Malevolent Designer News - How Creationism's Divine Malevolence is Waging an Arms Race - With Itself!

The Aedes aegypti mosquito species, shown here obtaining a blood meal, is a vector for the dengue virus.

Articles - Dengue viral evolution study in Thailand - Emerging Pathogens Institute - University of Florida

A paper by a team of scientists from University of Florida, published recently in Science, shows how the four strains of the dengue virus circulating in Bangkok, Thailand, have changed in response to immunity in a population over a period of two decades. Being scientists, they attribute this to the natural process of evolution by natural selection, but, as any self-respecting Creationist (if any such exist) will tell you, because nothing changes genetically without their putative designer god's intelligent intervention, these changes must be because this divine malevolence is trying to find ways around the resistance to the virus our immune system is providing - an immune system which it also designed to protect us from is nasty little creations, allegedly!

We want to understand if or how immunity is driving extinction or persistence of particular lineages of dengue virus circulating in this one place. To do that, we characterized the immune signature of dengue viruses isolated in Bangkok over a long period of time.

We found that there is a pattern like influenza, where we get different viruses every year that are driven by natural selection for viruses that evade the human immune response to the population. We have shown that that this is also happening with dengue.

Professor Derek Cummings, senior author
Professor of biology
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA.

This of course, is a classic evolutionary arms race, just as is predicted and expected by the theory of evolution by natural selection, but which, if we are to believe Creationists, can only mean their putative creator god is indulging in yet another bizarre arms race with itself, almost as though it suffers from a multiple personality syndrome. But it gets even more bizarre. There are four different versions (or serotypes) of the virus, named by scientists as DENV1 through DENV4, each of which appears to be competing with the others! As well as variation between strains, there are also smaller variations within strains.

It's as though there are four independent, competing designers, each responsible for just one strain of the virus, as well as a fifth designer responsible for the human immune system, and they're all competing with one another. The thought that this is one and the same, supposedly highly intelligent, designer simply beggars belief.

Our findings suggest that the dengue viruses are moving away from the viruses that generated immunity in the population in the past. It’s sort of like the flu story, dengue is evolving to escape the immunity that is in the population at any particular time. But it seems to be happening at a slower pace with dengue than influenza.

Professor Henrik Salje, co-author
Assistant professor
Department of Biology and Emerging Pathogens Institute
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

The scientists analysed the genomes of the viruses in 1,944 archived blood samples from Bangkok. The samples were preserved from people known to be ill with dengue and they represent all four dengue virus strains from every year between 1994 and 2014. The team genetically sequenced more than 2,000 virus samples. They then tested a subset of these samples that represented a time series of each strain. From this they were able to characterise the antigenic relationship of the strains to each other through time. This showed how well (or badly) an immune response to one strain protects against another strain.

These results were then plotted on a chart to make a map showing how far from the original strain(s) and from one another, the viruses had moved over time.

This scatter plot depicts the movement of antigenic distance within and between each DENV serotype. Yellow circles date to 1994, green to 2004, and purple to 2014.

They showed that, just like influenza where a different strain of virus arises every year in response to immunity in the human population, dengue virus strains do the same and in doing so, also tend to diverge away from one another so they can overcome the immunity produced by the other strains. Immunity produced by one strain is the environmental factor driving the evolution not only of that strain but of the other three strains as well.

The results also show a clear inverse relationship between the level of antigenic diversity in a given year and epidemic levels. When Thailand experienced large epidemic outbreaks, antigenic diversity was low. But in years when epidemic levels were lower than average, the antigenic diversity was higher. They also showed that the assumption that infection by one strain of the virus would also protect people against the other strains was not strictly true, since reinfections are now known to have occurred. The reason for this is that the virus evolves to evade the antibodies produced by an earlier infection, or to put that in evolutionary terms, those viruses that survive and get passed on are those which are able to infect despite the presence of antibodies to earlier strains in the population. In this way the presence of genetic variations which enable this evasion tend to increase in the population of that strain.

Classic evolution by natural selection.

In the abstract to their published paper in Science the team say:

Variations in disease enhancement

Secondary Dengue virus (DENV) infections can be dangerous if levels of antibodies from prior infection are inadequate to clear the virus. This RNA flavivirus exploits the presence of lower levels of heterotypic antibodies to infect immunoglobulin Fcγ receptor–bearing cells. Many RNA viruses also exhibit antigenic variation, which classically allows evasion of immune responses. Katzelnick et al. investigated whether antigenic variation in DENV has a biological function in a virus that courts immune responses to enhance replication (see the Perspective by Rohani and Drake). Using antigenic cartography on a panel of more than 400 DENV1-4 subtype samples isolated in Bangkok, Thailand, the authors found that antigenic variation in virus populations oscillated between similarity and dissimilarity across subtypes over time, with outbreaks correlating with periods of antigenic dissimilarity within serotypes. This pattern may be at least in part a result of the conflicting evolutionary pressures of immune evasion and immune enhancement. — CA


Abstract

Infection with one of dengue viruses 1 to 4 (DENV1-4) induces protective antibodies against homotypic infection. However, a notable feature of dengue viruses is the ability to use preexisting heterotypic antibodies to infect Fcγ receptor–bearing immune cells, leading to higher viral load and immunopathological events that augment disease. We tracked the antigenic dynamics of each DENV serotype by using 1944 sequenced isolates from Bangkok, Thailand, between 1994 and 2014 (348 strains), in comparison with regional and global DENV antigenic diversity (64 strains). Over the course of 20 years, the Thailand DENV serotypes gradually evolved away from one another. However, for brief periods, the serotypes increased in similarity, with corresponding changes in epidemic magnitude. Antigenic evolution within a genotype involved a trade-off between two types of antigenic change (within-serotype and between-serotype), whereas genotype replacement resulted in antigenic change away from all serotypes. These findings provide insights into theorized dynamics in antigenic evolution.

