Reflectorites
Below are web article links, headlines and/or paragraphs for the period 28
January - 10 February, with my comments in square brackets.
Steve
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000113078204876&rtmo=Q0wS33wR&atmo=tttttttd&pg=/et/00/2/10/ecfman10.html
Electronic Telegraph 10.02.00 ... Stone Age man wasn't so dumb
Archaeologists are rethinking our cultural origins in the light of new
discoveries in South Africa. Andrew Luck-Baker reports. IN a
cramped cave that looks out across the swell of the Indian Ocean,
South African archaeologists are unearthing evidence of Middle
Stone Age people well ahead of their time. The prehistoric
occupants were painting their bodies red for rituals and carving
abstract symbols. They were fishing and using bone awls, perhaps
for leather working. ... This is a South African team's interpretation
of life in Blombos Cave some time between 80,000 and 100,000
years ago. If correct, many prehistorians will be inclined to change
their views about the origins of modern human culture and mind.
Our ancestors should not have been doing these sophisticated
things for another 40,000 years at least. ... At Blombos, we have
African hunter-gatherers at 80,000 years ago doing many things
associated with the Late Stone Age "cultural explosion" 40,000 to
30,000 years ago - when Homo sapiens arrived in Europe for the
first time. ... There are other sites in Africa of similar age with some
elements of the Blombos cultural package. ... For archaeologists,
symbolic behaviour - manifest in art and body decoration - is the
great hallmark of modern behaviour and mind. Some even argue
that the appearance of symbolism correlates with the origin of
syntactical language in our ancestors. ... [More confirmation of the
Biblical picture that man was originally advanced but fell away.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000209/sc/science_bigbang_2.html ...
Yahoo! ... February 9 ... CERN Physicists Recreate 'Big Bang' Conditions
... By Stephanie Nebehay GENEVA (Reuters) - For the first time,
physicists have created a new form of matter by recreating the conditions
thought to have existed 10 microseconds after the Big Bang at the start of
the universe, scientists announced Thursday. The European Laboratory for
Particle Physics (CERN)... smashed together heavy lead ions in a fireball ...
By generating collisions at temperatures 100,000 times as hot as the sun's
center ... they succeeded in isolating tiny components called quarks from
more complex particles such as protons and neutrons ... This provided
"compelling evidence" for the existence of a new state of nuclear matter, a
quark-gluon plasma, which CERN described as "the primordial soup in
which quarks and gluons existed before they clumped together as the
universe cooled down." ... the breakthrough in the project affectionately
known as the "Little Bang," is an important step in understanding the early
state of the universe, created some 12 to 15 billion years ago in a massive
explosion, or Big Bang. ... Also at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_636000/636886.stm ;
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/021000sci-quark-plasma.html &
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/littlebigbang000209.html
... More conclusive evidence of this state of matter, called a "quark-
gluon plasma" will await the new Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at
Brookhaven National Laboratory on New York's Long Island, set to begin
collecting data this summer with collisions 10 times more energetic. "We're
creating such tremendous heat and pressure that we're melting those
protons and neutrons in essence, and those particles inside are able to come
outside for a brief time," ... Scientists have long expected to find this super-
hot "primordial soup" as part of the theory that the universe was created in
a gigantic explosion. But 1/100,000th of a second after the Big Bang,
matter cooled enough for the gluons to pull the quarks together into
protons and neutrons, eliminating free quarks from the universe. ...
[Interesting that they use the same "primordial soup" terms to describe the
origin of the universe as they do for the origin of life!]
http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/02/08/clinton.genetics/in dex.html ...
President to bar genetic discrimination February 8, 2000 ... WASHINGTON (CNN) --
President Clinton is expected to sign an executive order on Tuesday prohibiting the
federal government from using genetic test results in any decision to hire, fire or
promote its employees. The order...is a response to fears that advances in medical
research could be abused by employers. It covers nearly 2 million civilian federal
employees, but does not apply to the private sector. ... Also at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_636000/636481.stm &
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/science/20000209/t000012879.html [This
sounds like a can of worms. What if an employee who scores well genetically is also
the best applicant for the job? And if someone has a gene associated with a major
problem, you can bet your bottom dollar an employer will find a pretext to not employ
or not promote him/her.]
