You will conserve your genes even more if you deny women your essence.
Posted on 12/03/2003 4:53:26 PM PST by Pharmboy
LONDON (Reuters) - Fossils discovered in Ethiopia's highlands are a missing piece in the puzzle of how African mammals evolved, a team of international scientists said on Wednesday.
Little is known about what happened to mammals between 24 million to 32 million years ago, when Africa and Arabia were still joined together in a single continent.
But the remains of ancestors of modern-day elephants and other animals, unearthed by the team of U.S. and Ethiopian scientists 27 million years on, provide some answers.
"We show that some of these very primitive forms continue to live through the missing years, and then during that period as well, some new forms evolved -- these would be the ancestors of modern elephants," said Dr John Kappelman, who headed the team.
The find included several types of proboscideans, distant relatives of elephants, and fossils from the arsinoithere, a rhinoceros-like creature that had two huge bony horns on its snout and was about 7 feet high at the shoulder.
"It continues to amaze me that we don't have more from this interval of time. We are talking about an enormous continent," said Kappelman, who is based at the University of Texas at Austin.
Scientists had thought arsinoithere had disappeared much earlier but the discovery showed it managed to survive through the missing years. The fossils from the new species found in Ethiopia are the largest, and at 27 million years old, the youngest discovered so far.
"If this animal was still alive today it would be the central attraction at the zoo," Tab Rasmussen, a paleontologist at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri who worked on the project, said in a statement.
Many of the major fossil finds in Ethiopia are from the Rift Valley. But Kappelman and colleagues in the United States and at Ethiopia's National Science Foundation (news - web sites) and Addis Ababa University concentrated on a different area in the northwestern part of the country.
Using high-resolution satellite images to scour a remote area where others had not looked before, his team found the remains in sedimentary rocks about 6,600 feet above sea level.
No. Drug resistant strains are a result of mutation and natural selection. If 100 people try to jump a crevasse, and only a few survive, you really can't argue the result is that humans learned to jump further, even though the ones who survive will likely be genetically more capable of jumping a long way.
And wouldn't learning be necessary to explain the low mutability of regulatory control genes along the evolution timeline?
Many genes that have to do with DNA transcription and translation are very highly conserved.
You will conserve your genes even more if you deny women your essence.
In Chapter Three of The Force, she adduces the work of Fritz-Albert Popp, a theoretical biophysicist at the University of Marburg, Germany. Popp is well-known for his state-of-the-art research into cancer, among other things.
For present purposes, I just want to get down to the nitty-gritty of certain passages in this work. Please do read the book if you want all the preliminary details.
To be brief, suffice it to say that Popp eventually conjectured that the mechanism of cancer in biological systems proceeded from cancer’s ability to neutralize the “photo-repair mechanism” at the cellular level of the cancer-invaded organism. In other words, there are photons capable of work in the organic body, and cancer interferes with and finally overcomes their ability to effect necessary cellular repairs. Popp conducted many successful experiments tending to confirm this active photon-as-maintainer-of-living-systems hypothesis. But still, the results were not dispositive. Fast-forward to the relevant passages:
* * * * * *
A particularly gifted student [of Popp’s] talked him into trying an experiment. It is well known that when you apply a chemical called ethidium bromide to samples of DNA, the chemical squeezes itself into the middle of the base pairs of the double helix and causes it to unwind. The student suggested that, after applying the chemical, he and Popp try measuring the light coming off the sample. Pop discovered that the more he increased the concentration of the chemical, the more the DNA unwound, but also stronger the intensity of light. The less he put in, the lower the light emission. He also found that DNA was capable of sending out a large range of frequencies and that some frequencies seemed linked to certain functions. If DNA were storing the light, it would naturally emit more light once it was unwound.
These and other studies demonstrated to Popp that one of the most essential stores of light and sources of biophoton emissions was DNA. DNA must be like a master tuning fork in the body. It would strike a particular frequency and certain other molecules would follow. It was altogether possible, he realized, that he might have stumbled upon the missing link in current DNA theory that could account for perhaps the greatest miracle of all in human biology: the means by which a single cell turns into a fully-formed human being.
