Far Beyond Carbon-Dating - A New Method for Building Timelines of Human Evolution

Fragments of ostrich eggshells from the Ysterfontein 1 site near Cape Town, South Africa. Researchers have determined that these eggshells are about 120,000 years old, discarded by early Homo sapiens who lived along the coast and exploiting marine food resources as well as ostrich eggs. The scale bar at lower right is 1 centimeter (0.4 inches).

Photo credit: Elizabeth Niespolo

Discarded ostrich shells provide timeline for our African ancestors | Berkeley News

Don't tell Creationist frauds like Ken Ham and Kent Hovind this, but scientists have found a way to extend the accuracy of precision radiometric dating of hominin activity to about 500,000 years - some ten times as far back as carbon-14 dating reliably takes us. It all depended on discarded ostrich shells from the midden tips of our African ancestors!

This holds out the possibility of accurately tracing the progress of our ancestors over time so giving us a more detailed picture of the timing and movement of the different archaic forms as they evolved.

A long and detailed news item from University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley) explains how, and the scientists' paper can be read in PNAS, sadly behind a paywall, so only the abstract and statement of significance is freely available.

Explaining the significance of their technique, the Berkeley team say:

Significance

Novel ²³⁰Th/U burial dating of ostrich eggshells complements other dating methods applicable to archaeological materials beyond the range of radiocarbon dating. New ages for the Ysterfontein 1 (YFT1) shell midden show it accumulated rapidly between ∼120 to 113 ka closely following the Last Interglacial sea-level highstand. The ages show the great antiquity of intensive human coastal adaptation, date a distinctive lithic industry, and show that teeth from YFT1 are among the oldest H. sapiens fossils recovered in southern Africa. Stable isotopes of ostrich eggshells indicate rapid cooling and drying during site occupation. Despite rapid sea-level drop and increasing aridity, the site’s occupants maintained a consistent diet, which may not indicate a stable paleoenvironment but rather results from systematic, selective foraging.

From the UC Berkeley News release:

40 Million Year History of the Central Asian Steppe

Mongolian steppe.

Unfolding 40 million years of Asian steppe history | CNRS News

Young-Earth Creationist dogma, based on nothing more than a calculation by an Irish Bishop, not from looking at the geological record, but by reading a Book of Hebrew origin myths written in the Bronze Age by people who thought Earth was small and fat with a dome over it and that the Universe worked by magic and was haunted by demons, is that Earth was created in about 4004 BCE and so is about 6,000 years old give or take a century or two.

Bear that in mind as you read this article about the findings of a combined Dutch and French team of scientists who have just completed a project to map the evolution of the Central Asian steppe over the past 40 million years, then ask yourself why Bishop Ussher got it so badly wrong, if that's not already obvious.

What does this tell us about using religion, not science, to try to discover the truth about the world we live in? Answers below, please.

A news item from Le Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) (The French National Center for Scientific Research) explains how they went about this. The key to understanding how this vast area evolved over time was in the pollen grains trapped in sediments:

From the northern foothills of the Tibetan plateau to southern Siberia, and from western Kazakhstan to eastern Mongolia lies one of the world’s largest ecosystems, the Central Asian steppe. As far as the eye can see, an ocean of grass harbours a rich biodiversity. Elk, gazelles, brown bears, leopards and Siberian tigers, among other remarkable species, have made it their home.

However, until now, there was something missing from this vast region: its natural history. The evolution of the steppe over geological time remained a mystery, since it had hardly ever been studied. A French-Dutch team has now set out to fill the gap, by publishing the first-ever chronology of the main climatic and environmental events that have affected the region over the past 40 million years. This segment of history shows the extent to which this grassland is fragile and vulnerable to climate change.

Using pollen as a time machine

To reconstruct the evolution of the steppe, the researchers made use of one of the best indicators of past ecosystems: pollen. Every grain has a specific shape and pattern, making it possible to identify the plant species or family that produced it. As a result, a record of successive floras is preserved in different geological strata.

There we have a record that spans a period from 40 to 15 million years ago. It’s a unique site that provided us with an overview of the history of the steppes.

You have to be extremely careful not to contaminate samples with recent pollen.

