Schematic model of SARS-CoV-2-induction of complement in respiratory epithelial cells. SARS-CoV-2 infects respiratory epithelial cells and induces an interferon response. IFNs signal via the IFN receptor to activate STAT1 via JAK1/2. STAT1 co-operates with RELA to induce transcription of IL6 and complement genes including C3, CFB, C1R and C1S. CFB acts as an alternative pathway C3 convertase to cleave C3 intracellularly to C3a and C3b. C3a engages C3aR and C3b engages CD46 on leukocyte subsets in the lungs to drive inflammation. These events can be pharmacologically targeted with antivirals (e.g., remdesivir), JAK-STAT inhibitors (e.g., ruxolitinib) and/or cell permeable complement inhibitors, including CFBi.
News today of what a brilliant job the Intelligent [sic] Designer did with the SARS-VoV-2 virus which is designed to make us sick and die.
An international team of researchers working with Majid Kazemian, assistant professor in the departments of computer science and biochemistry at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indian, USA, have discovered that a biochemical pathway, known as the immune complement system, is triggered in lung cells by the virus, which might explain why the disease is so difficult to treat.
According to the press release from Purdue University press release:
Poor Jim Bakker (I use the term 'poor' not in its wealth sense but as a term of concern for his welfare) is becoming more and more desperate in his frantic search for yet more money.
Following on from his inclusion of the wackadoodle conspiracist, Steve Quayle with his 'impending zombie apocalypse' prophesies on his show, he then invited another deranged conspiracist, Tom Horn, to expound on his loopy predictions and wackadoodle claims.
Tom Horn is a leading Trumpanzee cultist who, back in May, 2019 announced that God had chosen Donald Trump, to 'Help build the Third Temple' in Jerusalem in preparation for the return of Jesus. Sadly for Horn, Trump was booted out by the US electorate before the construction work began, having failed even to build a single wall.
Apparently, Horn has detected an approaching asteroid, due to strike Earth in 2029. Not only that, but reading the paranoid writings of a 1st or 2nd century CE author of a book of dubious legends and prophesies, the Bible, he has concluded that this asteroid will be carrying a virus that will turn into the antichrist. His 'evidence' is that said 1st or 2nd Century CE author wrote:
The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water — the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.
Revelation 8:10-11
Earlier this month Horn claimed to have died and met God and Jesus who told him what the future held.
No mention of viruses there, of course, because no-one had heard of them in those days of ignorance and scientific illiteracy, but not content with the mental gymnastics needed to turn a 'star' named "Wormwood" (from the days when stars were believed to be little lights, stuck to a dome over Earth and could be shaken loose by earthquakes, to fall down), into an asteroid named Apophis, Horn goes one better and includes it in a conspiracy invented for the purpose usig the 'logic' there must be consspiracy somewhere or my 'prophesy' would look implausible!
He needs to explain why the governments of the world (for Tom Horn's and his parochial target marks' world, read, the USA) aren't becoming concerned that an asteroid is heading our way, bent on destruction. So, he has concluded that 'they' (ie, the US federal government) are aware but are conspiring with Satanic forces to keep news of it leaking out and alarming people, presumably in case they start asking God to change his perfect plan and divert the evil asteroid with which he plans to kill us - which would turn Tom and the 1st or 2nd century CE author of the Bible into false prophets.
He told Jim Bakker:
I believe that Apophis is carrying an alien microorganism on it in which a virus is being sustained. I believe it’s going to make coronavirus look like a walk in the park. On impact with the Earth, the contagion that is going to be brought to this planet. … I think that it’s going to be a trigger event that ultimately leads to the Mark of the Beast, which will mean that you’re going to have to be vaccinated.
A contagion during the Tribulation period could sweep the world. Literally tens of millions of people are dying by the hour, and an international cry goes up around the world for some kind of cure, a vaccine. Well, a man comes forward — a single individual who happens to be the Antichrist — and he’s the only man on Earth whose blood is naturally immune to this alien virus. And so a vaccine is created from his blood by which all mankind then are required to be inoculated. So, it’s almost like a black communion.
