ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 624
December 2, 2015
Mysterious Sealed Chambers Discovered In Ancient Aztec Ruins
Photo credit:
Archaeologists think they may have found the burial chamber of Montezuma I in Mexico City. Diego Rivera via Wikimedia Commons
In the heart of modern-day Mexico City lies the great Aztec temple known as the Templo Mayor, which once served as the sacred center of the Pre-Columbian empire’s capital city of Tenochtitlán.
Type 2 diabetes reversed by losing fat from pancreas
Type 2 diabetes is caused by fat accumulating in the pancreas – and that losing less than one gram of fat through weight loss reverses diabetes, researchers have shown.
So if you ask how much weight you need to lose to make your diabetes go away, the answer is one gram! But that gram needs to be fat from the pancreas
Professor Roy Taylor
Affecting two and a half million people in the UK – and on the increase – Type 2 diabetes is a long-term condition caused by too much glucose, a type of sugar, in the blood.
The research led by Professor Roy Taylor is being published online today in Diabetes Care and simultaneously he is presenting the findings at the World Diabetes Congress in Vancouver.
Bariatric surgery
In a trial, 18 people with Type 2 diabetes and 9 people who did not have diabetes were measured for weight, fat levels in the pancreas and insulin response before and after bariatric surgery. The patients with Type 2 diabetes had been diagnosed for an average of 6.9 years, and all for less than 15 years.
The people with Type 2 diabetes were found to have increased levels of fat in the pancreas.
The participants in the study had all been selected to have gastric bypass surgery for obesity and were measured before the operation then again eight weeks later. After the operation, those with Type 2 diabetes were immediately taken off their medication.
Both groups lost the same amount of weight, around 13% of their initial body weight. Critically, the pool of fat in the pancreas did not change in the non-diabetics but decreased to a normal level in those with Type 2 diabetes.
To read the entire article, click on the name of the source below.
Molecular Clock Needs To Take Supernovae Into Account, Claims Researcher
Photo credit:
Tick tock. Andrey Armyagov/Shutterstock
Not all clocks measure time in hours, minutes and seconds. The molecular clock is one such timepiece; it uses the random mutations in sequences of DNA to estimate when species diverged from one another. Although it is an invaluable tool for biologists and paleontologists alike for tracking evolutionary changes over time, it doesn’t always precisely match up with the dates given by the corresponding fossils.
COP21- From Paris to Your Classroom
Over the next two weeks the City of Lights will transform into a hub for world leaders as they address climate change at the United Nation’s 21st Conference of Parties (COP21). The results of COP21 could change the way we tackle climate change as a global community—and determine the future of our planet. 195 countries and 150 heads of state are meeting in Paris, hoping to craft a legally binding agreement on climate change that will keep temperature rise below 2°C and unite the world in addressing this global threat. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened the conference by telling delegates that, “We have never faced such a test. But neither have we encountered such great opportunity.” And for teachers, never has there been such a great (and relevant!) opportunity to engage students in the policy side of climate change. Take advantage of this historic event and immerse your students in COP21 with these interactive activities and tools:
World Climate Negotiation Simulation
Lead your students through their very own international climate negotiations with this intricate tool. All of the materials are provided for you to guide your students as they take on the roles of world leaders trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while still looking out for the economic and social well-being of their countries. Students who complete this simulation will have a personal understanding of how leaders are coming to an agreement in Paris!
C-Learn Environmental Impacts Simulator
Help students understand what it takes to keep global warming below 2°C with this interactive website from MIT and Climate Interactive. Students input what year they want greenhouse gas emissions to peak, what year emissions should begin declining, and what percentage of emissions should be reduced annually. The tool also includes an instrument to measure the effects of afforestation and deforestation rates on climate change. Once students determine all of the aforementioned values, they run the model and are shown how much the Earth will warm based on the parameters set. C-Learn also includes fossil fuel (and other) emissions, CO2, temperature, CO2 bathtub, and sea level rise simulators. This tool has everything you need predict the environmental impacts of different negotiation outcomes and is great to use in conjunction with the World Climate Negotiation Simulation.
Live from Paris! Climate Interactive Webinars
Put your students in the center of the action in Paris with two live webinars from COP21. On December 3rd and 10th, Climate Interactive is providing updates and analysis of decisions made at the conference directly from Paris. The webinars will be held at 11 a.m. EST and only require a quick registration to participate.
On December 4th, the theme of the Paris Climate Talks is education. World leaders will discuss how informal and formal education will be included in the final agreement to address climate change.
