Reflectorites
Below are web article links, headlines and paragraphs for the period 15-19
February, with my comments in square brackets.
BTW check out the latest cosmic design `coincidence' in my tagline.
Steve
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6183-2000Feb18.html The
Washington Post ... Cosmic Driving Force? ... By Kathy Sawyer Washington Post
Staff Writer ... February 19, 2000 ... BERKELEY, Calif. -Saul Perlmutter ...
was busy directing a quest to understand a mysterious force that seems to
be taking over the universe. ... that can be summed up in a single word stolen from
fantasy fiction: antigravity. Most scientists were convinced years ago that the
universe is expanding from a point of genesis known as the Big Bang. But they had
assumed that the outward rush was gradually being slowed by the gravitational
attraction of all the star-filled galaxies ... Two years ago, Perlmutter's group, along
with a rival team led by Brian Schmidt of Australia ... rocked the scientific world
with the announcement that the cosmic expansion is not slowing at all. In fact,
something appears to be speeding it up. ... The import of their findings is
staggering: that "empty" space actually sizzles with some kind of powerful energy
that is becoming the dominant influence in the universe, wresting that role away
from gravity. ... As the 20th century began, mainstream scientists favored a static
universe, peaceful and eternal. New theories and observations soon toppled that
view and replaced it with inklings of a cosmos in which the galaxies are flying
apart ... Today, the Big Bang vision of an expanding cosmos--with or without
antigravity to accelerate the expansion--has gained wide acceptance. Scientists are
focused on refining the details of the first trillionth of a second of the Bang. The
result is a theory that seems to explain how titanic walls of galaxies and their
numberless populations of stars, planets, dust, rubble, black holes and at least one
colony of living creatures began some 12 or 14 billion years ago as unbelievably
minuscule quantum fluctuations in a wildly inflating primordial stew of subatomic
particles. ... Whatever it is, it seems the energy in the vacuum will not reverse the
course of a falling apple ... In contrast to ordinary gravity, which diminishes with
the distance between objects, the putative energy in empty space grows with
distance, pumping up space itself--in effect, manufacturing more space--across
billions of light-years. It strengthens as the galaxies thin out and gravity weakens.
Among the many puzzles kicked up in the antigravity speculation is a seeming
coincidence of timing. The findings suggest that we are living at the one and only
time in all of cosmic evolution when the collective gravitational pull and the
opposing push of antigravity are roughly balanced. ...To some, the whole gaudy
Big Bang construct sounds arbitrary and suspicious, fraught with weird
coincidences and Zen-like paradoxes. It involves realms where our own senses,
intuition and common sense seriously mislead us. Everything sprang from nothing,
the scientists tell us. ... Scientists ponder why the universe is so perfectly balanced
gravitationally that it neither flew apart nor collapsed before the first stars or
galaxies could form. They liken it to a pencil standing on its point: the slightest
tipping, and it would immediately fall quickly in one direction or another. Recent
supernova studies suggest that all the shining galaxies may play a minor role in this
balancing act compared with an exotic form of energy -- a reverse gravity -- in
empty space. ... [Another big `coincidence': "we are living at the one and only
time in all of cosmic evolution when the collective gravitational pull and the
opposing push of antigravity are roughly balanced" to make life possible! This
effectively kills off SETI and Directed Pansepermia because there hasn't been
enough time for other advanced civilisations to arise before us.]