Because, of course, that's how vaccines are made - from the blood of immune individuals. Clearly, Horn is even less of a biologist/immunologist than he is an astronomer or prophet.
But he has a handy book - the only book he needs - in which, with a creative imagination, the entire future of the world is spelled out in detail. All it needs is a few words to have their meanings changed and the historical context of the time it was made up, to be ignored.
Is this insanity caused by excessive religiosity, excessive religiosity caused by insanity or merely a fraud fleecing gullible fools by trading on ignorant superstitions and psychotic paranoias?
Just when you were beginning to think Trumpanzee Talibangelical Christians couldn't get any further round the bend, up pops Jim Bakker and Steve Quayle to prove you wrong!
Serial adulterer, Jim Bakker, who has a personal hotline to Jesus for when he needs his sin counter zeroed, has been earning a crust recently by selling his dupes products intended to help them survive the 'End Times' that he keeps on forecasting.
He's now turned that up a notch and thrown his lot in with equally sleazy, Steve Quayle, the extreme right-wing, conspiracy theorist fruitloop who earns his living selling goods to help survive the coming zombie apocalypse he keeps on prophesying.
Quayle's conspiracy theories are becoming ever loopier and byzantine. His latest is that coronavirus tests are to collect your DNA to be used to create targeted biological weapons that will infect people and either kill them or turn them into flesh-eating zombies. Bakker asked Quayle if zombies were a disease on Earth, like any other disease. Quayle 'explained':
A research paper dealing with the evolution of a widespread species of African monkey, the Mona Monkey, Cercopithecus mona, illustrates several mechanisms by which a species can diversify and speciate, and gives the lie to the Creationist claim that the Theory of Evolution is a theory in crisis.
The reality is that the TOE is the foundation of modern biology and the only theory that explains the observed facts. Creationist frauds like to tell their dupes that it's about to be overthrown by some flavour of Bible-literalist fundamentalist creationism or other to make them feel intellectually superior to 'mad' scientists with their 'false' theories and wacky ideas.
Covid-19 Vaccine fact sheet produced by Hennepin Healthcare
This is not a joke, not even a belated April fools joke.
There really are people who, because they suffer from religion, can be induced to believe these absurdities.
An American health-care provider has had to put out a disclaimer stating that the anti-Covid-19 vaccine does not contain something called 'luciferase' or 'the mark of the beast" to mark recipients as followers of Satan.
Luciferase is the enzyme found in bioluminescent organisms responsible for making them glow in the dark. There would be absolutely no purpose in putting it in a vaccine. But what on earth is 'the mark of the beast'? Oh, I know all about the nonsense in Revelations about the number 666 and all that tosh, but how can it be a substance included in a vaccine?
Apparently, this is one of the latest QAnon-type conspiracy theories concerning the Covid-19 vaccine, which is circulating in fundamentalist Christian circles, as though, fresh from their success with the "Deep state, cannibalistic paedophile ring", Bill Gates' "tracking nanobots" and "gay genes", nonsense, the originators of this idiocy have gone one step further round the bend and taken their dupes with them.
I suspect that a small group somewhere is betting amongst themselves to see who can get people to say the most idiotic thing in public. I wonder if Republican politicians and evangelical, Talibangelist 'prophets' realise they're being made public fools of for someone's entertainment.
The scary thing is that, as Voltaire said:
People who believe absurdities will commit atrocities
How arrogant we once were, before science taught us humility!
When I was young, back in the 1950s, we assumed us humans were exceptional in so many ways that justified believing we must be a special creation with a special purpose, being blessed with so many unique abilities. Human exceptionalism justified so much about religion and our relationship with the rest of nature and the world, which we assumed had been created solely for our benefit to be used as we saw fit. There was even an account in our book of self-justificatory origin myths that related how and why everything was created this way - "And God gave Man dominion..."
