Category Archives: Evolution

Meet the granddaddy of the animal kingdom, including humans: Ikaria wariootia, a humble worm-like creature that lived an estimated 555 million years ago.

This extinct creature is the oldest known bilaterian, meaning its body exhibited bilateral symmetry on its left and right sides, in addition to front and rear openings (a mouth and an anus) connected by a through-gut. These features distinguish Ikaria wariootia as the first clear common ancestor of most animals alive today.

Over hundreds of millions of years, animals have diversified into a dazzling range of forms that includes humans, dinosaurs, elephants, sharks, spiders, birds, snakes, and countless other species. Despite this mind-boggling variety, all animals share the same extended lineage, inspiring scientists to probe the deepest reaches of this labyrinthine family tree.

Tantalizing traces of early animals are etched in ancient sandstone near Nilpena, South Australia, in the form of tiny fossilized burrows called Helminthoidichnites. For more than a decade, scientists have speculated about the creatures that might have dug these tunnels, but have not been able to spot their fossilized bodies.

Now, a team led by Scott Evans, a recent doctoral graduate from UC Riverside, has identified more than 100 body fossils of these ancient burrowers using 3D laser scanning, according to a study published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

It was really exciting to finally find them! Evans said in an email, adding that it was a drawn-out process even before his team began acquiring laser scans.

We knew from what we could see that these were definitely fossils and that they might fit what we predicted made Helminthoidichnites and that was really the motivation for going out and getting the scanner, Evans explained. Once we had 3D scans, that was our 'aha' moment of fully realizing what we had and how impactful it was.

The team revealed that the largest Ikaria wariootia animals could grow to about the size and shape of a grain of rice. The new genus is named for the word Ikara, which means meeting place in the Indigenous Adnyamathanha language. The species name refers to Warioota Creek, which runs close to the fossil site.

3 specimens of Ikaria wariootia from Nilpena. Image: Scott D. Evans

These burrowers werent the only animals on Earth during this period, which is known as the Ediacaran Era, and not all living animals today are bilaterianfor instance, sponges, jellyfish, and anemones are animals that do not share this body plan. However, the majority of animals have bilaterian bodies and Ikaria wariootia is potentially the oldest, definitive bilaterian found in South Australia, the study said.

In addition to pushing back the timeline of early bilaterians, the specimens may present the oldest direct evidence of scavenging in the fossil record. As they tunneled through the seafloor, the animals likely fed on algae or dead lifeforms they came across, a foraging strategy that may have helped give rise to predation.

The fossils not only offer a glimpse of Earths first riffs with the animal kingdom, they can also help constrain theories about the emergence of life on alien worlds. If we want to identify potential planets that could host complex life we need to better understand the environments in which such life evolved on our planet more than a half a billion years ago, Evans said.

Indeed, the research was funded in part by a NASA Exobiology Program Grant because of its relevance to understanding the origins of complex organisms. We can also see that Ikaria specifically sought out oxygen rich environments and avoided oxygen poor ones, Evans explained. These indicate that having an appreciable amount of oxygen was really important for the evolution and success of these types of organisms and that we should be looking for exoplanets with similar, well-oxygenated conditions.

The identification of Ikaria wariootia represents a major milestone in the reconstruction of our shared animal ancestry, and it is likely to be followed by more discoveries from the ancient Ediacaran-era rocks of South Australia, South China, and Russia, among others. Evans also hopes to reconstruct some of the genetic machinery that led to this influential organism.

Work that I am currently involved with is combining the characters we can identify in Ikaria, and other animals from this period, with our understanding of the genes that produce those characters in animals today, he said.

This will ultimately give us a better picture of the genetic programming operating to build these early animals and hopefully give us a better idea of where they fit within the broader context of the evolution of complex forms on this planet.

The rest is here:

Nearly All Animal Life Evolved From This Gross Worm Creature, Including Us - VICE

Some Assembly RequiredNeil ShubinPantheon, $26.95

When descendants of ancient fish firsthauled themselves onto dry land, they didnt do so with lungs evolvedspecifically for that reason. The need to breathe air ultimately led to achange in the function of an organ the fish already had. Likewise, when birdstook to the air millions of years later, they did so using feathers that may haveoriginally evolved as insulation or as a way to attract mates.

In SomeAssembly Required, Neil Shubin, a paleontologist, explores these and othergreat evolutionary innovations, as well as the invisible genetic changes thatmade them possible. The book is an impressive chronicle of what geneticresearch over the last few decades has done to complement the story ofevolution, a tale once told through fossils, anatomy and physiology alone.

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Forinstance, studies show that the genes fish need to build swim bladders theorgan that helps control buoyancy are the same ones lungfish and humans useto build lungs. Such repurposing, of both genes and anatomical features, is arecurrent theme in the tree of life, Shubin notes.

In somecases, genetic mutations trigger the production of new proteins, which caneither serve new functions or perform old tasks more efficiently and, in turn,enhance the survival of the organism. In other cases, mutations cause genes tobe switched on or off earlier or later in development and at different placesin an embryo. These changes can alter the development of skulls, fins, limbsand other anatomical features, and sometimes result in totally new features.

Many ofthese tweaks may arise when genes duplicate themselves, a process that allowsone copy of a gene to retain its original function but frees up the additionalcopy to change and gain a new purpose. For instance, research suggests that thegene NOTCH2NL, which originated via duplication of a more primitive geneand is found in humans but not monkeys, triggers the growth of brain cells wheninserted into the DNA of lab mice. The gene probably contributes to humans bigbrain, scientists have proposed.

