Genetic Explanation For Moles' Poor Eyesight

Due to their underground habitats, moles' eyes have been modified by natural selection in ways very different from those of surface-dwelling animals. New research, offers a detailed anatomical and genetic examination of the changes that result from living life in the dark.

A team of researchers led by J Martin Collinson from the University of Aberdeen has carried out the first molecular study of the entire process of lens development in a subterranean animal - the Iberian mole, Talpa occidentalis, which has permanently closed eyes unlike the closely related European mole found in gardens throughout Britain. According to Collinson "Our results show that there are primary developmental defects in the lens of this insectivore. As a result, the adult lens is composed of a disrupted epithelium and a disorganised mass of immature and nucleated fibre cells."

The genetic information the authors amassed shows that the internal defects in the animals' eyes are not the result of an adult degenerative condition but because development of the eye lens fibres, which starts normally, is not completed. The expression of some genes that are central to eye development is also abnormal.

Frank Chapman, a CPUSA supporter, has written a letter to the party newspaper hailing the Illinois senator's victory in the Iowa caucuses:

"Obama’s victory was more than a progressive move; it was a dialectical leap ushering in a qualitatively new era of struggle. Marx once compared revolutionary struggle with the work of the mole, who sometimes burrows so far beneath the ground that he leaves no trace of his movement on the surface. This is the old revolutionary 'mole,' not only showing his traces on the surface but also breaking through."

-People's Weekly World (PWW), official newspaper of the Communist Party, USA

http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/12302/1/405

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Statement from Communist Party USA (CPUSA):

"The Communist Party USA views the 2008 elections as a tremendous opportunity to defeat the policies of the right-wing Republicans and to move our country in a new progressive direction.

The record turnout in the Democratic Presidential primary races shows that millions of voters, including millions of new voters, are using this election to bring about real change. We wholeheartedly agree with them."

http://cpusa.org/article/articleview/907/1/4/

Next we’ll be hearing ... that women and men are actually born different.

No, any perceived difference between the sexes is nothing more than a social construct. That's what the postmodernists say and they're loads smarter than those science dudes.

It is so liberating to learn that one's genitals exist only as a constructed perception of self in a given cultural context! This is the pinnacle of postmodern thought, where mental masturbation is realized in its most sublime completion, manifesting itself simultaneously in both the figurative sense and the literal one!

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