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/021900sci-dark-matter.html The
New York Times. February 19, 2000. Evidence of Mystery Particles Stirring
Excitement and Doubt ... By JAMES GLANZ A team of physicists based at the
University of Rome has generated both intense excitement and profound
skepticism among scientists around the world by presenting evidence that they may
have detected a heavy particle that could solve a 70-year-old mystery in astronomy
and lead to a conceptual breakthrough in physics. The presumed particles would
weigh at least 50 times as much as a proton and would almost always pass through
other matter without a trace because of an extremely weak ability to interact with
it. The new evidence, which so far has not been confirmed by other scientists,
would suggest that space is swarming with enough of the particles to account for
the long-sought "dark matter" that astronomers believe makes up some 80 percent
of all the mass in the universe. ... A particle like the one that may have been found
could also be part of an entire family of still-undiscovered particles predicted by an
advanced theory of physics called supersymmetry. Many physicists regard
supersymmetry as a possible first step toward an ultimate theory that would
account for all the known forces and particle behaviors in nature -marrying
quantum theory and gravity, for example. ... But a number of scientists...said it was
still unclear whether the finding was correct. ... the team made a paper describing
the possible detection of the particle, variously called a neutralino and a weakly
interacting, massive particle, or WIMP... Without the gravitational pull of the dark
matter, clusters of galaxies would fly apart, since the galaxies are generally orbiting
around each other too quickly to be held by the gravity of observable
matter...because the matter seems utterly invisible, astronomers believe that the
dark matter is very different from the ordinary stuff of which stars, planets and
people are made. ... WIMPs are thought to clump like an immense cloud or gas
around the visible, starry parts of galaxies.. [and] ... extend for hundreds of
thousands of light years into space beyond the visible disk of a galaxy like the
Milky Way.... "The Copernican revolution told us we're not the center of the
universe," Dr. Cline said. "This tells us we're not the matter of the universe." ... [Is
this an anti-design argument that the universe has more WIMP's than MACHO's?
:-) They keep trotting out this Copernicus myth as though he showed there is a
centre of the universe and we aren't it. The fact is Copernicus thought the *Sun*
was the centre of the universe, so he got it wrong too. In fact Einstein showed that
there is no absolute centre of the universe, and indeed each human observer is the
relativistic centre of the universe from his/her frame of reference.]
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/planetarium000219.html
ABCNEWS ... Indians Want Meteorite. Centerpiece of New Planetarium Under
Dispute ... The Associated Press. NEW YORK, Feb. 19 - The American Museum
of Natural History's new planetarium opened today with the 16-ton Willamette
meteorite sitting in a place of honor, propped on a steel pedestal specially
embedded into the main hall. But a group of American Indians says the meteorite
is a holy tribal object and has made a claim under federal law for the behemoth
from space - about the size of a small car - to be returned to Oregon. The
meteorite hit Earth more than 10,000 years ago... The Clackamas tribe adopted it
as a sacred object, and the rainwater that collected in its deep craters was prized
for its holiness.... He said the meteorite, called Tomanoas by the Indians, embodies
three heavenly realms - sky, earth and water. Clackamas youths were sent on vigils
to the meteorite to await messages from the spirit world, and other tribes also
made pilgrimages, said Heavy Head, a Blackfoot. ... a museum spokeswoman ...
made clear that it would not be easy to move the meteorite from the planetarium ...
"Because the meteorite is so massive, parts of the facility had to essentially be built
around it," ... if the case goes to a federal review committee or to court, it may
take time. ... Heavy Head said he does not expect a harmonious exchange given
the effort and expense devoted to building the meteorite into the Rose Center. ...
[Another clash between religion and science! I suspect in this case religion will
win. The Indians' claims are respected by the law not because they are regarded as
be true, but because they are deeply and sincerely felt. If a scientist made
disparaging remarks about Indian religious beliefs, he/she would be in hot water.
Yet scientists make disparaging remarks all the time about *Christian* religious
beliefs regarding creation. Even if Christian religious beliefs about creation are
regarded by scientists as untrue that is no reason why they should not be
respected.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000218/sc/science_newworld_1.html Yahoo!