One possible scenario is that the advance of the desert will leave only scattered islands of fertility. Then, if the barren areas continue to expand, the fertile patches will in turn disappear. What our work shows is that there is a threshold beyond which there is no turning back. Once a desert environment takes hold, it could last for millions of years. So, even if we managed to control levels of atmospheric CO2, returning to the previous situation would be impossible,

Guillaume Dupont-Nivet
CNRS researcher Université de Rennes, CNRS, Géosciences Rennes, France and Universität Potsdam, Institute of Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany.

In northwest China, the researchers found an exceptional location for the collection of pollen near the town of Xining, the capital of Qinghai province. “There we have a record that spans a period from 40 to 15 million years ago,” explains Guillaume Dupont-Nivet, a CNRS researcher at the Geosciences Rennes laboratory^[1] and at the University of Potsdam (Germany). “It’s a unique site that provided us with an overview of the history of the steppes.”

Collecting these microscopic grains is a particularly tricky job. “You have to be extremely careful not to contaminate samples with recent pollen,” the researcher explains. Under the microscope, it is indeed very difficult to distinguish a 30 million-year-old grain from one that has just been released from a nearby flower.

To reconstruct the history of the climate and environment of the region, the scientists also used other information. They relied on climate models, animal fossil records, and isotopic data that can help track variations in temperature and precipitation over millions of years. This enabled them to identify three major ecological phases in the steppes of Central Asia.

Successive climate upheavals

Looking for pollen in sediments, bushes and plants (Xining Basin, Qinghai province, China, 16 August 2017).

© Guillaume Dupont-Nivet

Some 40 million years ago, two families of shrubs, the Nitrariaceae and the Ephedraceae, were found everywhere in the region. These plants fostered the emergence of a remarkable fauna dominated by the ancestors of horses and rhinoceros, the Perissodactyla, or odd-toed ungulates.

But then the local climate started to change. The Himalayas and Tibet began to rise, pushed up by the collision of the Indian subcontinent with Eurasia, leading to a change in the monsoon regime. To the north of Tibet, rainfall started to decrease. At the same time, the Paratethys, the extensive sea that stretched from Mongolia to the Mediterranean, gradually dried up, causing the area to become increasingly arid.

However, the final blow that ushered in the end of these early steppes occurred 34 million years ago. A global crisis known as the Eocene-Oligocene Transition brought about a mass extinction of species in many regions around the world. It was largely caused by the formation of the Antarctic ice sheet, an event that rapidly cooled the planet, leading to a sharp drop in precipitation in Central Asia. The steppes turned into a desert as arid as the Sahara. Sand dunes covered the last refuges of life. In this hostile environment, the fauna mainly consisted of a few rodents and rabbits.

Evolution of the geographical distribution of pollen records in Central Asia from the Eocene period (40 million years ago) to the modern era. These paleogeographies also show mountain ranges gradually rising and the Paratethys Sea receding westwards.

© G. Dupont-Nivet/Sciences Advances DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abb8227

The desert persisted for millions of years. Then, in the middle of the Miocene, 17 to 14 million years ago, the climate became wetter again. As Dupont-Nivet admits, scientists don’t know what caused the change. Yet for whatever reason, there was a significant shift in conditions, which once again became more favourable to life. Steppes like those seen today, covered with grasses and shrubs, emerged. Large mammals, such as lions, aurochs and megaloceros (giant deer) encountered their ecological niche there, before being ruthlessly hunted down by a new invasive species that arrived 50,000 years ago: Homo sapiens.

The uncertain future of the steppes

This great ape may well turn out to be the cause of another environmental upheaval. Climate change models show that Central Asia is fast becoming one of the hottest and driest places on the planet. Researchers think that the steppes could turn into a highly arid desert again. Ecosystems are already visibly deteriorating, as shown by the expansion of the Gobi Desert, which has led the Chinese authorities to embark on a massive reforestation programme dubbed “the Great Green Wall”. “One possible scenario is that the advance of the desert will leave only scattered islands of fertility. Then, if the barren areas continue to expand, the fertile patches will in turn disappear,” the scientist predicts.

The problem is that this process could be irreversible. “What our work shows is that there is a threshold beyond which there is no turning back. Once a desert environment takes hold, it could last for millions of years. So, even if we managed to control levels of atmospheric CO2, returning to the previous situation would be impossible,” Dupont-Nivet warns. If this worst-case scenario were to come about, the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people would collapse in just a few decades.