Katzelnick Leah C.; Coello Escoto Ana; Huang Angkana T.; Garcia-Carreras Bernardo; Chowdhury Nayeem; Maljkovic Berry Irina; Chavez Chris; Buchy Philippe; Duong Veasna; Dussart Philippe; Gromowski Gregory; Macareo Louis; Thaisomboonsuk Butsaya; Fernandez Stefan; Smith Derek J.; Jarman Richard; Whitehead Stephen S.; Salje Henrik; Cummings Derek A. T.
Antigenic evolution of dengue viruses over 20 years
Science 2021 374 (6570); 999-1004; DOI: 10.1126/science.abk0058

© 2021 The Authors. Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Reprinted with kind permission under license #5193010127296.

A very clear case then of how a virus can evolve according to the changes in its environment and how strains diversify when in competition for the same resource and in the presence of antibodies produced by their competitors. As with SARS-CoV2, Creationists are left to explain this in terms of intelligent design by their favourite putative god, rather than to attribute it to a natural process not involving any gods, their favourite included. For reasons which have never been explained they prefer to present this god as the malevolent and rather stupid entity behind these parasites and the resultant arms races with itself.

One wonders what it would think of their portrayal of it, if it were real.

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Evolution News - One of Our Missing Links is still Missing!

In the shallows near shore, Tetrapodophis amplectus glides through a tangle of branches from the conifer Duartenia araripensis that have fallen into the water, sharing this habitat with a water bug in the family Belostomatidae and small fish (Dastilbe sp.).

Image credit: Julius Csotonyi

Paleontologists debunk fossil thought to be missing link between lizards and first snakes - Taylor & Francis Newsroom

In a very nice example of the self-correcting nature of science, a paper published three days ago in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, scientist led by University of Alberta palaeontologist Michael Caldwell, produce evidence refuting an earlier claim to have identified a fossil of a 'missing link' between snakes and lizards, from which snakes are assumed to have evolved, with a detailed reassessment showing that the fossil was not of a snake but in fact a highly adapted aquatic lizard.

This is the sort of science which will gladden the heart of any dedicated creationist trying desperately to ignore the evidence of the very many other 'missing' link fossils which turn up almost routinely in the scientific literature - until, that is, it dawns on them that this willingness to reassess and revise is exactly what gives the scientific method its great power to reveal the truth of the natural world as opposed to the theological method which looks for reasons not to change one's mind but to reinforce the sacred dogmas - like the Creationist insistence that there are no missing link fossils.

Fleecing the Suckers - Kat Kerr Shows How Easy it is to Fleece Trump-Supporting Talibangelical Christians

Kat Kerr
Talibangelical Christian False Prophetess

“Prophetess”: God’s Moving Me Into a Mansion So I Can “Infiltrate” the Wealthy | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

The notorious false prophetess, Kat Kerr, has boasted to her credulous supporters about what she is doing with all the tax-free money they give her - she is buying a mansion in an exclusive, gated community in Florida.

True to form however, she fooled them some more by telling them God had told her to buy it so he could use her to 'infiltrate her into the circle of the wealthy and the rich'! Well, that's her story and she's sticking to it. And why not? She knows full well that anyone who thinks Donald Trump was a competent president, let alone a good one worth re-electing, will probably believe anything. After all, experience must tell her that no matter how preposterous her claims, her simpleton victims will continue to pay good money just to hear it.

Covidiots Are Missing More Than Just Brain Cells

Electron micrograph of a single SARS-CoV-2 particle with its spike proteins (blue) clearly visible. The inset is a 3D model of the spike protein — the portion of the COVID-19 virus that currently available mRNA vaccines recognize. A recent Johns Hopkins Medicine study suggests that T lymphocytes — immune system cells that target the spike protein and direct antibodies against the COVID-19 virus — persist six months after vaccination and help protect against the delta variant of the virus.

Credit:
Graphic: M.E. Newman, Johns Hopkins Medicine, using public domain images.
Micrograph: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
SARS-CoV-2 spike protein 3D model: National Institutes of Health

Study Shows Immune Cells Against Covid-19 Stay High in Number Six Months After Vaccination

A Recent study by scientists at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, published recently by Oxford University Press in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, shows just what the covidiots who are refusing to get vaccinated against the SARS-CoV-2 virus are missing in addition to the ability to make rational decisions and think for themselves. The study shows how people vaccinated with either of the mRNA vaccines still have high levels of t-lymphocytes circulating in their blood 6 months after immunisation and that these levels have only declined slightly from the initial levels.

In other words, people who have been vaccinated with the mRNA vaccines have specialised, pre-programmed cells active and ready to fight the virus by destroying infected cells and preventing them producing more virus particles in addition to the antibodies that identify and attack virus particles that get into the body.

If Ever You're Feeling Really Stupid - 20 Absurdities That Some Adults Believe

1. That Earth is flat and has a dome over it to keep the water above the sky out. The moon and sun are lamps hung on this dome so we can tell day from night and the stars stuck to it can shake loose and fall to earth during earthquakes.
2. That a magic man designed himself before he existed then self-assemble out of nothing with enough information to create a Universe out of nothing and micromanage it to the minutest level.
3. That a hundred-year-old man built a wooden boat and rounded up two or seven of every species in the world to live together for a year sealed in that boat with only one small window for air, then they left the boat onto a sterile planet on which all living things had been destroyed, including the plants, but still found enough to eat so everything alive today is descended from those few survivors.
4. That just five generations after the survivors left the boat in 2, there were enough people to support a massive civil engineering project to build a tower up to Heaven, which in those days was just above the sky over the Middle East, and that all the languages on Earth are the result of this population each being magically made to speak languages that non-one else could understand, because the project alarmed an omniscient, omnipotent god who lived in the Heaven.

Evolution News - Amazon Rainforest Birds Evolving Due to Climate Change

Above the Amazon rainforest canopy where birds have become smaller and their wings have become longer over several generations, indicating a response to the shifting environmental conditions that may include new physiological or nutritional challenges.

Photo credit: Vitek Jirinec, LSU

Amazon Rainforest Birds’ Bodies Transform Due to Climate Change

A study by a combined team from the USA, Brazil and Portugal, led by Vitek Jirinec of Louisiana State University's School of Renewable Natural Resources, has found evidence that climate change is causing birds of the Amazon Rainforest to evolve smaller bodies and longer wings, even in the areas of the forest where human activity is minimal.

