A governança global da clonagem humana: o caso da UNESCO

The global governance of human cloning: the case of UNESCO

Adèle Langlois

Palgrave Communications 3, Article number: 17019 (2017) ​

doi: 10.1057/palcomms.2017.19

Received 13 October 2016 Accepted 23 February 2017 Published online 21 March 2017

Source/Fonte: Science - How stuff works

Abstract

Since Dolly the Sheep was cloned in 1996, the question of whether human reproductive cloning should be banned or pursued has been the subject of international debate. Feelings run strong on both sides. In 2005, the United Nations adopted its Declaration on Human Cloning to try to deal with the issue. The declaration is ambiguously worded, prohibiting “all forms of human cloning inasmuch as they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life”. It received only ambivalent support from UN member states. Given this unsatisfactory outcome, in 2008 UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) set up a Working Group to investigate the possibility of a legally binding convention to ban human reproductive cloning. The Working Group was made up of members of the International Bioethics Committee, established in 1993 as part of UNESCO’s Bioethics Programme. It found that the lack of clarity in international law is unhelpful for those states yet to formulate national regulations or policies on human cloning. Despite this, member states of UNESCO resisted the idea of a convention for several years. This changed in 2015, but there has been no practical progress on the issue. Drawing on official records and first-hand observations at bioethics meetings, this article examines the human cloning debate at UNESCO from 2008 onwards, thus building on and advancing current scholarship by applying recent ideas on global governance to an empirical case. It concludes that, although human reproductive cloning is a challenging subject, establishing a robust global governance framework in this area may be possible via an alternative deliberative format, based on knowledge sharing and feasibility testing rather than the interest-based bargaining that is common to intergovernmental organizations and involving a wide range of stakeholders. This article is published as part of a collection on global governance.

Subject terms:Politics and international relations • Science, technology and society

FREE PDF GRATIS: Palgrave Communications

Australopithecus sediba: mais outro macaco que caí da árvore da evolução humana!

This skull may have grown up to look more like an australopithecine than a human-like member of our genus Homo.

Brett Eloff/Courtesy Profberger and Wits University

A famous 'ancestor' may be ousted from the human family

By Ann GibbonsApr. 23, 2017, 7:00 PM

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA—A remarkably complete skeleton introduced in 2010 as “the best candidate” for the immediate ancestor of our genus Homo may just be a pretender. Instead of belonging to the human lineage, the new species of Australopithecus sediba is more closely related to other hominins from South Africa that are on a side branch of the human family tree, according to a new analysis of the fossil presented here last week at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.

When fossils from several individuals’ skeletons were found in a collapsed cave in Malapa, South Africa, in 2008, their discoverer, paleoanthropologist Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand, noted that they helped fill a key gap in the fossil record 2 million to 3 million years ago when some upright-walking australopithecine evolved into the earliest member of our genus, Homo. But the oldest Homo fossils, at 2.4 million to 2.9 million years, are scrappy, and a half dozen more primitive hominins may have been walking around Africa at roughly the right time to be the ancestor. Researchers have hotly debated whether their direct ancestor was the famous 3.2-million-year-old fossil Lucy and her kind, Australopithecus afarensis from Ethiopia, or another australopithecine. 

With its fossils dated to 1.98 million years ago, Au. sediba is too young to be directly ancestral to all members of the genus Homo. But Berger and his colleagues proposed in 2010, and again in 2013 in six papers in Science, that given the many humanlike traits in Au. sediba’s face, teeth, and body, the Malapa fossils were a better candidate than Lucy or other East African fossils to be ancestral to Homo erectus, a direct human ancestor that appeared 1.8 million years ago.

In a talk here, though, paleoanthropologist Bill Kimbel of Arizona State University in Tempe analyzed the most complete skull of Au. sediba and systematically shot down the features claimed to link it to early Homo. Kimbel noted that the skull was that of a juvenile—a “7th grader”—whose face and skull were still developing. In his analysis, with paleoanthropologist Yoel Rak of Tel Aviv University in Israel, he concluded that the child already showed traits that linked it most closely to the South African australopithecine Au. africanus, a species that lived in South Africa 3 million to 2.3 million years ago. And had it survived to adulthood, its humanlike facial traits would have changed to become even more like those of Au. africanus.

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Read more/Leia mais: Science

Celebrando o Dia do DNA em 2017 - artigos científicos gratuitos!

Um tesouro de artigos celebrando o Dia do DNA de 2017:

Nature

Springer - 70 artigos gratuitos!

BioMed Central 

Tenham uma boa semana baixando e lendo os artigos!!!

Dissidência e síntese na Royal Society: hasta la vista, Darwin?

