Daily Archives: March 31, 2020

Many people have been wondering about the relevance of intelligent design (ID) or evolution to the new coronavirus reported in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. What follows is my view as a molecular biologist.

The new virus goes by several names. It was initially called 2019-nCoV by the World Health Organization (with n standing for new). Since its DNA sequence is similar to that of the coronavirus that caused Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003, the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses renamed it SARS-CoV-2 in March 2020. The disease caused by the virus has been called COVID-19 (with d standing for disease).

There are other coronaviruses (including MERS-CoV, the virus that caused the 2012 epidemic of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome). To avoid confusion, I will refer to the latest coronavirus by its technical name, SARS-CoV-2.

Some people have maintained that SARS-CoV-2 is a product of human design. According to a February New York Post article, it may have escaped from a microbiology laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But I have seen no scientific evidence to support this claim.

On March 17, 2020, an analysis of DNA from several different coronaviruses was published in Nature Medicine. The authors concluded, Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.

Jonathan Bartlett, who has studied the logic of design inferences in depth, subsequently argued that the scientists had ruled out only one design hypothesis, so design was still theoretically possible. But Bartlett did not maintain that SARS-CoV-2 is a product of human design.

Could SARS-CoV-2 have evolved from another coronavirus by mutation and natural selection? I dont see why not, though there is only indirect evidence (from DNA sequences) to support the idea. If it had happened, however, it would not provide support for Darwinian evolution.

First, viruses are not living organisms: They are just pieces of DNA or RNA enclosed in a protein coat. They do not carry out metabolism (the chemical processes that are essential for life), and they do not reproduce themselves (only living cells or skilled genetic engineers can make copies of them). Second, even if viruses were considered living things, the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 from another coronavirus would be akin to microevolution minor changes within existing biological species. (Species are not even defined the same way in viruses as they are in living organisms.)

But Darwin did not write a book titled How Existing Species Change Over Time. He wrote a book titled The Origin of Species. In other words, Darwin attempted to explain macroevolution the origin of new species, organs, and body plans.

What, then, is the relevance of ID or evolution to SARS-CoV-2? As we have seen, their relevance to the origin of the coronavirus is unclear. But what about their relevance to combating the disease, COVID-19? According to Darwinist Theodosius Dobzhansky (who distinguished between microevolution and macroevolution in the 1930s), nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. In 2003, Texas Tech University professor Michael Dini wrote:

The central, unifying principle of biology is the theory of evolution. How can someone who does not accept the most important theory in biology expect to properly practice in a field [medicine] that is so heavily based on biology?

Yet the measures being taken against the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic owe nothing to evolutionary theory. The use of quarantine to block the spread of disease began in the fourteenth century. In the 1790s, Edward Jenner vaccinated people to protect them from smallpox. In 1847, Hungarian obstetrician Ignc Semmelweis demonstrated that proper hand washing lowers mortality from infectious disease. The administration of oxygen to patients with labored breathing was first reported in the years just following the publication of The Origin of Species, but the practice was based on physiological and clinical considerations, not evolution. And if any treatments are found to cure COVID-19 or lessen its effects, they will come from the intelligently designed efforts of virologists, biochemists, and clinicians not evolutionary biologists.

Photo credit: Airman 1st Class Alexis Christian, via Peterson Air Force Base.

Read more:

Coronavirus, Intelligent Design, and Evolution - Discovery Institute

Get great content like this right in your inbox.

NEW YORK 7-Eleven Inc. openedits latest Evolution Store in a city known for its fast-paced lifestyles and ever-evolving landscape of innovation: the Big Apple.

Evolution Storesare real-time, real-life, experiential testing grounds where customers can try and buy the retailer's latest innovations in revolutionary new store formats. They are alsothe first 7-Eleven stores to integrate restaurant concepts into the store design.

TheNew York City 7-Eleven Evolution Store, located at 88 Greenwich St. in Manhattan, features Raise the Roost Chicken & Biscuits, a new Southern-inspired quick-serve concept that serves up made-from-scratch, hand-breaded fried chicken tenders.