The team's open access paper was published last October in Science Advances:

Abstract

The origins and development of the arid and highly seasonal steppe-desert biome in Central Asia, the largest of its kind in the world, remain largely unconstrained by existing records. It is unclear how Cenozoic climatic, geological, and biological forces, acting at diverse spatial and temporal scales, shaped Central Asian ecosystems through time. Our synthesis shows that the Central Asian steppe-desert has existed since at least Eocene times but experienced no less than two regime shifts, one at the Eocene–Oligocene Transition and one in the mid-Miocene. These shifts separated three successive “stable states,” each characterized by unique floral and faunal structures. Past responses to disturbance in the Asian steppe-desert imply that modern ecosystems are unlikely to recover their present structures and diversity if forced into a new regime. This is of concern for Asian steppes today, which are being modified for human use and lost to desertification at unprecedented rates.

Barbolini, N.; Woutersen, A.; Dupont-Nivet, G.; Silvestro, D.; Tardif, D.; Coster, P. M. C.; Meijer, N.; Chang, C.; Zhang, H.-X.; Licht, A.; Rydin, C.; Koutsodendris, A.; Han, F.; Rohrmann, A.; Liu, X.-J.; Zhang, Y.; Donnadieu, Y.; Fluteau, F.; Ladant, J.-B.; Le Hir, G.; Hoorn, C.
Cenozoic evolution of the steppe-desert biome in Central Asia
Science Advances 09 Oct 2020: Vol. 6, no. 41, eabb8227 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abb8227

Copyright: © 2020 The authors. Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science
Open access. Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).

So there we have a clear, coherent picture of how the Central Asian steppe came to be what it is today over a period of some 40 million years.

Which all goes to show how:

The Bible is a book about what people used to believe before we knew any better.

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Evolution News - Filling More of Creationism's God-Shaped Gaps With Science

Researchers performed a more detailed comparison of the genomes of modern and archaic humans and found that the way genes turned on and off could have resulted in changes in the brain and vocal tract.

Image: Getty Images

Stanford study dives deeper into genetic differences between modern and archaic humans

I've just posted an article about how advances in techniques for DNA recovery and analysis are closing Creationism's god-shaped gaps by the dozen and finding no gods and no place for gods in them. Now here is another example from Stanford University, where researchers have developed a technique for analysing not only the DNA sequence of ancient hominins but also the likely way they were activated.

This opens up the prospect of a far greater depth of analysis of ancient DNA than simply sequencing it, and so discovering finer details not only of DNA changes but changes in the way particular genes were activated. Changes in the sequence and duration of activation of genes during embryonic development can have a profound effect on the resulting genotype with little or no change in the genes themselves.

The Stanford group have used the technique to show how the brain and vocal tract evolved as our ability to vocalise developed.

The Stanford News Service article by Taylor Kubota explains how this was done:

The Ever-Shrinking God of the Gaps Just Got a Bit Smaller.

This skull of the extinct horned crocodile from Madagascar (Voay robustus) has been part of the American Museum of Natural History’s scientific collections since the early 1930s.

Credit: M. Ellison/© AMNH

Ancient DNA of Crocodile Sheds Light on Croc Family Tree | AMNH

It has been said the creationism's God of the Gaps is the only thing faster than light because it's always gone just before Science shines its light in the gap, leaving Creationists to search around for another gap to put it in - or invent one if they can't find one.

Just such a gap was found to be empty a few days ago when science solved an ongoing puzzle - how did the extinct Madagascan horned crocodile fit in the crocodile family tree? It was quite obvious from just looking at it that it was a crocodile of some sort but its evolutionary relationship to the others was unknown - until now. The key to closing the gap was the recent advance in the recovery and analysis of ancient DNA - the same scientific advance that is proving the Theory of Evolution to be correct, closing gaps and evicting gods by the dozen.

The Madagascan horned crocodile, Voay robustus (artist's impression)

Source: Nix Illustrations

In this case, it turned out that the Madagascan horned crocodile, Voay robustus, was very much part of the crocodile family tree but deserved a branch in the tree all to itself.

A research report from the American Museum of Natural History tells the story:

New research based on two skulls that have been in the Museum’s collection since the early 1930s resolves a long-standing controversy about an extinct “horned” crocodile that lived in Madagascar.