Schism and Synthesis at the Royal Society

Kevin N. Laland

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2017.02.015

Publication History

Published online: February 28, 2017

Summary

November 7–9, 2016 witnessed a joint discussion meeting of the Royal Society and the British Academy (the UK national academies for the sciences and social sciences, respectively) entitled ‘New Trends in Evolutionary Biology: Biological, Philosophical and Social Science Perspectives’. The meeting, anticipated with a mix of feverish enthusiasm and dread, sold out months in advance, the eager audience perhaps expecting radical and traditional evolutionists to go toe to toe, rather than the constructive dialogue among biologists, social scientists, and researchers in the humanities that the academies advertised. One issue under discussion was whether or not the explanatory core of evolutionary biology requires updating in the light on recent advances in evo-devo, epigenetics, ecosystem ecology, and elsewhere.

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EXCERPTS/EXCERTOS:

The conference brought home a key point – these debates are not about data but rather about how findings are interpreted and understood.

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Those speakers at the meeting pushing for change tend to emphasize the role of conceptual frameworks in shaping what questions are asked, what data are collected, and what factors are viewed as causally important.

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For all that, the discussion witnessed little meeting of minds.

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For these social scientists, standard gene-centric selectionist accounts provided less satisfactory explanations. 

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Trends in Ecology and Evolution

Grandes visões extremas da evolução: hasta la vista, Darwin?

Trends in Ecology and Evolution

Grand Views of Evolution

Harold P. de Vladar, Mauro Santos, Eörs Szathmáry

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2017.01.008

Publication History

Published online: February 25, 2017

Summary

Despite major advances in evolutionary theories, some aspects of evolution remain neglected: whether evolution: would come to a halt without abiotic change; is unbounded and open-ended; or is progressive and something beyond fitness is maximized. Here, we discuss some models of ecology and evolution and argue that ecological change, resulting in Red Queen dynamics, facilitates (but does not ensure) innovation. We distinguish three forms of open-endedness. In weak open-endedness, novel phenotypes can occur indefinitely. Strong open-endedness requires the continual appearance of evolutionary novelties and/or innovations. Ultimate open-endedness entails an indefinite increase in complexity, which requires unlimited heredity. Open-ended innovation needs exaptations that generate novel niches. This can result in new traits and new rules as the dynamics unfolds, suggesting that evolution is not fully algorithmic.

Trends

Biological evolution appears to be open-ended, but models of evolution have so far failed to account for this phenomenon.

Open-endedness minimally requires generating novel phenotypes, but stronger forms entail the continual appearance of evolutionary novelties and innovations.

A sensible picture of evolution should describe unfolding of the state space, and not merely its occupancy.

State-space unfolding crucially rests on the appearance of exaptations that are neither prestatable nor orderable. Hence, a predictive theory of open-ended evolution might be impossible.

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Trends in Ecology and Evolution

A hipótese da origem da Lua - passado, presente (e futuro?)

The giant impact hypothesis: past, present (and future?)

William K. Hartmann

Published 11 August 2014.DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2013.0249

Source/Fonte: NASA - Joe Tucciarone

Abstract

At the request of editors, this paper offers a historical review of early work on the giant impact hypothesis, as well as comments on new data. The author hereby claims (whether believable or not) that his interest is to move towards a correct model of lunar origin, not to defend a possibly incorrect idea, just because of being a co-author of a relevant early paper. Nonetheless, the 1974 giant impact hypothesis appears still to be viable.

FREE PDF GRATIS: Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A

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NOTA DESTE BLOGGER:

Todas as atuais teorias e hipóteses sobre a origem da Lua, em que pese os esforços denodados dos cientistas, estão mais furadas do que queijo suíço - até aqui nenhuma delas são corroboradas no contexto de justificação teórica! 

Vide: Discussion Meeting Issue ‘Origin of the Moon: challenges and prospects’ organizado e editado por David J. Stevenson e Alex N. Halliday.

Os limites da informação

The Limits of Information 

Daniel N. Robinson

Source/Fonte: HABBENINK (habbenink.com)

There is a long, winding, and vexing wrangle among philosophers on the nature and validity of our knowledge of the physical world. Take the example of color. A stroll through the garden reveals a busy bee extracting nectar from a yellow rose. I see the yellow rose owing to certain pigments in the cone receptors of my retina. In a normally sighted person, the neurochemistry of vision operates over a range of wavelengths from about 360 to 760 nanometers (nm) — roughly violet to a deep red. What English-speaking percipients describe as “yellow” is in the near vicinity of 580 nm, a little above the eye’s peak sensitivity. For the honey bee, matters are quite different. Its compound eyes are equipped with three types of retinal receptors — one for very short wavelengths (peaking at 344 nm, or ultraviolet), a medium-type (peaking at 436, or blue), and one for long wavelengths (peaking at 544, or green). Though we and the bee may share floral preferences — revealed in the bee’s foraging and in our table settings — the bee’s representation of the external world clearly includes features to which we are blind.