They arrived at this conclusion by examining data from measuring over 15,000 birds over a period of 40 years from a wide range of sites. Over that time the body mass of individuals has reduced by about 2% per decade, so that a bird species with an average body weight of 30 grams in 1980 would now have an average weight of 27.6 grams. These changes are not confined to specific areas, so eliminating local factors. In other words, the changes are being produced by a pervasive environmental change.

The team have published their findings, open access a few days ago, in Science Advances.

These birds don’t vary that much in size. They are fairly fine-tuned, so when everyone in the population is a couple of grams smaller, it’s significant.

This is undoubtedly happening all over and probably not just with birds...If you look out your window, and consider what you’re seeing out there, the conditions are not what they were 40 years ago and it’s very likely plants and animals are responding to those changes as well. We have this idea that the things we see are fixed in time; but if these birds aren’t fixed in time, that may not be true.

Professor Philip Stouffer, co-author
Lee F. Mason Professor
School of Renewable Natural Resources
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

Where there was a significant difference, however, was related to the level in the forest that the species normally inhabits, from the forest floor to the canopy. The change was most marked in those which occupy the higher levels, where climate change has had the biggest impact making it drier and hotter. This has created an environment which favour lighter bodies with longer wings, both of which improve flight efficiency so making it easier to tolerate higher temperatures.

In the abstract to their open access paper, published in Science Advances, the authors say:

Abstract

Warming from climate change is expected to reduce body size of endotherms, but studies from temperate systems have produced equivocal results. Over four decades, we collected morphometric data on a nonmigratory understory bird community within Amazonian primary rainforest that is experiencing increasingly extreme climate. All 77

species showed lower mean mass since the early 1980s—nearly half with 95% confidence. A third of species concomitantly increased wing length, driving a decrease in mass:wing ratio for 69% of species. Seasonal precipitation patterns were generally better than temperature at explaining morphological variation. Short-term climatic conditions affected all metrics, but time trends in wing and mass:wing remained robust even after controlling for annual seasonal conditions. We attribute these results to pressures to increase resource economy under warming. Both seasonal and long-term morphological shifts suggest response to climate change and highlight its pervasive consequences, even in the heart of the world’s largest rainforest.

Jirinec Vitek; Burner Ryan C.; Amaral Bruna R.; Bierregaard Richard O.; Fernández-Arellano Gilberto; Hernández-Palma Angélica; Johnson Erik I.; Lovejoy Thomas E.; Powell Luke L.; Rutt Cameron L.; Wolfe Jared D.; Stouffer Philip C (2021)
Morphological consequences of climate change for resident birds in intact Amazonian rainforest
Science Advances 7(46); eabk1743. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abk1743

Copyright: 2021 The authors. Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC 4.0)

This is a clear example, not only of the effects of climate change but of how significant environmental change can influence the evolution of species as the environment selects for those characteristics which give greater fitness. It's a beautiful example of how science quite incidentally and with no intention on the part of the authors to do so, casually refutes Creationism by revealing the facts and so confirming once gain how evolution by natural selection works in practice. Significant morphological changes have occurred in these species over a defined time period and that change is proportional to the impact of a pervasive, measurable environmental change in different ecological niches.

Trumpanzee Talibangelical 'Prophets' are Becoming Even More Confused

Talibangelical false prophets.
Left: Nathan French of Nathan French Ministries
Right: Robin Bullock of Youth Force Ministries Church International Inc.

'Donald Trump, Call Me': Robin Bullock Says Trump Must Listen to the Prophets, Not His Political Advisers | Right Wing Watch

'Prophet' Nathan French Says God Must Restore Trump to Office to Silence Those 'Trying to Discredit the Prophetic Community' | Right Wing Watch

Judging by two recent items in Right Wing Watch, American Talibangelical, Trumpanzee 'Prophets of God' are becoming increasingly confused by their long litany of abject failures about what exactly God it trying to tell them. Firstly, to a man (or woman) they prophesied that their idol, Donald Trump, would win last November by a landslide, claiming God himself had assured them he would arrange it.

Then, when that prophesy proved false they searched around for ever-more creative and unlikely ways to explain their failure as a success, claiming the landslide would all be revealed once Trump had been returned to the Oval Office - which God had assured them was imminent - with an ever-shifting deadline - Before inauguration day, before February, by April, er… June… or July… At least one announced that God had told him Trump had secretly declared a state of emergency and declared martial law, so a military government, answerable to Trump, was now running the USA. They would soon be releasing the evidence of electoral fraud and arresting Biden and his fellow 'conspirators', including Hilary Clinton and Barak Obama! None of that was true either.

God's promise of electoral victory had turned instead into God's promise of a military coup to overturn the result that God had proved powerless to deliver, if we are to believe God's (false) prophets.

But with the anniversary of Biden's victory come and gone, and not a single successful attempt to prove electoral fraud in court, no attempt to find any evidence being successful, and no sign of the prophesied military coup or the arrest of leading Democrats, they have some explaining still to do.

One of the leading loons, Nathan French of Nathan French Ministries, is beginning to realise that his continuing failures is damaging him and his fellow frauds and threatening their tax-free income streams. He has even started demanding that Trump be reinstated to save their reputations because people are understandably losing faith in prophets who continue to prove themselves to be frauds.

Appearing on the ElijahStreams You Tube channel, he told host Steve Schultz:

If somebody gives a word that, ‘Hey, on this date, this person is going to be in office,’ and it doesn’t come to pass, then it was a false word. It wasn’t true. But if they give that word and the date that they gave hasn’t yet come to pass, you can’t call him a liar or [say] that they were wrong because the time hasn’t happened yet. If somebody doesn’t give a date and God gives a word and speaks through the voice of his prophets—which he’s doing on the Earth right now because there’s still prophets today. … There’s a whole bunch of people on the planet that don’t believe that there are still prophets on the Earth. And so they scripturally are trying to resolve that, and they’re teaching people that prophets no longer exist.

At least he got that part right. False prophets are of course, people like Nathan French who make prophesies that don't come true. The clue is in the name 'false prophet'. Had Nathan French not been a false prophet, Trump would have been restored to the White House last April.

