Reflectorites
Below are web articles for the period 23 March - 4 April with my comments in
square brackets.
Steve
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http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000404/ts/science_species_1.html Yahoo! ...
April 4 ... New Species Fills Evolutionary Gap ... LONDON (Reuters) - British
scientists said on Tuesday they had identified a new species that fills a crucial gap
in the evolutionary transition from fish to land animals about 370 million years ago.
Fossils of the creature were found embedded in rocks excavated from Latvia and
Estonia in Eastern Europe. They consist of two small pieces of lower jaw, showing
a bone arrangement half-way between those of fish and prehistoric four-legged
land animals known as tetrapods. ... "This fossil shows just about a perfect
intermediate condition between fish and amphibian," Dr Per Ahlberg...told a press
conference. ...Ahlberg said this evolutionary route gives us a better understanding
of where we have come from and also who we are. The unnamed creatures had a
crocodile-like body, long head, eyes close together on top of its head and a tail fin
at the rear. ... All amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals and humans are ultimately
descended from one small group of fishes that left the water about 365 million
years ago, .... ...Ahlberg also believes it may be possible to find complete
skeletons, which could show how tetrapod features like limbs originated. "It's
going to be extremely important in terms of explaining the most dramatic step in
the actual physical transformation, ... that goes from fish to land animal, turning
your fins into limbs," he added. ... Also at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_701000/701008.stm real 28k
BBC ... 4 April, 2000 ... A new fossil find could be the missing link that shows
how our ancestors climbed out of the primordial swamps to live on land. .. "Of all
the bones in a skeleton that we could have found, the jaw is exactly the right piece,
because it carries the signature of the creature," said Dr Per Ahlberg ... who led the
team. "... These new fossils not only shed light on how fish evolved but also
prompt a rethink of where existing fossils fit into the evolutionary jigsaw puzzle. ...
"The question we can't yet answer is whether this creature had paired fins or legs,"
... Dr Jenny Clack ... said: "The discovery is interesting because it shows a most
peculiar tooth arrangement, unlike any other creature in this lineage or elsewhere,
to my knowledge." ... &
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/link000405.html
ABCNEWS ... April 5 - The remains of a creepy-crawly fish that lived 370
million years ago could hold the answer as to how we got here. Dr. Per
Ahlberg looked at thousands of bones in hundreds of collections before he
found two unusual pieces deep in the bowels of a Latvian museum, tucked
away in a drawer. ... "It took me about a minute from taking one of those
bones in my hands to realizing that this was what I had been searching for
all this time - the missing link," said Ahlberg ... What he was holding, he is
convinced, was the remains of the first fish to crawl out of the water and
establish itself on land - the common ancestor of all 25,000 species of land-
based creatures. ...Ahlberg said. Ahlberg and the rest of the paleontology
world have long known that such a creature had existed. "There had to be
something between the fish Panderichthys, which lived in water 375 million
years ago, and the four-limbed, eight-toed Acanthostega, which lived on
land 365 million years ago," ... The beast resembled a four-foot crocodile,
the scientist says. Instead of legs, it had four stubby fins, with which it
could walk on land, and a long tail fin to enable it to swim. It also had a
nasty set of teeth. Like a crocodile, it probably hunted in the shallows with
only its eyes above the water. But it was better equipped for a rush onto
land to grab its prey. ... Ahlberg and his two fellow researchers have named
the beast Livonia multidentato because of its unprecedented five rows of
teeth on its lower jaw. ... [This sounds like a bit of a beat-up, especially
the `creation mythology' bit about "a better understanding of where we
have come from". And there is something `fishy' about Ahlberg describing
its body based on what he thinks an intermediate should look like. Since
these are only jaw fragments (the BBC site has a picture), were not found
in situ but in a museum drawer, and have very unusual teeth (quite different
from either its claimed ancestors, the fishes Eusthenopteron and
Panderichthys and from its presumed descendant the tetrapod
Acanthostega), it may be something else entirely. Ahlberg's words highlights
the *real* problem of documenting the "actual physical transformation...
from ... fins into limbs". The really *big* question is why would *one* line
of fish start preparing under water all the requisites for an eventual life on
the land, including everything that was needed for "All amphibians, reptiles,
birds, mammals and humans" for the next "365 million years"? Sounds to
me like the forward planning of a far-sighted Intelligent Designer, not a
`blind watchmaker'!]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000403/sc/britain_cloning_2.html Yahoo! ...
