I used to know all about it and even taught the underlying concept to undergraduates. That was 25 years ago and I'd forgotten what the t-complex was all about. Anonymous Coward1 wanted to find out and (s)he posted a description on bayblab [WTF is transmission ratio distortion]. Normally I don't like linking to anonymous blogs but I'll make an exception here because this is cool.1. What a good pseudonym!
This is a really excellent TV series narrated by Richard Dawkins. I'm very impressed with Dawkins as a TV personality and I agree completely with his view of Darwin as an extraordinary genius. The one thing that bothers me is the adaptationist bias of Dawkins—the same thing I've been complaining about in several other postings.This series is about perhaps the most powerful idea ever to occur to a human mind. The idea is evolution by natural selection and the genius who thought of it was Charles Darwin.... What Darwin achieved was nothing less than the complete explanation of the complexity and diversity of all life. And yet it's one of the simplest ideas that anyone ever had.This is not correct. The complete explanation requires knowledge of genes, genetics, population genetics, random genetic drift, speciation, horizontal gene transfer, biochemistry, physiology, embryology, developmental biology, molecular drive, mutation, recombination, punctuated equilibria, species selection (possibly), cladistics, mass extinctions, plate tectonics, and much more. Even with all that there are still some things we're unsure about, like how to explain the Cambrian explosion
When glutamine is bound to glutamine-binding protein, the protein is wrapped around the ligand to form a closed binding site that brings more amino acid side chains into contact with the ligand. The unbound protein has a much more open confromation.[Figure credit: Okazaki, K., Takada, S. (2008) Dynamic energy landscape view of coupled binding and protein conformational change: Induced-fit versus population-shift mechanisms. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. (USA) 105:11182-11187. [DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0802524105]
nigh: Common Teutonic: OE. néah, néh = OFris. nei, nî, MDutch na, nae (Dutch na), OS. nâh (MLG. nâge, nâ), OHG. nâh adv., nâher adj. (MHG. nâ, nâh-, nâch, G. nah), ONor. ná- (in combs. like ná-búi neighbour; Sw. and Da. na-), Goth. nêhwa (nêhw): the stem appears to be unrepresented outside Teutonic. OHG. is the only one of the older languages in which a fully developed adjectival use of the word exists along with the adverbial. In OE. there are very scanty traces of adjectival inflexion, néah being commonly employed either as a simple adv. or with a dependent dative: in predicative use it may sometimes be taken as an adjective, but it is more probable that in such cases also it is an adverb. It is not till the 14th or 15th cent. that the attributive use becomes common.
The original comparative of néah as an adv. is néar, néor, near adv.1, while the adj. form néarra finally became ner, nar a. The OE. superlative níe(hook)hst(a is latterly represented by next a. and adv. After phonetic changes had obscured the relationship of these forms to the positive, a new compar. and superl., nigher and nighest, were formed, and have been in common use since the 16th cent.
= near adv.2 and a. (which in all senses has taken the place of nigh except in archaic or dialect use). [Oxford English Dictionary]
Let me be clear about one thing. I've said it many times but it bears repeating. In my opinion Charles Darwin is the greatest scientist who ever lived and natural selection is one of the greatest ideas in science.Next year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his On The Origin of Species. The Natural History Museum and the BBC plan extensive education programmes. Anticipating the anniversaries, Professor Richard Dawkins is presenting a series on Channel 4. These are welcome ventures. On the evidence of its first episode, Professor Dawkins's exposition of Darwinism will be an important public resource.There are three things wrong with this short article.
Darwin founded a branch of learning that has remarkable explanatory power and also grandeur. That the mechanism of evolution is natural selection is one of the great discoveries of science, with implications far beyond evolutionary biology. As Ernst Mayr, the biologist, wrote: “No educated person any longer questions the validity of the so-called theory of evolution, which we now know to be a simple fact.”
It is an unfortunate wonder of the modern age that people who are highly educated in some areas may still be resistant to scientific inquiry. We customarily think of objectors to Darwinism as Protestant fundamentalists. There is in fact a worrying trend for Muslim children to be taught the myths of creation, and the pseudoscience of “intelligent design”, as an explanation of the origins of life.
[Hat Tip: RichardDawkins.net]
I've always been a bit skeptical of Obama. It seemed to me that he wasn't as sincere about his "progressive" stance as, say, Dennis Kucinich. I wondered whether he wasn't playing to a particular audience in order to win the nomination. 