Billed as "Chicken Worth Crossing the Road For," Raise the Roost offers a simple menu:made-from-scratch, hand-breaded fried chicken tenders with signature sauces; bone-in and boneless wings;signature chicken sandwiches;and breakfast sandwiches. The in-store proprietary restaurant offers both made-to-order and grab-and-go options.

"On-the-go customers are looking for high-quality, differentiated food options and 7-Eleven continues to explore new concepts that meet that demand," said 7-Eleven President and CEOJoseph DePinto. "Raise the Roost offers craveable food and generous portions at prices below what you'll find at most fried chicken establishments."

In addition to the Southern-inspired cuisine, this Evolution Store also offers:

7-Eleven held a grand opening forits NYC Evolution Store from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Thursday, March 12. As part of the celebration, the retailer featured:

7-Eleven's NYC Evolution Store is the third of its kind. The retailer opened its first Evolution Store inDallas last year, followed by the second in Washington D.C., at 504 KSt. A San Diegostore at 3504 El Cajon Blvd. will open in the coming weeks.

"Today's customers expect even more than they did just a year ago when 7-Eleven opened its first Evolution Store inDallas," saidChris Tanco, 7-Eleven's executive vice president and chief operating officer. "Consumer feedback from that original store and the neighborhoods these new stores will serve helped our store development team refine and design this next generation of the 7-Eleven shopping experience. We have raised the bar for convenience and invite everyone to come experience it for themselves."

Based in Irving, Texas, 7-Eleven operates, franchises and/or licenses more than 70,000 stores in 17 countries, including 11,800 inNorth America.

See more here:

PHOTO GALLERY: 7-Eleven Brings Evolution Store to the Big Apple - CSNews Online

Janet BurnsMarch 30, 2020

Cannabis and humans co-evolved over thousands of years, each helping the other thrive and expand across the planet. (Jesse Milns/Leafly)

For humans,like most species, surviving life on Earth isnt exactly easy. But thankfully were not in it alone.

For tens of thousands of years, Homo sapiens has been developing mutually beneficial relationships with other species, from dogs and cats to bacteria and breadfruit. These interactions have allowed our different life forms to evolve and flourish together. These relationships are examples ofmutualistic coevolution, which happens when multiple species beneficially affect each others progress over time.

Theyre also a key part of what Dr. Sunil K. Aggarwal calls humankinds evolutionary garden. Aggarwal is a physician, medical geographer, and co-founder of the Advanced Integrative Medical Science (AIMS) Institute in Seattle. In 2013, he published one of the foundational articles on the subject, Tis in our nature: taking the human-cannabis relationship seriously in health science and public policy, in the medical journalFrontiers in Psychiatry.

The garden he describes is acollection of plants, fungi, and animal secretions that people have cultivated since prehistory, and carried around the world, because of their usefulness for human health and survival, whether as food, medicine, clothing, or other vital supplies.

Most are still embraced today, from honey and grains to caffeine and aspirin. In the past century, however, some cultures have decided its a good idea to cordon off certain areas of that garden, despite a long evolutionary historyand current scientific datasuggesting otherwise.

These blacklisted species include plants and fungi that humans have carefully administered for millennia to treat some of our worst sicknesses and pain, of both body and mind: distilled opium plants for physical agony, for example, or psilocybin tea for processing some of lifes most difficult moments.

Many are powerful, and can even be dangerous (in classic or modern forms) without supervision and guidance. Some have multiple uses, but never caught on in certain cultures.

According to Aggarwal, however, and to a growing number of experts on history and biology, one forbidden species stands out as our biggest loss, and for likely being the single most useful plant that humans have ever gotten to knowand which may even have helped us become more human.

That plant, of course, is cannabis.

Current research indicates that humans have been cultivating cannabis for tens of thousands of years, but aspects of our biology suggest that the relationship reaches back much further.