Another Religion-Based Dogma Falls to Science

Mice form categories to simplify their world. Showing that, researchers identified neurons that encode learned categories.

© MPI of Neurobiology/ Kuhl

Simplifying our world - Mice master complex thinking with a remarkable capacity for abstraction | Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

Yet another religion-based dogma fell to investigation by science recently. The dogma was that there is something unique about humans that sets us apart from the other animals as some sort of special creation - the basis of our belief that we own the planet and everything on and in it, including the other animals, incidentally.

In particular, humans were once thought to be the only sapient, tool-making species. That dogma has been laid to rest many times with many species now known to be capable of logical reasoning, tool-making and use, and problem-solving.

Now here we have evidence, provided by scientists working at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Martinsried, Germany, that mice can categorise information and think in the abstract - a fundamental of logical reasoning, information processing and learning, and mice use the same parts of their brain to do it with as we use. Their results were published, open access, in Nature recently.

The Max Plank Gesellschaft news release explains:

How Creationists Lie to Us - Tom Meyer

'Leonardo', the 77-million-year-old Brachylophosaurus canadensis Showing the beautifully-preserved 'soft' tissue.

Dinosaur discovery contradicts theory of evolution, claims creationist Bible expert | Weird | News | Express.co.uk

Young-Earth Creationist, Tom Meyer's claim to fame is that he can recite large chunks of the Bible from memory - so this makes him an expert biologist, geologist and cosmologist, fully qualified to inform millions of working biomedical scientists, geologists and cosmologists, that they've got it all wrong and he knows best - because he's memorised large chunks of a book.

Only trouble is, he also seems to realise he needs to misrepresent science, misinform his audience and play to their gullible, scientifically-illiterate credulity to foist his superstitions on his dupes.

Subversive Christian Talibangelicals Just Keep on Trying!

Rep. Mary Bentley (R-Perryville), seen here introducing a bill to ban abortions in Arkansas, despite the Supreme Court ruling in Roe vs Wade, which decriminalised it in all 50 states.

House advances bill to let schools teach creationism

Subversive Talibangelical Christians are continuing their efforts to circumvent the Constitutional Establishment Clause which forbids any tier of US government from promoting any religion.

This time their effort is in Arkansas where the Repuglican-dominated House has approved a bill (by 72-21) to allow the teaching of Intelligent [sic] Design Creationism to children at tax-payers expense. All the Repuglican voted for the bill and all the Democrats voted against it. This is in direct contravention of a 1980 court ruling which forbids the teaching of Creationism in Arkansas schools, several Supreme Court rulings which have struck down previous attempts to do so and the famous Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District which ruled that Intelligent Design is religion in disguise, not science. The bill now moves to the Senate.

Fundamentally Racist Christians

Source

Do Multiracial Churches Offer Healthy Community for Non-White Attendees? - Barna Group

A survey by the Christian Barna Group has revealed a shocking level of racism in American churches, according to their Beyond Diversity project.

29% of practicing Black Christians reported experiencing racial prejudice in multiracial churches; 27% reported feeling required to give up their racial/ethnic identity in order to integrate successfully into a multiracial church and 28% say they find it difficult to build relationships in multiracial churches.

Persecution News - The Doubt That Strikes Terror in the Heart of Religions.

Said Djabelkhir

3 years in prison and a 50,000 Dinar fine

Said Djabelkhir,
Sentenced to 3 years in prison and a 50,000 Dinar fine.

Algeria: quash the conviction of humanist academic Said Djabelkhir, Freethinker.

Can you imagine a fundamental disagreement between two scientists over a basic principle in science resulting in the state locking up one of the scientists while supporters of the other called for his execution?

That's exactly what has happened in Algeria because of a fundamental disagreement in Islam.

Talibangelical Covidiot News - Death Threats for Advocating Anti-Covid Vaccine

Jamie Aten, Disaster psychologist, author and evangelical
Death threats for advocating anti-Covid vaccines.

For evangelical leader Jamie Aten, advocating for vaccines led to a death threat

An evangelical Christian who urged his fellow evangelicals to get the anti-covid vaccine says he has been getting death threats and other hate messages from his fellow evangelical Christians.

Jamie Aten is executive director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute at Wheaton College and his work has generally been praised, but when he began urging his fellow evangelicals to get vaccinated, things turned ugly.

