such thoroughly convincing mimics of female wasps that males not only try to mate with them, but they actually do mate with them — to the point of ejaculation.

Watch the amazing video. (Six minutes long) Incredible: what more's there to say? Incredible. Based on Judson Laipply's "Evolution of Dance Video," but way better. We get to see a robot doing Vanilla Ice's dance moves better than he did. A robot doing the "walk like an Egyptian" dance. The upcoming MechRC robot has been under development for three years and has 17 independently-controlled servos, and built-in audio. And if this video is anything to go by, when it goes on sale in the fall it should make quite a dent in the miniature robot world.

At long last, the world has recognized the importance of the fossils Dawson discovered a century and a half ago as a young geologist walking along a beach at Joggins, N.S. His finds would inspire Charles Darwin, document the emergence of the world's first reptiles, and supply evidence that reptiles, mammals and birds share common ancestry.

An anti-religion Minnesota biology professor expects to receive dozens of consecrated Communion wafers in response to his public solicitation that people send him the hosts in order that he may publicly desecrate them. He also said he wants to point out that "I am under no obligation to revere the sacred objects of the Catholic Church.... I don't have to treat it as a little idol." In an interview Friday, Mr. Myers said he already had received "a double-digit number" of positive responses, from people saying that they would try to get consecrated Catholic hosts for him and that the...

PLEASE WRITE IN SUPPORT OF PZ MYERS.By Richard Dawkins Readers of yesterday's thread "It's a Goddamned Cracker" will be aware of somebody called Bill Donohue, whose grasp of reality is so poor that he can't tell the difference between a wafer and Jesus. The shrieking hysteria of Donohue and other Roman Catholics over the temporary removal of a communion wafer from a church service epitomises all that is ridiculous in the religious mind. Today's development is that Donohue is now inciting a witch-hunt against PZ, and is trying to whip up Roman Catholics to write to the President of the...

A bill protecting the critical analysis of evolution by Louisiana public school teachers outraged committed Darwinists last month when it cruised through both houses of the state legislature with overwhelming bipartisan support. Not a single state senator voted against the Science Education Act and just three of 97 state representatives opposed it—this despite strong public relations campaigns condemning the legislation from several high-profile organizations and individuals. In the wake of that crushing defeat, the rhetoric of the bill's opponents morphed into threats of costly lawsuits. The Louisiana Coalition for Science called the development an "embarrassment" and warned that it would...

In the past, I have observed that the newsmedia and scientific establishment commonly promote the Darwinist bias against intelligent design (ID), where the media "carefully selects the sources of information it will broadcast to the public on this issue." (To see how various groups in the establishment serve as checkpoints to prevent scientific information that challenges neo-Darwinism from reaching the public, observe the diagram at left.) National Geographic (NG) is doing its job as a media checkpoint, promoting biased information to the public on ID.

Here’s an interesting article with lots of detail on the Turkish radical Islamic creationist Harun Yahya (real name: Adnan Oktar), who has joined forces with US creationist groups like the Institute for Creation Research, to promote their Dark Ages anti-science agenda around the world: Muslim creationist preaches Islam and awaits Christ. ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Harun Yahya is one of the most widely distributed authors in the Muslim world. He may also be among the most widely criticized Muslim authors in the Western world. His glossy books and DVDs on religion and science sell in Islamic bookshops around the globe. He...

Louisiana is another story. A hub of creationist activism since the early 1980s, it was Louisiana that enacted the Balanced Treatment Act, which required that creationism be taught alongside evolution in schools. In a landmark 1987 case known as Edwards vs Aguillard, the US Supreme Court ruled the law unconstitutional, effectively closing the door on teaching "creation science" in public schools. ID was invented soon afterwards as a way of proffering creationist concepts without specific reference to God.

In the current issue of Nature, researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, and the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) in Hinxton, UK, present the most precise map of genetic recombination yet. The study sheds light on fundamental questions about genetic shuffling and has implications for the tracking of disease genes and their inheritance.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Some odd-looking fish fossils discovered in the bowels of several European museums may help solve a lingering question about evolutionary theory, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday. The 50 million-year-old fossils -- which have one eye near the top of their heads -- help explain how flatfish such as flounder, sole and halibut developed the strange but useful trait of having both eyes on one side. For flatfish, which lie on their sides at the bottom of the sea, this arrangement gives them the use of two watchful eyes. But the trait has posed a problem for evolutionary...