One of the greatest mysteries of biology is how we and every other living thing take geometric shape. Modern scientists mostly understand how we have blue eyes or grow to six foot one, and even how cells divide. What is far more elusive is the manner by which these cells know exactly where to place themselves in each stage of the building process, so that an arm becomes and arm rather than a leg, as well as the very mechanism which gets these cells to organize and assemble themselves together into something resembling a three-dimensional human form. [BIG hello!!! to all you information theorists out there….]
The usual scientific explanation has to do with the chemical interactions between molecules and DNA, the coiled double helix of genetic code that holds a blueprint [information!] of the body’s protein and amino acids. Each DNA helix or chromosome – and the identical twenty-six pairs exist in every one of the thousand million million cells in your body – contains a long chain of nucleotides, or bases, of four different components (shortened to ATCG) arranged in a unique order in every human body. The most favored idea is that there exists a genetic ‘program’ of genes operating collectively to determined shape, or, in the view of neo-Darwinists such as Richard Dawkins [and don’t forget Steven Pinker here], that ruthless genes, like Chicago thugs, have powers to create form and that we are ‘survival machines’ – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.
This theory promotes DNA as the Renaissance man of the human body – architect, master builder and central engine room – whose tool for all this amazing activity is a handful of the chemicals which make proteins. The modern scientific view is that DNA somehow manages to build the body and spearhead all its dynamic activities just by selectively turning off and on certain segments, or genes, whose nucleotides, or genetic instructions, select certain RNA molecules, which in turn select from a large alphabet of amino acids the genetic ‘words’ which create specific proteins. These proteins supposedly are able to build the body and to switch on and off all the chemical processes inside the cell which ultimately control the running of the body.
Undoubtedly proteins do play a major role in bodily function. Where the Darwinists fall short is explaining exactly how DNA knows when to orchestrate this and also how these chemicals, all blindly bumping into each other, can operate more or less simultaneously. [Help!!! information theorists!] Each cell undergoes, on average, some 100,000 chemical reactions per second – a process that repeats itself simultaneously across every cell in the body. At any given second, billions of chemical reactions of one sort or another occur. Timing must be exquisite, for if any one of the individual chemical processes in all the millions of cells of the body is off by a fraction, humans would blow themselves up in a matter of seconds. But what the rank and file among geneticists have not addressed is that if DNA is the control room, what is the feedback mechanism which enables it to synchronize the activities of individual genes and cells to carry out systems in unison? [emphasis added] What is the chemical or genetic process that tells certain cells to grow into a hand and not a foot? And which cell processes happen at which time?
If all these genes are working together, like some unimaginably big orchestra, who or what is the conductor? And if all these processes are due to simple chemical collision between molecules, how can it work anywhere near rapidly enough to account for the coherent behaviours that live beings exhibit every minute of their lives?
* * * * * * *
Personally, on the strength of the immediately foregoing, I think McTaggert is a pretty good “journalist.” For one thing, she is capable of making accessible to a non-specialist audience the things that working scientists ought to be “dialoging” about with us consumers of science – but in general do not; at least not in any kind of a forthcoming, proactive manner.
Isn’t science supposed to be dedicated to human understanding and welfare – that is, of all of us, including non-scientists?
It seems to me “science” has to stop “talking to itself” and start talking to the wider, intelligent if non-specialist, public. At least if it wants to continue to enjoy taxpayer funding for its research.
Just a “modest proposal.”
Meanwhile, I love this book so far. Probably this trend will continue. I do recommend The Field to any fellow FReeper who cares about science and its prospects for human society – and the human race at large.
Best to all, and thanks for the conversations.
p.s.: RWP, there's an article at Karl Popper's site that details the amoeba's "learning curve." I'll find that link for you (stored on my office computer), and bump it along to you tomorrow.... I've posted it here before; I guess you missed it. But this sort of thing happens to me all the time; so I certainly wouldn't hold this "lapse" (if it is one) against you.
When you consider the computational parameters of anything, physical or abstract, that you can observe, mathematical definitions force you down only a few possible paths. There are only two types of systems in the abstract: those with discernable high order patterns, and those without.
Systems with discernable high order patterns asymptotically approach certainty that they are finite state systems, as a function of the size of the dataset. For things like emotions and general human cognitive function, for which we have enormous datasets with clear high order patterns, the odds of these being the output of anything other than finite state machinery is about the same as the odds of me being God i.e. so infinitesimally small as to be effectively zero. To frame it another way, there are a lot of truly crazy ideas that have a higher probability of being correct than these not being the output of finite state systems.
