The technical term for the fear of learning that creationists seem to suffer from, is 'sophophobia' (from the Greek for knowledge or wisdom (sophia) and fear (phobia)). Their other manifest fears are 'atelophobia' (literally, a fear of being wrong) and theophobia (fear of gods).
Combine those acute anxiety disorders with arachnophobia (fear of arachnids or more precisely spiders) and sesquipedalophobia (fear of long words) and you can begin to understand why creationists can never be induced to read science papers like this one, which describes a fossilised arachnid with heavily-armoured, spiky legs from about 308 million years ago, that scientists have named Douglassarachne acanthopoda.
If anything is designed to deter creationists from reading about it, it is a fearsome arachnid with a long name that would make any creationists imaginary 'friend' really angry if they learned about it and might even make them wonder if they could be wrong. What could be more terrifying for a creationist?
So, creationists should either stop reading now, or find a responsible adult to be with them, because this describes how and where this 308 million-year-old fossil was found and how it fits in with what we know of the evolution of the arachnids, which includes spiders, mites, harvestmen, tics and the sister group, scorpions.
The fossil was found in shale in a coalmine spoil tip at Mazon Creek, Illinois, USA by palaeontologists Paul Selden from the University of Kansas and the Natural History Museum of London and Jason Dunlop from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. They have written up their discovery in an open access paper in the Journal of Palaeontology and describe it in a University of Kansas news release:
Convolutriloba longifissura. Fluorescence imaging shows the algal cells in red, and the acoel cells in blue and green.
Dania Nanes Sarfati
Convolutriloba longifissura. The green body color of the adult comes from algal symbionts integrated in its skin. The red stripes in the middle of the body of this 3 millimeter long worm indicate mature oocytes.
Credit: Eric Rottinger/www.Kahikai.org National Science Foundation - Media Gallery
Creationists who like to cite complexity as evidence of intelligent design, either don't understand design or believe the designer is a bumbling idiot who never settles for a simple solution when a more complicated one is available, and never misses an opportunity to make a mountain out a molehill, as my old mother used to say if we turned a small problem into a big one.
That's of course, if you believe that creationist superstition of magic creation and not the scientifically proven, evolution, as an explanation for the form of living things.
Imagine you're a creator who is designing a simple marine flatworm and you decide that just what it needs is to be able to make food the way plants do, using the energy in sunlight to turn carbon dioxide into sugars. You previously designed some bacteria to perform this process, then, in an earlier invention, you put some of these bacteria in a single-celled plant and made algae. You could have given the single-celled plant the same enzymes and metabolic pathway you gave the bacteria but that was too simple, so you put the bacteria inside the plant cell as cell organelles called chloroplasts.
Tell me all about the marine flat worm Convolutriloba longifissura, please. Convolutriloba longifissura is a species of acoelomorph worm that inhabits marine environments. Here are some key details about this fascinating organism:
Taxonomy and Classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Acoelomorpha
Class: Acoela
Order: Acoelida
Family: Convolutidae
Genus: Convolutriloba
Species:Convolutriloba longifissura
Morphology and Anatomy
Size and Shape: Convolutriloba longifissura are small, flattened worms. They are typically only a few millimeters in length.
Body Structure: They lack a true gut and body cavity, characteristic of acoelomorphs. Instead, their digestive system consists of a simple gastrovascular cavity.
Symbiotic Algae: These worms often contain symbiotic algae within their tissues, which provide them with nutrients through photosynthesis. This relationship is beneficial for both the worm and the algae.
Reproduction
Asexual Reproduction: Convolutriloba longifissura is well known for its remarkable method of asexual reproduction, specifically through transverse fission. The worm can split itself into two or more parts, each of which regenerates into a complete organism. The name "longifissura" hints at this long splitting process.
Regeneration: Post-fission, each segment is capable of regenerating the missing parts, making this species a subject of interest in the study of regenerative biology.
Habitat
Marine Environment: These worms are found in marine environments, often associated with coral reefs and shallow coastal waters. They prefer habitats where they can benefit from their symbiotic algae.
Behavior
Locomotion: Convolutriloba longifissura moves using cilia on its ventral surface, gliding smoothly over substrates in its habitat.
Feeding: The diet consists mainly of small particles and microorganisms. Their symbiotic relationship with algae also plays a crucial role in their nutrition.
Ecological Role
Symbiosis and Ecosystem Interaction: As part of the marine ecosystem, they play a role in nutrient cycling and serve as a food source for other marine animals. Their relationship with symbiotic algae also contributes to primary production in their habitats.