... February 18 3:13 PM ET Some Native Americans Had Neanderthal Roots-
Expert WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The baffling 9,300-year-old Kennewick Man,
whose skeleton was unearthed in 1996 in Washington state, looks so "European"
because he had Neanderthal roots, a scientist said on Friday. The National Park
Service said earlier this month it would allow a genetic analysis of the skeleton,
which some Native American groups claim as an ancestor and want buried. It has
intrigued researchers because the features seem to suggest a more Caucasian than
Asian origin. Others say he looks like an Ainu -- the aboriginal people of Japan
who are often said to be physically closer to Europeans than Japanese. Loring
Brace, a specialist in bone measurements at the University of Michigan, says he has
a simple explanation for this -- both Kennewick Man and the Ainu, along with the
people of Europe, descended from Neanderthals. "I have long maintained that
Neanderthals are obviously the ancestors of living Europeans," ..."To produce a
modern European out of a Neanderthal, all you have to do is reduce the
robustness," ... Scale down the heavy teeth, jaws and brow of the Neanderthal and
you have a European, he said. ... Erik Trinkaus, an anthropologist at Washington
University in St. Louis, led that study and another one that a few months earlier
suggested that the 24,500-year-old bones of a child found in Portugal showed
characteristics of both Neanderthals and of modern humans. Trinkaus said he
believed this suggested humans and Neanderthals interbred, but Brace said it just
as easily could have been an "intermediate" form of human evolving from
Neanderthal into modern Homo sapiens sapiens. [This sounds like a reductio ad
absurdum of Trinkaus' claim. If some existing known Homo sapiens have features
similar to Neandertals (which is not surprising since taxonomically they are
closely related species), then Stringer, Tattersall and Schwartz's claim that this
was just a stocky Homo sapiens is the simplest explanation.]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000113078204876&rtmo=aTCX4T4J&atmo=FFFFFFtX&pg=/et/00/2/17/ecrlab17.html
... Electronic Telegraph 17.02.00 View from the lab: A clever little beast, yeast
Professor Steve Jones goes protein fishing YEAST, as is well known, lacks poetic
feelings ... In fact, so insensible is Saccharomyces cerevisiae, brewer's yeast, to the
finer things in life that it does not even bother with a nervous system. Why, then,
does it have a gene almost identical to one that, when it goes wrong, causes an
inherited brain disease in humans? What does that actually do in the brainless yeast
cell - or, for that matter, in our own? The parts catalogue for the Mercedes Cclass
... contains 4,500 named items ... The yeast cell (scarcely the Mercedes of the
living world) needs more than the car: 6,000 different bits, or proteins. ... but what
does that mean in terms of understanding how the yeast cell actually does its job?
Rather less than it seems. A gene sequence is no more than a factory manual,
containing information on castings, mouldings and blanks but also on various
extraneous bits that are removed before the assembly line gets them. Then, the
parts have to be put together to make a car. Even that is of no use to someone
who cannot drive, or a driver dumped in a strange city without a road map. DNA
dismantlers, like car wreckers, present us only with a box of bits and pieces; the
biological equivalents of the nuts, bolts, springs, wires and all the other things
needed to make a car. Many parts give no hint as to what they do. Now that the
human gene map is almost made, the sky is darkening with the wings of chickens
coming home to roost. Where are the medical breakthroughs, ask those who paid
for the job? What use is a bag of assorted jumble when it comes to understanding
how a cell works, let alone fixing it? Not much: nobody can tune a Mercedes by
randomly bolting on a wing mirror, which explains the failure to cure disease with
gene therapy. Now, though, there is hope. An American group, using the
biochemists' equivalent of the Stuttgart factory, has begun to work out how yeast
proteins actually fit together. ... [In this era of `DNA is everything' a timely
reminder from a geneticist that genes make the proteins and it is proteins which
actually are the parts and tools which do the work of building and repairing the
body. Interesting that he says that "nobody can tune a Mercedes by randomly
bolting on a wing mirror" yet that is *exactly* what Darwinists claim built up all
the complexity of life, including things *far* more sophisticated than a Mercedes.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000217/sc/science_noise_1.html Yahoo! ...