Follow #Youth4Climate on Twitter and Facebook for all things youth from the Paris climate talks. Youth can get involved in the conversation by tweeting the reasons they care about the Paris climate talks with hashtag #Youth4Climate. Students are also encouraged to share their thoughts of what they hope the results of COP21 will be with the #Youth4Climate hashtag.
There are countless opportunities to get your students involved in the living, breathing history happening at COP21! How will you include this historic event in your classroom?
Kate Heffernan works with Minda Berbeco on teacher outreach activities. A recent graduate of the University of Florida, her undergraduate studies focused on environmental policy and education.
Star Wars Fan Made His Own Giant Lightsaber
Photo credit:
There has been an awakening. Have you felt it? BBC Click/Youtube
Thanks to the upcoming release of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” new and old fans alike are glued to the Internet, eagerly awaiting the release of any additional information about the film. An American fan has jumped on this bandwagon – his home-made giant lightsabers are getting a lot of attention, as reported by BBC News.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2Me4...]
Say What? The Theory of the Terrible MinutePhysics Video
If you’re reading this blog, there is a reasonably good chance that you’ve heard of the YouTube channel MinutePhysics and its sister-channel MinuteEarth. I haven’t done an exhaustive survey, but I have certainly heard from many educators that they enjoy these videos consisting of short, time-lapsed drawings. With well over three million subscribers, these videos have no-doubt made their way into many classrooms. Last May, I attended ComSciCon and MinutePhysics founder Henry Reich was on a panel. Among the audience of science communicators, (admittedly a pretty niche crowd), MinutePhysics and MinuteEarth were definitely well known and well received.
So I was a bit surprised when Bertha Vazquez (she of TIES) wrote to me asking if I’d seen MinutePhysics’s video on evolution. In her eyes, it was very problematic and she wanted my take. So I looked and… yikes.
It starts with this line:
Most of us hear the word “evolution” and think of the process by which species change and adapt and maybe turn into other species or go extinct—but that’s specifically the evolution of life forms by means of natural selection.
There is a minor and a more major issue here. The minor one is that saying species “maybe turn into other species” makes it seem kind of like a magic trick—“Presto chango! You’re now a chicken, Mr. Velociraptor!” Now it is true that linear evolution (anagenesis if you are hankering for a new word to throw around) has been proposed in some cases, but I think it’s fair to say that even then, it’s less “poof!” and more “keep your eyes on the population for a few thousand years.” Why not just say, “and sometimes form new species,” Mr. Narrator? That’d be better.
As for the larger of my quibbles from this section—you know what I’m going to say, right? Not all evolution occurs by natural selection. To think it does lends itself to a hyper-adaptive view of life and all of a sudden, birds evolved wings so that they could fly and belly buttons evolved so that they could collect lint. What the narrator should have said is: “…but that’s specifically the biological evolution of life forms.”
He (the narrator) would then do well to amend his next line, too, that “Evolution in general means ‘”change or development.’” True—all development is change, but not all change is development. This phrasing makes them seem interchangeable, when in fact, confusing development with biological evolution is part of the misconception that individuals evolve. So, better not to bring up development at all in a piece about what evolution means unless you plan to explicitly call attention to the differences between the two.
Now, I almost like what Mr. Narrator says a bit later: “There absolutely was [at the time Darwin published Origin] and is no denying that life on Earth changes—and change over time is what “evolution” means. What Darwin proposed with his theory of natural selection was an explanation for how this change (which is stupidly well supported by evidence) could have occurred naturally.”
Not bad. An explanation, not the explanation. And you all know I love humorous hyperbole, so bonus points for the phrase “stupidly well supported”. But I do have a small quibble. If the point of this video is to explain the differences among different uses of the term “evolution", it would be good to be specific with your different meanings. Thus, “change over time is what ‘evolution’ means” would be much better stated as “genetic change over generations is what biological evolution means.”
But where this video really jumps into serious Say What?! territory is in the next section:
A very tragic, very different kind of change. (via Wikimedia Commons)
You can think of it like the Challenger disaster of 1986: All of the evidence showed that the collection of molecules named “Challenger” had tragically evolved from a space shuttle and its rocket booster into a cloud of gas and debris shortly after launch. The question for scientists at the time was to understand and explain how the explosion had happened so they could prevent it in the future. Ultimately, it was the Theory of Frozen O-rings in the Rocket Boosters, popularized by Richard Feynman, that provided a satisfactory explanation for the cause of the disaster. Now, you’re welcome to disagree with Feynman’s explanation for the explosion, or Darwin’s explanation for how life on earth changes, but they’re pretty darn good explanations for these incredibly well documented examples of change in the universe.