Were all sources of electromagnetic radiation to fall at wavelengths shorter than 340 nm, the affairs of the world would pass us unseen. (And eyes like ours wouldn’t work very well anyway, since excessive exposure to ultraviolent radiation renders the human lens increasingly opaque as a result of cataracts.) Our inability to see (or to endure) much ultraviolet radiation is a heavy price to pay for our eyesight, but it does protect the human retina from destruction by this same radiation. The moral of the tale so far is that creatures are fitted out for the world as given, and modes of adaptation come at a price.

Is this explanation of human perception no more than a poor glimpse into evolutionary forces? Here we face yet another of philosophy’s enduring engagements, to wit: What counts as an explanation, and what standard is to be applied in evaluating competing explanations?

Explaining the World

In 1814, Pierre-Simon Laplace presented his famous “demon,” as it has come to be known. Imagine a superior intelligence who, knowing the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe, can account for the past and predict the future from the laws of classical mechanics. For this intelligence, Laplace wrote, “nothing would be uncertain and the future, as the past, would be present to its eyes.” To explain the nature of a thing or occurrence, by this way of thinking, would require that we know with certainty the physical processes at the smallest level, because they determine the events at any larger level.

But then, some two centuries after Laplace, comes Werner Heisenberg and quantum mechanics rendering uncertain any attempt to specify a particle’s position and momentum simultaneously. Of course, uncertainty at the quantum level may impose no barrier to determinism at the macro-level, but even this proposition raises questions regarding the nature of explanation and the level at which scientific explanations are of the right sort.

But why assume there is a fixed and right sort of explanation? Sometimes taken to be the “realist” position in the philosophical debate between realists and anti-realists, the idea that there is a right sort of explanation is predicated on a core of metaphysical precepts. Dominant these days among such ideas is physicalism, which takes physical events and objects to be the sole and ultimate furniture of reality. Explaining such events and objects then calls for what is finally a causal account. In principle, all that is really real, even all that we cannot yet observe, is subject to explanations located within a causally closed system — that is, one admitting only of physical causes.

In 1980, Bas van Fraassen published The Scientific Image in opposition to the prevailing belief that scientific theories offer a true and closed account of how things “really” are. His “constructive empiricism” limits the reach of science to what is observable. Accordingly, to endorse a scientific theory entails no more than the belief that the theory is empirically adequate, which does not require that we make any grand claims about the nature of reality. This is a more modest position, requiring only agnosticism in the matter of hidden variables and unseen processes. Allegedly complete systems are simply too grandiose for serious consideration.

In his later book The Empirical Stance (2002), van Fraassen argues for the rejection of metaphysics as foundational for science and, indeed, the rejection of “foundationalism” itself — “the project to construct all knowledge on a foundation that cannot be false, by a method that cannot introduce falsity.” A commitment to empirical adequacy can never satisfy the lust for indubitable certainties regarding reality. Whereas the scientific realist begins with metaphysical presuppositions that would have authority in the matter of relevant and irrelevant observations, the empirical stance puts one in a different position: that of an observer whose choice of observables is aimed at adequacy in accounts of how things are. This stance, on van Fraassen’s understanding, liberates one from the burden of futile gestures.

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FREE FULL PDF COMPLETO GRATIS: The New Atlantis

Formação de nucleobases em uma atmosfera redutora Miller-Urey - será???

Formation of nucleobases in a Miller–Urey reducing atmosphere

Martin Ferusa, Fabio Pietruccib, Antonino Marco Saittab, Antonín Knížeka,c, Petr Kubelíka, Ondřej Ivaneka, Violetta Shestivskaa, and Svatopluk Civiša,1

Author Affiliations

a J. Heyrovský Institute of Physical Chemistry, Czech Academy of Sciences, CZ18223 Prague 8, Czech Republic;

b Institut de Minéralogie, de Physique des Matériaux et de Cosmochimie, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Sorbonne Universités, CNRS, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, UMR 7590, F-75005 Paris, France;

c Department of Physical and Macromolecular Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, CZ12840 Prague 2, Czech Republic

Edited by Jerrold Meinwald, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, and approved March 13, 2017 (received for review January 6, 2017)