Systems for which there are no discernable patterns give two possibilities. First, the system may be finite state but simply have no discernable high order patterns within the predictive limits of your brain(*). Strong cryptographic PRNGs (like the RC4 algorithm) are examples of this. Second, the system may be truly infinite state. There is no way to tell between the two except by either looking inside the black box as it were, or re-testing for high order patterns on bigger hardware.
(*) As should be self-evident, if the brain was an infinite state system it should be able to discern high order patterns in all finite state systems, such as cryptographic PRNGs. That even trivial PRNGs do not have transparent high order patterns to humans is tantamount to proof that our brains are relatively limited finite state systems.
The key word in that sentence is "perceive". Everything we think we know is limited by our aspect in the "lofty structure of all that there is" (as Einstein called it.)
On the one hand, the materialist may say that something appears to be random or unpredictable - but on the other that "the mind is what the brain does" and all physicality abides by physical laws from the beginning over a timeline.
All of this is perception based on a 4D aspect with a single time dimension. IOW, the aspect itself is but a choice of coordinates.
Likewise, an observer can falsely perceive randomness in a deterministic system because of the aspect - as tortoise put it post 912:
Frankly it bothers me that pharmaceutical researchers of the day – with the full knowledge of evolution theory - didn’t “train” bacteria with the new antibiotics to see how long it would take them to "learn" to defeat it. Perhaps they had no appreciation for how aggressive the bacteria could be.
I also wonder whether the external provocation of an antibiotic triggered a faster clip of “trial and error” – kind of like climate changes which cause creatures to adapt. If the bacteria did this kind of mutation without provocation over a 3.8 bya geological age, then it would be amazing to find any bacteria which retained an apparent original configuration.
Hmmm… more to research. You keep me busy, RWP!
The physical implementation is quite different, but I believe the processes are functionally equivalent. Coming out of the closet a bit, I believe that much of what we do when we are "thinking" is equivalent to trial and error learning. It's just that humans have the ability to prune their trials by imagining consequenses. Thus some of us are able to avoid running in front of cars without firsthand experience of the consequenses. On a more positive note, we are able to project the outcome of new ideas by imagining the consequenses, and through the projective tools available in math and science.
the source of new ideas, however is just as mysterious as the source of new genes. I personally believe that believe ideas emerge through a process functionally equivalent to evolution.
But my question was more to the epistemological point of how do you know that emotions can be measured or discerned. (For Lurkers, post 990.)
The issue is one of perception, how do you know you have observed an emotion like pain or love or grief? How could you ever know that you have observed all such emotions in all the possible manifestations, degrees and meanings?
For instance, how could anyone know the array of emotions that the various players would experience after the annihilation of a third of the world's population by an act of terror? Unless you can read my mind, you have no way of knowing the love, pain or grief I have already experienced much less that which I may experience under such unknown circumstances.
Lurkers may enjoy this link to view the issues: Epistemological Problems of Perception
I would also submit the difference caused by aspect of the observer due to dimensionality.
The entire species as a single organism, in effect?
I recall the amoeba learning example you posted a few months back. It was absolutely fascinating!
And this book sounds very interesting as well especially the photon speculation. betty boop, I have no idea how I'm going to keep up with you - but I'll give it my best effort!
You might find Calvin, W. H. (1987). The brain as a Darwin machine. interesting.
I'm especially fond of Calvin's throwing theory
I see no reason not to consider a bacterial strain to be a single organism for some analytical purposes.
 2 entries found for algorithm. To select an entry, click on it. Pronunciation: 'al-g&-"ri-[th]&m Function: noun Etymology: alteration of Middle English algorisme, from Old French & Medieval Latin; Old French, from Medieval Latin algorismus, from Arabic al-khuwArizmi, from al-KhwArizmI fl A.D. 825 Arabian mathematician Date: circa 1894 : a procedure for solving a mathematical problem (as of finding the greatest common divisor) in a finite number of steps that frequently involves repetition of an operation; broadly : a step-by-step procedure for solving a problem or accomplishing some end especially by a computer - al·go·rith·mic /"al-g&-'ri[th]-mik/ adjective - al·go·rith·mi·cal·ly /-mi-k(&-)lE/ adverb |
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