Research Significance
Regeneration Studies: The ability of Convolutriloba longifissura to regenerate its body parts makes it an important model organism in scientific research, particularly in studies related to developmental biology and regenerative medicine.
Evolutionary Insights: Studying this worm provides insights into the early evolution of bilaterian animals, given its position in the phylogenetic tree.
Conservation Status
Population and Threats: There is limited information on the conservation status of Convolutriloba longifissura specifically. However, like many marine organisms, they could be affected by habitat degradation, pollution, and climate change.
Fun Fact
Bioluminescence: Some species within the Convolutriloba genus are known for their bioluminescence, although it is not well-documented if Convolutriloba longifissura exhibits this trait.
In summary, Convolutriloba longifissura is a small but remarkable marine worm notable for its asexual reproduction through fission, its symbiotic relationship with algae, and its significance in scientific research on regeneration and evolutionary biology.
But what about these flatworms?
You now have three choices: you can give them the same enzymes and processes you gave the bacteria, but that was too simple for the algae, so why make it that easy for the flatworm? You could put the bacteria in the flat-worm cells like you did with the algae; but why do that when there is an even More complicated method? The third choice is to put the algae inside the flatworms and, as that's the most complicated way of doing it, why not go for that solution?
The baobab or 'upside down' trees, mostly of Madagascar, are an interesting example of how species radiate and evolve to fit different available niches in their immediate environment, but the genus also contains some examples of remarkable migrations and one example of the founder effect in evolution where a new species can arise by going through a very narrow genetic bottle neck where a new population is founded on an atypical sample of the parent species genome.
The evolution of the genus also includes examples of how, as species diverge, there is a period during which they can still hybridize and how hybrids themselves can be the foundation of new species.
Of all the different orders of living organisms' only mammals and birds today are warm-blooded, i.e., they are able to maintain a body temperature, within a certain range of ambient temperatures, by either producing heat or losing it, as necessary.
It might be thought that this indicates that the ability evolved in a common ancestor but of the ancestors of birds, the evidence suggests that many dinosaurs were cold-blooded like today's reptiles, and mammals are descendants of an earlier, pre-dinosaurian reptiles, so these similar processes for maintaining the body temperature may be more a matter of convergence than common ancestry.
Do mammals and birds use the same method to maintain their body temperature, and if not, how do they differ?
Mammals and birds both maintain their body temperatures through endothermy, meaning they generate and regulate heat internally to keep their body temperatures stable. However, there are differences in how they achieve this due to variations in their physiology and behaviors. Here’s an overview of the similarities and differences:
Similarities in Temperature Regulation
Metabolic Heat Production:
Both mammals and birds generate heat through metabolic processes. This involves breaking down food to produce energy, with heat being a byproduct.
Insulation:
Both groups have evolved insulating layers to retain heat. Mammals have fur or hair, while birds have feathers. These layers trap air and provide a barrier against the cold.
Shivering Thermogenesis:
Both can generate additional heat through shivering, which involves rapid muscle contractions that produce heat.
Behavioral Adjustments:
Both mammals and birds engage in behaviors to manage their temperature, such as seeking shade or shelter, sunning themselves, or altering their activity levels based on the ambient temperature.
Differences in Temperature Regulation
Physiological Mechanisms:
Sweating and Panting: Mammals often use sweating and panting to cool down. Sweat glands secrete moisture that evaporates, taking heat away from the body. Dogs, for instance, pant to evaporate moisture from their respiratory tract. Birds, on the other hand, do not sweat. Instead, they often rely on a behavior called gular fluttering, where they rapidly move the skin in their throat to increase evaporation and cool down.
Brown Adipose Tissue (BAT): Many mammals, especially small ones and those living in cold environments, have brown adipose tissue that generates heat through non-shivering thermogenesis. Birds lack this type of tissue.
Heat Exchange Systems:
Countercurrent Heat Exchange: Birds have highly efficient countercurrent heat exchange systems in their legs and feet, which minimize heat loss. Blood vessels are arranged such that warm arterial blood warms the cooler venous blood returning to the body, conserving heat. While some mammals also use countercurrent heat exchange (such as in extremities), the systems are particularly pronounced and crucial in birds.
Basal Metabolic Rate:
Birds generally have higher basal metabolic rates compared to mammals of similar size, which means they produce more heat relative to their body size. This higher metabolic rate is partly due to the high energy demands of flight.