As a medical geographer, Aggarwal has studied the path of numerous natural medicines in different cultures and around the globe, based on anthropological and archaeological evidence.

Cannabis is one of the oldest medicines on record, he says. Its been evolving across the planet for tens of millions of years, stemming from its sturdy ancestors in Central Asia. In fact, early cannabis seems to trace back to when the worlds tallest mountain range, the Himalayas, were forming.

Sixty million years ago, those mountains were formed by the Indian subcontinent hitting the Asian plate, Aggarwal explained in a phone interview. All life there had to adapt or die.

It created a unique opportunity for this ancestral plant, which appeared 40 to 50 million years ago, to become very active in production, he said. There was less oxygen, and increased UV radiation, so the plant had to develop quite a bit of hardiness.

In the millions of years since, cannabis has shown a remarkable ability to survive in a wide variety of climates, from scrub-like Cannabis ruderalis to bush-like Cannabis indica and tall-growing Cannabis sativa and their hybrids, which produce most of our cannabis flower and low-THC hemp today.

Cannabis also appears to have been chemically compatible with the brains of animals, including humans, for much of that time.

In response to its new, harsher environs near the Himalayas, Aggarwal said, the plant seemingly began to produce a wide range of terpenes and cannabinoid chemicals, which the human bodywith its balance-keeping endocannabinoid system, which relies on cannabinoid neuroreceptors throughout the body, and can be found in all vertebrate speciesis especially suited to process.

The endocannabinoid system is key to our overall health and wellness because it has a crucial role in homeostasis, the regulation of our major biological functions. Our bodies are constantly working to maintain a narrow operative balance, and cannabinoid compounds can trigger the endocannabinoid system to regain this important equilibrium throughout the body as needed.

Despite their name, cannabinoid chemicals arent unique to cannabis. The compound type CBG, from which all phytocannabinoid compounds are derived, is found in many other plants, like echinacea, turmeric, and kava, to name a few.

But cannabis robustly produces tons of them, Aggarwal said. As a result, people living near the Tibetan Plateau domesticated the plant early on and found a great number of uses. That includes the neurological side, which is very interesting, as well as good old nutrition, and fibers for cordage.

It affects our neurological circuits and has a very important role in protecting the brain from injury, and promoting feelings of relaxation, Aggarwal added. Physical and psychological trauma can disturb the brain, and sub-optimize it. The endocannabinoid system, and phytocannabinoids if need be, can set the brain on the path toward regeneration.

In short, Aggarwal said, this cannabis ancestor happened to make these compounds that bind to receptors in the human system which tap into an even older evolutionarily evolved biological system, which goes back 600 million years: a magnitude older in terms of stages of the formation of life.

Specifically, those receptor typesknown as CB1 and CB2 todaytrace back to when multicellular organisms were becoming multicellular and were trying to figure out how to send communication and modulate action.

In biogenetic mapping, when you look at different species and map how old they are, you find cannabinoid receptors going back, and through today. In Homo sapiens, its a really integrated system for cell communication.

On the cellular level, cannabinoids are also particularly useful for their anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, throughout the body as well as the brain. These aspects help the body to maintain optimal performance across its systems from the intercellular level on up, like other natural supplements that ease the way for the body to do its job.

In terms of their antioxidant properties and neuroprotective properties, cannabinoids are certainly not the only game in town, Aggarwal said. But theyre pretty high up there.

Aside from archaeological and biological evidence, humankinds relationship with cannabis has been documented for thousands of years in printed language, and in oral histories that reach back even further.

As Aggarwal wrote in 2013, Cannabiss very name belies its longstanding relationship with humanity, as it was pragmatically given the species name Sativa in 1542 by German physician-botanist Leonhart Fuchs, meaning cultivated or useful in Latin.

Researcher Rob Clarke, whos written or co-authored numerous texts on cannabis history and biology, told Leafly that, simply put, cannabis seems to be one of the most useful plant that humans have ever come across. Plenty of plants are used for one purpose, and I can name a number of plants that are used for two purposes, he said. But I cant think of another one thats used for three.