Among the emails he reported when he filed his complaint to the sheriff’s office in DuPage County, Illinois, was one telling him his work on vaccines was "punishable by death".

How's your Monday going? Mine started with having to file a police report in response to the increasing number of threats I'm getting for encouraging white evangelicals to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

— Jamie Aten (@drjamieaten) April 26, 2021

Another, received after he spoke to the New York Times about the importance of getting vaccinated, warned him that encouraging white evangelicals would "eventually lead to the murdering of all mankind". It continued with the veiled threat, "If I knew my stuff, I would know not to encourage people to get vaccinated because that’s what’s going to take down humanity more".

The importance of persuading white evangelical leaders to get a vaccine was highlighted by a recent Pew Research poll which showed that 37% of white evangelicals would not have the vaccine - one of the highest levels of vaccine scepticism for any American demographic. Given the large number of white evangelicals in the USA, this figure means it will be difficult to reach the required level for herd immunity to be effective in controlling the virus, so America will always have a high level of infections and the pandemic will last much longer and claim many more lives than it need.

Other surveys have shown that White Evangelical Christians are the least concerned about how their behaviour impacts on other people when it comes to holding super-spreader events in churches, wearing face masks and observing the social-distancing regulations, so it is hardly surprising that they are also least concerned about acting as a reservoir for the coronavirus and providing a means for new varieties to evolve, so long as they aren't slightly inconvenienced in any way.

Last year, under Trump's leadership, face-masks became a badge of tribal loyalty for Americans, like a MAGA hat. Now it seems a vaccination is also a sign of tribal loyalties.

But perhaps the most instructive thing in this story is not the stupidity of those, mostly Trumpanzee evangelical Christians, who are campaigning against the vaccines, but their quick resort to threats, like good fundamentalist Christians when people disagree with them.

Having just posted a slightly tongue-in-cheek item on Twitter about science flying a helicopter over the surface of Mars and asking what equivalent achievements religions had to matched it, I can understand how Aten feels, as I have also had veiled threats about what their imaginary friend is going to do to me if I don't agree with them and credit the work done by religious scientist to religion, not science. Apparently, they believe that science done by religious scientists is materially different to that done by non-religious scientists, so should be credited to religion, not science.

But Aten has chosen his bed-fellows himself. He might like to consider what it is about their mutual religion that can be used to excuse their selfishness and the threats of violence against anyone who dares to disagree with them. He chose to jump into bed with that particular rat pack so he shouldn't be surprised when they act entirely in character (with apologies to any rats who may have been offended by that metaphor). Laudable though his efforts are, he should be asking himself why they are evoking such a response in his co-religionists.

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Repugnican News - When the Truth Doesn't Work for You, Lie.

New York Post temporarily deletes, then edits false story that claimed Harris' book was given out in migrant 'welcome kits' - CNNPolitics

A couple of days ago the New York Post ran a story that alleged copies of VP Kamala Harris' children's book, Superheroes Are Everywhere were being included in welcome packs for immigrant children at Long Beach, California and she was therefore profiting from immigration. This would have been illegal, if true, so it was eagerly seized upon by several prominent Repuglicans and repeated on social media such as Twitter without the slightest attempt at fact-checking first. Why spoil a good scandal with truth, eh?

Religious Abuse News - 99 Years for Child-Abusing Paedophile Pastor

Jeffrey Winston Forrest, Youth Pastor
99 years for aggravated sexual abuse of a child and jumping bail

Former Abilene youth pastor sentenced to 99 years in prison | KTXS

"Religion provides excuses for people who need excuses!"

This was never truer than in the case of former Abilene youth pastor Jeffrey Forrest, sentenced to 99 years in prison for the aaggravated sexual abuse of two boys, bail jumping and failure to appear. He had fled to Mexico where he was tracked down, arrested and extradited back to Texas in May 2020.

During the trial, multiple witnesses testified that Forrest admitted to the abuse. He allegedly told a good friend and a professional counsellor.

New York Religions - Trying to Solve the Problems Religions Cause.

Dec 11, 2019. Orthodox Jewish men pass New York City police guarding a Brooklyn synagogue prior to a funeral for Mosche Deutsch, a rabbinical student from Brooklyn who was killed in a shooting at a market in Jersey City, N.J.

