The ID Report

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

(Who said science was useless ... ?)

From "Captivated by Critters: Humans Are Wired to Respond to Animals" (ScienceDaily, Sep. 9, 2011), we learn:

... researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and UCLA report that neurons throughout the amygdala -- a center in the brain known for processing emotional reactions -- respond preferentially to images of animals.

Working with 41 epilepsy patients who were already monitored for stress, they found.

"Our study shows that neurons in the human amygdala respond preferentially to pictures of animals, meaning that we saw the most amount of activity in cells when the patients looked at cats or snakes versus buildings or people," says Florian Mormann, lead author on the paper and a former postdoctoral scholar in the Division of Biology at Caltech. "This preference extends to cute as well as ugly or dangerous animals and appears to be independent of the emotional contents of the pictures. Remarkably, we find this response behavior only in the right and not in the left amygdala."

Mormann says this striking hemispheric asymmetry helps strengthen previous findings supporting the idea that, early on in vertebrate evolution, the right hemisphere became specialized in dealing with unexpected and biologically relevant stimuli, or with changes in the environment. "In terms of brain evolution, the amygdala is a very old structure, and throughout our biological history, animals -- which could represent either predators or prey -- were a highly relevant class of stimuli," he says.

Hmmm. The researchers are likely onto something, but a better explanation for their find is surely needed. "Unexpected and biologically relevant stimuli" could include fire, flood, and nearby lightning strikes - none are life forms, but all are "biologically relevant" if the biology in question is one's own. The same could be said for long lost allies or strangers who appear suddenly from nowhere, and offer no word of greeting.

The thing about animals is that we know they are sentient. And variously endowed with intelligence, but not rational. That may be the significance of a separate way of reacting to them. Their behaviour is sensed as neither automatic nor the product of national choice - rather, a middle ground that suggests different responses.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain. Follow UD News at Twitter!

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

In a recent Fox News poll,

45 percent of voters accept the Biblical account of creation as the explanation for the origin of human life on Earth, while 21 percent say the theory of evolution as outlined by Darwin and other scientists is correct. Another 27 percent say both explanations are true.

Belief in creationism, however, fails to explain Republican presidential primary preferences. Frontrunner Rick Perry is the top choice for GOP primary voters who believe in creationism as well as those who believe in evolution.

That's probably because the upcoming US election will likely turn on beliefs about the economy rather than origins. There's been an increase in the number of people who believe Darwin, from 1999 through 2011: From 15% to 21%. And a decrease in those who believe "the Biblical account" (down to 45 from 50%). Which is just enough to be statistically significant.

That said, the current enthusiasm of Republican prez hopefuls (the latest was Ron Paul) for nixing Darwin is most likely due to the reverence paid him by the Ivy League. These are bad times in which to be an establishment expert.

See also: When science is nuts, anti-science is newly respectable

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain. Follow UD News at Twitter!

In response to "Geneticist W.-E. Loennig replies to Darwinist Nick Matzke: Which is more important: Darwin or facts?", Nick matze pretty much removed any doubt, replying,

Continued silliness. The generalization that carnivorous plants tend to live in nutrient-poor environments applies to Utricularia as well. There might be some exceptions, but they are just that, exceptions to the general rule.

We need look no farther than Wikipedia:

Distribution and habitat

Utricularia can survive almost anywhere where there is fresh water for at least part of the year; only Antarctica and some oceanic islands have no native species. The greatest species diversity for the genus is seen in South America, with Australia coming a close second.[1] In common with most carnivorous plants, they grow in moist soils which are poor in dissolved minerals, where their carnivorous nature gives them a competitive advantage; terrestrial varieties of Utricularia can frequently be found alongside representatives of the carnivorous genera–Sarracenia, Drosera and others–in very wet areas where continuously moving water removes most soluble minerals from the soil.

Although, if you like, I could start quoting experts which even Loennig would agree are experts (since he cites their work at various points in his monograph). I have all of the major works on CPs [carnivorous plants].

Now, I am happy to debate carnivorous plant evolution with folks, but there is really no point if you guys (and Loennig) can't accept basic facts of the case without obfuscation and insult. This question must be answered before any further discussion on the evolution of carnivorous plants can take place: is the above statement basically correct, or not?

He adds here,

The standard theory is that carnivory in plants is an adaptation to increase nutrient uptake in environments where (chemically available) nutrients are scarce. Low nutrients = the primary selective pressure that gave an advantage to variations that allowed the improved trapping of insects.