Viralinfections have also led to evolutionary changes in the host, Shubin pointsout. Syncytin, a protein that plays a vital role in the placenta of mammals, isa viral protein that lost its ability to infect other cells. At some point inthe evolution of mammals, the protein was incorporated into its hosts geneticcode and put to work, creating intercellular pathways that enable nutrients andother substances to flow between mothers and embryos.

By taking a historical perspective and recounting the gradual accumulation of knowledge about genes and their effects, Shubin transforms a complicated topic into a smooth and fascinating read.

Buy Some Assembly Required from Amazon.com.Science Newsis a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. Please see ourFAQfor more details.

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A new book captures how genetics fills in the story of lifes evolution - Science News

Stories from the Hall of Fame Archive: A look at how the active free-agent process we see today gradually came to be in the NFL.

The National Football League kicked off its new league year on Wednesday and with it came the beginning of the free agency period. Players from around the league, whose contracts have expired, became eligible to sign with any team wanting to acquire their services.

This wasnt always the way the NFL conducted business. From 1920 to 1946, the league utilized the reserve rule. This allowed teams the right to resign a player in perpetuity. Players could not move to another team by choice and had only three options: play for the same team, get traded or retire.

The NFL replaced the reserve rule with the one-year option rule in 1947. Teams only had the right to use the reserve clause once after the expiration of a players contract. This gave players the ability to negotiate and enter into a contract with another team after their option year was fulfilled. It took 16 years before a player exercised the rule to change teams. Wide receiver R.C. Owens signed with the Baltimore Colts in 1961 after playing out his option year with the San Francisco 49ers.

Owens move to the Colts prompted the NFL to create the Rozelle Rule in 1963. Named after NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, the rule stipulated that whenever a team lost a free agent, his former team would receive compensation from the team signing that free agent. It essentially worked similar to a trade. If the teams could not agree to terms, Rozelle had final authority on what compensation would be delivered. Only 34 players signed with new teams from 1963-1974 as most teams found it easier to just not sign free agents.

In 1976, the NFL players union won a court decision in John Mackey v. NFL that found the Rozelle Rule to be an unfair restraint of trade. The settlement added structure to the Rozelle Rule and a new form of free agency was created. The new rule was known as The Right of First Refusal and Compensation which was used by the NFL from 1977-1988.

This rule gave a free agents original team the right of first refusal, enabling it to retain its player by matching any contract offer by another team. The original team was also entitled to draft choice compensation from the team signing its player based on a players NFL experience and his new salary.

In 1989, the players union sued the league again. The NFL would adopt the Plan B Free Agency system. Teams could now protect 37 players on their roster, and the remaining players became unrestricted free agents. A protected player was unable to sign with another team without giving his original team the first chance to sign him. Linebacker Wilber Marshall, who jumped from the Chicago to Washington, was the only protected player to change teams while this system was in place.

Following more lawsuits from individual players, a federal jury in Minnesota ruled that Plan B was illegal and in 1992, Philadelphia Eagles tight end Keith Jackson, New England Patriots defensive end Garin Veris, Cleveland Browns wide receiver Webster Slaughter, and Detroit Lions running back D.J. Dozier were granted temporary unrestricted free agency for five days. All of them would go on to sign with new teams except for Dozier who remained unsigned.

Then, in 1993, during collective bargaining between the League and the NFL Players Association, the owners granted players Unrestricted Free Agency in exchange for a salary cap (which was set at $34.6 million). The Reggie White Settlement allowed any veteran with at least five years of experience to become an unrestricted free agent. It did allow teams to designate a Franchise player and a Transition player which restricted their market. Under this structure, teams also retained exclusive negotiating rights to players with fewer than three years of experience.

White earned the nickname "The Minister of Defense" as a senior at Tennessee. The moniker surely had to do with something more than the fact that he became an ordained minister at the age of 17. That became instantly apparent when he began his pro football career.

He became the most significant free agent signing in NFL history when the new system went into effect during the 1993 offseason. White chose Green Bay in a shocker that shifted the balance of power in the NFL and foretold free agency's boom and boon. White teamed with future Hall of Famer Brett Favre to lead the Packers' resurgence that ended a 30-year title drought.

In a countdown to the NFLs Centennial celebration on Sept. 17, 2020, Director of Archives and Football Information at the Pro Football Hall of Fame Jon Kendle shares unique and interesting stories starting from the leagues founding in downtown Canton to the present day.

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From R.C. Owens to Reggie White, the evolution of NFL free agency - Canton Repository

No, not those fish fingers. Defrosting and a microwave werent required here.

Humans may not be directly related to fish (except maybe Abe Sapien or that creature from The Shape of Water), but the fossil of an extinct fish known as Elpisostege watsoni was a breakthrough for a research team from Flinders University in Australia and Universite de Quebec a Rimouski in Canada. This literal fish out of water had fingers, as in actual finger bones, in its pectoral fins. Its 380-million-year-old skeleton revealed how vertebrate fingers evolved from fins and how prehistoric fish morphed into tetrapods.

The find reveals extraordinary new information about the evolution of the vertebrate hand,"said John Long, Strategic Professor in Paleontology at Flingers University, who recently published a study in Nature. This is the first time that we have unequivocally discovered fingers locked in a fin with fin-rays in any known fish. The articulating digits in the fin are like the finger bones found in the hands of most animals."