We urge you, then, to listen to the voices of the people who can lift you to the presidency and beyond.I think they have a point but the more interesting question, from my perspective, is which one is the real Obama? Does he really believe in universal health care but is willing to make compromises for the sake of political expediency, or is he lukewarm on socialized medicine? Does he really believe that the USA needs to get out of Iraq because it never should have been there in the first place, or is he willing to compromise on that stance? What does he really think about the death penalty? Is he opposed on principle, in which case there's no compromise, or are his "principles" negotiable? Does he really expect to change the way things are done in Washington, or is that just something he says in order to get votes?
Since your historic victory in the primary, there have been troubling signs that you are moving away from the core commitments shared by many who have supported your campaign, toward a more cautious and centrist stance--including, most notably, your vote for the FISA legislation granting telecom companies immunity from prosecution for illegal wiretapping, which angered and dismayed so many of your supporters.
We recognize that compromise is necessary in any democracy. We understand that the pressures brought to bear on those seeking the highest office are intense. But retreating from the stands that have been the signature of your campaign will weaken the movement whose vigorous backing you need in order to win and then deliver the change you have promised.
My fellow godless hedonists,In other words, Obama is a liar and a hypocrite but that's okay because we all know that deep down he's a true believer.
Obama is totally on our side. He's just hiding some of his feelings to get elected. We cannot take a stand on principle, we cannot afford to. Obama is blurring his position to win over independents that he sure as hell is going to shake off when he gets elected.
Allen MacNeill has started a new blog called Evolutionary Psychology. Allen teaches introductory biology and evolution at Cornell University (New York, USA). This could be a good addition to the blogosphere since he intends to defend the field. (Good luck!)Recent work on the evolutionary dynamics of religion have converged on a "standard model" in which religions and the supernatural entities which populate them are treated as epiphenomena of human cognitive processes dealing with the detection of and reaction to agents under conditions of stress, anxiety, and perceived threat.I agree with this. There has been selection in the primate lineages for intelligence and one of the reasons for the fitness advantage may well be the ability to cope with external threats. I think that religion, and many other human behaviors, are epiphenomena that are indirect consequences of intelligent brains.
Unfortunately, this does not seem to be what MacNeill really means. He goes on to describe behaviors such as religion and warfare as though they were individually selected. He seems to be implying that there are genes for religious behavior and for engaging in warfare. This isn't the same as the "standard" model—unless my interpretation is completely wrong.Wilson (2002) has proposed that the capacity for religion has evolved among humans as the result of selection at the level of groups, rather than individuals. Specifically, he argues that benefits that accrue to groups as the result of individual sacrifices can result in increased group fitness, and this can explain what is otherwise difficult to explain: religiously motivated behaviors (such as celibacy and self-sacrifice) that apparently lower individual fitness as they benefit the group.
At first glance, Wilson's argument seems compelling. Consider the most horrific manifestation of religious warfare: the suicide bomber. A person who blows him or herself up in order to kill his or her opponents has lowered his or her individual fitness. Doesn't this mean that such behavior must be explainable only at the level of group selection? Not at all: the solution to this conundrum is implicit in the basic principles of population genetics. Recall that one of Darwin's requirements for evolution by natural selection was the existence of variation between the individuals in a population. (Darwin, 1859, pp. 7 - 59) Variation within populations is a universal characteristic of life, an inevitable outcome of the imperfect mechanism of genetic replication. Therefore, it follows that if the capacity for religious experience is an evolutionary adaptation, then there will be variation between individuals in the degree to which they express such a capacity.
Furthermore, it is not necessarily true that when an individual sacrifices his or her life in the context of a struggle, the underlying genotype that induced that sacrifice will be eliminated by that act. Hamilton's principle of kin selection (Hamilton, 1964) has already been mentioned as one mechanism, acting at the level of individuals (or, more precisely, at the level of genotypes), by which individual self-sacrifice can result in the increase in frequency of the genotype that facilitated such sacrifice. Trivers (1971) has proposed a mechanism by which apparently altruistic acts on the part of genetically unrelated individuals may evolve by means of reciprocal altruism.