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/020800sci-space-life.html
The New York Times February 8, 2000 Maybe We Are Alone in the
Universe, After All ... By WILLIAM J. BROAD In the last few
decades, a growing number of astronomers have promulgated the
view that alien civilizations are likely to be scattered among the
stars like grains of sand, isolated from one another by the
emptiness of interstellar space. Just for Earth's own galaxy, the
Milky Way, experts have estimated that there might be up to one
million advanced societies. ... This extraterrestrial credo has fueled
not only countless books, movies and television shows -- not to
mention hosts of Klingons, Wookies and Romulans -- but a long
scientific hunt that uses huge dish antennas to scan the sky for faint
radio signals from intelligent aliens. Now, two prominent scientists
say the conventional wisdom is wrong. The alien search, they add,
is likely to fail. Drawing on new findings in astronomy, geology and
paleontology, the two argue that humans might be alone, at least in
the stellar neighborhood, and perhaps in the entire cosmos. They
say modern science is showing that Earth's composition and
stability are extraordinarily rare. Most everywhere else, the
radiation levels are too high, the right chemical elements too rare in
abundance, the hospitable planets too few in number and the rain
of killer rocks too intense for life ever to have evolved into
advanced communities. Alien microbes may survive in many places
as a kind of cosmic shower scum, they say, but not extraterrestrials
civilized enough to be awash in technology. Their book, "Rare
Earth" (Springer-Verlag), out last month, is producing whoops of
criticism and praise, with some detractors saying that the authors
have made their own simplistic assumptions about the adaptability
of life forms while others call it "brilliant" and "courageous... Also at:
http://archives.seattletimes.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?storyID=389dc4d2f6&query=squelch
... The Seattle Times ... February 06, 2000 UW experts squelch
hope of finding folks on that final frontier by Eric Sorensen Seattle
Times science reporter. It's a thought that grips most everyone who
stares into the unfathomable depths of a star-speckled night: Is
there anybody out there? The odds, say Peter Ward and Don
Brownlee, are probably more remote than you think. Earth, they
contend, is simply too special, the result of myriad physical
conditions missing from most of the universe, with just enough time
and other circumstances to let complicated life arise. ... Hence the
title of their book, "Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in
the Universe," published this month (Copernicus, $27.50). The
book throws a wet blanket on the mounting optimism of the past
half-century...The two authors have already begun fielding criticism
that they might hurt efforts to find extraterrestrial life and serve up
ammunition to creationists who hold that Earth is not only rare, but
unique. ... [More signs that the era of Materialism is ending and
Intelligent Design is returning to centre-stage. There is irony that
their book is by "Copernicus", who is supposed to have demoted
Earth from the centre of the universe!]
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/science/20000207/t000012220.html
Los Angeles Times ... February 7, 2000 ... Patent Office Now at Heart of
Gene Debate By PETER G. GOSSELIN, PAUL JACOBS, Times Staff
Writers WASHINGTON--With the feat of deciphering the human genetic
code only months from completion, medical science appears to be on the
verge of a new golden age in which diseases that long defied treatment may
suddenly prove curable. But amid the grand hopes lurk doubts about who
will get to own and profit from the new genetic discoveries--and whether
sweeping private ownership could slow, rather than speed, innovation.
Some medical centers already report cutting back on genetic research for
fear of patent infringement...Myriad Genetics, won patents on two genes
associated with the disease and notified the university that it could use
them only with the firm's permission. ... In response to a drumbeat of
concern, the government's chief arbiter of ownership, the Patent and
Trademark Office, has quietly proposed two rules changes that are
intended to narrow what drug-makers and biotech companies can claim of
the genetic code.... "We've raised the bar" on what's needed for patenting
genetic material ...One of the patent office's changes would hold applicants
to a stricter standard of use for the piece of the code that they seek to
patent; the other addresses how long a segment of the code a patent
applicant can control by winning a patent on only a very small piece. ...