Robin Bullock, on the other hand, is still prophesying a reversal of last November's result. The problem is that Trump is listening to his political advisers and not to Robin Bullock. He told the extreme conservative program, Flyover Conservatives:

[God said, Trump was] anointed from the day you were born to be president.

Get in touch with me, and I can tell you some of these things. Donald Trump, call me. Call me. … Listen to the prophets. Don’t let them tell you to not listen to the prophets. … I heard these people talking, and they told the president—I’m talking about President Trump. The president. I’m not talking about the jackal who barks over the desk of the Oval Office. I’m talking about the president—I was listening to this conversation and they said, ‘Don’t listen to the prophets.'

But the Lord said, ‘Don’t listen to your advisers about that because they have their own agenda in mind, and it does not include you. Operate in the power of God, and let him pave your way. [Take] one step toward your position, and God will open the way all the way back. After I gave a word similar to that, a very important person called me and said, ‘You have no idea how right you are.’ He said, ‘I know one of his close advisers, and they told him, “Don’t run in 2024. Don’t run again. You’ll mess it up for all of us.”‘ I heard the conversation. I heard them talking. And I’m going to tell the president something: Donald John Trump, you were anointed from the day you were born to be president, and you were brought on the scene for such a time as this.

From that forlorn please, it looks like even Bullock has now accepted that Biden is there until at least November 2024 and that his 'prophesy' of Trump's restoration will only come true if he stands and wins in a rerun against Biden. No coup, no revealed evidence of electoral fraud, no heavenly intervention to reverse a democratic vote… nothing. Just the normal operation of the democratic process he so despises when it doesn't produce the result he feels entitled to.

Just imagine if these frauds ever gained the political power they came close to obtaining under Trump's corrupt and incompetent leadership!

Malevolent Designer News - Creating a More Dangerous Breast Cancer

Counterintuitive relationship between PIK3CA genotype and transcriptomic stemness and PI3K signalling scores in human breast cancer.

Graphical Summary

In a paper published today, Ralitsa Madsen of University College London and colleagues show just how devious any designer of one of the more aggressive forms of breast cancer would have to have been, if in fact breast cancer had been designed, as Creationists believe.

The secret to their design is that a mutation makes the cells behave more like stem cells, i.e., cells which have had their epigenetics reset to make them more like the cells from which other, specialist, cells develop during embryonic development. This has been known about for some time but what is new in this research is that there is not one mutation but two or more in the more aggressive cancers and those with a poorer prognosis whereas a single mutation decreases the aggressiveness of the resulting cancer.

The PLOS press release accompanying the open access publication in PLOS Genetics explains:

Malevolent Designer News - Another Stunning Blow by Medical Science.

A new antiviral dramatically reduced the number of people newly diagnosed with COVID-19 who needed hospitalization.

Credit: Rory Doyle/The New York Times

Pfizer antiviral slashes COVID-19 hospitalizations | Science | AAAS

Creationist mode:

Scientists have landed another significant blow in their arms race with Creationism's beloved malevolence over the infectivity and morbidity associated with the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes COVID-19. This development is almost on a par with the development of the mRNA anti-COVID vaccines and it is based on a treatment originally developed in the fight against another of the malevolent designer's nasty little organism - HIV.

The treatment, developed by Pfizer who developed one of the first anti-COVID vaccines to be approved, involves giving patients a protease inhibitor within the first few days of infection. The early results of the randomised, double blind clinical trial were so marked that the external regulator stopped the trial so that those volunteers taking the placebo could benefit from the treatment. It had resulted in an 89% reduction in those who received the treatment within 3 days of the onset of symptoms needing hospitalisation, with a similar reduction in those starting treatment within 5 days of onset of symptoms. There were no deaths in the experimental group over the trial period. Only 0.8% of the trial group needed hospitalisation compared to 7% of the control group. 7 of the control group died.

In addition to reducing the severity of symptoms, the treatment should help victims clear the virus more quickly, so reducing the transmission of the virus to others.

Evolution News - How Brains Evolved From Sponges' Stomachs

Sponge neuroid cell (orange) extends arms that enwrap the feeding apparatus of a sponge digestive cell (green) to create a link for targeted communication. The image was taken using electron microscopy.

Credit: Jacob Musser, Giulia Mizzon, Constantin Pape, Nicole Schieber/EMBL

More than a gut reaction - EMBL.

Brain cells, all 86 billion of them, communicate with one another across microscopic gaps between them called synapses. Communication across this gap is via neurotransmitter substances such as acetyl choline. A similar process is involved at the neuromuscular junction between nerves and muscle cells. This has been well understood for some time but what was a mystery was how this system evolved.

Certainly it happened early in the evolutionary history of multicellularity because all but the most primitive multicellular organisms such as sponges have a nervous system of some sort.

This is the sort of mystery that Creationists latch onto to fool their dupes with the false dichotomy that if science hasn't explained it, the locally popular god must have created it, leaving their scientifically illiterate targets to assume that if science hasn't explained something then science can't explain it and never will.

Now though, scientists working for EMBL have discovered that this method of cell communication evolved in just those primitive organisms, sponges, for an entirely different function - an example of something Creationists hate - evolutionary repurposing, or exaptation, of an existing process or structure for a new function. This is, of course, how apparently irreducibly complex processes and systems such as flagella evolve.

In so doing, the scientists have also solved another mystery - why do sponges have the genes for synaptic control when they don't have a nervous system?

The EMBL news release explains:

Malevolent Designer News - How Creationism's Favourite Malevolence Created a More Dangerous SARS-CoV-2 Virus.

Creative rendition of SARS-COV-2 virus particles with spike proteins dotting their surfaces. Image not to scale.

Credit: NIAID

NIH scientists identify mechanism that may influence infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 variants | National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Creationist mode:

News today of how Creationism's beloved malevolence found a way to get round the human body's defence mechanism against the SARS-CoV-2 virus - the mechanism it designed to protect us from the organisms it makes to kill and make us sick - and so get the maximum impact of the virus on human health.