Elpisostegalians were amphibious predators that merged features of fish and tetrapods. They were the closest known evolutionary ancestors of tetrapods, but are thought to have appeared more fishlike (closer to how you would probably imagine a fish-crocodile hybrid) since they still had the scales and gills. Their large skulls with eyes on top were parts of their morphology closer to tetrapods, and unlike fish, they had insignificant dorsal and anal fins or none at all, relying instead on their pectoral fins to carry them around in shallow water or all the way to shore. Finger-like bones made it easier for them to spread their weight through those fins.

No other fossils have revealed the complete anatomy of an elpisostegalians extraordinary pectoral fins until now. Out of four elpistostegalian species, E. watsoni is the only one whose body shape and proportions can now be fully fleshed out.

Tetrapods are thought to have emerged in the form of elpisostegalians during the Devonian period. Earlier fossilized impressions of bones that suggested the beginnings of a transformation do exist, but these not-quite-fish, or tetrapodomorphs, which probably walked something like this, marked the dawn of the transformation into tetrapods. What may have deceptively appeared to be a fin could have been mistaken for one, since it still shows fin rays characteristic of fish. These fins were actually hiding skeletal digits that Long and his team determined to be the closest skeletal structure to tetrapod hands ever found.

"This finding pushes back the origin of digits in vertebrates to the fish level, and tells us that the patterning for the vertebrate hand was first developed deep in evolution, just before fishes left the water," Long said.

So where did fish end and tetrapods begin? The Devonian phenomenon of fish fingers was undoubtedly one of the most significant events in vertebrate evolution. Later incarnations of tetrapodomorphs would eventually ditch the gills for lungs and further adapt to terrestrial life by developing stronger muscular structures in fins that were turning into legs. Dorsal and anal fins that are necessary for stability and swimming in water also disappeared. Functions of major organs began to change, and sensory abilities to detect movement of predators and prey in water gradually faded, though E. watsoni was probably not in much danger of being eaten since it had fangs for days.

Elpistostege further blurs the line between fish and tetrapods in showing a greater number of tetrapod novelties than are present in any other fish, Watson and his team concluded in the study.

Just hope that monster sharks wont start taking sunset walks on the beach anytime soon.

(via Flinders University/Nature)

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Creepy extinct fish with fingers unearths the bizarre truth of how hands evolved - SYFY WIRE

Are we all washing our hands several times a day? As the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic spreads, we should all be washing our hands several times a day. Take a moment right now, go give your hands a scrub with some warm soapy water for 20 seconds, and then come back. Maybe spritz around some hand sanitizer if you dont have access to a sink. Put on a little hand lotion so your skin doesnt get too chapped.

Ready? Great.

Right now, all of us either are or should be very vigilant about washing our hands, but for much of human history, that wasnt the case. Hand-washing as a social responsibility is a fairly new concept.

To learn about how that concept developed and when and why it emerged, I called up Peter Ward, a professor of history at the University of British Columbia and the author of The Clean Body: A Modern History. Over the phone, we discussed the history of hygiene, when people started washing their hands, and why we usually wash our hands and it has a lot less to do with medicine, and a lot more to do with social acceptance, than you might think. Highlights from our conversation, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity, follow.

To start off, tell me a little bit about your book, The Clean Body. Whats the central argument?

The book is a history of personal hygiene in the West from the 17th century to the recent past. Its about how people have thought about their bodies and treated their bodies.

In the 17th century, people didnt have baths regularly. They thought that to be clean, it was enough to change their underwear and wash their underwear frequently.

The first person I mention in the book is Louis XIV of France, who had two baths in his adult lifetime. They were both for medicinal reasons. He had headaches and his doctors recommended baths. It didnt work to cure the headaches, so he lived another half century and never bathed again.

But he washed his hands once a day in scented water and his face every second day. And he changed his underclothes. That was it. That was the habit of middle and upper-class people in the Western world until the middle of the 19th century.

So what changed in the middle of the 19th century?

A lot changed then! It began in the upper reaches of Western society. People began to think about their bodies as something to be cared for, and that treatment as something to distinguish themselves from the lower classes, who didnt wash in the same way. By washing you were making a statement about what class you belonged to.

Then theres the technological side, like the development of new bathing equipment. And the architectural side, the beginning of the appearance of the bathroom first in the homes of the extremely wealthy, and then over the course of about a century, down to mass housing.

Theres lots of strands here. Some of them have to do with the history of plumbing, some of them have to do with the history of domestic architecture, the history of clothing, of class understanding. A lot of them have to do with the history of business and the advertising of soap, which became highly industrialized in the late 19th century. That had a huge educational impact on hygiene.

And when did people start to talk about hand-washing specifically?

Well, Louis washed his hands every day. The idea was there. Our current concern for hand-washing was a product of the germ theory era more than anything else. The idea that people should habitually wash their hands is not an idea that existed before the latter part of the 19th century.

Before then, people had no particular reason to wash their hands unless they were dirty or sticky or something of that sort. There was no epidemiological reason to wash until the germ theory emerged, which was another gradual process. It really didnt take root fundamentally until the 1880s, with the discoveries of Pasteur.

Theres this story I read that Ive always thought might be apocryphal of surgeons refusing to wash their hands during the beginning of the rise of germ theory, because a gentlemans hands are always clean, so on those grounds hand-washing was unnecessary. Is there any truth to that story?