[This sounds like its going to be a long-drawn out legal battleground. Since
genes work in concert with other genes, it might be difficult to work out
how long a piece if code is. Any benefits of sequencing the human genome
might be an even longer time coming.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000203/sc/science_remains_2.html ...
Yahoo! ... February 3 ... U.S. Seeks DNA Analysis of Ancient Skeleton
SEATTLE (Reuters) - The U.S. Interior Department said on Tuesday it
would try to carry out DNA analysis on a 9,300-year-old skeleton
unearthed in Washington state, risking the wrath of American Indian tribes
who claim the remains are the sacred bones of an ancestor. The
department...said such analysis could help it figure out to whom the ancient
resident is related. ... Kennewick Man...is claimed by five Native American
tribes as an ancestor. The tribes have vigorously opposed any scientific
testing of the remains and want them reburied. ... government officials have
said he bears little resemblance to any modern people, and scientists have
said he may be related to the Ainu people of Japan, who show many
cultural similarities to Northwestern U.S. tribes. ... [It would be an
interesting test of scientific knowledge versus traditional beliefs if
Kennewick Man turns out not to be genetically related to any modern
Native Americans but to the Ainu people of Japan! We have the same issue
in Australia. Modern Australian aborigines claim that any human fossil
found was their ancestor, but there is evidence that their ancestors were not
the original human inhabitants of Australia, but a later wave of migration.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000203/sc/science_diabetes_1.html ...
Yahoo! ... February 3 ... New Gene Therapy Approach Makes Cells Pump
Protein WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new approach to gene therapy turns
the body's own cells into little protein factories and has worked to help
diabetic mice make their own insulin.... A team at Ariad Pharmaceuticals
Inc. said their method may make the still-experimental science of gene
therapy work better and with more control. They genetically engineered
mouse cells to produce extra insulin, but the cells did not release the insulin
until "told" to do so by a drug given orally.... [the] method is safer because
it will use an adeno-associated virus (AAV) to carry the new genes into a
patient's body. The viruses do not cause disease in humans... "It will make
gene therapy safer because you can shut it off and more effective because
you can fine-tune the effects of the gene therapy,"... [This sounds *very*
promising and might avoid ethical problems.]
http://www.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/02/03/long.living.worms.ap/index.html
... CNN ... February 3, 2000 .... . (AP) -- Giant tube worms living 1,700
feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico have been found to be up to
250 years old -- a record for creatures without a backbone... The tube worms,
whose scientific name is Lamellibrachia, do not eat; they survive by absorbing
energy from chemicals that seep up through cracks in the sea floor. ... Also at:
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/020800sci-animal-worm.html
[Proof that eating shortens your life! :-)]
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/science/20000203/t000010883.html
Los Angeles Times ... February 3, 2000 .... Remaking the World One Atom
at a Time Nanotechnology, manipulating materials on a molecular scale,
holds the promise of unlocking nature's secrets in everything from
industrial engineering to medicine. By SYLVIA PAGAN WESTPHAL,
Special to The Times In the not-so-distant future, bricks in new homes may
repair themselves when cracks appear. Cars may be coated with a
diamond-strength layer that will guard against scratches. Doctors might be
able to diagnose hundreds of illnesses by placing a droplet of blood in a
machine and reading the results in a few seconds. All those scenarios, and
many more, are conceivable through the use of nanotechnology.
Nanotechnology works in the world of the small--the very small. The goal
of nanotechnology is to build things the way nature has been doing it for
millions of years: atom by atom, molecule by molecule, with a "bottom up"
approach. [I like this description of the "bottom up" approach: "atom by
atom, molecule by molecule". Except I would substitute "God" for
"nature".]