Source/Fonte: https://media.giphy.com/media/APKV6mdZxThIs/giphy.gif

Abstract

Significance

The study shows that Miller–Urey experiments produce RNA nucleobases in discharges and laser-driven plasma impact simulations carried out in a simple prototype of reducing atmosphere containing ammonia and carbon monoxide. We carried out a self-standing description of chemistry relevant to hypothesis of abiotic synthesis of RNA nucleobases related to early-Earth chemical evolution under reducing conditions. The research addresses the chemistry of simple-model reducing atmosphere (NH3 + CO + H2O) and the role of formamide as an intermediate of nucleobase formation in Miller–Urey experiment. The explorations combine experiments performed using modern techniques of large, high-power shock wave plasma generation by hall terawatt lasers, electric discharges, and state-of-the-art ab initio free-energy calculations.

Abstract

The Miller–Urey experiments pioneered modern research on the molecular origins of life, but their actual relevance in this field was later questioned because the gas mixture used in their research is considered too reducing with respect to the most accepted hypotheses for the conditions on primordial Earth. In particular, the production of only amino acids has been taken as evidence of the limited relevance of the results. Here, we report an experimental work, combined with state-of-the-art computational methods, in which both electric discharge and laser-driven plasma impact simulations were carried out in a reducing atmosphere containing NH3 + CO. We show that RNA nucleobases are synthesized in these experiments, strongly supporting the possibility of the emergence of biologically relevant molecules in a reducing atmosphere. The reconstructed synthetic pathways indicate that small radicals and formamide play a crucial role, in agreement with a number of recent experimental and theoretical results.

life origins asteroid impact reducing atmosphere

Footnotes

1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: svatopluk.civis@jh-inst.cas.cz.

Author contributions: M.F., F.P., A.M.S., and S.C. designed research; M.F., A.K., O.I., and S.C. performed experimental research; F.P. and A.M.S. performed computer simulations; M.F., F.P., A.M.S., P.K., O.I., V.S., and S.C. analyzed data; and M.F., F.P., A.M.S., and S.C. wrote the paper.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.

This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1700010114/-/DCSupplemental.

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Professores, pesquisadores e alunos de universidades públicas e privadas com acesso ao site Portal de Periódicos CAPES/MEC podem ler gratuitamente este artigo do PNAS e de mais 33.000 publicações científicas.

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NOTA DESTE BLOGGER:

Repare que eles transformaram a frase "laser-driven plasma impact simulations" em "we show that RNA nucleobases are synthesized in these experiments..." Uau! Simulações virtuais!

 

Será? Onde? Dentro do computador? Ou dentro do programa? Ou simplesmente dentro das bases de dados? As perguntas que devem ser feitas: Vocês podem nos dizer o estado racêmico dessas nucleobases simuladas? E quantos isômeros inativos se formaram comparados com as versões dos isômeros biologicamente ativos? Dá para ficar rico vendendo esse material para outros químicos?

 

Se um computador esteve envolvido, então tudo é VIRTUAL. Pelas barbas de Darwin, não poluam a literatura científica com dados vituais.

Explorando a química da armazenagem e propagação da informação genética através da engenharia da polimerase: design inteligente!

Exploring the Chemistry of Genetic Information Storage and Propagation through Polymerase Engineering

Gillian Houlihan, Sebastian Arangundy-Franklin, and Philipp Holliger* 

MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Francis Crick Avenue, Cambridge Biomedical Campus, Cambridge CB2 0QH, U.K.

Acc. Chem. Res., 2017, 50 (4), pp 1079–1087

DOI: 10.1021/acs.accounts.7b00056

Publication Date (Web): April 6, 2017

Copyright © 2017 American Chemical Society

*Philipp Holliger. E-mail: ph1@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk.

Abstract

Conspectus

Nucleic acids are a distinct form of sequence-defined biopolymer. What sets them apart from other biopolymers such as polypeptides or polysaccharides is their unique capacity to encode, store, and propagate genetic information (molecular heredity). In nature, just two closely related nucleic acids, DNA and RNA, function as repositories and carriers of genetic information. They therefore are the molecular embodiment of biological information. This naturally leads to questions regarding the degree of variation from this seemingly ideal “Goldilocks” chemistry that would still be compatible with the fundamental property of molecular heredity.

To address this question, chemists have created a panoply of synthetic nucleic acids comprising unnatural sugar ring congeners, backbone linkages, and nucleobases in order to establish the molecular parameters for encoding genetic information and its emergence at the origin of life. A deeper analysis of the potential of these synthetic genetic polymers for molecular heredity requires a means of replication and a determination of the fidelity of information transfer. While non-enzymatic synthesis is an increasingly powerful method, it currently remains restricted to short polymers. Here we discuss efforts toward establishing enzymatic synthesis, replication, and evolution of synthetic genetic polymers through the engineering of polymerase enzymes found in nature.