April 3 ... Britain May Soon Back Human Embryo Cloning ... LONDON (Reuters)
- British scientists may soon be allowed to create human "spare parts" from cloned
tissue with the government set to lift a ban on the cloning of human embryos for
use in medical research, media reports said .... Government officials would neither
deny nor confirm a report ... that a panel of experts is ready to advise the
government to allow so-called "therapeutic cloning" of embryo tissue to help treat
the sick. A spokesman for the Department of Health said the report was "purely
speculative." But he declined to deny it. ... The news immediately sparked a fierce
row between supporters of embryonic cloning, who say it is vital to help combat
disease, and pro-life campaigners who argue that the practice is effectively creating
human beings and then murdering them. Labor peer Lord Winston -- one of
Britain's most prominent fertility experts and a friend of Prime Minister Tony Blair
-- said lifting the ban would be "an important step in the right direction." ..."There
is no intention nor any ability to clone human embryos," .... "What we need to do
is to derive tissue of an... embryonic origin and then grow cell lines which would
help human disease." ... Professor Jack Scarisbrick, chairman of the anti-abortion
group Life, said supporters of such experiments were trying to disguise the true
nature of the work. "It is cloning. It is producing an exact replica of another human
being. And you take a bit from that human being and then kill it," he said.
...unidentified government sources [were quoted] as saying ministers were almost
certain to end the ban for research that could help treat kidney, liver or heart
disease. ... Britain has some of the world's strictest rules on fertilization and
embryology and scientists worry that if the ban on therapeutic cloning is not lifted
Britain may lose out to countries with less stringent rules such as the United
States. ... ... one unidentified member of the panel [was quoted] as saying: "The
potential is enormous. This could allow us to regrow a heart muscle or bone
marrow and that is not a threat to humanity." Also at:
http:////www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000113078204876&rtmo=3wnAunHM&atmo=lllllljx&pg=/et/00/4/6/ecnclon06.html ;
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000402/sc/britain_cloning_1.html ... &
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_699000/699627.stm BBC .
...[Growing little potential human beings for the purpose of killing them and
harvesting their parts will IMHO further dehumanise humankind. Because
materialism thinks of humans as just a collection of spare parts cobbled together by
a `blind watchmaker' it sees no reason not to grow those parts artificially and use
them, much as one would grow plantations of trees for wood to repair houses. The
Biblical teaching that humans are special in the eyes of God, is just scoffed at as
`fundamentalist superstition' which Darwin has shown to be wrong.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000404/sc/health_cells_1.html Yahoo! ...
April 4 ... Australian Team Reports Stem Cell Breakthrough ... MELBOURNE
(Reuters) - Australian scientists said on Tuesday they had succeeded in developing
nerve cells from early human embryos which could lead to a cure for Parkinson's
disease and a range of other health problems. The Monash Institute of
Reproduction and Development said its research team was the first to achieve the
controlled, laboratory development of nerve cells from embryonic stem cells. "We
hope that one day we will be able to produce pure populations of specific types of
nerve cells that could be used for screening new medicines or for transplantation to
correct specific diseases," ... Embryonic stem cells are building blocks which can
turn into virtually any type of cell in the body. ... the cells used in the research were
developed from human embryos. ... Also at:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/health/2000/04/item20000404195949_1.htm
ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation] ... Tue, Apr 4 2000 ... 'Biological
cannibalism' in Melbourne cell research The Right to Life movement has described
the announcement of the growing of human cells from embryos as "biological
cannibalism". ... In what is being hailed as a world first, scientists from the Monash
Institute of Reproduction and Development in Melbourne have grown human
tissue in the laboratory from embryonic cells. The development could offer hope to
patients with degenerative conditions such as Parkinsons and Alzheimers Disease.