Hibernation and Torpor:
Many mammals can enter states of torpor or hibernation to conserve energy and reduce body temperature during periods of cold or food scarcity. While some birds also enter torpor, true hibernation is rare in birds. Instead, some birds migrate to warmer regions to avoid cold weather.
Behavioral Differences
Migration:
Migration is a key strategy for many birds to avoid extreme temperatures. While some mammals also migrate, it is far more common and pronounced in birds.
Nesting and Roosting:
Birds often build insulated nests or seek out warm roosting spots to maintain body temperature, especially during breeding seasons or cold nights. Mammals, on the other hand, may use burrows, dens, or other insulated shelters.
In summary, while both mammals and birds use endothermic processes to maintain their body temperatures, the specific physiological and behavioral strategies they employ can differ significantly due to their distinct evolutionary paths and physical characteristics.
A team of researchers led by University College London (UCL) and Universidade de Vigo, Spain, scientists has concluded that dinosaurs may have evolved warm-bloodedness as long ago as 180 million years ago, some 50 million years after the first dinosaurs evolved.
They concluded this after relating the evolutionary tree of the dinosaurs throughout the Mesozoic era to climate and geographical changes over the same time period and examining 1000 dinosaur fossils.
Their findings are the subject of an open access paper in the Cell Press journal, Current Biology. Their work is also explained in a UCL news release:
The ability to regulate body temperature, a trait all mammals and birds have today, may have evolved among some dinosaurs early in the Jurassic period about 180 million years ago, suggests a new study led by UCL and University of Vigo researchers.
In the early 20th century, dinosaurs were considered slow-moving, “cold-blooded” animals like modern-day reptiles, relying on heat from the sun to regulate their temperature. Newer discoveries indicate some dinosaur types were likely capable of generating their own body heat but when this adaptation occurred is unknown.
The new study, published in the journal Current Biology, looked at the spread of dinosaurs across different climates on Earth throughout the Mesozoic Era (the dinosaur era lasting from 230 to 66 million years ago), drawing on 1,000 fossils, climate models and the geography of the period, and dinosaurs’ evolutionary trees.
The research team found that two of the three main groupings of dinosaurs, theropods (such as T. rex and Velociraptor) and ornithischians (including relatives of the plant eaters Stegosaurus and Triceratops), moved to colder climates during the Early Jurassic, suggesting they may have developed endothermy (the ability to internally generate heat) at this time. In contrast, sauropods, the other main grouping which includes the Brontosaurus and the Diplodocus, kept to warmer areas of the planet.
Previous research has found traits linked to warm-bloodedness among ornithischians and theropods, with some known to have had feathers or proto-feathers, insulating internal heat.
Our analyses show that different climate preferences emerged among the main dinosaur groups around the time of the Jenkyns event 183 million years ago, when intense volcanic activity led to global warming and extinction of plant groups. At this time, many new dinosaur groups emerged. The adoption of endothermy, perhaps a result of this environmental crisis, may have enabled theropods and ornithischians to thrive in colder environments, allowing them to be highly active and sustain activity over longer periods, to develop and grow faster and produce more offspring.
Dr Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza, first author
Centro de Investigación Mariña
Departamento de Ecoloxía e Bioloxía Animal
Universidade de Vigo, Vigo, Spain
And Department of Earth Sciences
University College London, London, UK.
Theropods also include birds and our study suggests that birds’ unique temperature regulation may have had its origin in this Early Jurassic epoch. Sauropods, on the other hand, which stayed in warmer climates, grew to a gigantic size at around this time – another possible adaptation due to environmental pressure. Their smaller surface area to volume ratio would have meant these larger creatures would lose heat at a reduced rate, allowing them to stay active for longer.
Dr Sara Varela, Co-author
Centro de Investigación Mariña
Departamento de Ecoloxía e Bioloxía Animal
Universidade de Vigo, Vigo, Spain.
In the paper, the researchers also investigated if sauropods might have stayed at lower latitudes to eat richer foliage unavailable in colder polar regions. Instead, they found sauropods seemed to thrive in arid, savannah-like environments, supporting the idea that their restriction to warmer climates was more related to higher temperature and then to a more cold-blooded physiology. During that time, polar regions were warmer, with abundant vegetation.
The Jenkyns event occurred after lava and volcanic gasses erupted from long fissures in the Earth’s surface, covering large areas of the planet.
This research suggests a close connection between climate and how dinosaurs evolved. It sheds new light on how birds might have inherited a unique biological trait from dinosaur ancestors and the different ways dinosaurs adapted to complex and long-term environmental changes.