For example, Palms provide us with food, and with fibers for clothing or shelter; bamboo is the same, he said. Other members of the garden provide us with both food and drugs, such as numerous fruits, roots, and grains that people have long eaten but also fermented into alcohol,like cannabis evolutionary cousin hops.

But cannabis has all three, Clarke said: Food, fiber, and drugs. Meaning that, from just one kind of crop, humans can get an important source of protein, fiber for building and crafting, and medical or cultural tools for our minds and bodies.

Martin Lee, co-founder and director of Project CBD and the author of several books on cannabis, explained in an interview with Leafly that plants, like humans, have ways of dealing with stressors, and expressing that stress physically. Cannabis plants do it through chemical signals, odors, things like that, said Lee. Plants under stressif theyre being eaten by insects or whateverhave evolved to communicate with their environment to deal with those stressors.

They might have a smell that attracts a predator of the thing attacking the plant, or that will keep potential predators away. And it so happens that these same smells, the same molecules that [cannabis] uses to deal with stress, are very helpful to the human brain in dealing with stress.

Cannabis goes back a long way as a plant ally to humankind, he added.

In fact, it even seems possible that cannabis particularly helped kickstart our evolution toward being the big-brained, culture-prone critical thinkers we are today. This could have occurred for practical, nutritional, or psychoactive reasons, or (like the plant itself) as a mixture.

In terms of humans neurological development and nutrition, Lee explained, Agriculture is really a turning point as the beginning of hoarding and carbohydrate farming, which was different from earlier diets. He continued, Its possible that cannabis is the first agricultural plant, and its certainly one of the very, very early ones. And cannabis is unique because its so versatile.

Today, Lee noted, humans are finding all kinds of new ways to use it (whether in food, medicine, industrial or artisanal fabrics, hempcrete, fuel, or many other forms), as well as better ways to appreciate its psychoactive effects. But as obvious as its usefulness in human lives and history may be, theres one thing we may never know about cannabis: how the first humans got high.

We can only speculate how people first discovered cannabis psychoactive aspects, Lee reflected. Its hard to imagine it would have come through eating it but, for various reasons, you can imagine they inhaled smoke accidentally.

Janet Burns is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn who finds drugs, tech, labor, and culture extremely interesting, among other things. She also hosts the cannabis news and conversation podcast The Toke.

Read more here:

How cannabis and humans evolved together - Leafly

However, the overall impact of this transient biological form goes well beyond that of the obvious danger to public health and has, sadly, also manifested in related digital exposures born out of, but not limited to:

a) Bad Practicesb) Unpreparednessc) Exposures created by the imposed new ways of workingd) Crime.

The first element to consider is that of the imposed way of working for business users, which may also touch on state of unpreparedness. Granted, there will be those organisations who have planned for, or practice security for out of office operations, but there are also many more who may fall into the category of unpreparedness. For example, when an operative is situated within the business premises, they are (hopefully) working under robust operational policies, are accommodated with secure communications and digital defence facilities, and are supported by those everyday, taken-for-granted invisible elements which provision physical security. However, once we step outside the box of the ring-fenced operational environment, we are, as they say, on our own!

It is in such circumstances as these, when we may see the creep of insecurity enter the unanticipated, extended perimeter of commercial operations impacting the absence of the overarching working security framework of robust policies and the accommodation of real-time pragmatic defences. For example, data which has been quickly migrated onto some spare USB device, or which has been sent by insecure communications lines. And just think about the home-based multi-family computer, upon which such data may be stored and processed; or, maybe it is the generated hard copy waste that finds its way into the household waste. All these, and more add to the increased levels of digital exposure - and this default presence of potential imposed insecurity, can also impact those who have prepared for such extended perimeter of operation conditions. After all, people are only human after all!