February 17 ... From Sole to Rock Bass, Fish Are Key to Music Joy LONDON
(Reuters) - Loud music and singing at the top of your voice may be such fun
because of a hearing mechanism we have inherited from our distant ancestors --
fish. British scientists say humans still have a pleasure-inducing mechanism in the
ear -the sacculus -- that is tuned to respond to sound frequencies that predominate
in music. ... the frequency sensitivity of the human sacculus appears to mimic that
of fish -- the only other creature to use the sacculus for hearing. "This primitive
hearing mechanism from our vertebrate ancestors appears to have been conserved
as a vestigial sense in humans," ... The sacculus had a connection to the part of the
brain responsible for drives such as hunger, sex and hedonistic responses. This
could explain why music has developed into such an important cultural force. This
buzz may mimic the thrills that people get from swings and bungee jumping, Todd
said. ... [Why should fish be "the only other creature to use the sacculus for
hearing" besides humans? What about all the other alleged intermediate stages like
amphibians, reptiles, mammal-like reptiles, primates, hominids, etc, between fish
and man? If this is literally true that all these intermediates didn't use the sacculus
for hearing, and it is used in only humans for music appreciation, then this would
be a powerful argument that the genetic potential for this organ was formed in fish,
and then was switched off in later descendant vertebrates, in order to be switched
back on later when it was needed for its final end in humans as part of the imago
Dei.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000217/sc/science_liver_1.html Yahoo! ...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Helping liver cells to become a little more immortal
may be the key to treating liver disease, two teams of researchers reported on
Thursday. One team made liver cells live longer by renewing little caps that protect
the genetic material in cells, while a second team gave liver cells temporary
immortality to help make a grow-your-own liver transplant for rats. ... The caps
are called telomeres, and they are found on the ends of the chromosomes that carry
the genes. Each time a cell divides, the telomeres become a little more frayed.
Eventually, they becomes so damaged that the cell dies. ... an enzyme called
telomerase that helps prevent this damage. ..."Telomerase therapy may be useful
for a wide spectrum of chronic diseases, including cirrhosis," ... liver cells, known
as hepatocytes, can regenerate many times. But ...."The effects of alcohol or
infection create so many cycles of cell damage and regeneration that the cells
essentially run out of telomeres," ... they genetically engineered mice to make their
liver cells produce extra telomerase. The mice did not develop cirrhosis when
chemicals were used to damage their livers ... they believed their findings would
translate to humans. ...A second team at Harvard...along with a group ... in Japan,
thought along similar lines. They made human liver cancer cells "immortal" not
with telomerase, but with another gene taken from a virus... Also at:
http://www.cnn.com/2000/HEALTH/02/18/new.livers.ap/index.html [While the
more grandiose claims of longevity via telomerase are apparently false, these more
modest claims of using it to restore `worn out' organs may have validity.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000215/sc/genes_athersys_1.html Yahoo! ...
February 15 ... Company Says It Filed 10,000 Gene Patents WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - A tiny, privately owned biotechnology company said on Tuesday it had
filed for preliminary patents covering more than 10,000 new genes and says it has a
new approach to patenting and testing genes. Cleveland-based Athersys said it has
found a way to force genes to produce proteins without going through the steps
that other companies do to isolate genes. ... it used its ...RAGE-GD .. technology
to discover the genes.... "We don't clone the gene; we don't isolate it; we don't
remove it from the cell. We get production of a natural human protein without
knowing anything about the gene," she said. ... The company has been quietly
checking out its legal stance. "One of the reasons we have been so quiet -- we call
it stealth mode -- is that we have been building our intellectual property
foundation," ... Celera Genomics Group ... had filed preliminary patents on 6,500
whole or partial genes. Rival HGSI has filed 6,700 full patent applications on
various genes. Incyte says it has filed 6,300 full-length gene patents and .... 50,000
... partial sequences. Preliminary patents act as a sort of "place holder", giving the
filer more time to file a full patent application. ... [With all these potential legal
cases brewing, one wonders how long it is going to take for any benefits to reach
the patients. Sounds like the basis of a new John Grisham novel!]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000215/sc/health_transplant_1.html Yahoo! ...
February 15 ... Firm Sees Trials of Pig Organ Transplants ... By Kathy Fieweger.