Dr Juan L. Cantalapiedra, co-author
Departamento de Paleobiología
Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (CSIC), Madrid, Spain.
The study involved researchers from UCL, University of Vigo, the University of Bristol and the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid, and received funding from the European Research Council, the Spanish Ministry of Research, the Natural Environment Research Council and the Royal Society.
Highlights
Warm-blooded dinosaurs flourished in varied climates.
Dinosaur groups adapted differently to climate, suggesting diverse thermophysiologies.
Endothermy in theropods and possibly ornithischians evolved by the Early Jurassic
Sauropod niche conservatism suggests higher thermal sensitivity and poikilothermy.
Graphical Abstract
Summary
A fundamental question in dinosaur evolution is how they adapted to long-term climatic shifts during the Mesozoic and when they developed environmentally independent, avian-style acclimatization, becoming endothermic.1,2 The ability of warm-blooded dinosaurs to flourish in harsher environments, including cold, high-latitude regions,3,4 raises intriguing questions about the origins of key innovations shared with modern birds,5,6 indicating that the development of homeothermy (keeping constant body temperature) and endothermy (generating body heat) played a crucial role in their ecological diversification.7 Despite substantial evidence across scientific disciplines (anatomy,8 reproduction,9 energetics,10 biomechanics,10 osteohistology,11 palaeobiogeography,12 geochemistry,13,14 and soft tissues15,16,17), a consensus on dinosaur thermophysiology remains elusive.1,12,15,17,18,19 Differential thermophysiological strategies among terrestrial tetrapods allow endotherms (birds and mammals) to expand their latitudinal range (from the tropics to polar regions), owing to their reduced reliance on environmental temperature.20 By contrast, most reptilian lineages (squamates, turtles, and crocodilians) and amphibians are predominantly constrained by temperature in regions closer to the tropics.21 Determining when this macroecological pattern emerged in the avian lineage relies heavily on identifying the origin of these key physiological traits. Combining fossils with macroevolutionary and palaeoclimatic models, we unveil distinct evolutionary pathways in the main dinosaur lineages: ornithischians and theropods diversified across broader climatic landscapes, trending toward cooler niches. An Early Jurassic shift to colder climates in Theropoda suggests an early adoption of endothermy. Conversely, sauropodomorphs exhibited prolonged climatic conservatism associated with higher thermal conditions, emphasizing temperature, rather than plant productivity, as the primary driver of this pattern, suggesting poikilothermy with a stronger dependence on higher temperatures in sauropods.
Dinosaurs have always been a problem for creationists because their existence betrays the fact that the age of Earth as calculated from the Bible geneaolgies is wildly inaccurate by several orders of magnitude, but this paper piles on the agony by showign a clear evolutionary pathway from poikilothermy (cold-bloodedness) to homeothermy (warm-bloodedness) supported by geological, geographical and climatological evidence sometime around 180 million years before the biblical 'Creation Week'.
And it goes without saying that, being biologists, the authors of the paper show no sign of abandoning the TOE in favour of the childish notion of magic creation by an unproven supernatural entity. Indeed, they could scarcely be considered scientists if they included magic and superstition in their explanation for natural phenomena like creationists pseud-scientists are obliged to for contractual reasons.
Advertisement
What Makes You So Special? From The Big Bang To You
How did you come to be here, now? This books takes you from the Big Bang to the evolution of modern humans and the history of human cultures, showing that science is an adventure of discovery and a source of limitless wonder, giving us richer and more rewarding appreciation of the phenomenal privilege of merely being alive and able to begin to understand it all.
Available in Hardcover, Paperback or ebook for Kindle
Advertisement
Ten Reasons To Lose Faith: And Why You Are Better Off Without It
This book explains why faith is a fallacy and serves no useful purpose other than providing an excuse for pretending to know things that are unknown. It also explains how losing faith liberates former sufferers from fear, delusion and the control of others, freeing them to see the world in a different light, to recognise the injustices that religions cause and to accept people for who they are, not which group they happened to be born in. A society based on atheist, Humanist principles would be a less divided, more inclusive, more peaceful society and one more appreciative of the one opportunity that life gives us to enjoy and wonder at the world we live in.
Available in Hardcover, Paperback or ebook for Kindle
This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image captures a triple-star star system.
NASA, ESA, G. Duchene (Universite de Grenoble I)
Image Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)]
The box in the ground-based image reveals the location of Hubble’s view within the wider context of this triple-star system.