The problem was that there is a process in the cells that would normally limit the infectivity of viruses like SARS-CoV-2, so, starting with the α variant and continuing with the δ variant, the intelligent [sic] designer included some modifications, or mutations as scientists call them, which overcome this cell process and so make the variants much more infective.

Confirmed cases

Data source: gov.uk

The great success of these modifications can be seen in the daily record of the number of cases in the UK, where we saw a massive spike in cases last winter as the α variant became the dominant variant in the UK, followed by another huge spike of cases which started.

The intelligent designer is currently mopping up those covidiots who have fallen for the antivaxxer lies being promulgated by the extreme Trumpanzee right for political ends, while using them as a resource for developing an even more infective variant which can also overcome the stunning success of medical science in creating the vaccines against the virus.

Creationist mode:

Now back in the real world, the NIH news release explains the discovery:

Evolution News - Kind and Caring Bonobos Show us How Morality Evolved

Esake, photographed at the Lola ya Bonobo sanctuary in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2019, was rescued from a hunter who killed her mom.

Credit: Ley Uwera for NPR. Source.

Bonobo Mothers Adopt Babies That Look Different | Psychology Today

Baby bonobos are so cute! Wouldn't you just love to hold one and give it a loving cuddle, and protect and care for it? And not just because it looks so human with forward-looking eyes, but because it looks so vulnerable! Just adorable! No?

But why that response rather than treating it as a threat who'll take your food and give nothing back, or even as potential food?

The answer is because we share a great deal in common with bonobos, having evolved from a common ancestor.

Just in case there a still a few Creationists left who believe that the TOE is a theory in crisis that is about to be abandoned by science, or are still under the impression that humans were given their morals by a god, and didn't evolve them as their cultures evolved, here is an article in Psychology Today by Temma Ehrenfeld, which explains how we appear to have inherited at least some of our basic morality, the kinder, nicer side, from a common ancestor with the bonobo.

Covid Vaccination News - mRNA Vaccines 5 Times More Effective Than 'Natural' Antibodies From Infection.

COVID vaccines 5 times more effective at protecting against COVID-related hospitalization than prior infection alone

A large-scale study by the VISION network of the US CDC has shown that protection against the SARS-CoV-2 virus provided by the mRNA vaccines is 5 times more effective at preventing hospitalizations that any protection produced by infection with the virus. Whilst neither is 100% effective at preventing infection, by far the best protection against becoming seriously ill is provided by the vaccinations developed by medical science.

In the over 65 age-group, this differential rises to 20 times more effective that previous infection!

This data provides powerful evidence that vaccinations offer superior protection against COVID-19 than relying on natural immunity alone. Many have been asking if they should get vaccinated if they’ve already been infected – this research shows the answer is yes.

Dr Shaun Grannis, M.D., M.S.
Vice president for data and analytics, Regenstrief Institute
Professor of family medicine
Indiana University School of Medicine.

According to the press release by the Regenstrife Institute, who analysed the data provided by the VISION Network:

Researchers from the CDC’s VISION Network gathered data from more than 201,000 hospitalizations in nine different states. About 7,000 people in that group fit the criteria for this study. The research team analyzed the number of unvaccinated individuals who had a positive COVID-19 test more than three months before being hospitalized for the virus as well as the number of individuals who received the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine and were not diagnosed with COVID prior to being admitted to the hospital. The research team found that overall, unvaccinated adults with a previous COVID-19 infection were about five times more likely to be hospitalized than those who were vaccinated.

The data analysis also found among adults older than 65, overall mRNA vaccines were nearly 20 times more effective at protecting against hospitalizations than prior infection alone.

[…]

The study findings are consistent with laboratory evidence that mRNA vaccines create high levels of antibodies, whereas those who recover from COVID-19 have varying levels of antibodies, especially if they experienced mild symptoms or were asymptomatic.

The findings are published in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortaility Weekly Report (MMWR):

Summary

What is already known about this topic?

Previous infection with SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19 vaccination can provide immunity and protection against subsequent SARS-CoV-2 infection and illness.

What is added by this report?

Among COVID-19–like illness hospitalizations among adults aged ≥18 years whose previous infection or vaccination occurred 90–179 days earlier, the adjusted odds of laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 among unvaccinated adults with previous SARS-CoV-2 infection were 5.49-fold higher than the odds among fully vaccinated recipients of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine who had no previous documented infection (95% confidence interval = 2.75–10.99).

What are the implications for public health practice?

All eligible persons should be vaccinated against COVID-19 as soon as possible, including unvaccinated persons previously infected with SARS-CoV-2.

Bozio CH, Grannis SJ, Naleway AL, et al.
Laboratory-Confirmed COVID-19 Among Adults Hospitalized with COVID-19–Like Illness with Infection-Induced or mRNA Vaccine-Induced SARS-CoV-2 Immunity — Nine States, January–September 2021.
MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. ePub: 29 October 2021. DOI: 10.15585/mmwr.mm7044e1

So, it's a no-brainer. Get vaccinated and get the booster when available, unless, of course, you want to end up on a ventilator. It won't guarantee you don't get infected or even need hospital treatment, but it will significantly reduce your chances of doing so.

The sad thing is that a simple no-brainer is beyond the wit of those covidiots who have fallen for the antivaxxer hoax being promulgated by fruitloop extremists, often with a pro-Trump, political agenda.

Unintelligent Design - The Human Curved Birth Canal and Foetal Welfare

Relationship between pelvic depth (i.e. AP length of the pelvis) and spinal curvature as documented in the orthopaedic literature. The pelvis and spine are shown schematically in sagittal view. A Normal spinopelvic relationship where the centre of mass (indicated by the vertical dashed line through the last cervical vertebra, the so-called C7 plumbline) is positioned sagittally above both the hip joints and the superior endplate of the sacrum. B In an anteroposteriorly elongated pelvis (as indicated by the red double arrow) without spinal adjustment, the centre of mass is located behind the hip joints, which compromises the structural stability of upright posture. C To bring the centre of mass back above the hip joints in this elongated pelvis, the sacrum needs to be tilted forward. This leads to an overall increased curvature of the spine, particularly an increased lumbar lordosis and a deviation of the centre of mass from the sacral endplate. Increased lumbar lordosis is associated with multiple orthopaedic disorders, such as spondylolisthesis and disc herniation

Why do humans possess a twisted birth canal? | Universität Wien

A team led by Katya Stansfield from the University of Vienna has shown how the human birth canal evolved as a compromise and was not intelligently designed by an omniscient designer god to be the best solution to the design problem. In fact, it is a shoddy compromise made necessary because the basic human skeleton is an adaptation of the basic quadrupedal vertebrate skeleton and was never designed from the ground up for bipedalism as we would expect of a structure intelligently designed, rather than one evolved from earlier common ancestors with the other great apes and before that, a quadrupedal vertebrate with a horizontal spinal column.