So. Much. Bad. First, and most fundamentally, wasn’t the point supposed to be to explain the differences among uses of "evolution"? Why all of a sudden is the explosion of the Challenger being likened to evolution by natural selection? Yes, both were changes…but that’s about where the similarities stop. And this comparison is particularly terrible because it suggests that there is one lynchpin piece of evidence, [image error]On the day of Space Shuttle Challenger's launch, icicles draped the Kennedy Space Center. The unusually cold weather, beyond the tolerances for which the rubber seals were approved, most likely caused the O-ring failure. (via Wikimedia Commons)
like the Challenger’s O-ring, that will prove biological evolution. Two major issues arise from this suggestion: 1) Deniers will want us to show them the O-ring and 2) we don’t have an O-ring. We have a zillion data points and empirical observations, which is of course, way better than one discrete thing, but a lot less harder to “sell” to someone demanding a magic bullet of proof.
Even the phrase “Theory of Frozen O-Rings” is highly problemmatic because a single cause-and-effect chain does not rise to the level of a scientific theory. We don’t go around talking about the “Theory of the Empty Gas Tank” to explain what happens when we run out of gas, or the “Theory of the Blocked Drain” when we try to put too many potato peelings down the disposal on Thanksgiving Day, do we? No. And this—joke? Is it meant to be a joke?—of using the phrase “The Theory of Frozen O-Rings” makes light of the very high bar that scientific theories have to clear to merit that name. This is especially frustrating given the huge issue we have with conflating the meaning of “theory” when it comes to science vs. its colloquial “Here’s a crazy idea!” meaning.
Finally, Mr. Narrator ends with this:
In the end, the universe will go on evolving regardless of whether you and I believe in it or understand it, and perhaps the best thing to do is to remember that it’s ok for our beliefs and opinions and understandings to evolve too. That’s part of life, and it’s the way of science.
Seriously? Yes, beliefs, opinions, and understandings change—but holy moly that is not the way of science. Beliefs and opinions have no standing in science, and understandings don’t just change willy nilly, they change based on evidence, and it’s more than “okay” that they change based on evidence—it’s imperative.
To my dismay, Bertha wrote to the MinutePhysics founder making most of these points, but never got a reply. Too bad—because how real science works is how we change our understandings based on new information. If Henry Reich wants to model being a scientist for his audience, he should revise his video.
If you agree, let him know:
@minutephysics
https://www.facebook.com/MinutePhysics
Are you a teacher and want to tell us about an amazing free resource? Do you have an idea for a Misconception Monday or other type of post? Have a fossil to share? See some good or bad examples of science communication lately? Drop me an email or shoot me a tweet @keeps3.
coming out
https://www.patreon.com/theramintrees
A road map of my thoughts on coming out, looking at the top themes folks message me about.
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Studies:
Sugarman (2001) transition model — in Sugarman, L. (2001) Life Span Development (Second edition) Hove: Psychology Press Ltd.
Angelina E. Theodorou (2014) ‘Which countries still outlaw apostasy and blasphemy?’ Pew Research:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/05/28/which-countries-still-outlaw-apostasy-and-blasphemy/
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music © theramintrees
December 1, 2015
SpaceX Debris Found On British Coast Finally Identified
Photo credit:
Maritime and Coastguard Agency
A piece of rocket debris has been found washed up on the Isles of Scilly, just off the southwest tip of Britain. Until recently, space geeks and authorities were struggling to identify the part. However, the Internet sleuths over at Reddit seem to have come to a solid conclusion.
Why Do Humans Have Grandparents?
Photo credit:
Humans are one of the few species that live long after reproductive age. Family Business/Shutterstock
Many of us treasure our grandparents, but it turns out they’re so precious that humans have evolved gene variants that help protect them against certain age-related diseases, like Alzheimer’s. By keeping the older generation healthier, it not only reduces their burden on others but also allows them to keep contributing to society.
Scientists Map Four Billion Years Of Ribosomal Evolution
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The ribosome provides a site for protein synthesis in all living cells, but scientists have now tracked its development back to a time that predates biology. Vossman via Wikimedia Commons
Funded by NASA’s Astrobiology Institute, a team of researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology has retraced the development of the ribosome back almost four billion years, unlocking the chronology of its evolution from its primordial form to its present structure. The ribosome provides a site for protein synthesis in all living cells, and is therefore crucial for the existence of life.
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