But Right to Life spokesman Dr John James says using human embryos for
medical research goes against everything doctors are trained to do. "The principle
concern is that it involves the destruction of an innocent human life, something
which is foreign to the best traditions of medical practice, it really is...a form of
biological cannibalism," ... ["biological cannibalism" indeed!]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000330/sc/health_cloning_1.html Yahoo! ...
March 30 ... European Patent Office to Speed Up Cloning Review BRUSSELS,
Belgium (Reuters) - The European Patent Office will speed up the review of a
controversial patent it granted for a procedure that might one day clone humans,
the European Commission said Thursday. The Munich-based office has been
condemned by environmental groups and some governments for granting a patent
to Edinburgh University in December for a process that involves the alteration of
cells and human embryos. ... "It seems clear to everyone involved that this patent
should not have been granted in the form it was," ... He pledged the Commission
would fight the decision if the appeal did not progress quickly enough. ... [The
EU's resistance to human cloning is IMHO encouraging. It is interesting that the
holder of this patent is Ian Wilmut, the cloner of Dolly, and he has stated publicly
he is opposed to human cloning. So maybe he included human cloning in his patent
application to stop anyone else doing it?]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000403/sc/science_dinosaur_1.html Yahoo! ...
April 3 ... Possible Vegetarian Dinosaur Nests Found in Argentina ... BUENOS
AIRES (Reuters) - Paleontologists in Argentina's Patagonian hinterland said on
Monday they had found what they believed were the first nests of plant-eating
dinosaurs ever discovered. The researchers in Argentina's Neuquen province found
depressions holding 15 to 35 eggs each, with the eggs appearing to rest in baskets
of clay ... "If the results of the investigations indicate that they are nests, they
would be the first nests of sauropods known to the world," said Coria. Sauropods
are large, plant-eating dinosaurs including the brontosaurus and brachiosaurus.
Coria said it would take some work to determine if the depressions, ... are actually
nests or some natural formation. "We cannot know if these 'nests' were the
structural product of the animal's biological action or natural depressions where
the eggs accumulated," said Coria. ... [they] ... are thought to be the work of
titanosaurus, a plant-eater that roamed the rivers of these now-arid flatlands 80
million years ago. ... The beast was roughly the size of a school bus, stretching 15
yards (meters) and weighing 15 tons. It had a long neck, serpentine tail, small head
and four elephantine legs. ... Also at:
http://www.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/04/04/vegetarian.dinosaur.reut/ [I hope this
`school bus' did not actually sit on its eggs! :-)]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000330/sc/abortion_study_1.html ... ... March
30 ... Abortion Pills Outpoll Surgery in U.S. Rural Area WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - More health-care providers in rural areas of one U.S. state would be
willing to offer medication to end a pregnancy than to provide a surgical
abortion...Researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle surveyed
physicians, midwives, nurse practitioners and physicians' assistants in rural counties
of Washington state in 1996 and 1997. ... Most of the 707 who responded said
they provided reproductive health care such as the prescription of contraceptives,
but only eight, or slightly over 1 percent, said they performed abortions.
Community opposition and moral objection were the most common reasons given
for not offering surgical abortions, the survey said. About 26 percent of the
respondents said they probably would prescribe abortifacients, or drugs that induce
abortions, if they became more common. Many in that group said they viewed
medical abortions as safe, effective and private. Two drugs given together,
methotrexate and misoprostol, can induce an abortion. The Food and Drug
Administration also is working to approve the so-called French abortion pill,
RU486, for sale in the United States. ... [The survey answer was a choice between
two evils, but the headline makes it sound that the abortion pill was popular!].