One of the trade-offs was the welfare and survival of the foetus during the birth process. This was put at increased risk in order to ensure the long-term survival of the mother. Creationists might like to think about that as they try to force fit this into their religion with a putative designer god to whom all human life is sacred…

As the University of Vienna press release explains:

Evolution News - Here Be Dragonflies!

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Aeshna cyanea

Source: Wikipedia

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Aeshna grandis

Source: Wikipedia

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Anax junius

Source: Wikipedia

4 of 6

Ischnura senegalensis

Source: Wikipedia

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Libellula quadrimaculata

Source: Wikipedia

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Sympetrum flaveolum

Source: Wikipedia

Linking the Past and Present: Reconstructing the Dragonfly and Damselfly Family Tree - University of Tsukuba

Scientist from Japan have succeeded in doing what Creationists insist is impossible because it doesn't happen. They have shown the evolution and relationships between the different members of the insect order, Odonata, which includes all living and extinct dragonflies and damselflies, surely amongst the most beautiful of insects. For those unsure of the difference, damselflies tend to be smaller and more dainty and rest with their wings together over their backs, while dragonflies are generally larger, more robust and faster flying, and hold their wings horizontally, like those of an aeroplane when at rest. They are the only insects capable of flying backwards.

The scientists constructed a fanily tree for the order Odorata, by conducting a detailed analysis of the transcriptome - the collection of RNA in cells which are transcriptions of the functional DNA and mapping this onto the fossil record. Because this technique indirectly analyses only the active DNA, it gives a better evolutionary relationship between species and allows detailed timing of species divergence to be estimated.

As the University of Tsukuba research news item explains:

Evolution News - A Newly-Named Species of Archaic Hominin Clarifies our Evolutionary Picture

Artist's rendering of Homo bodoensis

Credit: Ettore Mazza

Experts name new species of human ancestor | University of Winnipeg News

Far from there being no transitional fossils showing the evolution of modern humans from archaic ancestors, as Creationists traditionally claim, there are so many of them that they tend to confuse rather than clarify the picture

Fossils are, of course, an irregular and infrequent snapshot of an evolving species over time, so palaeontologists always have a problem of slotting a new species into existing classifications because there is never a sharp delineation between an ancestral form and a descendant one. It's a bit like trying to determine exactly where one colour changes to another in a rainbow.

Where does the colour change?

So, the tendency has been to name a new find which is significantly different to any others, as a new species, with a name often derived from the place where they were discovered - the scientific equivalent of naming it 'Heidelberg Man' or 'Rhodesia Man'. This is even more problematic if the species is widespread and subject to regional variation, consequently, definitions can be fuzzy and confusing as newer finds are slotted into pre-existing types, each new type broadening and blurring the definition of that species.

Talking about human evolution during this time period became impossible due to the lack of proper terminology that acknowledges human geographic variation.

Naming a new species is a big deal, as the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature allows name changes only under very strictly defined rules.

Dr Mirjana Roksandic, co-first author
Palaeoanthropologist
Winnipeg University, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

This international team led by Dr. Mirjana Roksandic from Winnipeg University, Canada has clarified and simplified this muddle in the middle based on latest research and DNA analysis where DNA has been recovered and analysed. They looked especially at specimens that had been classified as Homo heidelbergensis or H. rhodesiensis, both of which carried multiple, often contradictory definitions. European specimens previously classified as H. heidelbergensis have been shown by DNA analysis to be early H. neanderthalensis, while H. rhodesiensis, named when Zimbabwe was still a British colony called Southern Rhodesia, has a name which is too closely associated with Cecil Rhodes and some of the more despicable and brutal aspects of Britain's former imperialism in Africa.

As the Winnipeg University news release explains:

Malevolent Designer News - How Creationism's Beloved Malevolence Could Have Made 'Friendly' Acne But Chose Not To.

Acne. Another of the malevolent designer's creations?

Not all acne is equal: scientists reveal strains of C. acnes that promote skin health — Osaka City University

For any teenage Creationist suffering from acne or carrying the facial scars of it, it will come as no comfort at all that their favourite pestilential malevolence, the 'creator' god of the Bible and Qur'an, could have just as easily given them a strain of the bacteria that causes it, Cutibacterium acnes, that not only doesn't cause acne, but which might even protect the skin from another pathogen, Staphylococcus aureus.

It will also come as no comfort to those who have fallen for the Deception Institute's intelligent [sic] design hoax, that a discovery by a Japanese team of scientists from Osaka City University and Okayama University shows how muddled and stupid any intelligence who designed the complex ecosystem that is the human skin and its commensal organisms, would have been.

Using a novel approach where a nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans, was used as a proxy for human skin, the team showed that certain strains, or ribotypes (RT), of C. acnes, based on clades of their ribosomal RNA (rRNA), not only do not cause acne but actually protect the nematode from infection with S. aureus and so possibly help to maintain a healthy skin. RT4 and 8, which are associated with acne also shorten the life of Ce. elegans, while RT6, found on healthy skin, does not.

From the Osaka University News release:

Creationism and Woolly Thinking

The European Mouflon or Mufflon, Ovis orientalis.