Now, if the above were accepted, we could move on to have a discussion of whether or not it is reasonable to thing that the necessary variations to produce plant carnivory could occur — and from there, we could then move to a discussion of whether or not the processes that could produce sticky-leaf-traps and pitcher-plant traps could also eventually produce Utricularia-type bladder traps.

But, Loennig and his fans have launched a series of UD posts claiming that the evolutionary explanation of plant carnivory is bogus idiocy from the get-go, because they apparently think that it's not true that CPs typically live in nutrient poor habitats, thus there is no reason for natural selection to favor such adaptations. They have been raising hell about it in a half-dozen posts, but without any attempt to review the massive and well-known (and available) literature on this topic. Loennig undoubtedly knows better, deep down, but he's letting his fans get away with very silly statements.

So, like I said, there's no point in continuing unless this kind of basic observational fact is accepted on all sides.

Everything seems to depend here on whether the standard theory is a correct statement of the behaviour of carnivorous plants - because that theory is under evidence-based dispute, it cannot be cited to judge the case.

In any event, Dr. Loennig replied re Dr. Matzke's comments, as follows:

Well, Matzke is strongly beating about the bush. Instead of answering in detail
key questions like

Why does Nick not answer Nachtwey's questions on the evolution of Utricularia's trap? Suction in half a millisecond: How did the trap become watertight and functional as a suction trap with all its synorganized anatomical and physiological details by a series of random 'micromutations' with slight or even invisible effects on the phenotype (Mayr)?

- he simply presupposes his mutation-selection theory as being entirely correct. And the infinite invention of non-testable evolutionary scenarios of how something could have evolved puts the synthetic theory outside science. See the details and discussions on such scenarios here.

Also, the question of how many of the aquatic Utricularia species can and do live in meso- to eutrophic (instead of oligotrophic) environments is, of course, not answered by quoting a general statement from the Wikipedia. For a scientifically correct answer the question has to be further investigated whether most (or exactly how many) of these species really occur in oligotrophic environments only and how or to what extent the 7 exceptions I mentioned so far (really all that I have precisely checked until now) disturb or even disprove the adaptionist viewpoint. And what about the almost 100 Pinguicula species that I have mentioned earlier? And many more cases are known. (Of course, I do not deny that many carnivores like Dionaea muscipula and most Drosera species and others really live - together with many non-carnivorous plants - "in nutrient impoverished substrate" - Fleischmann 2010, p. 843).

Above all: Even in (the wrong) case or scenario that all Utricularia species were living in oligotrophic environments - this would, of course, not explain the origin of their suction traps by mutations and selection (without ID) anymore than the adaptation of automobiles (wheels, motors, brackets, lights etc.) to roads and a thousand different tasks would explain their origin without intelligent design.

As to the details on Kingsley see p. 8 ff.: I did not simply copy Taylor's mistake but commented on it in detail in the paper just referred and linked to above already several years ago; it would really consume a lot of time to correct all the doubtful or false presuppositions and statements of Nick Matzke, who obviously did not carefully study my papers.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain. Follow UD News at Twitter!

From "Jumping Gene's Preferred Targets May Influence Genome Evolution" (ScienceDaily, Sep. 6, 2011) , we learn:

The scientists used the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, one of the premier "model" organisms for studying genome structure and gene function. They focused on one particular transposon, called the P element, which has an unsurpassed ability to move that has stimulated its widespread use by Drosophila researchers. " "
Remarkably, P elements have only been present in Drosophila melanogaster for about 80 years, at which time they were acquired from the genome of a distantly related fruit fly species by an unknown process. P elements remain highly "infective" today. Adding just one copy to the genome of one fly causes all the flies in a laboratory population with which it breeds to acquire 30 to 50 P elements within a few generations. The original goal of the Spradling team's research was not to understand how transposons spread or genomes evolve, but something much simpler: To learn why P elements insert at some locations in the genome but not in others.

P elements insert into DNA very selectively. Nearly 40% of new jumps occur within just 300 genes and always near the beginning of the gene. But the genes seemed to have nothing in common. When these sites were compared to data about the Drosophila genome, particularly recent studies of Drosophila genome duplication, the answer became clear. What many P insertion sites share in common is an ability to function as starting sites or "origins" for DNA duplication. This association between P elements and the machinery of genome duplication suggested that they can coordinate their movement with DNA replication.

Definitely an idea worth pursuing, but what they must now demonstrate is permanent, functional improvements resulting from this process.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain. Follow UD News at Twitter!