NASA, ESA, G. Duchene (Universite de Grenoble I); Image Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America); Inset: KPNO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/T.A. Rector
Standing in stark contrast with how the authors of the Bible guessed the Universe was like, we have this tiny fraction of it as revealed by the Hubble Space Telescope. It shows some of the earliest stars in formation:
Looking like a glittering cosmic geode, a trio of dazzling stars blaze from the hollowed-out cavity of a reflection nebula in this new image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The triple-star system is made up of the variable star HP Tau, HP Tau G2, and HP Tau G3. HP Tau is known as a T Tauri star, a type of young variable star that hasn’t begun nuclear fusion yet but is beginning to evolve into a hydrogen-fueled star similar to our Sun. T Tauri stars tend to be younger than 10 million years old ― in comparison, our Sun is around 4.6 billion years old ― and are often found still swaddled in the clouds of dust and gas from which they formed.
As with all variable stars, HP Tau’s brightness changes over time. T Tauri stars are known to have both periodic and random fluctuations in brightness. The random variations may be due to the chaotic nature of a developing young star, such as instabilities in the accretion disk of dust and gas around the star, material from that disk falling onto the star and being consumed, and flares on the star’s surface. The periodic changes may be due to giant sunspots rotating in and out of view.
Curving around the stars, a cloud of gas and dust shines with their reflected light. Reflection nebulae do not emit visible light of their own, but shine as the light from nearby stars bounces off the gas and dust, like fog illuminated by the glow of a car’s headlights.
The Universe as described in Genesis 1: 3-18 and Daniel 8:10.
HP Tau is located approximately 550 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. Hubble studied HP Tau as part of an investigation into protoplanetary disks, the disks of material around stars that coalesce into planets over millions of years.
The description of the Universe as a small, flat planet with a dome over it and stars stuck to the underside of the dome, was the best guess of simple Bronze Age pastoralists who only knew their small area of the Middle East and described what they thought they saw. Of course, that nonsense about the stars shaking loose from the dome and falling to earth during earthquakes was a stretch of the imagination too far. That should have raised doubt in the minds of those who decided to incorporate the Bronze Age pastoralists' naive description in a book they declared to be the inerrant word of an omniscient creator god, but then they probably knew no better themselves.
But now we do, so the ludicrously childish description of the Universe compared to the reality of the Universe as science is now revealing it, should, in the mind of any objective, rational person, raise considerable doubt about the value of the rest of the book, declared by the same compilers to be an accurate record of science and history.
The idea of predator-prey arms races is of course entirely inconsistent with the childish notion of intelligent design, because constantly designing solutions to problems you created earlier as solutions to even earlier problems you created, is not an act of intelligence.
And yet creationists continue to believe in intelligent [sic] design despite the abundance of these competitive arms races in the natural world.
It seems they have no difficulty in holding several pairs of mutually contradictory views of their putative designer god simultaneously. It is supremely intelligent and acts in ways that can only be described as supremely stupid.
It is omnibenevolent but designs ways to increase the suffering in the world with its parasites; it is omnipotent but powerless against another supernatural designer called 'sin'; and by the way, it is the only supernatural entity capable of designing living thing, so 'evidence' of design (i.e. something a creationist can't understand how it could have evolved) is proof of its existence.
One of the mysteries of microbiology and epidemiology, is why a virulent strain of Vibrio cholerae (the bacterium that causes cholera) has remained so stable ever since it emerged in 1961 in Indonesia, causing the seventh global cholera pandemic. this strain, known as 7PET, is now the predominant strain, out-competing the other strains and infecting an estimated 1.3 - 4 million people a year, of which between 21,000 and 143,000 die.
The reason for those wide-ranging estimates is because many of the deaths from cholera are in remoter areas of mostly third-world countries where sanitation is poor, health-care is hard to obtain, and many of the victims are children, so the cause of death is often not known with any certainty.
The traditional response of creationists to anything concerning the evolution of parasites like V. cholerae is to blame 'Sin'. The more sophisticated creationists who have realised that this is a blasphemy because it implies the existence of another creator over which their supposedly omnipotent, omni-benevolent god is powerless, so they simply blame this 'sin' thing for allowing 'genetic entropy' to cause an organism to 'devolve' (it would be a serious blasphemy to call it 'evolution' so Michael J Behe and the Deception Institute had put their heads together and come up with the term 'devolution' instead, which makes it look like the exact opposite of 'evolution'. Stupidly, this devise claims that everything was created perfectly and, when Adam & Eve 'sinned', somehow this opened the door to 'sin', which apparently took their 'omniscient' god by surprise, even though it had given its alleged creations immune systems in anticipation of the effects of 'Sin'.