Ive not heard that one, so its probably too good to be true. But at that point in time, surgeons and all attending physicians didnt have any clear reason to wash their hands as they moved from one patient to the next. This was an acute problem for physicians and any medical attendants who dealt with women delivering children. One of the leading causes of maternal mortality was childbed fever, which was circulated in maternity hall settings and passed from physicians to patients during the process.

Some of the earliest people who began to think more clearly about this began to think there might be a connection between hand-washing and the passage of disease. One of the first was an American, Oliver Wendall Holmes. He was a Boston poet and physician who wrote an article in the 1840s positing that there might be a connection between medical practitioners moving from patient to patient and womens post-birth deaths. But there was no theoretical basis for the idea to gain any broad acceptance. It more or less disappeared from sight until the 1880s.

It wasnt until Pasteur came along that people began to think about these microbiological elements, the unseen life of germs. Pasteur proved it. But even after Pasteur, it took a decade or even more, a generation, for his ideas to be accepted.

Why was there so much reluctance?

There were competing theories. We tend to think of Pasteur as this great genius who came to a universal truth, but he wasnt working in a vacuum. There were other people in his field working on the same problems and coming to different conclusions. He was one of many competitors, and not all his competitors fell away.

So what can we take away from that history? This long period where hand-washing wasnt considered important, and now all of a sudden its medically necessary?

Until very recently, most of our bathing practices had to do with our idea of ourselves as social beings. We want to go through our daily lives in a way that is agreeable to other people, and we assume probably correctly that one of the best ways of doing that is to be very, very clean. To look clean, to smell clean, to feel clean, to be clean. And a lot of that has to do with using the products that purport to make us clean. The commercialization of personal hygiene is driven by a different agenda than a medical one. Its primarily a social one.

Do you think thats changing now?

I think everybody is scared skinny at the moment. We all know that you must wash your hands many times a day right now, for 20 seconds, singing Happy Birthday to yourself twice. Theres going to be a degree of care at least in the short run thats driven by a medical agenda, but I think the underlying issues are going to be the same. From the 20th century on, the hygienic revolution of modern times has to do with the social imperatives of our communal lives more than anything else.

That takes the argument back to the 17th century: People appeared to be clean by wearing clean underwear that showed over their outer clothes through collars and cuffs. If you look at Dutch art, one of those marvelous Franz Hals portraits or really any other Dutch artist in the 17th century, youll see these people who are very somberly dressed. But they all have something white coming out over the tops of their outer garments: a collar, a cuff. There are often slashes in the outer garments that reveal white clothes next to the skin.

What these people were doing were displaying their cleanliness. They were differentiating themselves from the poor, who in some cases didnt wear a second layer of clothing and in other cases couldnt afford to wash their underclothes. It was a social statement of a different time, one of social differentiation rather than social inclusion. But right now, we clean ourselves to make a statement of social inclusion. Were making ourselves agreeable to each other.

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Coronavirus: The evolution of hand-washing, explained by a historian - Vox.com

Last fall, Senators Chuck Grassley, Tammy Baldwin, Joni Ernst, and Dick Durbin introduced the Whistleblower Programs Improvement Act, which protects financial whistleblowers who report internally from retaliation. This law mirrors theWhistleblower Protection Reform Act of 2019 which passed in the House of Representatives last spring. It is similarly aimed at clarifying that the Dodd-Frank Acts anti-retaliation provision applies equally to employees who report alleged misconduct directly to the SEC and to employees who only report alleged misconduct internally to their employers. In 2018, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Digital Realty Trust, Inc. v. Somers, 38 S.Ct. 767 (2018) that the plain language of Section 922 extends anti-retaliation protection to employees who report misconduct directly to the SEC.

Then, over the summer, the SEC announced two separate whistleblower awards which total more than $2 million. In lateJuly 2019, the SEC announced its award of a half-million dollars to an overseas whistleblower whose expeditious reporting helped the SEC bring a successful enforcement action. As it generally does, the SEC declined to provide information about the enforcement action or the identity of the whistleblower who provided the helpful information.

Then, in late August 2019, the SEC announced a second award of $1.8 million to a whistleblower who provided information and assistance critically important to success of an SEC enforcement action involving improprieties committed overseas. According to the SEC, the whistleblower provided extensive and ongoing cooperation during the course of its investigation, including reviewing documents and providing sworn testimony. At the same time, as reported the SEC, the whistleblower further continued to provide additional and new information that advanced the agencys investigation. At the same time, the SEC specifically pointed out that, because the misconduct in this case occurred overseas, absent the whistleblowers tip and assistance, the misconduct would have been difficult for the SEC to identify.

With these most recent awards, the SECs whistleblower program has awarded a total of approximately $387 million to 66 individual whistleblowers since beginning the program in 2012.

Of course, this is only one area of the changing law that affects practitioners who represent whistleblowers. At Balestriere Fariello, we constantly monitor all statutory and case developments and bring a team of ivy-league educated and big-firm trained lawyers who apply decades of prosecutorial and litigation experience to assist whistleblowers bring claims and qui tam actions at the federal level. Because of our diverse backgrounds and both extensive and diverse complaint drafting experience, we are able to move very rapidly, which is precisely what is essential to preserve a clients position and maximize the benefit of our courageous and savvy clients who take a stand against individual and corporate malfeasance. Our goal has always been to provide stellar representation while working tirelessly to advance the interests of those who take a stand and who want to safeguard their honest and law-abiding colleagues as well as all fellow citizens.