Given these two mechanisms, all that is necessary for the capacity for religious behavior, including extreme forms of self-sacrifice, to evolve is that as the result of such behaviors, the tendency (and ability) to perform them would be propagated throughout a population. The removal of some individuals as the result of suicide would merely lower the frequency of such tendencies and abilities in the population, not eliminate them altogether. If by making the ultimate sacrifice, an individual who shares his or her genotype with those who benefit by that sacrifice will, at the level of his or her genes, become more common over time. (Wilson, 1975, p. 4)
I take issue with this description. When an evolutionary psychologist says that "all that is necessary" for the evolution of a behavior is that it confers some advantage, your adaptationist bullshit detector should hit the red line. That's not all that is necessary. Another, very important, requirement is that there be a genetic component to the behavior. In other words, we need to show that suicide bombers (for example) have different alleles in their genomes than atheists. 
). As a matter of fact, it's probably no different than the cliques formed by adolescent girls or the street gangs of teenage boys. They all serve the same purpose, albeit on different scales. They are all learned behaviors. In my opinion, religion is a product of nurture, not nature.Response: Darwin’s idea that evolution generally proceeds at a slow, deliberate pace has been modified to include the idea that evolution can proceed at a relatively rapid pace under some circumstances. In this sense, “Darwinism” is continually being modified. Modification of theories to make them more representative of how things work is the role of scientists and of science itself.
Thus far, however, there have been no credible challenges to the basic Darwinian principles that evolution proceeds primarily by the mechanism of natural selection acting upon variation in populations and that different species share common ancestors. Scientists have not rejected Darwin’s natural selection, but have improved and expanded it as more information has become available. For example, we now know (although Darwin did not) that genetic mutations are the source of variation acted on by natural selection, but we haven’t rejected Darwin’s idea of natural selection—we’ve just added to it.
Here's how I would re-word the first sentence of the second paragraph.We now know that natural selection is just one of several mechanisms of evolution. One of the others is random genetic drift where variants can become established in a species purely by chance. There is clear evidence that variants that are neither harmful or beneficial can contribute to evolution and, in fact, the evidence suggests strongly that this is the most common form of evolution. However, there have been no credible challenges to the basic Darwinian principles that adaptive evolution proceeds exclusively by the mechanism of natural selection acting upon variation in populations and that different species share common ancestors.I realize that my version is more complicated but it is also more accurate. This is a case where over-simplification comes at the expense of accuracy and I don't think the
Understanding Evolution for Teachers is a website run by the University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP) in Berkeley. [Hat Tip: John Dennehy]
The latest issue of Tangled Bank has been published on denialism blog [Tangled Bank #111].Welcome to Tangled Bank #111! Today's entries are presented without comment, but with poetry, a truly remarkable natural, albeit human, phenomenon, or to quote Love and Rockets:
You can't go against nature
Because when you do
Go against nature
It's part of nature too.
If you want to submit an article to Tangled Bank send an email message to host@tangledbank.net. Be sure to include the words "Tangled Bank" in the subject line. Remember that this carnival only accepts one submission per week from each blogger. For some of you that's going to be a serious problem. You have to pick your best article on biology.
At 8:15 AM on August 6, 1945 an atomic bomb was detonated over Hiroshima, Japan. Approximately 78,000 civilians were killed on that day. Six months later the death toll had risen to about 140,000 people.
One of the many mistakes in Iraq was the naive assumption that it would be a clean war with few casualties and no long-term consequences for the Iraqi people. Yet today, the numbers of innocent lives lost in Iraq is comparable to the numbers lost in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And what is the benefit for Iraq that outweighs the cost in human lives? Is it "freedom" and "democracy"?
"for their discoveries concerning organization and elicitation of individual and social behaviour patterns"
The presentation speech was delivered in Swedish by Professor Börje Cronholm of the Karolinska Medico-Chirurgical Institute.
Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Animal behavior has fascinated man since time immemorial as can be witnessed by the important role of animals in myths, fairy-tales and fables. However, for too long man has tried to understand it from his own experiences, from his own way of thinking, feeling and acting. Descriptions along these lines may be quite poetic, but they do not lead to any increase in knowledge. Various pre-scientific ideas have been especially tenacious in this field. Thus, it is not long ago that the vitalists maintained that the instincts bore witness of a wisdom that was inherent in the organism and could not be further analyzed. It was not until behavior problems were studied by means of scientific methods, by systematic observation and by experimentation, that real progress was made. Within that research field this year's Nobel prize laureates have been pioneers. They have collected numerous data about animal behavior both in natural settings and in experimental situations. Being biological scholars they leave also studied the functions of behavior patterns, their role in the individual struggle for life and for the continuation of the species. Thus, behavior patterns have stood out as results of natural selection just as morphological characteristics and physiological functions.