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_695000/695911.stm BBC ... 30
March, 2000 ... June target for human genome The genetic data promise new
treatments for disease The first draft of the genetic code for human life will be
available on the internet by June. ...The announcement by the publicly-funded
Human Genome Project (HGP) significantly narrows down the date when the
international consortium will publish 90% of the human genome. This is likely to
be before its commercial rival, Celera Genomics, publishes its version - but the
latter is likely to be more complete. The development follows recent controversy
over whether all decoded human genes should be freely available or whether
companies should be able to patent the information in the course of searching for
new cures and treatments for diseases. Accelerating progress HGP has now
sequenced over two billion of the three billion individual "letters" in the human
genome. It is only four months since it passed its first billion. "It's good news that
we're moving so fast. But it's even better news that researchers throughout the
world are using this data now to investigate the genetic underpinnings of health
and diseases ranging from Alzheimer's to diabetes," said Dr Francis Collins .... The
first draft will be published on the HGP's public database GenBank at a cost of
$250m. It will cover 90% of the human genome and be 99.9% accurate thanks to
fivefold duplication of the DNA analysis. The HGP's final version is expected by
2003 and will have at least eightfold duplication. Celera has said its version will be
published later this summer. In January, it claimed to have 2.58 billion bases
decoded, compared to the 2.18 billion bases announced yesterday by HGP. But
Celera has said it will only publish its data when it is almost fully assembled. It
claims the HGP's data is made up of unconnected fragments whose position on
chromosomes is often only vaguely known. ... [Its going to be interesting if they
both have quite different gene maps!]
http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/03/31/solar.layers.ap/index. html CNN ...
Sun's layers rotate at different speeds, researchers find ... Discovery may help
explain sunspots, solar flares March 31, 2000 ... WASHINGTON (AP) -- Parallel
layers of gas deep within the sun rotate at different speeds, an action that may
explain the formation of sunspots and solar flares, new research shows. Using data
collected from a sun-watching satellite and from six solar observatories on Earth,
Stanford University scientists spotted two layers of gas deep within the sun that
slow or speed up in an opposite, but synchronized pattern. ... the difference in
rotation rate occurs above and below at a subsurface layer known as the tachocline
which separates two major gas areas of the sun, the convection zone near the
surface and the radiative zone, which includes the core. Based on four years of
data, the scientists found that the convection zone, just above the tachocline,
increased its rotation speed by about 60 feet (18 meters) a second from July 1996
to February 1997. It then slowed and returned to its original speed over the
following eight months. At the same time, the radiative zone showed exactly the
opposite behavior, slowing down, and then speeding up. The cycle repeated itself
every 16 months, or 1.3 years, at the solar equator, but it recurred only every 12
months in the mid-latitudes of the sun. Unlike the Earth, the sun is made of gas.
This allows parts of the solar sphere to spin at different rates. The puzzling cycle
may be related to the forces that create the sun's massive magnetic field and the
11-year cycle of sunspots, .... Also at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_697000/697114.stm Schou and
colleagues say that the unusual but regular changes only occur above and below a
section of the Sun known as the interface layer or tachocline. This lies about
217,000 km (135,000 miles) below the solar surface. The tachocline separates the
Sun's two major regions of gas: the radiative zone, which includes the energy-
generating core, and the convection zone near the surface. ...The discovery that
the inner Sun spins at different rates at different latitudes is consistent with earlier
studies showing that the surface of the Sun also rotates at different speeds. At the
equator, it takes about 25 days for the surface of the Sun to rotate on its axis. But
at the poles, surface rotation requires roughly 33 days. [This might turn out to be
another design parameter, ie. without it we wouldn't be here. I read somewhere
that the Sun does not have as violent solar flares as other stars the same size.].
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000323/sc/science_gaelic_2.html Yahoo!
...March 23 ... Geneticists Show That Irish Are a Race Apart ... LONDON
(Reuters) - Irish geneticists have used surnames and the male Y chromosome to
reconstruct a one thousand year-old genetic map of Ireland that shows the Irish
really are a race apart. "When you look at this old genetic geography of Ireland
what you find is that in the West (of the country) we are almost exclusively of one
type of Y chromosome," ... The Y chromosome is passed down exclusively from
father to son. It is a favorite of geneticists because it accentuates differences
between populations. ... Bradley and his colleagues at Trinity College in Dublin
examined the Y chromosomes of men with Gaelic surnames in the western- most
province of Connaught, and found that 98.3 percent had a group of genes on the Y
chromosome known as haplogroup 1. ... "When you look at Gaelic surnames they
are different in frequency of Y chromosome types from non-Gaelic surnames," ....