The discovery of a missing link in the evolution of bizarre flatfishes—each of which has both eyes on the same side of its head—could give intelligent design advocates a sinking feeling. CT scans of 50-million-year-old fossils have revealed an intermediate species between primitive flatfishes (with eyes on both sides of their heads) and the modern, lopsided versions, which include sole, flounder, and halibut.

Hidden away in museums for more that 100 years, some recently rediscovered flatfish fossils have filled a puzzling gap in the story of evolution and answered a question that initially stumped even Charles Darwin.

Can you believe in God and evolution? Yes, if you keep the two separated in logic-tight compartments. Belief in God depends on religious faith. Belief in evolution depends on empirical evidence. This is the fundamental difference between religion and science. If you attempt to reconcile religion and science on questions about nature and the universe, and if you push the science to its logical conclusion, you will end up naturalizing the deity because for any question about nature - the origins of the universe, life, cells, humans, whatever - if your answer is "God did it," a scientist will ask,...

The traces of organic material found in fossil feathers are remnants of pigments that once gave birds their color, according to Yale scientists whose paper in Biology Letters opens up the potential to depict the original coloration of fossilized birds and their ancestors, the dinosaurs.

A study into the mysterious changing skull shape of medieval man casts serious doubt on current theories. The peculiar shift from long narrow heads to those of a rounder shape, and back again, which took place between the 11th and 13th centuries, has been noted at sites throughout western Europe. But a study of skulls found at the deserted village of Wharram Percy, near Malton, North Yorkshire, suggests that the anatomical blip was not down to an influx of Norman immigrants, or climate change, English Heritage has said. It examined nearly 700 skeletons recovered from the village. Unlike other...

July 08, 2008, 6:00 a.m. Louisiana Confounds the Science Thought PoliceNeo-Darwinism is no longer a protected orthodoxy in the Bayou State's pedagogy. By John G. West To the chagrin of the science thought police, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal has signed into law an act to protect teachers who want to encourage critical thinking about hot-button science issues such as global warming, human cloning, and yes, evolution and the origin of life. Opponents allege that the Louisiana Science Education Act is “anti-science.� In reality, the opposition’s efforts to silence anyone who disagrees with them is the true affront to scientific...

This item is available on the Apologetics Press Web site at: http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/3740 - it was originally published in Reason & Revelation, 28[7]:49-55 AP Content :: Reason & Revelation The Bitter Fruits of Atheism [Part I]by Kyle Butt, M.A. [EDITOR’S NOTE: For several decades now, evolution has received preeminent exposure throughout American culture via public schools, natural history and science museums, television programming, national parks guide booklets, popular magazines, children’s toys and clothing, movies and cinema, and the list goes on. What have been the results of such widespread, unilateral propaganda? Has the teaching of evolution exerted a positive influence...

Remember Suzan Mazur, the credulous reporter hyping a revolution in evolution? She's at it again, publishing an e-book chapter by chapter on the "Altenberg 16", this meeting that she thinks is all about radically revising evolutionary biology. I can tell that Massimo Pigliucci — one of the 16 — is feeling a little exasperation at this nonsense, especially since some of the IDists have seized on it as vindication of their delusions about the "weakness" of evolutionary theory. He's got an excellent post summarizing some of the motivation behind this meeting, which is actually part of a fairly routine process...

The Plain Man's Argument from Design Charles J. Shebbeare Of the various arguments devised in past times to prove the existence of God -- and incidentally to refute a Naturalism like Mr. Russell's -- the clearest and simplest is the familiar "Argument from Design." This argument points to certain facts of Nature which look like evidences of design or arrangement; and draws the conclusion that the world is so like a plan that it must really be one; that is, that it resembles a work of intelligence in too many respects for this resemblance to be accidental. At the...

The Advocate newspaper in Baton Rouge Louisiana today published a front page story about Louisiana’s new law regarding teaching of evolution that contains a completely false statement in the lead. The paper reported an unnamed official stated that “Louisiana is the only state in the nation that has enacted a law that could change the way evolution is taught in public schools.” Louisiana recently enacted the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA) which protects teachers that encourage critical thinking and objective discussion about evolution and other scientific topics.