Credit: Jörg Hempel, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, via Wikimedia Commons

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Modern Merino sheep

Credit: Cgoodwin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

According to the Bible, God created all animals for mankind, as 'an helpmeet' for Adam (Genesis 2:18-19). Given that this creator god is supposedly omniscient and omnipotent, you would expect any animals so created to be perfectly fitted for purpose and exactly what mankind needs. Yet the reality is that not a single domesticated animal (or plant) has remained unchanged from its wild ancestor. Every single domesticated animal has been improved by selective breeding, to make them bigger, stronger or more productive, or as a food, better flavoured, more versatile or easier to store!

Why would this be? Did this allegedly all-knowing creator not know what mankind would use these animals for or was it just not very good at designing things for a specific purpose?

Many domesticated animals and plants have been so highly modified that their wild ancestors, where these still exist, are barely recognisable as the ancestors of their domestic descendants. Take as an example, the different breeds of domestic sheep, farmed for their wool as well as for their meat. They are believed to be descended from the mufflon, also spelled 'Mouflon', (Ovis orientalis). Once indigenous to Eastern Europe and Western Asia it is now only common in the Caucasus, Anatolia, northern Iraq and north-western Iran. It is also found on the Mediterranean islands of Elba, Sardinia, Corsica and Cyprus but these may be the descendants of feral forms of early domestic sheep, introduced in the Bronze Age.

Evolution News - Yet another of Those Pesky 'Non-Existent' Transitional Forms!

Cretapsara athanata Luque gen. et sp. nov., a modern-looking eubrachyuran crab in Burmese amber.(A to D) Holotype LYAM-9. (A) Whole amber sample with crab inclusion in ventral view. (B) Close-up of ventral carapace. (C) Whole amber sample with crab inclusion in dorsal view. (D) Close-up of dorsal carapace. White arrows in (B) and (D) indicate the detached left fifth leg or pereopod.

Photos by L.X. Figure by J.L.

International team of researchers discover first dinosaur era crab fully preserved in amber | Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology.

Another favourite Creationist article of faith was shattered again today with the publication of an open access article in Science Advances by a Chinese team of researchers, describing a Cretaceous crab that shows incomplete transition between an aquatic and a terrestrial existence.

The crab is beautifully preserved in amber and shows an amazing level of detail of soft tissues that are rarely fossilised, even down to the fine hairs on its mouth-parts. It has the gills of an aquatic crab, and lacks the lung-like adaptations of gills characteristic of terrestrial crabs, yet it is clearly terrestrial hence becoming trapped in amber. It thus represents a transition between marine and terrestrial crabs.

The team used micro-CT technology to examine the crab, Cretapsara athanata. At 100 million years old it is the oldest modern-looking crab ever described and is from the Cretaceous era when crabs were diversifying - the so-called Cretaceous Crab Revolution - when the modern crabs originated. According to the Harvard University Department of Organismic & Evolutionary Biology (OEB) press release:

The specimen is spectacular, it is one of a kind. It’s absolutely complete and is not missing a single hair on the body, which is remarkable.

The more we studied the fossil, the more we realized that this animal was very special in many ways.

Now we were dealing with an animal that is likely not marine, but also not fully terrestrial. In the fossil record, nonmarine crabs evolved 50 million years ago, but this animal is twice that age.

Dr Javier Luque, Lead author
Postdoctoral researcher
Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology,
Harvard University.

True crabs, or Brachyura, are an iconic group of crustaceans whose remarkable diversity of forms, species richness, and economic importance have inspired celebrations and festivals worldwide. They’ve even earned a special role in the pantheon of social media. True crabs are found all around the world, from the depths of the oceans, to coral reefs, beaches, rivers, caves, and even in trees as true crabs are among the few animal groups that have conquered land and freshwater multiple times.

The crab fossil record extends back into the early Jurassic, more than 200 million years ago. Unfortunately, fossils of nonmarine crabs are sparse and largely restricted to bits and pieces of the animal's carapace – claws and legs found in sedimentary rocks. That is until now with the discovery of Cretapsara athanata…

A group of scientists led by co-lead author Lida Xing, China University of Geosciences, Beijing, made micro CT scans of the fossil, which is housed in the Longyin Amber Museum in Yunnan, China. The scans created a full three-dimensional reconstruction of the exquisite preservation of the animal allowing Luque, Xing, and their team to see the complete body of the animal including delicate tissues, like the antennae and mouthparts lined with fine hairs. Shockingly they discovered the animal also had gills…

3D mesh of Cretapsara athanata Luque gen. et sp. nov. holotype LYAM-9.(A to E) 3D mesh extracted from reconstructed micro-CT data in VGSTUDIO MAX, remeshed in MeshLab, and visualized using Autodesk Maya: (A) dorsal, (B) ventral, (C) right lateral, (D) oblique postero-dorsal, (E) oblique antero-ventral views, showing the claws of equal size and four pairs of slender legs similar in shape and size, with P5 slightly smaller than the other legs. (F and G) Details of the dorsal (F) and ventral (G) carapace, showing details of the large eyes and orbits, small antennae, and a small, acute outer orbital spine [(F) thick arrow], two small anterolateral spines (F, thin arrows), a posterolateral margin bearing at least four small and equidistant tubercles (F, small arrows), straight posterior margin, slender coxae of the pereopods, a typical heterotreme eubrachyuran sternum (G), and a reduced and folded pleon with the first pleonites dorsally exposed. Left fifth pereopod digitally reattached. bcg, branchiocardiac groove; ca, carpus; cg, cervical groove; cx, coxa; da, dactylus; ib, ischiobasis; ma, manus or palm of claw; P1, claws or chelipeds; P2 to P5, pereopods or walking legs 2 to 5; po, pollex or fixed finger cheliped propodus; pr, propodus.

Images by E.G.C. Figure by J.L.

Cretapsara is remarkably modern-looking – superficially resembling some shore crabs found today – unlike most crabs during the mid-Cretaceous era which looked quite different from modern crabs. Yet, the animal was entombed in Cretaceous amber and the presence of well-developed gills indicated an aquatic to semi-aquatic animal. Aquatic animals are rarely preserved in tree resins that become amber. Crabs previously found in amber are by the handful and belong to a living group of tropical land and tree-dwelling crabs known as Sesarmidae from the Miocene (15 million years ago). How then, the researchers asked, did a 100 million year old aquatic animal become preserved in tree amber, which normally houses land-dwelling specimens?