... even within Ireland they found differences. More than 98 percent of men with
Gaelic names in western Ireland had haplogroup 1 but numbers dropped drastically
on the east of the Emerald Isle. Much further east in Turkey only 1.8 percent of
men carry haplogroup 1. "Ireland may tell us something about European diversity
because it is on the edge of Europe. Genetic diversity follows geography to some
extent," .... The researchers said there is a gradient of haplogroup 1 across Europe
starting at almost zero in the Far East to almost 100 percent in the west of Ireland.
One of the most likely explanations for this is that farming, which was invented
about 10,000 years ago in the near East and caused a fundamental revolution in the
way humans lived, spread over across Europe with time but only arrived in
western Ireland about 6,000 years ago. "Ireland has been relatively untouched by
this and the other great demographic movements because of its location. That
gives us the ability to look at the west and surnames and to get a snapshot of what
early European genetics may have been like," .... [Interesting, to me at least
because my ancestry is part South-West Irish. A better explanation might be
conquest-no one ever conquered the Irish, but there were many Viking and
English interbreedings in other parts of Ireland.]
HIV/AIDS:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000403/sc/aids_controversy_1.html Yahoo! ...
April 3 ... Journal Re-Kindles Controversy Over AIDS Research ...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A scientist attacked for leading a possibly unethical
AIDS trial defended the research on Monday, saying the experiment has been
misunderstood. The executive editor of the influential New England Journal of
Medicine said she deliberately published the study to rekindle a debate on whether
AIDS researchers should provide expensive drug treatment to volunteers in their
trials, even if the volunteers live in countries where such drugs are not normally
available. This time, the study under attack was done in Uganda to see what
factors make a person more likely to infect someone else with HIV, or to catch
it.... "I hope that publication of this paper will once again focus attention on the
vexing ethical issues raised by this sort of study," journal executive editor Dr.
Marcia Angell in an editorial accompanying the paper. In 1997, Angell attacked
studies aimed at finding out what causes and prevents mother-to-child transmission
of HIV. She said researchers should give everyone in the trial treatment. ... Dr.
Jerome Groopman, ... said the study raised questions affecting many medical trials.
"How could American researchers stand by silently while their subjects contracted
the virus?" Groopman asked ... "We did not idly sit back and not offer treatment,"
Quinn retorted. ... [This highlights the ethical dilemma which Duesberg, et al.,
claim is why proper double-blind clinical trials were not (and are not) done to test
if HIV causes AIDS and if the drug cocktails really work.]
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"Nor, thirdly, would it bring any uncertainty into the argument, if there
were a few parts of the watch concerning which we could not discover, or
had not yet discovered, in what manner they conduced to the general
effect; or even some parts, concerning which we could not ascertain,
whether they conduced to that effect in any manner whatever. For, as to
the first branch of the case; if, by the loss, or disorder, or decay of the parts
in question, the movement of the watch were found in fact to be stopped,
or disturbed, or retarded, no doubt would remain in our minds as to the
utility or intention of these parts, although we should be unable to
investigate the manner according to which, or the connection by which, the
ultimate effect depended upon their action or assistance: and the more
complex is the machine, the more likely is this obscurity to arise. Then, as
to the second thing supposed, namely, that there were parts, which might
be spared without prejudice to the movement of the watch, and that we had
proved this by experiment, -these superfluous parts, even if we were
completely assured that they were such, would not vacate the reasoning
which we had instituted concerning other parts. The indication of
contrivance remained, with respect to them, nearly as it was before." (Paley
W., "Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of
the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature," [1802], St. Thomas
Press: Houston, TX, 1972, reprint, p.4)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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