CHICAGO (Reuters) - It's a scenario recurring thousands of times each year:
Patients lie critically ill, waiting for a kidney, heart or liver. Minutes, days, weeks
tick by but no organ arrives in time to thwart death. ... Two companies are hoping
to solve this unending problem and one, Baxter International Inc., appears ready to
take the next step. The firm's Nextran subsidiary, located in Princeton, New Jersey,
concluded trials in late 1999 in which specially engineered pig livers were used as
filters outside the body to perform human liver functions. ... The next step after
that is to ask the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for permission to perform "in
vivo" trials -- where the organ is actually transplanted inside the body.... While
some people question the ethics of breeding animals for this type of use, the chief
obstacles are immunological in nature... First is preventing what Logan said is
called hyperacute rejection -- the process by which foreign tissue is turned into a
pulpy mess almost immediately by a human's immune system. Nextran is
engineering pig organs to express a human gene that prevents this rapid rejection...
Researchers are also very concerned with a certain virus contained by most if not
all pigs -- the porcine endogenous retroviruses (PERV). They pose no threat to
pigs and at least so far, seem not to infect humans who have undergone pig tissue
transplants. But concerns linger. ... [Maybe I'm getting too old but I can't help
wondering where all this will end. And while I applaud the saving of human life, I
can't help wondering if God approves the uniting of His image-bearer with parts of
animals. For those who regard man as just another animal, there is of course no
such problem.]
HIV/AIDS:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000219/sc/aids_genetics_1.html Yahoo! ...
February 19 ... AIDS Study Raises Hopes for Gene Therapy Treatment By David
Morgan PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - A newly published AIDS study could open
another front in the battle against HIV infection by showing that gene therapy can
be used to stop infected cells from spreading the deadly virus ... researchers based
at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia were able to block the operation of the "tat"
gene that allows HIV to spread throughout the body from infected cells. Up to
now, genetic AIDS research has concentrated on finding ways to help healthy cells
withstand the ravages of the HIV virus... But by working with human cells already
infected with HIV, the team was able to reduce the tat gene's virus-replicating
functions by 80 percent to 90 percent... That, researchers said, raises the possibility
of a new gene therapy approach capable of supplementing the current drug-based
treatment known as highly active antiretroviral therapy, or HAART, which is used
to stop HIV infection from becoming full-blown AIDS. ... HAART has proved to
be a costly drug regimen that poses serious side effects for HIV patients while
delivering questionable results. ... "Everyone thinks of an antiviral approach, or an
immunologic approach (to HIV). This adds another option into the equation that
could become more important as other options prove not to be totally successful."
... They found that when the antitat protein combined with the tat gene, it
successfully inhibited the gene's operation without disturbing healthy cells or
causing toxic side-effects. The study, funded by a private foundation, also found
that the introduction of the antitat gene prolonged the survival of immune-system
cells called CD4+ T lymphocytes. ... [This will be good if it works. If it doesn't it
will be more evidence that HIV doesn't cause AIDS. If "HAART has proved to be
a costly drug regimen that poses serious side effects for HIV patients while
delivering questionable results" why was it approved? How many AIDS patients
have needlessly spent their life savings, had miserable ends to their lives, and
then died because of it?]
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"A plot of the sun's course through our galactic locale shows that the sun has been
traveling through the Gould's Belt interior in a region of very low average
interstellar density for several million years. The sun is unlikely to have
encountered a large, dense interstellar cloud in this relatively benign region during
this time. Although our solar system is in the process of emerging from the Local
Bubble, the sun's trajectory suggests that it will probably not encounter a large,
dense cloud for at least several more million years. The consequences of such an
encounter for the earth's climate are unclear; however, one wonders whether it is a
coincidence that Homo sapiens appeared while the sun was traversing a region of
space virtually devoid of interstellar matter." (Frisch P.C., "The Galactic
Environment of the Sun", American Scientist, Vol. 88, No. 1, January-February
2000, pp53-54).
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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