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/science/20000203/t000010923.html
Los Angeles Times ... February 3, 2000 ... Cloning: What Hath Genomics
Wrought? Britain patents 'Dolly process' on animals. Early-stage human
embryos are 'inventions' too. By JEREMY RIFKIN ... Now, Ian Wilmut,
the Scottish scientist who cloned Dolly, has made history a second time,
and the new development is likely to have an even greater impact on the
world than the first. The British patent office has just granted Wilmut's
Roslin Institute patents on his cloning process and all animals cloned using
the process. ... The patent also includes as intellectual property--i.e.,
patented inventions--all cloned human embryos up to the blastocyst stage,
which is a cluster of about 140 cells. For the first time, a national
government has declared that a specific human being created through the
process of cloning is, at its earliest phase of development, to be considered
an invention in the eyes of the patent office. The implications are profound
and far-reaching. It was less than 135 years ago that the United States
abolished slavery, making it illegal for any human being to own another
human being as property after birth. Now the British patent office has
opened the door to a new era in which a developing human being can be
owned, in the form of intellectual property, in the gestational stages
between conception and birth. ... [This is a good point. How can one
human being legally "own" another, even if it is still developing? The only
way out would be to declare that developing human beings are not legally
human.]
http://cnn.com/2000/NATURE/02/02/science.dinosaur.reut/index.html
CNN ... Huge dinosaur's neck bones unearthed in Texas February 2, 2000
.... By Marcus Kabel DALLAS (Reuters) -- Scientists in southwestern
Texas have unearthed the neck bones of one of the biggest dinosaurs of its
kind, a sauropod possibly more than 100 feet (30 meters) long. ... It is said
to be the largest sauropod ever found dating from the Late Cretaceous
period, which ended about 66 million years ago. Sauropods were plant-
munching dinosaurs with long necks and column-like legs. They reached
lengths of more than 100 feet (30 meters). ...those sauropods were thought
to be mostly extinct some 32 million years before the Big Bend creature
lived. ... Three of the smaller vertebrae fossils, which weigh up to 467
pounds (212 kg), have been removed. But the others, which weigh up to
1,200 pounds (544 kg) each, remain at the site ... Also at:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000201/sc/science_dinosaur_1.html
[Sounds like Sauropods lived up to the time of asteroid collision which
terminated the Cretaceous Period? This might strengthen that theory
against the theory that various groups of dinosaurs were gradually
becoming extinct before the K-T extinction event. It is a major problem (if
not *the* major problem) for Darwinism if extinctions are not gradual,
because that means its flip-side, natural selection, was a weak to
nonexistent factor in life's history. See Phil Johnson's excellent review "The
Extinction of Darwinism" at www.arn.org/docs/johnson/raup.htm.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000202/sc/health_genetherapy_1.html
... Yahoo! ... February 2 ... Gene Therapists Misled Him - U.S. Victim's
Father WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The father of a man believed to be the
only person killed by gene therapy accused researchers on Wednesday of
misleading him about the experimental treatment's effects and risks. Paul
Gelsinger told Congress that...scientists had wrongly led him to believe that
their treatment for a rare liver disorder had produced some improvement in
one patient. At a public meeting in December, however, the scientists said
they had not seen any benefits ... [This is amazing if true. That gene
therapists kept carrying out these experimental procedures even though
they "had not seen any benefits"! One wonders how much of similar gene
therapy claimed results is just vapour-ware?]
http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/01/28/europa.life/index.html ...
CNN ... Scientist: Jupiter radiation could mean life on Europa January 28,
2000 ... PALO ALTO, California -- A vast subterranean sea underneath
one of Jupiter's moons could host living microorganisms similar in size and
complexity to bacteria found on Earth, according to an article in the journal
Nature this week. Despite having a frozen surface, Europa could possibly
produce sources of energy for basic chemical reactions needed for life,
thanks to billions of charged particles that constantly rain down from
Jupiter, theorizes Stanford University professor Christopher Chyba in the
report. The evidence is strong that beneath Europa's frozen exterior of ice
lies an ocean of liquid water, one of the essential ingredients for all living
organisms. And a relentless bombardment of radiation "should produce
organic and oxidant molecules sufficient to fuel a substantial Europan
biosphere," Chyba writes. ... [More exobiological speculation based on the
faulty assumption that life arises spontaneously wherever there is water,
chemicals and energy. And the presence of "oxidant molecules" is supposed
to be inimical to life and the reason why life only originated once on Earth.]
HIV/AIDS:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000202/sc/aids_drugs_3.html ...