But that was in the days before we knew any better. Now we know otherwise.
We used to think we were the only 'thinking' beings, now we know that many other species can think and solve problems.
We used to think we were the only beings with intelligence enough to make and use tools, now we know many other species also shape and use tools.
We used to think we were the only beings with ethics and moral codes, now we know several other species are also empathetic and know the difference between right and wrong in context.
We used to think we were the only beings with a sense of self, now we know many other species are self-aware and have a conceptual map of their environment with them at the centre of it.
We used to think we were the only beings with cultures, now we know that other species also form cultures which they inherit from their parents and peers.
And, that latter assumption has just taken another blow with the news that a group of researchers at the University of Konstanz and Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior in Germany have found that birds are able to change their culture to become more efficient. As the University of Konstanz press release explains:
The paper concerns the discovery of four new (to science) extinct species of snakefly which pose something of a problem. They were found in western North America in an area which our understanding of their modern counterparts says they shouldn't have been in.
All know modern snakeflies live in habitats which experience winter frosts and it was assumed that their over-wintering eggs needed a period of freezing in order to develop. However, these extinct species are all from temperate regions which experience few if any winter frosts, so the question is, why did their modern descendant evolve to be dependent on these winter conditions?
Sadly, the paper is behind a paywall, however, the Simon Fraser University media release has the details:
Another Gallop poll to gladden the heart of any Atheist or secular humanist, showing again the decline in religion in the USA. This poll appears to be undated, the only clue being that the last data points are for 2020 and the copyright is dated 2021, so we can assume the poll represents the state of religious opinion towards the end of 2020.
I'll let the charts speak for themselves since they need little by way of explanation. The trendlines in the first chart were added by me using Excel's 3 phase polynomial which gave a closer fit to the data points than a simple linear trend.
A whiff of the stinking cesspit of corruption that is the Vatican under Pope Francis was hanging around Southwark Crown Court in March when Judge Tony Baumgartner lifted a freezing order which had been placed on Gianluigi Torizi’s bank account. Torizi is the Italian businessman who was arrested in the Vatican City last year as part of its ongoing investigation into the London property deal at the heart of the financial scandal concerning the finances of the Vatican Secretariat of State.
Delivering his judgment, Judge Baumgartner criticised the Vatican Promoter of Justice offices for court filings that the judge said were riddled with “non-disclosures and misrepresentations.
Readers may remember how this scandal first surfaced when Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu suddenly 'resigned his rights as a cardinal' (a euphemism for 'was summarily sacked and stripped of his powers') over his involvement in financial scandals, including the London property deal, using a Vatican slush fund known as "Peter's Pence", and his doctoring of the Vatican's financial accounts.
The team zoomed in on the uniqueness of egg-laying in mammals. Today, chicks get all their nutrients from within the egg before they hatch. Newly-hatched puggles get some nutrients from within their platypus eggs, but they still need to lap mother’s milk. And of course, human babies initially get all their nutrients from milk. The research group demonstrated that chickens have three egg-producing genes, the platypus has one, and humans have none.
They concluded that since all three evolved from a common ancestor that laid eggs, the platypus lost two egg-specific genes while humans lost all three. This conclusion relies entirely on the premise of a common ancestor. It simply ignores the at least equally logical divine origins option. A smart Creator could have equipped each of these three creatures with the specific DNA sequences needed to carry out its own unique growth and development.
This subtle misrepresentation relies on three characteristics of Creationist frauds' target marks:
Hank Kunneman, One Voice Ministries
"People should trust the prophets who said Trump would win, because he did win really because the prophets said he would!"
In a presuppositional argument which would grace any list of Christian apologetics for its dishonest circularity, Talibangelical, Trumpanzee nut-job, Hank Kunneman, of One Voice Ministries, has said that Trump won really because lots of self-styled fundamentalist Christian 'prophets' prophesied he would win, therefore the election was stolen and the prophesies were correct, so people should continue to trust these 'prophets'.
In a chilling preview of what 'democracy' would be like in a Taliban-style fundamentalist Christian theocracy, comprised of people like Kummeman, elections are won and lost not on a count of the votes for the candidates, but by prophesies of self-styled, self-appointed 'prophets'. In other words, with typical fundamentalist Christian 'humility', the word of these fundamentalists loons overrides the will of the people expressed at the ballot box.
Regular readers might remember Hank, who crudely recently warned his dupes that "God hates those who point out when his prophets make false prophesies" (such as falsely prophesying a Trump win in 2020, for example) by misrepresenting... er... reinterpreting a Bible passage.
And of course, it goes without saying that the 'winning' candidate will always be the one who holds out the prospect of power, influence and increased wealth and job security for the 'prophets', because, naturally, that's the candidate whom God will favour too!
A few days ago in one of his "Prophetic Pulse 'conferences'", Kunneman, claiming there had been lots of signs in March that the alleged voter fraud that stole the election from Trump would soon be exposed, told his dupes:
President Trump won the election, so, for people to say, ‘Well, people prophesied that he’d win,’ he did win, and so we had a stolen election.
President Trump is not going anywhere. If you don’t like President Trump, that’s your problem because he’s not done talking, and God’s not done with him...
I’m sensing very strongly by the signs that God has given … that we are close to justice and righteousness being established. What we cannot do is quit, give up, point the finger, and then begin to think, ‘Well, you know what? All of this was just a smokescreen.’ No, that’s what the enemy wants because it’s a sad day if all of God’s messengers, prophets, intercessors, [and] Christians were somehow wrong and the fake news that we know has been fake news were the voice of truth. I don’t think so.
Curiously though Kunneman 'forgot' to tell his followers just what those mysterious signs were, or where the evidence proving this alleged fraud was to be found. For a prophet of an omniscient God, Kunneman seems to be remarkably poorly served in that respect. It's almost as though God doesn't know what that evidence is or where it may be found either.
But it seems his only 'evidence' that the election was stolen from Trump is the fact that he and so many of his fellow Talibangelical Trumpanzee cultists, said he would win. That's it! Trump won really because we said he would!
Well, either that or Kunneman is indeed the false prophet he so desperately now wants his dupes not to think of him as.
Police in Canada who went to check that a local Alberta church with a record of putting the health and safety of its congregation and the public at large at risk from Covid-19, was now complying with the law, were in for a treat.
Along with Pastor Artur Pawlowski's congregation in the Cave of Adullam Church, they were treated to a practical demonstration of Christian love, forgiveness and turning the other cheek - as he attacked them with a tirade of violent threats and abuse.
The reason for the routine and perfectly lawful check by the police was because of the churches recent history of ignoring the coronavirus mitigation measures and holding in-person services that exceeded the legal restrictions on attendance. Just days earlier, Pastor James Coates from the church had been released from jail following the Alberta government's decision to drop the case. He is still subject to financial charges for violating the health order.
A group of Satan-worshipping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media.
A further 37% were unsure. This means 46% (less than half) those adult Americans polled thought the statement was untrue!
Readers will be well aware that this belief is central to the QAnon conspiracy theories and fighting this "deep state", comprised of cannibalistic paedophile political elites, senior scientists and media moguls, is what Donald J Trump was put into power (by God) to fight. The same people who believe these theories also believe:
Close on news that a Hawaiian pastor has said his church should be allowed to continue holding Covid-19 super-spreader services because the authorities have allowed hospitals to remain open, we have fruitloop Robbin Bullock, fresh from the traditional abuse of LGBTQ people, claiming they would all be evangelical Christians really, only Satan has taken possession of them to prevent it.
Last November Bullock, founder of Youth Force Ministries Church International, told his dupes that God had told him the coronavirus pandemic was caused by people voting for Hillary Clinton in 2012, apparently unaware that most of those catching the virus and dying from it were from that unimportant little place called 'The Rest of The World', so couldn't have voted for Hillary Clinton even if they had wanted too. But Robin Bullock's parochial little world consists only of the USA - which is the only place of interest to his god too, it seems.
Pastor James Marocco, of the Church of the Sacred Covid Super-Spreader, aka, King's Cathedral, in Kahului, Maui, Hawaii, has come out with what must rate as one of the most bizarre, if not the most bizarre, arguments for refusing to close his church to help contain a massive cluster of Covid-19 cases already traced back to services in his church. He is arguing that because the authorities didn't close the local hospital when it was being overwhelmed by cases, they should keep his church open too!
When bone first appeared in the fossil record, it did not contain the bone cells (osteocytes) that are today considered essential for normal bone growth and development, so where did they come from? This is the sort of gap any diligent Creationist would look for and, when found, would plonk their god firmly in it, declare the fit to be perfect and proclaim the question answered, in the only way permitted to a Creationist - God did it!
But, as usual, when science looks in these gaps, Creationism's god is nowhere to be seen. Instead, they find it was never there at all because it was merely an illusion caused by gaps in the record, not gaps in the entirely natural processes that brought about the world as we see it today. As always, what is evolved out of what was, without magic or the involvement of a clever invisible magic sky man.
Just such a gap was closed recently by a team of scientists working for the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, headed by Dr Florian Witzmann who used the focussed ion beam of a scanning electron microscope at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) to examine the bone structures of 400 million year-old fossils of marine life in nanometre-scale, to calculate unprecedented 3D detail. The scientists believe they have even identified the environmental factor which drove this evolution - a shortage of the essential mineral, phosphorus.
The Intelligent designer has really pulled out the stops with this one!
It's only gone and designed a special virus to give sea lions cancer, and it's made it so it's sexually transmitted too!
According to researchers at The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, CA, USA, the cause of the cancer that is killing so many Californian sea lions, is a herpesevirus that has infected 1 in 4 sea lions.
The cancer starts in the genital tract of the sea lion then rapidly spreads throughout the internal organs. Sea lions that wash up on California's beaches suffering from the disease are normally in the terminal stages and so have to be euthanised humanely to prevent further suffering.
Mind you, clever and mendacious though it is, the intelligent designer needed a bit of help from humans with this one, albeit unwitting help. The problem appears to be exacerbated by man-made pollution with nasty chemicals like DDT and PCB. A lot of DDT was dumped in the sea around Southern California, which is one of the main habitats for these sea lions. DDT, especially, was once widely used as a general insecticide but proved to be extremely harmful to a multitude of species and was banned in most countries. However, it is very stable and stays in the environment for tens or even hundreds of years, being ingested, concentrated up the food chain, at the top of which sit species such as the sea lion, and put back into the environment when the animal dies, to be ingested again and recycled.
Nevertheless, the herpes virus was a brilliant masterstroke that really causes suffering, especially after the sea lions have been sexually active, so the sea lion's (geddit?!) share of the credit has to go to the malevolent designer of this nasty little virus!
Scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have now produced an artificial cell that reproduces like any other single-celled organism.
In 2010 Venter produced the first cell with a synthetic genome when he constructed a genome that was almost identical to that of Mycoplasma mycoides, a bacterial parasite commonly found in goats.
In 2016, this genome was, stripped it down to its bare essentials to contain just 237 genes, to become the smallest known viable genome capable of independent living. However, there was something not quite right about the way this cell (termed Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn3.0) because when it replicated, the daughter cells were not equal in size, as they are in the wild type and in Venter's 2010 version (JVCI-syn1.0). It became apparent that some genes needed for normal replication had been removed along with about half the genome to reduce it down to 237 genes.
A 'missing link' protein that shows the transition between two ancient species of algae, red algae and cryptophytes.
This was a mystery that had been eluding molecular biologists for decades and it was only found because of the stay-at-home regulations to mitigate the Covid-19 pandemic and because of international cooperation. The discovery was made by biologists based at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, Australia and the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada. There findings were published a few days ago, open access in Nature Communications.
The University of New South Wales news release by Lachlan Gilbert tells the story:
Congratulations to America for joining the rest of the developed world, where religious non-affiliation and increasing secularisation of society are now the norm.
The latest Gallop poll shows that church, synagogue or mosque membership in the USA has fallen below 50% for the first time. Now at just 47%, this represents a 26% percentage point fall since 1937 when Gallop first began polling. And the downward trend show signs of accelerating, falling 22 percentage points since the turn of the millennium and 8 percentage points since 2015.
According to this report in the Guardian, President reject, Donald J Trump, has launched his new cult website (45Office.com) with an account of his disastrous presidency in which he appears to have forgotten certain key events.
Consistent with his narcissistic personality disorder, it is full of self-praise and 'alternative facts', such as his claim to have acted decisively over the coronavirus pandemic and implying that he was personally responsible for innovative medical treatments and two vaccines. What he 'forgot' to mention was that he had dismantled the plans and contingencies that his predecessor, Barak Obama had put in place in preparedness for just such a pandemic, in his obsessive zeal to undo everything Obama had done.
In what could pass for a parody of the kind of self-eulogising, and disregard for the facts, that characterises Trump's personality disorder, in his opening 885-word braggadocio, written in the third person, which is hard to read without laughing out loud, he says:
Research into the flower preferences of pollinating moths may have delivered a vital clue to the simple factors needed for the emergence of new species.
With characteristic intellectual honesty, Charles Darwin was always quick to acknowledge difficulties for his theory of evolution by natural selection, one of which he called an 'abominable mystery' in a letter to his close friend, botanist and explorer Dr Joseph Hooker in 1879. He wrote:
The rapid development as far as we can judge of all the higher plants within recent geological times is an abominable mystery... Nothing is more extraordinary in the history of the Vegetable Kingdom, as it seems to me, than the apparently very sudden or abrupt development of the higher plants. I have sometimes speculated whether there did not exist somewhere during long ages an extremely isolated continent perhaps near the South Pole.
This 'mystery' had been used by Scottish botanist William Carruthers, keeper of botany at the British Museum, to argue for divine intervention in a 1876 lecture to the Geologists Association.
Now researchers Kelsey J. R. P. Byers and H. D. Bradshaw Jr., working at the Department of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA think they have gone some way to solving this mystery. The press release by the John Innes Centre explains:
This is my second blog post concerning the origins of historic cultural groups, the first being about the Basques of Northeast Spain and Southwest France. This new understanding has been made possible by advances in recovering DNA from ancient sources and techniques for analysing the results. In effect, it is the result of applied evolutionary theory.
The nomadic Scythians were a major force in Eurasia during the first millennium BCE. Their domestication of the horse allowed them to dominate the steppes of Central Asia and spread far and wide. Then they declined and disappeared from history.
Where they came from, how they relate to other Eurasia peoples and why they disappeared has long been a mystery for historians, but now the work of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, by analysing the DNA from the remains they left in their burial mounds is providing some answers. As always, the DNA shows the evolutionary changes and relationships that the Theory of Evolution leads us to expect. As the press release from the Max Planck Institute tells the story:
Generally thought of as fierce horse-warriors, the Scythians were a multitude of Iron Age cultures who ruled the Eurasian steppe, playing a major role in Eurasian history. A new study published in Science Advances analyzes genome-wide data for 111 ancient individuals spanning the Central Asian Steppe from the first millennia BCE and CE. The results reveal new insights into the genetic events associated with the origins, development and decline of the steppe’s legendary Scythians.
Color representation of the mixture and genetic structure in the Basque Country; the green symbolizing the Basques, and the blue and red blends it with the surrounding populations.
Isolated populations can either stay completely isolated and so gradually diverge from other populations of the same species by a combination of natural selection and genetic drift, or they can continue to exchange DNA with other neighbouring groups and so eventually merge and disappear as genetically distinct populations.
This true for all species, whether birds, mammals, reptiles or insects or, as in the case of the Basque people of Northeast Spain and Southwest France, humans.
A study by a mixed team from Spain and France, led by David Comas of the Departament de Ciències de la Salut i de la Vida, Institut de Biologia Evolutiva (CSIC-UPF), Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain has shown how the Basque people have retained genetic continuity with their Iron Age ancestors and have resisted genetic mixing with their neighbours, by a combination of linguistic, cultural and geographical barriers to gene flow.
A couple of days ago, I reported on the case of evolution by the rare process of
gene shuffling in a species of bird, to bring about a new combination,
reinforced by pre-zygotic barriers because the new combination gave a new
plumage display and so new assortative mating behaviour.
This time we have an example of horizontal gene transfer giving species of
whitefly a significant advantage over those without the newly-acquired gene.
Although this is common in protozoans, it is rare in multicellular animals and previously unknown between plants and insects.
A psychology paper published a few days ago by researchers at New York University, sheds some light on Donald Trump's self-evident Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). Although it doesn't name his as such, it could be describing his personality and idiosyncratic behaviour.
The open access paper shows how NPD is not driven by an inflated sense of self-worth but by insecurity and self-loathing in disguise. The question is then, what in his background caused this self-loathing in Donald Trump? We would almost certainly have to go back into his childhood and probably his relationship with his, by all accounts, particularly unpleasant and odious, psychopathic father.
The results of the simulation show the growth of tiny, extremely dense structures very soon after the inflation phase of the very early universe. Between the initial and final states in the simulation (top left and right respectively), the area shown has expanded to ten million times its initial volume, but is still many times smaller than the interior of a proton. The enlarged clump at the bottom left would have a mass of about 20kg.
Never having been especially interested in physics which, compared to biology, I found dry and uninteresting - probably wrongly - this subject is not something I can claim any great understanding of, but this simulation addresses the first few microseconds after the Big Bang, in the instance before the larger structures such as elementary particles came into existence.
It has been said that the initial density of the universe at this time was some trillion times that of water. Just how dense can be judged from the fact that, according to this computer simulation, some 10-24 seconds after the BB, bodies smaller than a proton had a mass of about 20 Kg! These 'inflaton halos' were responsible for the rapid inflation of the nascent Universe.
The simulation was done by theoretical physicists at the Universities of Göttingen, Germany and Auckland, New Zealand. The press release from Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen gives the details:
A group of researchers led by Sheela P. Turbek of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA have identified a rare form of evolution in a group of birds known collectively as the southern capuchino seedeaters. The process, known as genetic shuffling, had only been observed once before, in African in the cichlid fish of Lake Victoria and is believed to be behind the recent evolution of a new species, the Iberá Seedeater, Sporophila iberaensis.
In addition to speciation by gene shuffling - where a new species arises by recombining existing genes in a unique combination, this species of bird also illustrates how speciation can be maintained by pre-zygotic barriers to hybridization, that arise through natural selection because hybrids with intermediate characteristics may be at a disadvantage, having intermediate specialisations.
Readers may remember Talibangelical Trumpanzee nut-job and self-appointed Prophet of God, Shane Vaughn, who was one of my sample of three Trumpanzee false prophets. Vaughn had prophesied a Trump win in November 2020 and was, like the many other false prophets who did likewise, desperately trying to explain why his false prophesy wasn't actually false and that he really had, despite all the evidence, related God's inerrant word to his dupes... er... followers.
Vaughn had earlier prophesied that Trump would never be impeached, after he had already been impeached the first time and shortly before he became the only president in American history to be impeached twice.
He also claimed that Trump losing in November had all been part of God's plan, so that Trump can serve twelve terms! Seriously!
Now Vaughn is claiming he has been given a special mission by God “to raise my voice against the sin of the Biden administration". Comparing himself to the biblical prophet, Elijah and Kamal Harris to Jezebel, and revealing his obsession with Kamal Harris (not a hint of racism or misogyny there, obviously!) he told his followers:
A team led by researchers at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of
Molecular Biology (LMB) has identified a simple genetic switch that makes human
brain organoids grow more like ape brains, and vice versa.
Organoids are the result of stem cells grown in vitro, in this case stem cells
that would normally grow into brains in the developing embryo. The team
discovered the 'switch' in the form of the gene 'ZEB2' which turns on sooner in
the gorilla brain than the human brain. When this switch is delayed in the
developing gorilla organoid, the cells multiply faster and the organoid grows
like a human brain, and when turned on earlier in the developing human organoid
it grows like gorilla brain tissue.
The change in the timing of this switch is probably the evolutionary change that
allows the human brain to grow to something like three times the volume of the
brains of the other apes.
Lateral detail of a living Trioceros wolfgangboehmeisp. nov. from Goba, Ethiopia, showing the heterogeneous body scalation with both small scattered tubercles and enlarged flattened plate-like scales. In this individual the dorsolateral stripe is interrupted and forms a Y-shaped pattern on the flanks.
Photo by Petr Nečas.
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Living juvenile of Trioceros wolfgangboehmeisp. nov. from Goba, Ethiopia.
Photo by Petr Nečas.
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Digital elevation map of Ethiopia (generated by using the geographic information system ArcGIS 10.0; elevation in m a.s.l) indicating the currently known distribution of Trioceros wolfgangboehmeisp. nov. east of the Ethiopian Rift in the northern Bale Mountains (red stars; left star: Dinsho, right star: Goba). Black star: Addis Abeba. Grey dots show records of T. affinis based on distributional data after Largen and Spawls (2010) and Ceccarelli et al. (2014).
Here is another example of why fragile and vulnerable habitats need to be
preserved, if only for the rich variety of new species that could be living
there.
This time it is a new species of chameleon from the Bale Mountain forests of
Ethiopia. This one was discovered by zoologists Thore Koppetsch and Benjamin
Wipfler of the Research Museum Alexander Koenig in Bonn, Germany, and Petr Nečas
from the Czech Republic. The new species, Trioceros wolfgangboehmei is a
new small-sized chameleon living on the edge of the forest. Their findings were
published in the open-access, peer-reviewed life science journal
Zoosystematics and Evolution.
More bad news for Creationists. A chance discovery in the mountains of Canada’s remote Yukon territory, by geobiology graduate student Katie Maloney, has filled in another of those precious god-shaped gaps and provided yet another of those pesky transitional forms that aren't supposed to exist.
Christian fundamentalists will confidently assure you that their religion gives them superior morals to Atheists and members of other religions because they get their morals direct from a perfect god who defines right and wrong. Almost invariably, of course, the same fundamentalists who need to boast about their supposed superior morals are using religion for the excuses it gives them for otherwise unacceptable, antisocial attitudes and behaviour like homophobia, misogyny and/or racism, but that's another issue.
One of the claims they will make against Atheists, for example, is that Atheists see no reason not to be selfish, whereas Christian fundamentalist are altruistic because they know this is the right thing to do, not because it is inherently right but because their god tells them to be and promises them a reward for altruism or punishment for selfishness.
However, evolution by natural selection, operating at the level of genes is fully capable of explaining altruism as an evolved behavioural trait because self-sacrifice can often ensure the survival of those descendants and close kin who are carrying copies of the genes for altruistic behaviour, so ensuring the survival, even at the expense of individual carriers, of those genes through time.
So, this gene-centred evolution should predict altruism in other species; species moreover which don not need to read the Bible to know right from wrong because they have an innate, inherited, set of pro-social behaviours which are also situational - the situation depending on the probability of helping the survival through time of the genes for that behaviour.
This is the finding of a group of researchers from Osaka City University, Japan, whose results were published open access in Nature Communications a few days ago. They have shown that male convict cichlid fish, Amatitlania nigrofasciata can vary their behaviour between pro-social and anti-social depending on the situation.