But of course, we can dismiss that half-baked notion which no serious biomedical scientist would take seriously because there is no mechanism for a deleterious (i.e, 'devolutionarly' trait to accumulate in the species gene pool, and whatever it is about V. cholerae that gives it the edge over other strains, can't rationally be described as 'devolutionary', or a move away from some notional initial perfection, because there can't be anything better than perfect, and yet the 7PET strain of V. cholerae is better at doing the two things it appears to have been designed to do - making more people sick and making more copies of itself than the other strains.
Chromosomes during mitosis (white). In orange, a centromere is visible consisting of two subdomains (arrows), each bound to a discrete bundle of microtubules (magenta).
Two microscopy images of chromosomes. The left image shows chromosomes during mitosis (white). In orange, a centromere is visible consisting of two subdomains (arrows), each bound to a discrete bundle of microtubules (magenta). The right image depicts a dividing cancer cell showing a missegregating chromosome in the middle. The two centromere subdomains (arrows) of this chromosome appear split.
Credit: Carlos Sacristan Lopez. Copyright: Hubrecht Institute.
Creationists, who, generally speaking, know little or nothing of biology and don't want to either because the risk of wondering it they could be wrong is far too great, are easily fooled by the frauds with a vested interest in keeping them simultaneously ignorant and imagining they have a deeper understanding than the millions of educated, working biomedical scientists who apply the Theory of Evolution every day of their working lives.
One thing they've been fooled into believing is that there is some sort of perfection in design inside a cell and that same designer is responsible for everything about living organisms.
But, in the last few years, under the onslaught of science, the frauds have needed to fall back from the demonstrably false notion of perfection of design in view if cancers, diseases and parasites, and now blame something for these obvious imperfections, which, by definition, could not be the products of a perfect designer god, do they have invented the biologically nonsensical notion of 'genetic entropy' and devolution caused by 'Sin' over which their omnipotent, omnibenevolent designer god is powerless.
And, again under the onslaught of science, the frauds have also conceded that evolution does indeed happen and happened at a massively accelerated rate to account for all the biodiversity produced by a small number of survivors of a genocidal flood just a few thousand years ago.
An example of evolution if progress this week comes from a team of researchers from the universities of Tartu (Estonia), Toulouse (France), and Papua New Guinea. They have carried out an extensive analysis on blood samples from two populations in Papua New-Guinea who have remained isolated for the 50,000 years since Homo sapiens arrived on the Island.
One group occupies the highlands and the other group lives in the lowlands, making this a living laboratory to measure the effects of the different environments on the genomes of the two populations.
Different environments provide different drivers of evolutionary adaptation; for instance, the highlanders have adapted to a low oxygen partial pressure and comparatively few pathogens and an absence of mosquitoes; while the lowlands have both mosquitoes and a higher level of endemic pathogens. How each group has adapted to these different environments provides a text-book example of how the environment drives evolution and how isolation results in divergence.
Chimpanzees are famous for making and using tools, especially sticks, for obtaining nutritional foods like grubs and termites, but using them takes time, just like a human child needs to develop motor skills to use tools such as pens and pencils with sufficient dexterity.
How they do so, and the stages they go through, was described recently in an open access paper in PLOS Biology by a team of animal behaviourists from l'Institut des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod (The Marc Jeannerod Institute of Cognitive Sciences), Lyon, France; the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany, and the German Primate Center, Göttingen, Germany, who analyzed film of wild chimpanzees making and using stick tools in the Taï National Park, Côte d’Ivoire.
They concluded that, like human children, acquiring motor skills is not just a matter of practice, important though that it, but also depends on a protracted childhood during which they observe and copy adults with the necessary skills. In other words, young chimpanzees learn skill from their parents and elders, like a human apprentice.
The team's work was explained in information made available ahead of publication by PLOS, and published in SciTechDaily.com:
In the first few months of 2020, when the news was full of overflowing hospitals, doctors and nurses dying, shortages of personal protection equipment, respirators and oxygen cylinders and people dying in the streets from COVID-19, going outside was a hazardous business.
I well remember the first time I ventured outside as I had to go to my bank. I put on a face mask and plastic gloves before I got out of my car; parking charges had been suspended because using the ticket machine was too hazardous, and besides there no-one to refill it or even issue the spot fines for non-display of the parking ticket.