Gills allow aquatic animals to breathe in water. But crabs have successfully and independently conquered land, brackish water, and fresh water at least twelve times since the dinosaur era. In doing so their gills evolved to include lung-like tissue allowing them to breathe both in and out of the water. Cretapsara however, had no lung tissue, only well-developed gills indicating the animal was not completely land dwelling.

The team’s phylogenetic studies show that carcinization (the evolution of true crab-looking forms) had actually already occurred in the most recent common ancestor shared by all modern crabs more than 100 million years ago. Cretapsara bridges the gap in the fossil record and confirms that crabs actually invaded land and fresh water during the dinosaur era, not during the mammal era, pushing the evolution of nonmarine crabs much further back in time.

In their open access paper published in Science Advances the authors say:

Abstract

Amber fossils provide snapshots of the anatomy, biology, and ecology of extinct organisms that are otherwise inaccessible. The best-known fossils in amber are terrestrial arthropods—principally insects—whereas aquatic organisms are rarely represented. Here, we present the first record of true crabs (Brachyura) in amber—from the Cretaceous of Myanmar [~100 to 99 million years (Ma)]. The new fossil preserves large compound eyes, delicate mouthparts, and even gills. This modern-looking crab is nested within crown Eubrachyura, or “higher” true crabs, which includes the majority of brachyuran species living today. The fossil appears to have been trapped in a brackish or freshwater setting near a coastal to fluvio-estuarine environment, bridging the gap between the predicted molecular divergence of nonmarine crabs (~130 Ma) and their younger fossil record (latest Cretaceous and Paleogene, ~75 to 50 Ma) while providing a reliable calibration point for molecular divergence time estimates for higher crown eubrachyurans.

J. Luque, L. Xing, D. E. G. Briggs, E. G. Clark, A. Duque, J. Hui, H. Mai, R. C. McKellar
Crab in amber reveals an early colonization of nonmarine environments during the Cretaceous.
Science Advances. 7, eabj5689 (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abj5689

Copyright: © 2021 The authors. Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

The great thing about these frequent transitional forms and so incidental refutations of a basic article of faith of the Creationist cult, is the way Creationists and the frauds who live off their gullibility, studiously ignore them and continue to insist they don't exist. It's as though they live in some sort of weird parallel Universe in which reality obediently conforms to their requirements.

Evolution News - The Difference Between Information and Meaning

I. sakaiensis grown on poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) accumulates poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB).

How a bacterium may help solve the plastic pollution crisis｜NARA Institute of Science and Technology

One key concept in genetic evolution that Creationists, either wilfully, or because of genuinely limited critical thinking ability, find hard to grasp, is the difference between genetic information and the meaning of that information in the context of the prevailing environment. This makes them especially susceptible to professional frauds in the Deception Institute and others in the Creation Industry, to false claims about mutation always involving a loss of information, when what changes in most forms of mutation is simply a change in the meaning of the information.

Certain bacteria harbor the necessary enzymes to degrade PET, the most problematic plastic environmentally. Our research has shown that the bacterium Ideonella sakaiensis converts PET into poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB), a type of poly(hydroxyalkanoate) (PHA) plastic that is biodegradable.

We believe that this discovery could be significant in tackling plastic pollution, as we show that the PET-degradation and PHB-synthesis pathways are functionally linked in I. sakaiensis. This might provide a novel pathway where a single bacterial species breaks down difficult-to-recycle PET plastics and uses the products to make biodegradable PHA plastics.

Shosuke Yoshida, senior author
Institute for Research Initiatives,
Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Nara, Japan

This is illustrated neatly by the discovery that the 201-F6 strain of the bacterium Ideonella sakaiensis can not only degrade petroleum-based plastics but can also sustainably produce biodegradable plastics from otherwise non-biodegradable poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET), a plastic widely used for disposable containers such as drinks bottles as well as textiles and food wrappers. This discovery was made by scientists at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), Kansai Science City, Japan. Their findings are published, open access, in Scientific Reports.

This ability depends on the presence of two enzymes, PET hydrolase (PETase) and mono(2-hydroxyethyl) terephthalic acid (MHET) hydrolase (MHETase) which together hydrolyse PET into terephthalic acid (TPA) and ethylene glycol (EG) monomers, both of which are readily biodegraded by other organisms.

In this strain of bacteria, genetic information has mutated to produce these two enzymes which, in the context of an environment highly polluted by man-made plastics, has given them the ability to exploit an abundant food source, unlike their ancestral form. Had this mutation arisen in pre-plastic times, it would have been utterly useless and might even have been detrimental in taking up resources to produce useless enzymes. In other words, the change in information now has a highly beneficial meaning in the context of a modern Earth, where once it had none.

In their paper published a few days ago in Scientific Reports the team say:

Abstract

Poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) is a widely used plastic in bottles and fibers; its waste products pollute the environment owing to its remarkable durability. Recently, Ideonella sakaiensis 201-F6 was isolated as a unique bacterium that can degrade and assimilate PET, thus paving the way for the bioremediation and bioconversion of PET waste. We found that this strain harbors a poly(hydroxyalkanoate) (PHA) synthesis gene cluster, which is highly homologous with that of Cupriavidus necator, an efficient PHA producer. Cells grown on PET accumulated intracellular PHA at high levels. Collectively, our findings in this study demonstrate that I. sakaiensis can mediate the direct conversion of non-biodegradable PET into environment-friendly plastic, providing a new approach for PET recycling.

Fujiwara, Ryoga; Sanuki, Rikako; Ajiro, Hiroharu; Fukui, Toshiaki; Yoshida, Shosuke
Direct fermentative conversion of poly(ethylene terephthalate) into poly(hydroxyalkanoate) by Ideonella sakaiensis
Scientific Reports 11, 19991 (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-99528-x

Copyright: © 2021 The authors. Published by Springer Nature Ltd.
Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

What has changed in not the quantity of genetic information but the contextual meaning of it and that meaning has changed over time with the invention, use and environmental accumulation of vast quantities of non-biodegradable man-made plastic.