Daniel McGillycuddy has over 30 years of experience in handling complex, high-stakes criminal and civil matters. He is a partner at the trial and investigations law firm Balestriere Fariello in New York, where he and his colleagues represent domestic and international clients in litigation, arbitration, appeals, and investigations. You can reach Dan atdaniel.m.mcgillycuddy@balestrierefariello.com.

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Continued Evolution Of Whistleblower Law - Above the Law

Editors note: As an alternative to what you are getting pretty much everywhere else in the media at the moment, Evolution News is proud to offer inspiration, pointing to purpose and meaning in life. The profoundest mystery and thus the deepest inspiration is life itself. Discovery Institute Press has just published a greatly expanded edition of the 1984 classic of intelligent design science literature, The Mystery of Lifes Origin. Below is the original Foreword to the book by San Francisco State University biologist Dean Kenyon.

The Mystery of Lifes Origin presents an extraordinary new analysis of an age-old question: How did life start on Earth? The authors deal forthrightly and brilliantly with the major problems confronting scientists today in their search for lifes origins. They understand the impasse in current laboratory and theoretical research and suggest a way around it. Their arguments are cogent, original, and compelling. This book is sure to stimulate much animated discussion among scientists and laymen. It is very likely that research on lifes origins will move in somewhat different directions once the professionals have read this important work.

The modern experimental study of the origin of the first life on Earth is now entering its fourth decade, if we date the inception of this field of research to Stanley Millers pioneering work in the early 1950s. Since Millers identification of several (racemic) protein-forming amino acids in his electric discharge apparatus, numerous follow-up studies have been conducted. Conforming in varying degrees to the requirements of the so-called simulation paradigm, these experiments have yielded detectable amounts of most of the major kinds of biochemical substance as well as a variety of organic microscopic structures suggested to be similar to the historical precursors of the first living cells.

This program of research can be regarded as a natural extension of Darwins evolutionary views of the last century. The goal of the work is to find plausible uniformitarian mechanisms for the gradual spontaneous generation of living matter from relatively simple molecules thought to have been abundant on the surface of the primitive Earth.

The experimental results to date have apparently convinced many scientists that a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life will be found, but there are significant reasons for doubt. In the years since the publication of Biochemical Predestination I have been increasingly struck by a peculiar feature of many of the published experiments in the field. I am not referring to those studies conducted more or less along the lines of Millers original work, although there are firm grounds for criticizing those studies as well. I am referring to those experiments designed to elucidate possible pathways of prebiotic synthesis of certain organic substances of biologic interest, such as purines and pyrimidines, or polypeptides.

In most cases the experimental conditions in such studies have been so artificially simplified as to have virtually no bearing on any actual processes that might have taken place on the primitive Earth. For example, if one wishes to find a possible prebiotic mechanism of condensation of free amino acids to polypeptides, it is not likely that sugars or aldehydes would be added to the reaction mixture. And yet, how likely is it that amino acids (or any other presumed precursor substance) occurred anywhere on the primitive Earth free from contamination substances, either in solution or the solid state? The difficulty is that if sugars or aldehydes were also present polypeptides would not form. Instead an interfering cross-reaction would occur between amino acids and sugars to give complex, insoluble polymeric material of very dubious relevance to chemical evolution. This problem of potentially interfering cross-reactions has been largely neglected in much of the published work on the chemical origins of life. The possible implications of such an omission merit careful study.

Other aspects of origin-of-life research have contributed to my growing uneasiness about the theory of chemical evolution. One of these is the enormous gap between the most complex protocell model systems produced in the laboratory and the simplest living cells. Anyone familiar with the ultrastructural and biochemical complexity of the genus Mycoplasma, for example, should have serious doubts about the relevance of any of the various laboratory protocols to the actual historical origin of cells. In my view, the possibility of closing this gap by laboratory simulation of chemical events likely to have occurred on the primitive Earth is extremely remote.

Another intractable problem concerns the spontaneous origin of the optical isomer preferences found universally in living matter (e.g., L- rather than D-amino acids in proteins, D- rather than L-sugars in nucleic acids). After all the prodigious effort that has gone into attempts to solve this great question over the years, we are really no nearer to a solution today than we were thirty years ago.

Finally, in this brief summary of the reasons for my growing doubts that life on Earth could have begun spontaneously by purely chemical and physical means, there is the problem of the origin of genetic, i.e., biologically relevant, information in biopolymers. No experimental system yet devised has provided the slightest clue as to how biologically meaningful sequences of subunits might have originated in prebiotic polynucleotides or polypeptides. Evidence for some degree of spontaneous sequence ordering has been published, but there is no indication whatsoever that the non-randomness is biologically significant. Until such evidence is forthcoming one certainly cannot claim that the possibility of a naturalistic origin of life has been demonstrated.

In view of these and other vexing problems in origin-of-life research, there has been a need for some years now for a detailed, systematic analysis of all major aspects of the field. It is time to re-examine the foundations of this research in such a way that all the salient lines of criticism are simultaneously kept in view. The Mystery of Lifes Origin admirably fills this need. The authors have addressed nearly all the problems enumerated above and several other important ones as well. They believe, and I now concur, that there is a fundamental flaw in all current theories of the chemical origins of life. Although the tone of the book is critical, the authors have written it in the positive hope that their analysis will help us find a better theory of origins. Such an approach is, of course, entirely consistent with the manner in which scientific advances have occurred in the past.