Credit: AP Photo/Mark Lennihan

In New York, interfaith coalition makes common cause against rising tide of hate

Concerned by the rising tide of inter-faith tension and hate resulting in violent attacks on members of one faith by members of another, a group of New York's faith organizations have got together to try to solve the problem faiths are causing.

According to a report in Religion News Service:

On April 16, clergy from 20 New York congregations, including Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews and Christians, met as the Interfaith Security Council held its first meeting to talk about how to share expertise and improve relations with law enforcement.

This was prompted by, amongst other incidents, the mass shooting in Pittsburg, PA, in October 2018, when a gunman attacked worshippers at the Tree of Life Synagogue, killing 11 people, vandalism at four synagogues in the Riverdale neighbourhood of Bronx, NY, last week, and the killing of Mosche Deutsch, a rabbinical student from Brooklyn in Jersey City, N.J. on Dec 11, 2019. Armed police had to be deployed at the Brooklyn synagogue where his funeral took place.

The Interfaith Security Council is an umbrella organisation bringing together several other religious security organizations, one of which is 67th Precinct Clergy Council of Brooklyn, which supports mostly churches in the borough’s East Flatbush area. It's president, Pastor Gilford Monrose, of Mt. Zion Church of God 7th Day, blamed white supremacists for the escalating level of inter-faith violence with:

Malevolent Designer News - Another Win for Science?

The life cycle of malaria parasites. A mosquito causes an infection by a bite. First, sporozoites enter the bloodstream, and migrate to the liver. They infect liver cells, where they multiply into merozoites, rupture the liver cells, and return to the bloodstream. The merozoites infect red blood cells, where they develop into ring forms, trophozoites and schizonts that in turn produce further merozoites. Sexual forms are also produced, which, if taken up by a mosquito, infect the insect and continue the life cycle.

National Institutes of Health (NIH), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

New vaccine success for Oxford is truly remarkable | Kenan Malik - The Guardian

News today of a major breakthrough by medical science in its search for a treatment/cure for malaria which Intelligent [sic] Design advocates believe was created by their putative designer deity to kill around 430,000 people a year, mostly children.

Scientists at Oxford's Jenner Institute have announced the results of a clinical trial of their anti-malarial vaccine, R21, in Burkino Faso, which has shown it to be 77% effective.

One of the problems facing those humanitarian scientists seeking to eradicate malaria, is the complexity of the life-cycle of the organisms that cause it. From the Medicins Sans Frontier website:

Unintelligent Designer Update - The Pea Aphid Blunders.

Pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum

Credit: Shipher Wu (photograph) and Gee-way Lin (aphid provision),
National Taiwan University.
Source: Wikipedia
CC BY 2.5,

Defense Mechanisms in Aphids Can Become a Double-edged Sword, Sharpened by the Seasons | Now | Drexel University

A paper published a few days ago, should be giving Intelligent [sic] Design advocates nightmares, if they had the intellectual integrity to read it. It highlights several instances where basic creationist dogma is refuted by observable reality.

First a little bit of background: pea aphids (Acyrthosiphon pisum) are sap-sucking insects that live on members of the pea family of plants such as alfalfa. They are predated on by a parasitoid wasp (Aphidius ervi) that lays its eggs in the living aphid, which is then consumed alive by the grubs of the wasp. However, they have living in their cells a common endosymbiotic bacterium (Hamiltonella defensa) which provides them with some protection against the wasps in that it prevents the grubs from developing.

These bacteria are inherited exclusively through the female line, being passed to the next generation in the female gamete, or via the cells when the females reproduce parthenogenically (as they normally do) similar to how mitochondria are inherited. Throughout the summer, pea aphids reproduce parthenogenically and can produce about 13 generations in a year, being capable of reproducing 10-12 days after birth. In colder climates reproduction is sexual at the end of summer, via fertilized eggs which over-winter. In warm climates the females continue to reproduce parthenogenically all year round and in intermediate climates a mixture of adult females and fertilized eggs over-winter.

This very high generation rate means evolution can be readily observed so this species was used by researchers at Drexel University to investigate the evolutionary forces at work in this relationship between the endosymbiotic bacterium, the parasitoid wasp and the pea aphid.

Their findings were published a few days ago in the journal Molecular Ecology, sadly behind a paywall. However, the Drexel University news item has the details:

Fundamentally Hypocritical

Dr. Robert Jeffess
"Satan targets Evangelical Leaders and makes them 'sin'."