It is of fundamental importance that some behavior patterns evidently are genetically programmed. The so-called fixed action patterns do not request any previous experience and they will be automatically elicited by definite key stimuli. They proceed in a mechanical, robot-like way, and when they have started they are no more influenced by external circumstances. In insects, fishes and birds, such important procedures as courtship, nesting and taking care of the brood, to a large extent consist in fixed action patterns. With development of the brain hemispheres, behavior has become increasingly modifiable and dependent on learning in mammals and especially in man, but fixed action patterns still play an important role.
For more than sixty years: Karl von Frisch has devoted himself to studies of the very complicated behavior of honeybees. Above all, he has elucidated what has rightly been called 'the language of bees'. When a bee has found flowers containing nectar, it performs a special dance when returning to the hive. The dance informs the bees in the hive of the existence of food, often also about the direction where the flowers will be found and about the distance to them. The foraging bee is able to indicate the direction of the food source in relation to the sun by means of analyzing polarized, ultraviolet light from the sky, light that is invisible to us. The honeybees do not learn, either to dance or to understand the message of the dance. Both the dancing and the appropriate reactions to it are genetically programmed behavior patterns.Konrad Lorenz has studied among many other things the fixed action patterns of various birds. His experiments with inexperienced animals, e.g. young birds from an incubator, are of great importance in this context. In these young birds he observed behavior patterns that could not reasonably have been learnt but were to be interpreted as being genetically programmed. He also found that experiences of young animals during a critical period could be decisive for their future development. Newborn ducks and geese follow the first moving object that they catch sight of, and later on they will follow those particular objects only. Normally, they will follow their mother, but they may be seduced to follow almost any moving object or creature. This phenomenon has been called 'imprinting'.
While Konrad Lorenz has above all been a systematic observer of animal behavior, Nikolaas Tinbergen has to a large extent tested various hypotheses by means of comprehensive, careful, and quite often ingenious experiments. Among other things, he has used dummies to measure the strength of different key stimuli as regards their ability to elicit corresponding fixed action patterns. He made the important observation that 'supranormal' stimuli eliciting more intense behavior than those of natural conditions, may be produced by exaggerating certain characteristics.The discoveries made by this year's Nobel prize laureates were based on studies of insects, fishes and birds and might thus seem to be of only minor importance for human physiology or medicine. However, their discoveries have been a prerequisite for the comprehensive research that is now pursued also on mammals. Studies are devoted to the existence of genetically programmed behavior patterns, their organization, maturation and their elicitation by key stimuli. There are also studies concerning the importance of specific experiences during critical periods for the normal development of the individual. Research into the behavior of monkeys have demonstrated that serious and to a large extent lasting behavior disturbances may be the result when a baby grows up in isolation without contact with its mother and siblings or with adequate substitutes. Another important research field concerns the effects of abnormal psychosocial situations on the individual. They may lead not only to abnormal behavior but also to serious somatic illness such as arterial hypertension and myocardial infarction. One important conclusion is that the psychosocial situation of an individual cannot be too adverse to its biological equipment without serious consequences. This holds true for all species, also for that which in shameless vanity has baptized itself 'Homo sapiens'.
Karl von Frisch, Konrad Lorenz, Nikolaas Tinbergen,
According to an old fable, cited by one of you, king Solomon is said to have been the owner of a ring that had the mystical power to give him the gift of understanding the language of animals. You have been the successors of king Solomon in the respect that you have been able to decode the information that animals pass to each other, and also to elucidate the meaning of their behavior to us. Your ability to find general rules underlying the confusing manifold of animal behavior makes us sometimes believe that king Solomon's ring has in fact been available also to you. But we know that you have been working in an empirical way, collecting data and interpreting it according to hard and fast scientific rules.
Aside from their value in themselves, your discoveries have had a farreaching influence on such medical disciplines as social medicine, psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine. For that reason it was very much in agreement with the spirit of Alfred Nobel's will when the medical faculty of the Karolinska Institute awarded you this year's Nobel Prize.
We are proud to have two of you, professor Konrad Lorenz and professor Nikolaas Tinbergen, with us today, and we are also grateful to professor Karl von Frisch that he has sent his son, professor Otto von Frisch, to represent him here.
On behalf of the Karolinska Institute I wish to convey to you the warmest congratulations and I now ask you to receive your prize from the hands of His Majesty the King.
Today epigenetics is all the rage, but it has its roots in a pair of papers appeared nearly simultaneously in 1952-1953.