One of the uniquely valuable features of the book is its discussion (Chap. 6) of the relative geochemical plausibilities of the various types of simulation experiments reported in the literature. To my knowledge this is the first systematic attempt to devise formal criteria for acceptable degrees of interference by the investigator in such experiments. Another especially helpful feature is the detailed discussion of the implications of thermodynamics (Chaps. 7, 8, and 9) for the origin-of-life problem. This important topic is either omitted entirely or is treated superficially in most other books on the chemical origins of life. The authors might have included a more detailed discussion of the problem of optical isomer preferences, but this deficiency detracts in only a minor way from the overall strength of their argument.

If the authors criticisms are valid, one might ask, why have they not been recognized or stressed by workers in the field? I suspect that part of the answer is that many scientists would hesitate to accept the authors conclusion that it is fundamentally implausible that unassisted matter and energy organized themselves into living systems. Perhaps these scientists fear that acceptance of this conclusion would open the door to the possibility (or the necessity) of a supernatural origin of life. Faced with this prospect many investigators would prefer to continue in their search for a naturalistic explanation of the origin of life along the lines marked out over the last few decades, in spite of the many serious difficulties of which we are now aware. Perhaps the fallacy of scientism is more wide- spread than we like to think.

Ones presuppositions about the origin of life, and especially the assumption that this problem will ultimately yield to a persistent application of current methodology, can certainly influence which lines of evidence and argument one chooses to stress, and which are played down or avoided altogether. What the authors have done is to place before us essentially all the pertinent lines of criticism in one continuous statement and to invite us to face them squarely.

All scientists interested in the origin-of-life problem would do well to study this book carefully and to evaluate their own work in the light of its arguments.

Read the rest of The Mystery of Lifes Origin: The Continuing Controversy, from Discovery Institute Press.

Photo: Dean H. Kenyon, in On the Origin of Life: An Interview with Dr. Dean Kenyon, via Access Research Network (screenshot).

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What Scientists Fear: Foreword to The Mystery of Life's Origin - Discovery Institute

When the word came out last week that the Arizona Cardinals were one of three teams interested in signing QB P.J. Walker, the nifty 5-11 dual-threat MVP of the XFL, it made a lot of sense. Walker thrived in the Houston Roughnecks spread offense under June Jones-a system similar to Kliff Kingsburys.

Over the weekend there was some speculation amongst Bickley and Gambo and others that the Cardinals reported interest in P.J. Walker was designed to put pressure on Brett Hundley to re-sign with the club. Hmmm...

At the same time, the buzz of the NFL was Tom Bradys decision to sign with Bruce Arians and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. This is fascinating in the sense that Brady, after winning six Super Bowl rings with the New England Patriots under the close watch of the fastidious Bill Belichick, is now, at age 42, starting a new chapter of his brilliant NFL career under the watch of the swashbuckling Arians, who is, for all intents and purposes, the anti-Bellichick.

Fascinating too that Brady ensured the inclusion of a clause that said the Bucs cannot place the franchise tag on him in 2022, after his 2 year deal is over. George Blanda move over!

It has been an awkward couple of weeks for Belichick-first in losing out to the Cardinals in trying to trade for WR DeAndre Hopkins (per reports Belichick offered the Pats 1st round pick, #23), but was shunned by Bill OBrien perhaps very much in the way Belichick shunned OBrien by barely shaking his hand while jogging past him after the Texans beat the Patriots 28-22 back in early December.

Secondly, although it is evident that Belichick and Brady had a falling out over the past few months stemming back to a press conference months ago where Brady shunned The Patriots Way in order to promote his own brand The TB12 Method...for Belichick it must feel more than a little nettling to see Brady land in the arms of the pompous Bruce Arians, who gloated so effusively about the Chandler Jones trade so much so that after the Patriots beat the Cardinals 23-21 in game one of the 2016 season (with Jimmy Garopollo subbing in for the suspended Brady), when Belichick was asked how it felt to beat a Super Bowl contender on the road with their QB2 to start the season, Belichick quipped, at least they say they are.

Usually when Belichick feels a little incensed about another organization, he does what hes best at-he finds a spot where the opponent is a little vulnerable and tries to exploit it. Thus, I was wondering over the weekend whether Belichick would make a play to sign QB Brett Hundley away from the Cardinals, knowing the Cardinals very much wanted Hundley back.

Normally, Hundley to the Patriots might seem like a head-scratcher-but-what some people have yet to realize is that the post-Brady Patriots want to follow the recent trend of investing in mobile, dual-threat QBs.

This is one of the reasons why Belichick and Josh McDaniels are enamored with 2nd year QB Jarrett Stidham. Not only does Stidham posses an above average NFL arm, he has good mobility, similar in some respects to the kind of mobility Patrick Mahomes exhibits. Thus, adding Brett Hundley to compete with Stidham, felt like a good match because they are the same size 6-3, 220 and Hundley is a touch faster.

Whats fascinating is to go back and look at how ESPN ranked the dual-threat QBs coming out of high school.

Going back to 2011, check these ESPN dual-threat QB rankings (with hometowns and college signings):

4. Braxton Miller, Hunter Heights, OH-Ohio St.

6. Brett Hundley, Chandler, AZ-UCLA

9. Teddy Bridgewater, Miami, FL-Lousiville

25. Jacoby Brissett, Palm Beach Gadens, FL-Florida (later transferred to N.C. St.)

33. Cardale Jones, Cleveland, OH-Ohio St.

39. Johnny Manziel, Kerryville, TX-Texas A&M

41. Dak Prescott, Haughton, LA-Mississippi St.

80. Michael Bercovici, Woodland Hills, CA-Arizona St. (thought youd like to see this!)

Think of how this high school class of QBs impacted college football and the integration of dual-threat QBs into the NFL.