The Christian response when a brother falls

Another noxious bubble of stinking hypocrisy just burst on the surface of that cesspit of corruption, American fundamentalist Christianity, in the form of Dr. Robert Jeffress of First Baptist-Dallas.

In doing so, it showed how fundamentalists use religion as the source of excuses for their behaviour, so they don't need to take responsibility for their own actions and the consequences of them.

Commenting on the difficulties currently befalling Jerry Falwell Jnr and Liberty University, Jeffress blamed Satan.

Readers may recall how Jerry Falwell Jnr., head of Liberty University - a post he inherited from his dad, who founded the fundamentalist, right-wing conservative Christian Bible college - resigned abruptly when it was revealed that he and his wife Becki, had been having an unusual arrangement with a pool boy from Miami, Giancarlo Granda. The arrangement was that Becki and Giancarlo had sex while Jerry watched.

It also emerged that Falwell had decided to give public support to Donald Trump's election campaign shortly after receiving help from Trump's shady lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, in preventing Granda making the photographs of the trio's activities public. Cohen had earlier been instrumental in bribing the prostitute, Stormy Daniels, to keep quiet about her activities with Donald Trump, during the 2016 election campaign - about which he later lied to Congress and for which he went to prison for election campaign expense offences in not declaring the payment as an expense by the Trump team.

Malevolent Designer News - How SARS-CoV-2 Gets a Second Shot at Killing Survivors of its First Attempt.

A new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis shows that even mild cases of COVID-19 increase the risk of death in the six months following diagnosis and that this risk increases with disease severity. The comprehensive study also catalogues the wide-ranging and long-term health problems often triggered by the infection, even among those not hospitalized.

Credit: Sara Moser

Among COVID-19 survivors, an increased risk of death, serious illness – Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis

Those few remaining diehard intelligent [sic] design advocates who are still dogmatically wedded to the notion that nothing evolves and everything is the work of their putative magic creator will be thrilled by this piece of research from scientists at Washington University School of \Medicine in St Louis.

In a paper published in Nature yesterday, the researchers show how, even if you manage to survive the first attack by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, it is 'designed' to get a second go at you in several different ways. Obviously this designer thing has left very little to chance in its determination to kill as many people as possible.

Sadly, the paper in Nature is behind a paywall but, as the Washington University School of Medicine news release explains:

Right-Wing Christians for Lynch Law

George Floyed by Lukas Carlson, 2020

Right-Wing Activists Attack Conviction of Derek Chauvin, Engage in Whataboutism | Right Wing Watch

In the wake of the conviction of ex-police officer, Derek Chauvin, for the extra-judicial killing of George Floyd, yet another in a long list of white police officers killing black people, right-wing white supremacist Christian fundamentalists are coming out in favour of these murders and in defense of the murderers.

Right-wing extremist, Candace Owens, who at the time of the killing tried to justify it by branding Floyd, "a horrible human being" and then categorised the protests that followed as catering for "the bottom denominator in society" (i.e. black people), declared the verdict "mob justice".

Trumpanzee lawyer, Jenna Ellis claimed the jury reached its 'guilty' verdicts because they were influenced by 'leftist' to make him "pay for the collective sins of white people".

Another neo-fascist extremist, Mike Cernovich, declared that the verdict will result in police officers leaving the cities to move into 'deep red' areas,

On Tucker, Candace Owens calls the Chauvin verdict "mob justice" and declares that "this was not a fair trial. No person can say this was a fair trial." pic.twitter.com/A9OtJaKa9K

— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) April 21, 2021

presumably because he believes in these Repugnican areas they can continue to kill black people with impunity, like in the good ol' days of Jim Crow, segregation and KKK Lynchings. He was supported in this by the far-right activist, Jack Posobiec, who blamed the anti-fascist "Antifa", whom Trump declared to be "terrorists". Remember how in Trump’s America, opposing fascism was regarded as terrorism?

