ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 319

Scientists Rush to Explore Underwater World Hidden for 120,000 Years Below Ice

By Jeanna Bryner

A huge, trillion-ton iceberg about the size of Delaware broke free from Antarctica’s Larsen C Ice Shelf in July 2017. As it moved away from its chilly birth mom and into the Weddell Sea, a vast expanse of water saw the light for the first time in up to 120,000 years.

And this month, a team of scientists will venture to the long-ice-buried expanse to investigate the mysterious ecosystem that was hidden beneath the Antarctic ice shelf for so long.

The newly exposed seabed stretches across an area of about 2,246 square miles (5,818 square kilometers), according to the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), which is leading the expedition. The scientists consider their journey “urgent,” as they hope to document the system before sunlight begins to change at least the surface layers.

Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.

On the trail of invasive cells in breast cancer

By Douglas S. Micalizzi & Shyamala Maheswaran

In the early-stage breast cancer called ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), a cluster of cancer cells arises in the milk duct and remains confined there. The recorded incidence of DCIS has risen since the late 1980s, probably due to an increase in its detection through more widespread breast-cancer screening1. Up to 40% of cases of DCIS progress to invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC), in which tumour cells invade other regions of the breast2–4. IDC requires clinical treatment. Moreover, because it is not possible to predict which people with DCIS are at risk of progressing to IDC, the standard treatment for patients who have DCIS is surgery, often followed by radiotherapy5. Therefore, understanding how DCIS progresses to IDC might enable the selective treatment of those at high risk of developing IDC. A paper in Cell by Casasent et al.6 reveals the origin of DCIS and its progression to IDC.

Casasent and colleagues obtained frozen samples of breast-cancer tissue gathered from patients. The authors used single-cell DNA sequencing of cells from DCIS and IDC regions in the same section of tissue to create molecular maps of patients’ breast cancers, in an approach they call topographic single-cell sequencing. They stained the samples to identify tumour cells and noted the location of each selected cell in the regions of DCIS and IDC. A technique called laser capture microdissection enabled the separation of a selected cell from its neighbours by tracing a laser beam around the cell. This was combined with an approach termed laser catapulting, in which energy from an ultraviolet laser propels a microdissected cell into a collection tube for subsequent DNA analysis. These laser-based techniques are used in other contexts, including forensic science and studies of plant physiology7.

Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.

‘Not the right kind of Catholic’: Private school teacher fired days after same-sex wedding

By Cleve R. Wootson Jr. and Moriah Balingit

Jocelyn Morffi and Natasha Hass had booked the Key Largo Lighthouse estate for three days starting Feb. 2, turning their wedding day into a wedding weekend.

They had a welcome bash at the Florida wedding venue on Friday, a goodbye barbecue on Sunday and their seaside nuptials in between.

The women relayed important messages to their loved ones through their wedding website: Wear semiformal attire, contribute to the honeymoon fund instead of buying gifts and, of course, use the hashtag #MorffiHassTheKeys.

Morffi’s messages were more somber a few days later. On Instagram, she explained to family, friends and anyone else who wondered why she hadn’t shown up at Miami’s Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic School, where she had been a first-grade teacher for seven years.

Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.

Trump Signs Budget Deal Giving Taxpayer Money To Churches

By Michael Stone

Unconstitutional: Trump signs new budget deal giving taxpayer money to churches in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution.

In disastrous news for those who respect the U.S. Constitution and the secular values upon which this nation was founded, President Donald Trump has signed The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 (H.R. 1892) into law.

Contained in the new budget are provisions which seriously damage the separation of church and state guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.

The Next Falcon Heavy Will Carry the Most Powerful Atomic Clock Ever Launched into Space

By Rafi Letzter

An ultra-precise atomic clock the size of a four-slice toaster is set to zip into outer space this summer, NASA said.

This isn’t your average timekeeper. The so-called Deep Space Atomic Clock (DSAC) is far smaller than Earth-bound atomic clocks, far more precise than the handful of other space-bound atomic clocks, and more resilient against the stresses of space travel than any clock ever made. According to a NASA statement, it’s expected to lose no more than 2 nanoseconds (2 billionths of a second) over the course of a day. That comes to about 7 millionths of a second over the course of a decade.

In an email to Live Science, Andrew Good, a Jet Propulsion Laboratory representative, said the first DSAC will hitch a ride on the second Falcon Heavy launch, scheduled for June.