By comparison, if you go back to Russell Wilsons high school senior year of 2006, Wilson was just a 2 star recruit, not even ranked among the top high school QBs-so lets give credit where credit is due-Russell Wilson was the trailblazer for dual-threat QBs (even diminutive ones) to make their mark in the NFL. Wilson was, in some many ways, the ultimate outlier.

By the way-just as an FYI-in 2013 Chris Streveler of Woodstock, IL, was ranked the #39 dual-threat QB and was signed by the University of Minnesota.

Check out 2014:

16. DeShone Kizer, Toldeo, OH-Notre Dame

22. Patrick Mahomes, Whitehouse, TX-Texas Tech

And best of all-check out 2015:

9. Joe Burrow, Atlen, OH-Ohio St. (transferred to LSU after year 2)

17. Lamar Jackson, Boynton Beach, FL-Louisville

To show how in vogue dual-threat QBs have become, 3 of these 4 players have won Heisman Trophies and 3 of them are 1st round picks (and Murray might be joined by Burrow as a #1 pick).

Facts-(1) the only Heisman Trophy winner over the past 10 years who wasnt a dual-threat QB is RB Derrick Henry (Alabama, 2015): from 2010 to 2019: Newton, Griffin, Manziel, Winston, Mariota, Jackson, Mayfield, Murray, Burrow. (2) 4 of the last 6 NFL MVPs-Newton, Rodgers, Mahomes, Jackson (Wilson has been runner-up in 3 of those years).

So-yeah-even though I am talking about a backup QB in Brett Hundley, I was worried that Bill Belichick was going to make him an offer he would find difficult to refuse. Knowing that the Patriots are up against the cap, I figured Belichick would offer Hundley something like a $2M base contract with up to $2-3M in incentives, with the assurance that he could compete with Jarrett Stidham for the starting job.

Well, just a couple of hours after the word came in last evening that Brett Hundley had agreed to re-sign with the Cardinals, the Patriots announced that they had signed Brian Hoyer (who was released over the weekend by the Colts, the very Colts who are hanging on to Jacoby Brissett at $15M, despite signing Philip Rivers at $25M) to a one year contract with a base salary of $1M, but with incentives of up to $2.5M-and-get this-with the assurance that he can compete with Jarrett Stidham for the starting job.

While Hoyer is not nearly the athlete Brett Hundley is, this is his 3rd stint with Patriots and he is innately familiar with Josh McDaniels offense.

But-stay tuned-with only $1M to lose if they go in a different direction, it will be interesting to see whether the Patriots make a play in the 1st round for Jordan Love, 6-4, 225, Utah St. who curiously enough, compares in a number of ways to Brett Hundley.

While Bickley and Gambo were likely spot-on about the Cardinals putting the pressure on Hundley to re-sign by making known their interest in P.J. Walker (5-11, 216, Temple), the word is that today the Cardinals are still going to try to sign Walker. The Broncos and Seahawks have also expressed interest in signing the XFL MVP-who spent two years on the Colts practice squad behind Andrew Luck and Jacoby Brissett.

With practice squad rosters expanding from 10 to 12, many teams will want to keep a QB3 on the practice squad-as the Cardinals did last year with Kyle Sloter and then Drew Anderson, after Sloter was hoovered late in the year by the Lions.

The evolution of dual threat QBs in the NFL-has become so much in vogue that old school defensive minded head coaches like Bill Belichick and Vic Faggio are becoming fans of the trendy RPO (run, pass option) and jumping on the wagon.

The RPO is largely becoming the standard pick and roll of the NFL.

Go here to see the original:

Evolution of the Dual-Threat QB - Revenge of the Birds

The coronavirus pandemics global spread has caused concern regarding the development of the situation.

The most up-to-date online platform for the monitoring, analysis and mapping of the geographical distribution and evolution of the virus has been created by the GeoCHOROS research team of the National Geographic and Space Research Laboratory of the National Technical University of Athens.

Unlike other platforms, it is the only one that gives a true picture of the size and magnitude of the problem, in each country and worldwide, and makes it easier for the visitor to make comparisons, even estimates of evolution, the research team said.

What makes the platform particularly unique is the way in which it allows users to see the data in a visual form.In addition to the number of cases, deaths, and recoveries, the rate of disease progression for different time periods can be visualised; overall, on the last day, the last week, or the last two weeks, the incidence and death rates can be calculated on population or relative to the population density of each country.

Professor George Fotios, professor of Geography and Regional Planning at the School of Rural and Surveying Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens told the Athens Macedonian News Agency that the platform was created so that people could see a break-up of cases in terms of population while also viewing the development of coronavirus in terms of specific groups.

READ MORE:Australian states closing their borders in response to coronavirus epidemic

The reason we developed this platform is because this is a phenomenon that people evaluate based on three to four key facts how many cases there are, how many deaths and how many have recovered. But these numbers need to be weighted according to the country they refer to, Professor Fotios said.

It allows you to compare how this pandemic evolves by country. That is, one can see what the number and spread of the disease is in each country, he said, adding that it is a tool both for the ordinary citizen and people who want to deepen their knowledge of the issue.

READ MORE:Flexible visa terms on the way during coronavirus crisis

The creation of the platform, according to the research team, makes use of state-of-the-art technologies and has focused on user-friendliness, which provides maps, graphs, and tables that answer questions.