I walked from the car-park, through an almost empty pedestrianized shopping precinct, crossing to the far side to avoid a queue of anxious-looking people in facemasks, standing two metres apart, waiting to be admitted one at a time to a pharmacy - one of the only shops open.
It was surreal; the air we breathed had suddenly become toxic and touching any surface meant using a hand-cleansing anti-viral gel before we touched our face or handled anything else. Only essential shops were open. As soon as we came in the house, we used the hand-cleanser on the hall table then went straight to the bathroom to wash our hands with soap for the recommended 20 seconds - our hands had never been so clean.
When we had our weekly groceries delivered, we had them put in our garage, put on plastic gloves to put frozen food in the freezer, and of course washed our hands immediately, and left the rest for several hours before touching them, to allow the virus to die. Soon, all available delivery slots were taken by vulnerable people, and we had to use click and collect.
Our son, who was on a visit from the Czech Republic when the pandemic hit, got stranded here by the ban on travel, until, in April 2020, the Czech government arranged a repatriation coach for Czech nationals, with strict quarantine regulations. His Czech mother-in-law had made some face masks for him for the journey, but they arrived two weeks later. I drove him to Victoria in London through eerily empty streets, fully prepared to pay any fixed penalty for making a ‘non-essential’ journey. Trafalgar square, normally packed with people, was deserted and the normally heavily congested streets of London were strangely empty. Nothing moved on the M40 motorway.
Life had become strange and rather frightening, and we lost 50 lbs in weight to give ourselves a better chance if we caught the virus. We had gotten used to click and collect food shopping as a weekly routine - checking which local supermarket had a vacant slot, sometime needing to go as far afield as Reading or Wantage to find one. Gradually the restrictions were eased, but Christmas was a write-off. We got used to wearing face covering in public, using hand-cleanser as we entered any building and maintaining a 2-meter distance. Arrows on walkways showed us which side to walk on.
And we did twice-weekly lateral flow tests with the free test-kits we ordered online and dutifully reported the results to the NHS.
Then, in February 2021, we got the long-awaited phone call inviting us to get the new COVID vaccine and on Saturday, 6 February, 2021, everything changed. We had the first of our two vaccinations at a mass-vaccination centre in a social centre in a village some 5 miles away. It felt like a weight had been lifted from our shoulders; we had gotten through the pandemic! In 10-14 days, we would be protected against the more severe form of COVID-19. Medical science, in the form of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, had delivered humanity from the worst of the pandemic and made it possible to begin to restore normal life.
Last year, after having had just about every booster going in spring and autumn, we both caught COVID-19 on a trip to France - it was a mild, flue like infection that lasted about a week - nothing worse than a 'bit of a cold'. Without the protection of the vaccines, the outcome could have been very different.
And soon we are going to Czechia to visit our son, free from any worries or restrictions on travel; Czechia that 4 years ago, our son could only enter in a sealed, specially quarantined coach. What has made the difference is the vaccines, manufactured by pharmaceutical companies using techniques developed by the Oxford scientists in association with AstraZeneca (AZ).
And now, the European Union has decided to withdraw authorization for the AZ. Michael Head, Senior Research Fellow in Global Health, University of Southampton, explains why in an article in The Conversation, reprinted here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency:
AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine withdrawn – right to the end it was the victim of misinformation
AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine withdrawn – right to the end it was the victim of misinformation
This EU announcement was preceded by an application from AstraZeneca on March 27 2024 to withdraw the EU marketing authorisation. This development has been covered in various media outlets as primarily related to the known “adverse events”, namely a very small risk of blood clots. However, other factors are far more likely to be driving this decision.
The first AstraZeneca vaccine dose, outside of clinical trials, was administered on January 4 2021. In that year, about 2.5 billion doses were administered, and an estimated 6.3 million lives saved.
It was a key product at the peak of the pandemic. This includes during the emergence of the delta variant in India, across the first half of 2021 where, amid significant global supply issues, the AstraZeneca vaccine was one of the few tools available during that humanitarian crisis.
Professor Sarah Gilbert led the Oxford University team that produced the AZ vaccine.
This COVID vaccine, like those from Pfizer, Moderna, Novavax and others, went through the appropriate levels of testing. The phase 3 trials (where the vaccine is tested on thousands of people) showed the AstraZeneca product was safe and effective. It was distributed in many countries in Europe in early 2021, including the UK.
The potential adverse events related to blood clots were publicly reported in February 2021, with, for example, the UK government and the drugs regulator (the MHRA) then publishing a statement about its continued use on March 18 2021.