In a time of national, or indeed international upheaval, there is an enhanced opportunity for cyber crime with existing vulnerabilities and new opportunities being exploited by hackers and organised crime actors. Such criminal, parasitic activities as these may be born out of extraction of funds through some Covid-19 scam, or unsolicited communication claiming to be from the WHO (World Health Organisation); or maybe, the old game of taking control of the local IT asset with the underlying intention of onward exploitation for whatever purpose - all of which are every day, common-or-garden dangers we face at work - but all of a sudden, by the circumstance of imposition, one could infer such risks have been exacerbated by our new ways of imposed working!

Sadly, we also live in a world which is darkened by some state sponsored actors (SSA) such as North Korea, who have already been caught with their hands in the digital till. It is here where we see the aspect of a biological agent such as Covid-19 imposing disruption and fear to the global population, where such SSAs see this as an opportunity. For example, remember the WannaCry Cyber Attack on the NHS which gave the UK tax-payer 92m bill? The attack resulted in over 19,000 appointments being cancelled - some of which resulted in death! As such, C-19 presents the opportunity which, again, allows some SSAs to target their cyber-armoury against a known vulnerable target.

One noted technology minded member of the House of Lords, with whom I had a remote conversation, this week, raised a very good point insofar as Her Majestys government (HMG) do not have any public text alerting system in place. If there was, it could have been leveraged over the first weekend of stricter isolating measures in March (2020) when the public parks and cities were crowded for recreational purposes, against all government advice! Here, such an alerting system could have been used to publish a go home muppets communication.

With the younger members of our society spending their educational study time at home, this presents yet another knock-on opportunity for those predatory actors within our communities. Such actors as these are of course very much aware that young Johnny or Sally will be most likely spending time on the internet to busy their minds during this period of ultimate boredom - remembering that the youth / children of our age are amongst the most socially-active members of the online world. Here, during the C-19 pandemic there has, sadly, been a noted increase in predatory activities manifesting out of the corrupt minds of online abusers. Parents and Guardians alike must remind those in their care about the dangers of the online world - and where possible put in place not only parental defensive controls, but also active supervision.

We now find ourselves in a new age of business continuity which is teaching us that we need to commercially evolve and accept that remote working will become a necessary part of business as usual. Here, we will see that world of Cloud becoming embraced, with out-of-band services moving towards the centre of the normal graph. Video conferencing tools such as Zoom will replace the need to attend face-to-face meetings. The delivery of training, such as services being now delivered by Dubai based Meirc, will become an everyday occurrence, or a necessary commercial evolution that will work to underpin the continuance of operations.

The time has also arrived to review those business continuity policies and plans, to stress test them for accuracy and to ensure they are both fit for purpose, and pragmatic to serve the circumstance. At the same time, it may be wise to check how data will be made available to those business users who are not able to attend the. It is worth remembering that secure access controls are of paramount importance when dealing with commercially sensitive data assets.

Data privacy regulations are, or should be, at the forefront of the corporate governance mindset, and thus, as we move further away from the over-shadowing hand of internal controls, so the potential of not meeting all compliance expectations increases. Remembering, the mandated expectations of standards such as GDPR travel in tandem with their related data assets, so the need to ensure that all external users, handlers, processors and custodians are fully educated and aware of the mandated safeguards is essential. After all, any adverse occurrence will certainly find the path back to the parenting organisation in the form of reputational damage or a fine.

Last, but not least, as introduced above, we must be aware of the need to protect the information assets we are the custodians of, which is asserted by the said number of standards. Thus we must start to think both of logical and physical security, and the use of storage devices, like the certified istorage mobile and desk based FIPS-140 / 2 diskAshur products. No longer will that USB thumb drive, sitting in the desk drawer be considered the to-hand solution for data migration - or should I say exfiltration!

Mankind can very resilient when it comes down to the wire, and in the face of the C-19 pandemic, time has arrived to don the fighting spirit against this unseen aggressor. From health to security,e time has come to fight the good fight. No longer is it a case of your country needs you, on his war-footing it is more a case of your planet needs you.

Take care, stay safe and keep washing your hands!

See the article here:

Article The evolution of awareness in the pandemic age - BCS