Yahoo! ... February 2 ... U.S Doctors Cautiously Welcome New HIV
Drugs SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Researchers said on Wednesday they
were cautiously optimistic about new drugs and new therapies for HIV
reported to them this week ... Drug companies reported on both new
classes of drugs ... and on new versions of older drugs aimed at helping
patients whose virus has learned to elude medications. Fourteen HIV drugs
are now in use, but as many as 40 percent of HIV-infected patients in the
United States have strains of HIV resistant to them. The virus evolves
while inside a patient, and these mutated forms can also be passed on to
others." ... adding a new drug to the popular cocktail approach ... can
boost the effects of the entire mixture, so that patients do not have to
discard the whole batch and start over. ... it is time to start using tests to
see if the virus will resist drugs. .... groups are now pressing for
government funding so that every patient can find out if he or she has a
resistant form of the virus before starting what may be a drug cocktail of
only limited use. Hammer said when a patient becomes resistant to a drug,
doctors need to look at the overall cocktail, not just a single drug. ... [This
sounds like a case study in pseudoscience. With multiple drug cocktails
(many of them are listed in the article) of up to 14 drugs and a doctrine of
`more is better', drug companies maximise their sales and there is no way
that effective drugs (if any) could be distinguished from ineffective drugs.
Drug companies could never be blamed if the patient dies from the drugs,
since the patient has HIV and the death will be blamed on AIDS. And the
drug company researchers haven't even started testing their claims about
HIV resistance yet!]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000202/sc/aids_superinfection_1.html
Yahoo! ... February 2 ... Canadian Man May Have Caught HIV Twice
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A Canadian man may have been infected
with the AIDS virus twice, a worrying possibility that could make it harder
to develop a vaccine, doctors said on Wednesday. The man was HIV
positive in 1989, and seems to have been infected with another strain of
HIV in 1987 ... Angel said the patient was 40 years old and a client at his
clinic. He had tried the antiviral drug ribavirin years ago, before the new
HIV drugs came out, but his virus seemed naturally controlled and he was
classed as a "non-progressor". ... [The interesting thing here is that
someone could have HIV for 12 years and yet the virus could be "naturally
controlled" by his own immune system "before the new HIV drugs came
out". How do they know that other HIV positive patients would not be
"naturally controlled" without "the new HIV drugs"?]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000201/sc/aids_origin_2.html ...
Yahoo! ... February 1 ... Computer Traces AIDS Origin to 1930 By
Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent SAN FRANCISCO
(Reuters) - Researchers using the most powerful computer in the world
said on Tuesday they had traced the origin of the AIDS virus to around
1930. Bette Korber and colleagues at the Los Alamos National Laboratory
in New Mexico used a computer model to calculate the mutations found in
the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and estimate when the epidemic
started. ... The first case of infection with HIV, as it is known today, could
have been in a chimp, which passed it to a human, or in a human being
infected with a chimp virus that mutated into HIV in his or her body. ...
Korber used an extremely powerful computer to calculate the rate of
change of the virus, known for its quick mutations. She compared present
and past samples of the virus taken from human beings to samples taken
from chimps, and analyzed the 10 known variations of HIV, known as
clades, which range from HIV-1 A to M. ... Korber used two models -- the
so-called molecular clock, which assumes that the genes in any organism
mutate and evolve at a constant rate; and a system that allowed for varying
rates of change. Both gave a best estimate of 1930. ... [This seems faulty
reasoning because point mutations could mutate back and forth to and
from the original state in a comparatively simple thing like a virus which
mutates rapidly. The article says "the actual origin could range from
anywhere between 1910 and 1950".]
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"But evolution is different. Evolutionists purport to explain where we came
from and how we developed into the complex organisms that we are.
Physicists, by and large, do not. So, the study of evolution trespasses on
the bailiwick of religion. And it has something else in common with
religion. It is almost as hard for scientists to demonstrate evolution to the
lay public as it would be for churchmen to prove transubstantiation or the
virginity of Mary." (Wills C., "The Wisdom of the Genes: New Pathways in
Evolution", Basic Books: New York NY, 1989, p9)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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