Atomic clocks are the most powerful time-measuring devices human beings have ever built. Broadly speaking, they work by observing atoms that are known to do certain things — like emit light — extremely regularly and quickly, then counting how many times those atoms do those things. The most powerful atomic clocks on Earth can go billions of years without losing a second of time.

Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.

Primitive fish’s sea-floor shuffle illuminates the origins of walking

By Giorgia Guglielmi

The genes and nerve cells that allow people and other mammals to walk around can also be found in a primitive fish known as a skate, according to a study. The findings suggest that the nerve cells essential for walking evolved millions of years earlier than previously thought.

By studying the little skate (Leucoraja erinacea), a close relative of sharks and rays that can walk on the sea floor, a team of neuroscientists found that the nerve networks that control this ability are the same as those in mammals. The results, published on 8 February in Cell1, support the argument that the nerves that control walking first appeared in fish at least 420 million years ago, more than 20 million years before the first four-legged animals crawled out of the ocean2.

The analysis provides some of the only direct evidence showing that the nerve cells for walking arose before vertebrates moved onto land. Bones, teeth and other tough body structures are well preserved in the fossil record, but softer tissues such as muscles and nerves decay quickly and are often lost to time, says Tetsuya Nakamura, an evolutionary biologist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. So if researchers want to study the nerves that control locomotion in an ancient animal, they often turn to modern creatures that scientists believe are good approximations of their ancestors.

Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.

Evangelicals, Having Backed Trump, Find White House ‘Front Door Is Open’

By Noah Weiland

When the White House wants to gather evangelicals for one of its many issue-specific “listening sessions,” the Rev. Johnnie Moore is often one of the first to hear.

It wasn’t always clear that Mr. Moore, a 34-year-old Southern Baptist minister who was a co-chairman of the Trump campaign’s evangelical advisory board, would be a frequent White House guest. Some critics, and even some evangelicals, wondered whether conservative Christians’ sometimes uneasy alliance with the Trump campaign was a marriage of convenience that would be abandoned after Inauguration Day. But one year in, conservative religious leaders are hailing the president’s actions in office.

“This White House, the front door is open to evangelicals,” said Mr. Moore, who estimates that he has visited at least 20 times since Mr. Trump took office, averaging nearly once every other week. “It hasn’t been evangelicals reaching into the White House. It’s been the White House reaching out to evangelicals. Not a day goes by when there aren’t a dozen evangelical leaders in the White House for something.”

Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.

‘Faith is central to American life’: Those without faith feel excluded from Trump’s vision of America

By Eugene Scott

The number of Americans professing no religious ties is growing, but President Trump reemphasized at the National Prayer Breakfast that faith is key to being an American.

“Faith is central to American life and to liberty,” he said in a speech Thursday morning.

“As long as we open our hearts to God’s grace, America will be free, the land of the free, the home of the brave and the light to all nations.”

The National Prayer Breakfast is a massive ecumenical gathering that draws thousands of people from around the world, The Washington Post’s Sarah Pulliam Bailey reported, especially from the United States’ white evangelical community, which continues to give Trump high approval marks.

This year’s event included as many as 60 representatives from Russia’s religious and political communities, according to CNN, more than three times the number that attended last year’s event.

Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.

Yup, Flat-Earthers Think the Falcon Heavy Launch Was a Conspiracy

By Stephanie Pappas

Yesterday’s successful launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket also sent an unusual payload into space: a cherry-red Tesla Roadster “manned” by a dummy named Starman and equipped with cameras that provided gorgeous views of Earth against the backdrop of space.

But flat-Earthers aren’t buying it.

“People who believe that the Earth is a globe because ‘they saw a car in space on the Internet’ must be the new incarnation of ‘It’s true, I saw it on TV!’ It’s a poor argument,” tweeted The Flat Earth Society, an organization dedicated to spreading the (incorrect) notion that the Earth is not round. “Why would we believe any privately held company to report the truth?” the organization added.

Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.

Trump Admin Installs ‘Religious Freedom’ Czars In All U.S. Attorney’s Offices

By Michael Stone

Theocracy Alert: U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is quietly installing “religious freedom” czars in every U.S. Attorney’s office.

In a move meant to fly under the radar, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, under the guidance of the Trump administration, made significant changes to the policy manuals for U.S. Attorneys’ offices and Department of Justice litigation offices.

The new policy change requires that all U.S. Attorneys’ offices and Department of Justice litigation offices appoint a staff member to monitor any litigation involving religious freedom issues. These “religious freedom” czars would report directly to the Associate Attorney General, Trump political appointee Rachel Brand, before taking any action concerning “religious freedom.”

Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.