Malevolent Designer News - A Little More About How Brilliantly SARS-CoV-2 is Designed for Killing People

1. Rotavirus RNAs have a 5′ cap but not a 3′ poly(A) tail. Its NSP3 protein (instead of PABP) binds to the 3′ end of the viral mRNA and interacts with eIF‐4G directly to maintain the closed‐loop RNA for the initiation of viral RNA translation and to block host mRNA circularization (Piron et al, 1998
2. Picornavirus RNA has an internal ribosome entry site (IRES) in the 5′ untranslated region and a 3′ poly(A) tail. Viral protease (2A or leader) digests eIF‐4G. The truncated eIF‐4G shows higher efficiency in the IRES‐driven translation than the cap‐dependent translation (Ohlmann et al, 1995; Ali et al, 2001).
3. Coronavirus RNAs have a 5′ cap and a 3′ poly(A) tail. In our model, SUD associates with the 40S/80S ribosome and enhances the PABP:Paip1 interaction to stimulate the host translation machinery. Meanwhile, coronaviral Nsp1 specifically cleaves host mRNAs (green) but not viral RNAs (Kamitani et al, 2006; Huang et al, 2011). Also, viral Nsp1 blocks host mRNA binding to the 40S ribosome. As a result, SARS‐CoV could increase the viral RNA translation but inhibit host mRNA translation.

How SARS coronaviruses reprogram host cells to their own benefit | News - LMU München

For those Intelligent [sic] Design advocates who are not embarrassed by the evident malevolent sadism of their putative designer, this sort of information should thrill and delight them.

Scientists working at the University of Lübeck, Germany and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München, Germany have discovered the brilliant mechanism by which the SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 viruses reprogram our cells to reproduce many more copies of the viruses than other coronaviruses, such as those causing the common cold.

They suggest that this may account for the much higher pathogenicity of these two viruses compared to the other coronaviruses. Their findings appeared, open access, in The EMBO Journal 2021, two days ago.

The relevent details are in the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität news release:

Coronavirus researchers led by Professor Rolf Hilgenfeld of the University of Lübeck and PD Dr. Albrecht von Brunn of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München have discovered how SARS viruses enhance the production of viral proteins in infected cells, so that many new copies of the virus can be generated. Notably, coronaviruses other than SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 do not use this mechanism, which may therefore provide a possible explanation for the much higher pathogenicity of the SARS viruses. The findings appear in the EMBO Journal.

Coronaviruses that cause harmless colds in humans were discovered more than 50 years ago. When it emerged in 2002/2003, the SARS coronavirus was the first coronavirus found to cause severe pneumonia in infected people. Comparisons of the RNA genomes of innocuous coronaviruses with those of the SARS coronavirus permitted researchers to identify a region that only occurred in the latter, and was called the "SARS-unique domain" (SUD). Such genomic regions and their protein products might be linked to the extraordinary pathogenicity of SARS coronavirus and its cousin, the COVID-19 virus SARS-CoV-2.

The research groups led by Hilgenfeld and von Brunn showed that the SUD proteins of these two viruses interact with a human protein called Paip-1, which is involved in the first steps of protein synthesis. Together with Paip-1 and other proteins in human cells, SUD apparently binds to the ribosomes, the molecular machines that are responsible for protein synthesis in cells. This would lead to an enhancement of the production of all proteins, both those of the host cell and those of the virus. However, in cells infected with SARS-CoV or SARS-CoV-2, the messenger RNA molecules that code for host proteins are selectively destroyed by a viral protein named Nsp1. As a result of this complicated process, the infected cell predominantly produces viral proteins, so that many new copies of the virus can be created.

Albrecht von Brunn’s research group discovered the interaction between the proteins SUD and Paip-1 several years ago. "Being an experienced coronavirologist, I knew that one has to inspect the special regions of the SARS genome when trying to understand this virus,” he says.

[My emphasis]

Ingenious, or what?!

The Church of English Racists

Church of England congregation.

BBC Panorama programme 'Is the Church Racist?' | The Church of England

An insight into one of the reasons the Church of England has suffered such a massive decline in membership and attendance was revealed in a BBC Panorama program a few days ago. The CofE is deeply and institutionally racist, at least in the lower tiers of management. Viewers were given example after example of racial abuse and discrimination and of managerial indifference to it. For example, as Dr Elizabeth Henry, the CofE's former race relations adviser related:

A really shocking incident was a young black man who received a picture of a banana [with] his head superimposed on it and underneath is said 'Bananaman'. That is a deeply offensive and a deeply racist image.

He took it to HR and did file a grievance [but] the decision was that it was not racist.

[He] left and was given a very small compensation, however he was forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement.