Evolution News - Every Fossil Tells a Story.

Every fossil tells a story but some have more to say than other. This one, from the period when some lobe-finned fish like Tiktaalik were transitioning into terrestrial tetrapods, shows that evolution is not a straightforward progress towards a desired goal but can go off at a tangent and even into a reverse of sorts. It is a close relative of Tiktaalik, from the same region, but it stayed in the water and probably adapted to living in open water.

The story of how Qikiqtania wakei. was discovered and analysed is told in this article from The Conversation. (Read the original article). Reprinted here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Meet Qikiqtania, a fossil fish with the good sense to stay in the water while others ventured onto land

An artist’s vision of Qikiqtania enjoying its fully aquatic, free-swimming lifestyle.

Alex Boersma, CC BY-ND

Thomas Stewart, Penn State

Approximately 365 million years ago, one group of fishes left the water to live on land. These animals were early tetrapods, a lineage that would radiate to include many thousands of species including amphibians, birds, lizards and mammals. Human beings are descendants of those early tetrapods, and we share the legacy of their water-to-land transition.

But what if, instead of venturing onto the shores, they had turned back? What if these animals, just at the cusp of leaving the water, had receded to live again in more open waters?

COVID-19 News - Why You Should Get a Booster Vaccination as Soon as Possible.

Vaccine-Induced Immune Response to Omicron Wanes Substantially Over Time | NIH: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Be under no illusions, the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over.

We are currently seeing yet another wave of infections as the Omicron variant diverges into new and even more infections variants, and investigators at the US National Insitute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases have shown that the antibody levels following vaccination wane significantly in about 3 months.

From the NIH news release:

Malevolent Designer News - Why Creationism's Divine Malevolence Gave Us Junk DNA

‘Junk’ DNA could lead to cancer by stopping copying of DNA - The Institute of Cancer Research, London

Creationists hate junk DNA because no intelligent designer would have included lots of DNA that does nothing apart from being replicated endlessly in every cell and passed on to each new generation. They also hate it because it contains 'fossil' relics from our remote ancestors and we share much of it with our close relatives, so it is very compelling evidence for evolution and common descent. The third reason they hate it is because it is available to mutate and occasionally give rise to new genetic 'information' when Creationist dogma says that no new genetic information can arise because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics' [sic].

So, creationist frauds put a great deal of effort into trying to debunk the idea that junk DNA really does do nothing. For that reason they should welcome this piece of research that shows that, far from doing nothing, junk DNA may actually cause cancer.

Yep! You read that right. Creationists such as Michael J. Behe will often use examples that, if they were intelligently designed, would portray the designer as a malevolent sadist who invents way to make his creation suffer.

For example, Behe has used both the flagellum of the bacteria Escherichia coli (E. coli) which better equips it for causing food poisoning, and the resistance of the Plasmodium parasites that cause malaria to the drugs used to prevent it, as examples of 'irreducible complexity' which he claims must have been designed, so Creationists are used to portraying their putative creator as an evil sadist. The fact that, if we subscribe to their superstition and apply their logic we have here an example of their god deliberately causing cancers, should come as no surprise.

Evolution News - How Gonorrhoea Probably Gave Us Grandparents

Neisseria gonorrhoeae bacteria may have driven the evolution of human gene variants that protect against dementia.

Photo credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,
National Institutes of Health

Did Gonorrhea Give Us Grandparents?

In an earlier study, researchers at the University of California - San Diego (UCSG), showed that a set of mutant genes help protect older adults against cognitive decline and dementia. Now the same team has shown that we may have evolved with these mutation as an evolutionary adaptation to the sexually-transmitted disease organism, Neisseria gonorrhoeae that causes gonorrhoea.

These mutations are only found in Homo sapiens and not in our close extinct relatives, Neanderthals and Denisovans, who share the same genes with our common ancestors, the chimpanzees, suggesting that these mutations only became widespread in the H. sapiens genome after we split from our common ancestor with Neanderthals and Denisovans (possibly H. erectus) a few hundred thousand years ago.

The implication of that is that having adults that survived longer and who could be actively involved in child-care of their grandchildren, may have been what gave us an advantage over the archaic hominins we came into contact with, both in Africa and in Eurasia.

The finding is an example of how a mutation which became fixed in the species genome in response to environmental pressure can then be adapted further for an entirely different purpose. The research also shows how the scientists were in no doubt at all about the power of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection to explain what we observe in biology. There is no sign of even a shadow of doubt about the TOE or any sign that the TOE is a theory in crisis, as Creationist frauds are continually telling their credulous dupes. The TOE is fundamental to any understanding of biology for anyone who knows anything about it.

Here is how the research is explained in the UCSG news release:

Evolution News - How the Environment Drives Evolution

Plant study hints evolution may be predictable | YaleNews

Similar leaf types evolved independently in three species of plants found in cloud forests of Oaxaca, Mexico and three species of plants in similar environment in Chiapas, Mexico. This example of parallel evolution is one of several found by Yale-led scientists and suggests that evolution may be predictable.

On of the enduring debates in biology is to what extent evolution is predictable. If we could somehow rewind the tape and play it again, would we end up with the same species as we have today, or would the result be a very different planet with different taxons and different dominant species? Would it in fact produce an intelligent species capable of going to the moon and building computers?

The problem is that the environment, which is the underlying driver of evolution, is itself subject to unpredictable changes and the operation of chaos, where a small change here or there can have a large effect some way down the line - the proverbial butterfly effect where a butterfly flapping its wings on a Pacific island can result in a hurricane in the Himalayas. Small, randon fluctuations in weather patterns or ocean currents can have widespread effects on the distribution of different species in food chains, for example.

This piece of research, although interesting in that it shows the effect of the environment as a driver of evolution, doesn't really answer that question because it shows what can happen when the environment is a constant. This is, of course, the prerequisite for convergent evolution, where, not surprisingly, from a similar starting point, in a given environment, evolutions tends to home in on the same phenotypic solutions, albeit by different genetic routes.

As explained in a Yale News article by Bill Hathaway:

Transitional Fossil News - Now it's Lots of Transitional Forms, All In One Place!

Ecological reconstruction of the Liexi fauna

Drawn by J. Sun

Ecological reconstruction of the Liexi fauna

Drawn by J. Sun

A new Early Ordovician Lagerstätte reveals the early stage of the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event----Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology Chinese Academy of Sciences

Creationist mode:

The Problem is probably that the Chinese don't have the Bible, like American fundamentalist Christians do, so how were they to know that they should be ignoring the evidence they find in the natural world and dismissing it as a Satanic plot, because the Bible says all living organisms were magicked up all at the same time, by a supernatural magician using magic? Nor did they know that while the physical world created by the same supernatural magician contains masses of misleading evidence and lies designed to trick us, all the truth was put in a book by the same magician, which is guaranteed to be the truth because the magician who lied in all the physical evidence said so.

These Chinese! They just can't do the logic!

Malevolent Designer News - How a Fungus Fools a Fly

Zombie fly fungus lures healthy male flies to mate with female corpses – University of Copenhagen

A male fly trying to mate with a female corpse held in place by a dab of Vaseline. The fungus has grown out of the rear body segment and is visible as large white patches from which spores are ejected

Credit: Filippo Castelucci

I describe several examples of these parasitic fungi taking control of their hosts and turning them into zombies in my popular, illustrated book, The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is Not Good. While this example might not be the most horrific, it is certainly up there amongst the top few.

It is the fungus known to science as Entomophthora muscae which not only takes control of the female fly it parasitizes, but then uses her dead body to release powerful pheromones that take control of males, forcing them to try to mate with the dead female, so it can spread the fungal spores to a living female.

How The SCOTUS Now Represents an Extremist Minority of Americans

Political and Religious Activation and Polarization in the Wake of the Roe v. Wade Overturn | PRRI

A survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) into attitudes to abortion and the overturning of Roe vs Wade shows the extent to which the ruling represents the viewpoint of a small, extremist religious minority of Americans - white evangelical Christians. But there are signs that this extremist minority may have shot themselves in the foot in this case.

The following charts tell their own story.

Malevolent Designer News - Incompetence, Malevolence or a Mindless, Natural Process. Creationists Won't Say.

In the central nuclei (blue) of immune cells called macrophages, removing the WASP gene (as in the right panel) leads to fewer clusters of RNA splicing proteins (red).

Credit: Xuan Zhou of KAUST

Salk researchers discover how RNA processing goes awry in rare immune disease - Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome is just one of a whole host of childhood diseases that have a genetic basis and which any decent scientific theory should be capable of explaining, if not yet devising a cure for them. For creationists however, they present a special problem if they are to stick to their dogma that nothing happens at the level of the genome that isn't the specific will and intent of their putative designer god.

This is especially relevant now that scientists working at the Salk Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia have discovered the underlying cause of this rare and distressing childhood disorder. As the Salk Institute press release describes it:

This study not only suggests new targets for treating Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome with small molecule drugs, but also sheds new light on the basic biology of RNA splicing, an important and not fully understood process.

These RNA splicing factors could both be a biomarker for monitoring Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome, and a potential target for treatment.

Professor Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, corresponding author
Gene Expression Laboratory
Salk Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA

Babies with Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome begin to develop symptoms quickly after birth: itchy, scaly rashes, frequent bruises and nose bleeds are some of the first signs. Over time, they become prone to infections and are more likely than other children to develop autoimmune diseases and cancers. The only potential cure is a bone marrow transplant, which carries a host of complications and only works in some children.

The underlying mechanism concerns how cells normally cut and paste strands of RNA in a process called RNA splicing. RNA splicing is often needed because a 'gene' may be composed of non-contiguous segments of DNA separated by various lengths of non-coding DNA. The entire section gets translated into RNA which then needs these 'introns' removed and the RNA spliced together to form a template for the protein, before it can be transcribed. In Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome, a genetic mutation disrupts this process which in turn means that numerous immune and anti-inflammatory proteins are not made properly.

The SALK Institute press release continues:

Why People Are Anti-Science - And What We Can Do About It.

The growth of the anti-vaccine movement is one prominent example of how politics has helped lead to more people rejecting science.

Photo: Ivan Radic, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

The 4 bases of anti-science beliefs – and what to do about them.

Under the influence of his scientific illiteracy and political incompetence during the COVID-19 pandemic, former President Donald Trump's lasting legacy is likely to be a large and growing number of Americans who now distrust science and so represent a danger to the rest of us.

The result is a growing resistance to measures to combat climate change and vaccination campaigns to eradicate or control pandemic such as the current coronavirus pandemic or life-threatening epidemics such as measles, mumps and rubella.

This level of anti-science attitude in a major country is a clear danger to the world as a whole, since climate change and viruses are not limited by national borders.

Now three researchers at Ohio State University who study attitudes and persuasion, have published a paper in Proceeding of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) which explain the rise in anti-science beliefs today and outlines what can be done about it. Sadly, the paper itself is behind an expensive paywall, but the abstract is available, open access, under a Creative Commons licence.

Malevolent Designer News - Another Piece of Malevolent Design, or a Stupid Mindless Blunder?

UT Southwestern researchers capture first images of antibody attacking neuron receptor: Newsroom - UT Southwestern, Dallas, Texas

Using cryo-electron microscopy, scientists at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center have, for the first time, photographed an antibody attacking a neuron.

Auto-immune diseases, where the body's immune system attacks the body itself, present intelligent [sic] deign creationists with some very special problems, none of which they can never be induced to discuss or explain in ID terms.

For example, a system supposedly designed by an omniscient, omnipotent designer simply should not go rogue and turn on the person it is designed to defend, unless of course, that was the intention all along and is a feature of the design! But then again, why doesn't this always work so everyone has these auto-immune diseases, and why are those who suffer from them usually children, apparently randomly selected for this piece of nastiness?

Binding of patient-derived autoimmune antibodies to the GABAA receptor illuminated by cryo-electron microscopy.

From the UTWestern News release:

Stunning Success for Science as First Webb Telescope Images Released.

President Biden Reveals First Image from NASA’s Webb Telescope | NASA

Webb’s first deep field is galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, and it is teeming with thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared.

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

While fundamentalist religions based on Bronze Age superstitious ignorance still struggle to reconcile their beliefs with scientific realities, science has progressed to the point where we now can take photographs of deep space, revealing details of which the superstitious founders of religions would never have even dreamed.

The first images from NASA's newly commissioned Webb telescope were released yesterday by President Joe Biden. They show the teeming thousands of galaxies in the galaxy cluster, SMACS 0723. Each of these thousands of galaxies in this one cluster, like the Milky Way galaxy, will contain trillions of suns, many of which will have orbital planets similar to those in the Solar System. This image is even more astounding when you realise that the area of the sky it shows, as seen from Earth, would be covered by a single grain of sand, held at arm’s length!

Hard Sums For Creationists: How Mathematics is Used in Biology and is Failing to Prove Creationist Claims

A Dahlia bloom with petals arranged in a Fibonacci spiral.

Creationists love mathematics because they don't understand it. This makes them vulnerable to Creation Industry frauds who misuse statistics and probability theory to fool them into thinking mathematics can prove that life could not have arisen without the aid of magic, or that evolution either doesn't happen, or, even if it does, it can't produce new taxons so doesn't account for biodiversity or show how humans are an evolved ape.

So, it's refreshing to see how mathematics is being used by biologists, none of whom have shown any of the Creationist claims to be true. This is the result of mathematics being a description of reality, showing that biology is the result of the operation of natural forces without the need for magic or magic designers anywhere in the process. In so showing, of course, it refutes the entire basis of Creationism.

The following article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency. Read the original article:

Cult News - Religious Lies, Conmen and Coercive Control

With fundamentalist religions operating as cults, especially, but not exclusively, in the USA and parts of Africa, they represent a danger to democratic society by handing control over to the cult leaders. Cults are invariably highly autocratic and usually male-dominated, with female members often having an inferior, subordinate and submissive role.

A single leader, such as a charismatic head of a megachurch or shadowy leaders of cults such as QAnon, can manipulate and control their followers to behave in wildly antisocial ways and advocate extreme fringe policies, such as we are seeing in the USA today with white supremacism and Christian Nationalism emerging from under the rocks to influence mainstream politicians, the judiciary and the Republican Party.

Cults are parasitic on democratic society where it is difficult to strike a balance between freedom of religion and measures to protect the young and vulnerable from the predation of extremist cults. Ironically, they thrive in liberal democracies which, if they ever had the power they crave, they would immediately abolish. It is a basic law of religion that fundamentalists support freedom of religion until they acquire the power to abolish it.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Reformatted for stylistic consistency. Read the original article. It was written from an Australian perspective but has wider applications.

Evolution News - A Universal Flu Vaccine Made Possible Because the Scientists Understand How Evolution Works

Influenza B virus, cut-away illustration. Influenza (flu) is a respiratory disease caused by infection with a flu virus. Influenza spreads around the world every year causing seasonal outbreaks, resulting in about three to five million cases of severe illness and about 250,000 to 500,000 deaths. Influenza B is a type of flu that is similar to influenza A and contributes to the annual seasonal flu outbreak. Influenza B viruses only pass from human to human, unlike type A where there are strains of virus in animals such as bird flu or swine flu.

Credit: Roger Harris / Science Photo Library

Universal Influenza B Vaccine Induces Broad, Sustained Protection, Biomedical Sciences Researchers Find - Georgia State University News - Faculty, Institute for Biomedical Sciences, Press Releases, Research, University Research -

Scientists at the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA believe they have produced a vaccine that is effective against different strains of the influenza B virus and think they may be able to extend this to include the Influenza A strains. They were able to do this because they understand how the influenza viruses evolve to escape our immune systems.

Influenza B viruses are often the dominant strains in seasonal flue epidemics accounting for about a quarter of clinical infections. As the Georgia State University news release explains:

Influenza epidemics pose a major threat to public health, and type B influenza has coincided with several severe flu outbreaks. About one-fourth of clinical infection cases are caused by influenza B viruses each year. Influenza B viruses are sometimes the dominant circulating strains during influenza seasons, such as the 2019-20 U.S. flu season when influenza B caused more than 50 percent of the infections.

Covidiot News - Antivaxxer Covidiots Losing the Argument

a COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and acceptance. b COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and acceptance if recommended by employer or one’s doctor. a, b COVID-19 acceptance in June 2020 was defined as willingness to take vaccine if proven safe and effective. COVID-19 vaccine acceptance in June 2021 was defined as having received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and if not, willingness to take the COVID-19 vaccine when it is available to them. Vaccine hesitancy was defined as having reported “no” to the question on whether they have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and also either unsure/no opinion, somewhat disagree, or strongly disagree to the question on whether they would take a COVID-19 vaccine when available to them. Four countries (Ghana, Kenya, Peru, and Turkey) were not included in the 2020 global survey. c Potential COVID-19 vaccine acceptance if recommended by employer or one’s doctor among those willing to take vaccine when available and those hesitant to vaccinate. c Potential COVID-19 vaccination was defined as willingness to take the COVID-19 vaccine when it is available if recommended by employer or by doctor.

Study shows increase in COVID-19 vaccine acceptance around the world - CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy

A new study by scientists from the City University of New York School of Public Health (CUNY SPH), USA, the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), Hospital Clínic, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain, the University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada and the School of Health Administration, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, has show a growing acceptance of the anti-Covid vaccines on a global scale between 2020 and 2021.

The team conducted a survey of 23,000 individuals from 23 countries in June 2021 and found that 75.2% reported acceptance of the vaccine, compared to 71.5% in 2020. The results of the survey were published open access in Nature Communications.
According to the CUNY SPH press release:

The study … was carried out within the context of a year of substantial but very unequal global COVID-19 vaccine availability and acceptance, which necessitated new assessments of the drivers of vaccine hesitancy and the characteristics of people not vaccinated.

Concerns about vaccine safety and efficacy and mistrust in the science behind vaccine development were the most consistent correlates of hesitancy. Other factors associated with vaccine hesitancy varied by country and included personal experience with COVID-19 (e.g., sickness or loss of a family member) and demographic characteristics (e.g., gender, education, and income).

The authors found that vaccine hesitancy did not significantly correlate with a country’s current COVID-19 case burden and mortality. In June 2021, vaccine hesitancy was reported most frequently in Russia (48.4%), Nigeria (43%), and Poland (40.7%), and least often in China (2.4%), the United Kingdom (UK) (18.8%), and Canada (20.8%).

In order to improve global vaccination rates, some countries may at present require people to present proof of vaccination to attend work, school, or indoor activities and events. Our results found strong support among participants for requirements targeting international travellers, while support was weakest among participants for requirements for schoolchildren.

Jeffrey Lazarus, lead author.
Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal)
Hospital Clínic
University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
And the Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy
City University of New York (CUNY), New York, NY, US

Support for vaccine mandates was substantially lower among those who were hesitant to get vaccinated themselves.

Importantly, however, recommendations by a doctor, or to a lesser extent by an employer, might have an impact on a respondent’s views on vaccination in some countries.

Dean Ayman El-Mohandes, co-author Graduate School of Public Health ∓ Health Policy
City University of New York (CUNY), New York, NY, USA

Although some countries are currently disengaging from evidence-based COVID-19 control measures, the disease has by no means been controlled or ended as a public health threat. The authors note that for ongoing COVID-19 vaccination campaigns to succeed in improving coverage going forward, substantial challenges remain. These include targeting those reporting lower vaccine confidence with evidence-based information campaigns and greatly expanding vaccine access in low- and middle-income countries.

Evolution News - How DNA Analysis is Adding to Our Knowledge of Evolutionary Biology

Source: OIST

Hidden in genetics: The evolutionary relationships of two groups of ancient invertebrates revealed | Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University OIST

One of the things a study of modern biology teaches is an appreciation of just how much of an achievement was Darwin's and Wallace's Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection considering the relatively small amount of knowledge they had access to, compared to today. in fact, all they really had to go on was morphology - i.e., the outward appearance of organisms, albeit aided with a hand lens and low-powered light microscopes. They had no knowledge of genetics, nor any inkling of how information was modified in one generation and passed onto the next.

Not surprisingly, then, they got some things wrong, especially where convergent evolution gave some species the appearance of being related when in fact they were both the product of the same environmental selectors pushing their evolution towards similar solutions, but coming from different branches of the evolutionary tree. And some problems they left unresolved, because, although there reasons to suppose two very dissimilar taxons were related based on their positions in the geological column, there was no basis for placing them firmly in the tree of life as either sister groups, distant cousins, or only very distantly related as the descendants of much earlier forms that had diversified considerably over time so they were morphologically very dissimilar.

Just such a case was the relationship between two ancient groups, the Kamptozoa and Bryozoa, small marine invertebrates related to animal like snails, earthworms, leeches, and ribbon worms.

More Evidence of Declining Religion in USA

Fewer in U.S. Now See Bible as Literal Word of God

More evidence of the decline in religion in the USA was published today in the form of a Gallop survey into the view of American adults on the origins of the Bible, which shows that the belief that the Bible is the literal word of God has declined to the minority view. Nevertheless, this view is still held by 1 in 5 American adults!

Although this view has never been held by more than 50% of Americans, is has almost halved from 38 to 20 percentage points since August 1976. Over the same period, the view that the Bible is just a collection of myths and fables has more than doubled from 13 to 29 percentage points. The 'middle’ view, that the Bible is the inspired word of God but not all of it should be taken literally, has always hovered around 45%-50% and now stands at 49%, up just 4 percentage point from 45% in August 1976.

Transitional Fossil News - Sorry Creationists, But It's Yet Another One of Those 'Non-Existent' Transitional Fossil Things!

An artist reconstruction of Ailurarctos from Shuitangba.

Illustration by Mauricio Anton

An artist reconstruction of Ailurarctos from Shuitangba. The grasping function of its false thumb (shown in the right individual) has reached to the level of modern pandas, whereas the radial sesamoid may have protruded slightly more than its modern counterpart during walking (seen in the left individual).

Illustration by Mauricio Anton

Eating bamboo? It's all in the wrist. | Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County

Technically, of course, all fossils are transitional since they represent a species at a given point in time and come precisely between its parent's generation and it's descendants, but creationists continue to demand examples of 'transitions' that illustrate their childish parody of evolution - one species, or order, changing into another with individuals midway between the two - a half fish - half monkey, or something equally ludicrous that no-one in their right mind would expect to see.

In other words, as often with creationists, they have been conditioned to demand proof of something that no scientists has ever claimed happened and something that is so different to what the TOE actually predicts, it would actually falsify the TOE if it were found.

But of course, real 'transitional' fossils abound because, like the example in this article, there are abundant examples of gradual changes in morphology over time. In this instance, the example is of the evolution of the pseudo-digit or 'thumb' in the panda, which is one of the anatomical differences between pandas and the other bears. Clearly, if, pandas, which are no known to be closely related to bears, share a common ancestor with them, we should expect an ancestor of the pandas to have a pseudo thumb, which is a development of the radial sesamoid bone of the wrist, somewhere between that of bears, which don't have one, and that of modern pandas.

And this is exactly what has been found in a fossil from the Shuitangba site in the City of Zhaotong, Yunnan Province, China dated to about 6-7 million years old. The only thing is that it is actually longer that that of modern pandas, although this doesn't necessarily mean it isn't intermediate, since a long pseudo thumb might not have been especially well adapted for both walking and gripping which involves a compromise.

The Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County news release explains:

Malevolent Designer News - The SARS-CoV-2 Virus is a Sophisticated Design For Increasing Suffering

Illustration of a SARS-CoV-2 viral particle entering a cell. The particle pierces through a cell’s membrane, made of two layers of lipids. A PNNL-OHSU team has shown how lipids are key to the ability of the virus to replicate.

Illustration: Michael Perkins | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

COVID-19 Fattens Up Our Body’s Cells to Fuel Its Viral Takeover | PNNL

Creationist mode:

No doubt the more they learn about the SARS-CoV-2 which is causing the current COVID-19 pandemic, the more creationists will come to admire the sheer brilliance of the divine malevolence they believe created it for the sole purpose of killing millions of people and making hundreds of millions sicker, to generally increase the suffering in the world. At least that's what it achieved and is still achieving so, since it is supposedly omniscient, we have to believe it knew precisely what it would do and designed it for that purpose.

Now a group of scientists has discovered yet another example of just what a brilliantly sophisticated machine for making us sick this nasty little virus is. They have found that it

undertakes a massive takeover of the body’s fat-processing system, creating cellular storehouses of fat that empower the virus to hijack the body’s molecular machinery and cause disease.

but before creationists get too excited, the scientists from Oregon Health & Science University and the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory caution that these results were obtained from cell cultures, not living humans, so must be treated with caution pending more research. Nevertheless, what they found should be enough to impress devotees of the malevolence that they believe designed this virus.

The news release from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory explains:

Evolution News - Human Origins Just Got More Complicated.

The skull of 'Little Foot', Australopithecus prometheus, from south Africa, now believed to be a contemporary of 'Lucy', Au. Afarensis, from Ethiopia.

Fossils in the ‘Cradle of Humankind’ may be more than a million years older than previously thought - Purdue University News

As I have pointed out many times here and on the social media, as well as in my popular book, What Makes You So Special: From The Big Bang to You., far from the often repeated creationist lie that there are no transitional fossils, there are actually so many of them that they serve only to cloud, not clarify the picture. Just when you think there is a nice direct line from a species of Australopithecus up to say, Homo erectus and thence to us, up pops another Australopithecus that might be a side branch or it might be an early ancestor of Homo sapiens. In the end we are left with a confusing collection of ancient African fossils that might or might not be our direct ancestors or might or might not be the ancestors of am extinct side branch, with no real way to determine which.

The picture is confused further when the fossils from which DNA has been extracted show that early hominins had a tendency to spread over a very wide range, evolve for a while in isolation, but not enough to be incapable of interbreeding with a cousin species, then come back together again and exchange DNA by interbreeding, so we may in fact never have had a single original distinct ancestral species but we are the descendants of two or more that hybridized.

Now the picture has been clarified a little by a scientists from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA, the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, and the University Toulouse Jean Jaurès, Toulouse, France, who have used a new dating method developed by Dr Darryl Granger of Purdue University to reassess the date of several hominin fossils found in the Sterkfontein Caves, South Africa and pushed their dates back more than a million years. This makes them older that 'Lucy' (Au. afarensis) who is believed to be close to our direct Australopithecine ancestor, if not actually our ancestor. It is hoped, that more accurate dating will leader to a more accurate placing of these fossils over time, so making lineages easier to identify.

From the Purdue University news release:

Climate Emergency News - Temperature Change Will Impact on Bumble Bees

Climate change negatively impacting bumblebees: Study - SFU News - Simon Fraser University

A stark reminder of the effects of climate change and the danger this represents to life on Earth, was published recently in the form of a study into the effects of global warming on the population of bumblebees in North America. The study was conducted by scientists from Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada, led by Hanna Jackson, in collaboration with scientists from the U.S.-based Pollinator Partnership, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, and the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Southern California.

Their findings were published, open access, in the Royal Society's Biology Letter

bumblebees are essential pollinators on which many plants depend for their reproduction and without which many plants would not produce the next generation. They are also essential for pollinating a number of human food crops from oilseed rape to fruit, so a significant loss of bumblebees would be economically catastrophic.

The Simon Fraser University press release explains the team's methodology and main findings:

Atheism - Winning in Australia

Census 2021 results: Christianity plummets as ‘non-religious’ surges

Figures released today show that, like elsewhere in the civilised, advanced world, Australians are abandoning religion in droves. The percentage of Australians who described themselves as 'Christian' in the 2021 census fell below 50% to 44% for the first time in Australia's history.

This figure has fallen from 52% in just 5 years. In 2011 it stood at 61%. When a census was first conducted in Australia in 1911, 96% of Australians identified themselves as Christian.

These figures are revealed in the first tranche of data to be released from last years census. The percentage who ticked the 'no religion' box stood at 39%, up from 30% just 5 years ago, and almost double what it was in 2011. Those who identified as Catholic fell 3 percentage points to 20% and Anglican fell 3 percentage points to 10%. Falls in other minor Christian denominations brought the total figure for Christians as a whole down to 44% from the 52% recorded just 5 years ago.

The percentage of Australians self-identifying as 'non-religious' is highly significant because it shows the extent to which 'non-religious' has become acceptable in Australia. In the mid-1960s only 1% of Australians so self-identified. What we are seeing in Australia is what we saw in the UK, where the social stigma of having no religion, so being perceived wrongly as immoral and untrustworthy, has gone, to be replaced by a more realistic perception of intelligence, compassion and integrity, so more and more people are coming out of the closet.

Covidiot News - Another Reason Why Pregnant Women Should Be Vaccinated Against COVID-19

Covid-19 vaccination during pregnancy reduced the risk of hospitalisation with COVID-19 for babies under 6 month-old by 80% for the Delta variant and by 40% for the Omicron variant.

COVID-19 Vaccination in Pregnancy Helps Protect Infants from Needing Hospital Care for COVID-19 | Lurie Children's

Contrary to the antivaxx propaganda coming from the extreme right in the USA, a new study, sponsored by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has shown that COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy reduced the risk of babies under 6 month old needing hospitalization due to COVID-19 infection, by 80% during the Delta wave and 40% during the Omicron wave.

The study, led by Dr. Bria M. Coates, MD, was conducted by investigators from the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital, Chicago and the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago. It included infants younger than 6 months of age who were admitted to 30 paediatric hospitals in 22 states from July 1, 2021, to March 8, 2022. Dr Coates and his colleagues found that most infants (90 percent) who needed intensive care due to COVID-19 infection were born to mothers who were not vaccinated during pregnancy.

The results were published a few days ago in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital press release explains the importance of these findings:

Fake News - Why People Believe False Stories and Disinformation

Why We Fall for Disinformation | Psychology Today

In a report published recently by the US Center for Naval Analysis (CNA) a team of psychologists analysed the reasons why so many people are falling for disinformation. The problem us due to the way we have evolved to deal with information and the fact that this has ill-prepared us to deal with the vast amount of information now being directed at us by modern technology.

In fact, some of the time-tested tools make us dangerously vulnerable to disinformation, especially disinformation designed to mislead and garner support for extremist groups for whom the truth would be toxic. We see this today in the form of disinformation about, for example, COVID-19, the measures to reduce its spread and the vaccines designed to protect us from it. We also see it in relation to politics, political movements and parties, international affairs, religious fundamentalism and anti-science propaganda, such as climate change and evolution, and especially conspiracy theories such as those promulgated by QAnon and former President, Donald Trump's supporters, intended to radicalise, undermine confidence in institutions, and garner support for extreme solutions to non-existent problems.

In other words, disinformation campaigns are designed to benefit those whom the report calls 'malign actors', for whom the truth would be dangerous and who know they need their target marks to believe falsehoods and mistrust the evidence.

In the abstract to their report, the psychologists, Heather Wolters, Kasey Stricklin, Neil Carey, and Megan K. McBride, say:

Confidence in U.S. Supreme Court Sinks to Historic Low

Confidence in U.S. Supreme Court Sinks to Historic Low | Gallop

According to the latest Gollop Poll, the damage the disastrous president, Donald Trump, did to American democracy continues to fester.

This time it is a dramatic collapse in the level of trust in the Supreme Court that Americans have, since Trump appointed overtly partisan Republican placemen to SCOTUS while in office. A flourishing democracy needs an independent judiciary, not an overtly partisan one, but SCOTUS is now expected to deliver verdicts demanded by the right-wing political fringe and religious fundamentalists, while ignoring the wishes and opinions of mainstream Americans. Consequently, the percentage of Americans who say they have a great deal or quite a lot of trust in SCOTUS has fallen to a new low of just 25%, an 11 percentage point fall in just the last year.

Evolution News - How Humans Evolved to Get Along With Neighbours

Shared grooming among bonobos is indicative of their group dynamics, which includes tolerance and cooperation.

Photo: Martin Surbeck

Bonobos’ tolerant, peaceful group relationships paved way for human peacemaking – Harvard Gazette

Despite our long history of often religiously-inspired wars, and divisions into mutually-hostile camps, humans are actually quite good at getting along with neighbouring social groups, and peace-making is generally considered a noble activity, while war-mongering is generally despised.

In this respect we much more closely resemble the peaceable bonobos with whom we share 99% of our genes, than the equally closely related chimpanzees.

Not surprisingly, because it is an innate human trait, early Christians tried to claim credit for the idea that peace-making is a skill to be admired, with "Blessed are the peace-makers". The pity is, because they only saw things in selfish terms, they made it look like something only worth doing for a personal reward and not for the greater social good, because it leads to greater human happiness. Ironically, with peace-making featuring in their Beatitudes (Matthew 5:9), it may well be the result of evolution and an indication of our common ancestry with the bonobo.

But how did we get this way?

Evolution News - Many Human Groups Show Evidence of a Sharp Dip in the Population

Many human genomes shaped by past events that caused sharp dips in the population | Plos Genetics.

Distribution of the oldest founder events dated at different locations of the world using ancient and present-day samples. Smaller sized points with warmer color correspond to more recent founder events.

Credit: Rémi Tournebize and Priya Moorjani (CC-BY 4.0)

In a paper published today in Plos Genetics, the author report finding evidence that many human populations show evidence of founder effects with a small number of founders and a consequent genetic bottleneck with a high level of inbreeding.

Covidiot News - More Figures Show How Antivaxxer Covidiots Were Culling Their Own Supporters with COVID-19

High vaccination rates blunted Delta variant surge in some US states | For the press | eLife

Figures published yesterday in eLife, show that, during the Delta variant wave of COVID-19 in the summer of 2021, areas with a high level of vaccine take-up in the USA had a lower peak of hospitalisations and deaths, and a shorter duration of the wave, compared to areas where the take-up was low.

The summer of 2021 was of course when pro-Trump QAnon, antivaxxers and evangelical Christians were loudest in campaigning to mislead people about the severity of the pandemic and the effectiveness/harmful effects of the COVID-19 vaccine, as a direct consequence of then president Trump's incompetent response to the crisis where he was out of his depth, so sought to minimise it to justify his inaction and indecision, so setting the scene for his supporters in the far right Trumpanzee cults. Consequently, those parts of America where a large number of people, mostly Trumpanzee Republicans, were refusing to get vaccinated or take sensible precautions against catching the virus and passing it on to others.

Now figures are showing the harm that did to those who fell for the lies emanating from the White House, and so made themselves vulnerable to the potentially life-threatening condition.

As the eLife press release says:

Malevolent Designer News - What a Devilishly Good Job Creationism's Divine Malevolence Made of Malaria!

This false-colored electron micrograph shows a sporozoite of Plasmodium bergei migrating through the cytoplasm of midgut epithelia of an Anopheles stephensi mosquito.

© Ute Frevert/Margaret Shear/Wikipedia

Why vaccination against malaria quickly loses its protective effect

Scientists in Germany have worked out why immunity to malaria is not very effective and has a very short duration.

Malaria is one of the world's biggest killers. It is caused by a number of different, closely related Plasmodium parasites, normally transmitted by Anopheles mosquitos. The commonest parasite is Plasmodium falciparum and the most efficient vector is Anopheles gambiae. According to the US Center for Disease Control (CDC):

Malaria is one of the most severe public health problems worldwide. It is a leading cause of death and disease in many developing countries, where young children and pregnant women are the groups most affected. According to the 2021 World Malaria Report:

• Nearly half the world’s population lives in areas at risk of malaria transmission in 87 countries and territories.
• In 2020, malaria caused an estimated 241 million clinical episodes, and 627,000 deaths. An estimated 95% of deaths in 2020 were in the WHO African Region.

Now Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) who studied the human immune response after immunization with the malaria pathogen Plasmodium falciparum have discovered that the immune response has a very short duration. They concluded:

Evolution News - How Plants Colonised the Land.

The diversity of flora and fauna as we know them today and the substrate on which thrive are thanks to a single species of algae that first went ashore more than 500 million years ago. This and all other drawings in the publication are by the paper’s first author, Dr. Mona Schreiber.

Image: HHU /Dr Mona Schreiber

Universität Düsseldorf: The Greening Ashore.

A team led by evolutionary biologist Prof. Dr. Sven Gould of Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) has been studying the current state of research on the plant colonisation of land that occurred some 500 million years ago. The findings from this illustrated overview study published by Dr. Mona Schreiber as lead author have now appeared, open access, in the latest issue of the journal Trends in Plant Science.

It was to take several hundred million years for Earth to cool sufficiently for oceans and landmasses to form then the conditions on land were far from conducive to the life that was evolving in the oceans to begin to colonise that land. Until about 500 million years ago, seismic activity meant the atmosphere was toxic and a weaker magnetic field meant UV light was more intensive. Then things began to change, and all terrestrial plant life has developed from the first plant species, a streptophyte alga, that began to move out of the oceans onto land. This was followed by simple animal life which in turn created the opportunities for tetraploid vertebrates to exploit by coming onto the land, developing air-breathing and a tetrapodal lifestyle.

The Heinrich Heine Universität news release explains:

Evolution News - Why Cave-Dwelling Species Appear to be Degenerate

The olm, Proteus anguinus

Photo: Nacionalni park Una/Wikicommons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

White, fat and blind — Economy and evolution in caves: Current Biology

One of the aspects of evolution that creationists find difficult to cope with is the fact that, in the right environmental conditions, evolution can result in a loss of complexity, whereas, to make it easier to attack, creationist dogma defines evolution as an increase in complexity (which they then claim is impossible due to misrepresentation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and Shanning Information Theory). For example, many parasitic organisms, particularly intestinal worms, have lost their digestive systems and absorb nutrients directly from the pre-digested contents of their host’s gut.

Other examples can be found in species adapted for living in caves which often lose their eyes and/or pigmentation. Once it was thought that these were examples of regression as these were the remnants of competition with their fitter, surface-dwelling relatives which had taken shelter in the safety of caves. Darwin found them difficult to explain because there seemed to be no obvious way in which a loss of function could be advantageous. At one point, Darwin seemed to accept a Lamarckian explanation for the loss of eyes in that their loss was a direct consequence of their lack of use.

Malevolent Designer News - Where Creationism's Favourite Sadist Released the Black Death on Humanity

Origins of the Black Death identified | Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

View of the Tian Shan mountains.
Studying ancient plague genomes, researchers traced the origins of the Black Death to Central Asia, close to Lake Issyk Kul, in what is now Kyrgyzstan.

© Lyazzat Musralina

The Black Death was one of Creationism's divine malevolence's earlier attempt to kill millions of people, and it was spectacularly successful, reducing the population of Eurasia by up to 60% between 1346 and 1353, and wiping out some villages completely - that is, of course, if you buy into the intelligent [sic] design hoax that says complex organism must have been designed because evolution doesn't happen, and even if it does, it can't account for complexity [sic].

The Black Death, which theologians at the time were in no doubt was some form of divine retribution - for whatever they said it was for. The shock of it to devout European Christian culture caused all sorts of obscure sects to arise, like the flagellants, who walked about beating themselves with whips. The obvious fact that praying to dead ancestors called saints and begging them to intercede with God and put a stop to the plague, wasn't working, coupled with a widespread belief that it was the routine debauchery and corruption within the Catholic Church that had resulted in divine retribution, eventually led to a fundamental reassessment of how people saw their relationship with God, culminating in the Protestant Reformation.

The pandemic was caused by the organism Yersinia pestis and a large team of researchers, including scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, the University of Tübingen, Germany, and the University of Stirling, Scotland, UK have worked out exactly where it started, something that has long been a mystery. They did this by studying the genome of ancient samples of Y. pestis

From the Max Planck-Gesellschaft news release:

Superstition News - Abandonment of Religion Accelerating in USA

Belief in God in U.S. Dips to 81%, a New Low

A new Gallop survey shows an accelerating fall in belief in God amongst American adults, and this trend hold true across all demographic grouping, whether age, race, geography of political leaning.

Belief in God is now at it's lowest (81%) since Gallop started polling on the issue. During the years 1944 to 2011 it had averaged just over 93% (range 92%-98%) but since then it has fallen by 12 percentage points, with half that fall occurring over the last year. To put that another way, the number of people admitting to not believing doubledlast year and now stands at 19% of American adults. An astonishingly high level of belief for an advanced economy, compared to that in most of Europe, but a very encouraging recent trend.

Covidiot News - How Antivaxxer Trumpanzee Covidiots Continue to Harm Their Gullible Supporters

Factors causing low COVID-19 vaccination have spilled over to lower flu vaccination rates | UCLA Health

A new study from UCLA researchers indicates a previously undocumented impact of widespread Covid-19 vaccine promotion on other public health behaviours. Adult flu vaccination rates have declined in states with low rates of Covid-19 vaccination, which the authors say may be a harbinger of declining trust in public health, suggesting that Covid-19 vaccination behaviour has spilled over to flu vaccination behaviour. The finding is published in The New England Journal of Medicine as a letter to the editor.

States with a low COVID-19 take-up are, of course, mostly red states where a majority of voters think Trump was a good president, so have been easy victims for the right-wing frauds who spread antivaxx disinformation and claim the pandemic was a conspiracy and the measure to combat it were unnecessary and an attack on their freedoms. These are also the fools who believed the right-wing political rhetoric of the pro-Trump evangelical white Christian churches who said it was all a plot to close the churches and to prevent Christians from practicing their faith.

It is alarming that controversy surrounding Covid-19 vaccination may be undermining separate public health efforts that save thousands of lives each year. Many Americans who never before declined a routine, potentially life-saving vaccine have started to do so. This supports what I have seen in my clinical practice and suggests that information and policies specific to Covid-19 vaccines may be eroding more general faith in medicine and our government’s role in public health.

Much as someone’s decision to wear or forgo a mask in public during the early pandemic was linked with their more general beliefs through the idea of ‘belief signaling’, we propose that ‘belief generalization’ may account for Covid-19 vaccine-specific opinions being generalized to other vaccines. People who feel compelled to oppose or support Covid-19 vaccines may feel that they should in turn oppose or support other vaccines.

Dr Richard Leuchter, MD, lead author
A resident physician at UCLA Health
And the David Geffen School of Medicine.

The letter to the editor of The New England Journal of Medicine points out how these fools have been victimised twice - one over the COVID-19 vaccine and again over the trustworthiness of medical science and in particular the flu vaccines which have done so much to prevent a serious flu pandemic by giving annual flu jabs to combat the latest, or most likely new flu variants.

According to the UCLA Health press release:

The authors used publicly available data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) collected through January 2022 to evaluate how flu vaccination rates changed during the pandemic based on state-wide rates of Covid-19 vaccination.

Flu vaccination rates for the first flu season of the pandemic (2020-2021), which pre-dated the widespread availability of Covid-19 vaccines, remained relatively stable across all states. However, in the second flu season of the pandemic (2021-2022), which was after widespread promotion of Covid-19 vaccines, flu vaccination rates dropped 4.5 percentage points (from 43.7% to 39.2%) in states with below-average rates of Covid-19 vaccination. Conversely, states with the highest uptake of Covid-19 vaccines saw increases in average flu vaccination rates of 3.8 percentage points (from 49.0% to 52.8%).

The authors say these findings taken together suggest that Covid-19 vaccination behaviors have spilled over to other public health behaviors, in this case flu vaccination. They explain that this relationship works in both directions: factors causing low Covid-19 vaccination rates (e.g., mistrust of Covid-19 vaccines, concerns about side effects, lack of trust in government) are linked to declines in flu vaccination compared to pre-pandemic times, whereas factors causing high rates of Covid-19 vaccination are spilling over to increase flu vaccination rates.

The authors propose that both of these trends may be explained by something called belief generalization.

It takes a special kind of stupid to think that, even if COVID-19 vaccinations are unnecessary and/or don't work or are part of some nefarious Satanic plot (which admittedly takes a high level of credulous gullibility in the first place) that this means flu jabs should be avoided too. But then we are still talking about people who think Trump was a good president, so for whom evidence is of no consequence and what they're taught to think from the pulpit is definitive truth.

The press release continues:

This is compelling evidence that the vaccination behaviors for flu and Covid-19 vaccines are inextricably linked.

Dr Richard Leuchter, MD

Rates of full vaccination against Covid-19 (i.e., both doses of a two-dose vaccine or one dose of a single-dose vaccine) varied from 50% (Alabama) to 81% (Rhode Island) through January 2022. Flu vaccination rates through January of the 2021-2022 flu season were also highly variable, ranging from 31% (Mississippi) to 59% (Connecticut). The study authors found that 60% of the variation in a state’s flu vaccination rate could be explained solely by that state’s average Covid-19 vaccination rate.

The authors note that these findings apply only to the general adult population. Flu vaccination rates among children fell uniformly and precipitously across both the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 flu seasons, regardless of when Covid-19 vaccines were introduced or state-wide rates of Covid-19 vaccination. The authors point out that previous studies have reported similar dramatic national declines in rates of childhood vaccination against measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR). Leuchter says that while belief generalization in the negative direction may partially explain why parents are opting out of routine vaccines for their children, the fact that childhood flu vaccination declined even among states with high rates of Covid-19 vaccination suggests that belief generalization from Covid-19 vaccines does not fully account for this trend. Reassuringly, flu vaccination rates among adults over 65 years of age remained relatively stable during these two flu seasons compared to the 2019-2020 season, albeit persistently underutilized in this population.

This study had some limitations. For instance, it did not directly measure individuals’ beliefs or reasons for forgoing vaccination. As an observational study, it does not prove that lack of trust of the vaccines or government caused the new decline in flu vaccination rates. In addition, the CDC reports flu vaccination rates based on self-report surveys and has not made county-level data for the 2021-2022 flu season available, so only state-wide data were used.

Despite these limitations, the researchers state that these findings should raise alarm and prompt rigorous study of the causes of decreases in non-Covid-19 vaccination rates to inform urgent action and corrective policies.

Sadly the letter in The New England Journal of Medicine is protected by copyright so can't be reproduced here. However, in their open paragraph, the authors make it clear that they place responsibility for this situation on the polarization of opinion over COVID-19:

The polarizing nature of vaccination against coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) within the United States threatens public health and has contributed to variable statewide vaccine uptake that ranged from 50 to 80% as of January 2022.¹ Given the divided national landscape and anecdotal evidence from our own patients, we hypothesized that low Covid-19 vaccination rates would be associated with decreases in influenza vaccination rates.

This polarization was a deliberate attempt by the Trump administration and his allies on the extreme right to politicise the pandemic, believing they would make political capital from such polarization. As things turned out, all they achieved was fooling their own supporters into risking serious illness and death from COVID-19, and now, as this article shows, from a seasonal flue epidemic.

The American Republican Pary is probably the first political party in history to promote policies that make their own supporters sick and take part in what some commentators have likened to a self-inflicted genocide of right-wing covidiot Trumpanzees, and Trumpanzee cultists are probably the first political faction who think policies which seem designed to harm them, are good things to vote for.