This was a time when COVID levels were extremely high, and getting higher, with around 4 million confirmed new cases globally per week.
It is well established that COVID itself caused a significantly increased risk of these related blood clots and also thrombocytopenia (low platelet count). An August 2021, analysis of 30 million vaccinated people in the UK showed that the risks of thrombocytopenic events were much higher following a COVID infection, compared with any COVID-related vaccine.
From that study, the British Heart Foundation describe how for every 10 million people who are vaccinated with AstraZeneca, there are 66 extra cases of blood clots in the veins and seven extra cases of a rare type of blood clot in the brain. By comparisons, infection with COVID is estimated to cause 12,614 extra cases of blood clots in the veins and 20 cases of rare blood clots in the brain.
To put this into some perspective, these vaccine-associated blood clot rates are much lower than many widely prescribed medicines. For example, the combined contraception pill, prescribed widely to women, has blood clot-related risks of around one in 1,000. With women taking postmenopausal hormone therapy, around one in 300 per year are likely to develop a blood clot.
Poor public profile
The AstraZeneca vaccine did suffer from a poor public profile, arguably much of it undeserved. There was some poor quality reporting in Germany in January 2021, with claims that the vaccine was only “8% effective in the elderly”. This claim was widely repeated, but it turns out that 8% figure referred to the percentage of people aged over 65 years in the study and not the efficacy measure.
The antivaccine lobby had a field day with fuelling the “infodemic”, including other false claims such as fabricated links between the vaccine and female infertility. As with the blood clots, COVID infection is known to increase the risks of infertility, but there is no link between infertility and the vaccine.
For individuals and families likely to have been injured by any medicine, including any of the COVID vaccines, compensation schemes are available. Many claimants report difficulties and frustrations with accessing the compensation. This is an area where the government-led schemes should be more transparent, and also where the misinformation from the anti-vaccine lobby hinders those groups they are claiming to support.
So, why would AstraZeneca withdraw this high-profile product? One reason for the withdrawal is likely to be that other COVID vaccines, such as Pfizer and Moderna, are essentially better products.
AstraZeneca is very good, but the mRNA versions have better effectiveness and safety levels.
The initial concerns around the difficulties of the specialist refrigeration needed to transport and store the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been overcome, including in low-income countries. The mRNA vaccines are also easier to update when new variants emerge.
With those factors, orders for the AstraZeneca vaccine are probably much lower now than they were in previous years. It is being overlooked in favour of better-performing vaccines.
For the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, perhaps it’s time has indeed passed. But it has been a safe and effective vaccine and a key part of the pandemic response for most countries around the world.
Correction. The sentence that read: It is well established that COVID itself caused a significantly increased risk of these related blood clots (thrombocytopenia). Now says: It is well established that COVID itself caused a significantly increased risk of these related blood clots and also thrombocytopenia (low platelet count). Michael Head, Senior Research Fellow in Global Health, University of Southampton
Published by The Conversation. Open access. (CC BY 4.0)
Because of the widespread claim by antivaxxer propagandists and purveyors of disinformation, that the AZ vaccine had not been fully tested and was somehow 'experimental', the full AZ test methodology and results are in the following PDF of the open access report in The Lancet:
Once sexual reproduction had become established in multicellular organisms, there was selection pressure to determine the gender of a developing embryo, so the result was either genetically male or genetically female. In humans and other mammals, for example, this is achieved by the XY Chromosomes, which, unlike all the other chromosomes (autosomes) are not paired. A zygote with 2X (homozygous) becomes a female and a zygote with XY (heterozygous) becomes male. Because the zygote gets either one or the other of these chromosomes from each parent these are the only combinations possible, so we never see a YY zygote.
Snake venom is usually a potent cocktail of multiple different toxins, 'designed' to kill, mostly small vertebrate prey very quickly, so the snake can strike, then wait for the prey to become paralyzed or die before it can go very far.
The reason for this rich cocktail is an interesting piece of evolutionary biology that would embarrass any creationist with the courage to learn about it. It is the result of repeated arms races between the snake and its prey species. Not only that, but it involves new genetic information arising, by gene duplication and mutations - contrary to creationist dogma that such a thing is impossible.
As one prey species starts to evolve resistance there is selection pressure on the snake to change its venom to overcome the resistance or loose one source of food, but, there must be a balance between retaining one food species but loosing several others if the changed venom is less effective against them. Resistance usually arises when there is a change in receptor sites on cell surfaces, on which the venom acts so the active venom molecule doesn't bind to it.
.jpg)