Visit the platform at http://geochoros.survey.ntua.gr/coronavirus/?fbclid=IwAR3bWOdskdtMh2znadEJPg-rTqWHNnkbhRzvoi_GCk24jzVToz6t7yOI4Bs

See the original post here:

University of Athens coronavirus platform shows the geographical distribution and evolution - Neos Kosmos

IN NANDITA Dass film, Manto, the great story writer, who loved Bombay beyond distraction, finds himself under pressure from family, in the midst of the post-partition carnage, to leave for Lahore. Shyam, film star and friend remarks you are not such a Muslim that you have to leave for Pakistan.

Enough of a Muslim to be killed, in a riot, retorts Manto. The irony is that Manto was an atheist. Circumstances had imposed on his name an identity he was otherwise not comfortable with.

Havent some of us experienced this identity superimposition on the basis of our names? A few days ago a former foreign secretary took my breath away: he addressed me in tones that would have flattered the Sheikh of a Muslim seminary. In such extreme circumstances would you blame me if I am tempted to reintroduce myself. Look that is not me at all. In fact, what I wrote after the Moradabad riots of 1982, is what I am, give or take an inflection or two. Prior to that date, no journalist had ever taken that approach to the theme. Pardon me for repeating what I wrote 38 years ago. It may help to beat the current amnesia.

Whenever events like Moradabad take place some of my friends turn to me with sympathy which generally leaves me cold because I guess I am a minority in my own community for reasons more than one.

My credentials as a good Muslim are quite as suspect as Ghalibs were. I am half a Muslim, he said when, in the course of a litigation, a magistrate asked him to declare his religion. I drink but I do not eat pork.

However, my children generally describe themselves as Muslims while filling up school admission forms, although I wonder why such questions should ever be asked. Before you hastily trace my attitude to my anglicised education let me dispel the notion straightaway. Yes, I did have my schooling in an Anglo-Indian institution of sorts in Lucknow, but the home in which I grew up was a deeply religious one even though the likes of the Imam currently in the news would not have been allowed within miles of it.

My grandfather, like Dryden, always maintained that Priests of all religious are the same, but some he respected, even befriended for their scholarship and conversation. I remember sitting through many a theological discourse, with Maulana Nasir-ul-Millat holding court; among the participants was one Gurtu, a Kashmiri Pandit.

A moulvi of little distinction was hired ostensibly to brush up my arithmetic but actually to put me through my first paces in namaz. His efforts at proselytization were supplemented by my mothers; she augmented our meagre library with biographies of the prophets and the great Imams.

There was a quaint little mosque in the compound of our house in the village, Mustafabad, near Rae Bareli. Since we visited the village only during school holidays, marriages, deaths and births, it was not difficult to maintain a certain discipline and be seen in the mosque, at reasonable frequency, often only to please grandfather.

We were groomed into believing that Islam was the most dynamic of religions but we found it equally easy to accept that it was Islams interaction with a greater civilisation that resulted in Dara Shikoh, Rahim, Kabir, Amir Khusro, Raskhan, Nazir Akbarabadi, Ghalib, and Anis. Nowhere in the Muslim world is there a monument, like the Taj or Fatehpur Sikri.

Folks these days are ignorant of the 18th century poet Nazir Akbarabadis poem kya kya likhoon main Krishna Kanhaiya Ka baal pan (How should I write about the beautiful childhood of Lord Krishna) or Mohsin Kakorvis Samte Kashi se chala janibe Mathura badal jab talak Brij mein Kanhaiya hai yeh Khulne ka nahin (The clouds are moving ecstatically from Kashi to Mathura and the sky will remain covered with the beautiful clouds as long as there is Krishna in Braj). These lines were written by the Muslim poet to celebrate the birthday of Prophet Mohammad?

In the region I was raised in, Sohar was a song sung during a womans confinement. My mothers favourite sohar was Allah Mian, hamre bhaiya ka diyo Nandlal (Oh my Allah, give my brother a son like Lord Krishna).

What does all this nostalgia has to do with contemporary realities, a friend asks.

Well, I guess I am no pandit but I do know a bit about contemporary realities. I know how partition ruptured the fabric, bits of which I still keep with me. I also know about the status reversal experienced by the Muslims in independent India, particularly with the decline of the feudal order. It was the self-confident Muslim elite which found it easy to extend patronage to the beautiful aspects of Hindu culture: after all, Krishna Leela was preserved in its entirely in the Kathak style evolved in the Muslim courts.

With the decay of the feudal order, the lower middle class, always given to religiosity gained upward mobility. It is upon this class that the clergy dominated parties feed and which forms the central nervous system of the sort of fundamentalism on show. I also know of a certain pan-Islamic sentiment among the Muslims and I guess that the RSS does not like it. All this and more I have been aware of for quite some time.

It must, therefore, be a considerable intellectual failure on my part that in spite of all this I am unable to disengage myself from the folks who moulded me in my formative years. The credo they lived by is no longer part of the contemporary ethos.

Call it private grief, call it indifference, or both, but I find it, increasingly difficult to have a readymade response to Moradabad, Jamshedpur or Aligarh. And when friends turn to me with sympathy when such madness erupts, I feel a sort of numbness and have a strange feeling that they are addressing the wrong person.

Saeed Naqvi is a senior Indian journalist, television commentator, interviewer, and distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.

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Evolution from a good Muslim to a bad one: really? - newagebd.net