To endow natural polymerases with the ability to efficiently utilize non-cognate nucleotide substrates, novel strategies for the screening and directed evolution of polymerase function have been realized. High throughput plate-based screens, phage display, and water-in-oil emulsion technology based methods have yielded a number of engineered polymerases, some of which can synthesize and reverse transcribe synthetic genetic polymers with good efficiency and fidelity.

The inception of such polymerases demonstrates that, at a basic level at least, molecular heredity is not restricted to the natural nucleic acids DNA and RNA, but may be found in a large (if finite) number of synthetic genetic polymers. And it has opened up these novel sequence spaces for investigation. Although largely unexplored, first tentative forays have yielded ligands (aptamers) against a range of targets and several catalysts elaborated in a range of different chemistries. Finally, taking the lead from established DNA designs, simple polyhedron nanostructures have been described.

We anticipate that further progress in this area will expand the range of synthetic genetic polymers that can be synthesized, replicated, and evolved providing access to a rich sequence, structure, and phenotypic space. “Synthetic genetics”, that is, the exploration of these spaces, will illuminate the chemical parameter range for en- and decoding information, 3D folding, and catalysis and yield novel ligands, catalysts, and nanostructures and devices for applications in biotechnology and medicine.

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A arma secreta do DNA contra nós e emaranhados: mero acaso, fortuita necessidade ou design inteligente?

DNA's secret weapon against knots and tangles

A simple process seems to explain how massive genomes stay organized. But no one can agree on what powers it.

Elie Dolgin

19 April 2017

Leonid Mirny swivels in his office chair and grabs the power cord for his laptop. He practically bounces in his seat as he threads the cable through his fingers, creating a doughnut-sized loop. “It's a dynamic process of motors constantly extruding loops!” says Mirny, a biophysicist here at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

Mirny's excitement isn't about keeping computer accessories orderly. Rather, he's talking about a central organizing principle of the genome — how roughly 2 metres of DNA can be squeezed into nearly every cell of the human body without getting tangled up like last year's Christmas lights.

He argues that DNA is constantly being slipped through ring-like motor proteins to make loops. This process, called loop extrusion, helps to keep local regions of DNA together, disentangling them from other parts of the genome and even giving shape and structure to the chromosomes.

Scientists have bandied about similar hypotheses for decades, but Mirny's model, and a similar one championed by Erez Lieberman Aiden, a geneticist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, add a new level of molecular detail at a time of explosive growth for research into the 3D structure of the genome. The models neatly explain the data flowing from high-profile projects on how different parts of the genome interact physically — which is why they've garnered so much attention.

But these simple explanations are not without controversy. Although it has become increasingly clear that genome looping regulates gene expression, possibly contributing to cell development and diseases such as cancer, the predictions of the models go beyond what anyone has ever seen experimentally.

For one thing, the identity of the molecular machine that forms the loops remains a mystery. If the leading protein candidate acted like a motor, as Mirny proposes, it would guzzle energy faster than it has ever been seen to do. “As a physicist friend of mine tells me, 'This is kind of the Higgs boson of your field',” says Mirny; it explains one of the deepest mysteries of genome biology, but could take years to prove.

And although Mirny's model is extremely similar to Lieberman Aiden's — and the differences esoteric — sorting out which is right is more than a matter of tying up loose ends. If Mirny is correct, “it's a complete revolution in DNA enzymology”, says Kim Nasmyth, a leading chromosome researcher at the University of Oxford, UK. What's actually powering the loop formation, he adds, “has got to be the biggest problem in genome biology right now”.

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FREE PDF GRATIS: Nature

A SBPC apoia a Marcha da Ciência: um apoio à conformidade de pensamento - pobre Ciência!!!

The March for Science is Really a March for Conformity

By JONATHAN WELLS Published on April 18, 2017 • 34 Comments

I am a scientist, but I won’t be joining the worldwide March for Science April 22. That’s because it’s really a march for something that undermines good science.

March organizers say “our diversity is our greatest strength.” They say “a wealth of opinions, perspectives, and ideas is critical for the scientific process.” But they don’t really mean it. Their passion for diversity extends to race, religion, nationality, gender and sexual orientation, but not to opinions, perspectives and ideas.

In particular, it doesn’t extend to diversity of opinion about two controversial ideas. The first idea is that you evolved from ape-like ancestors by unguided processes such as accidental mutation and natural selection. The second idea is that manmade global warming threatens civilization, and our government must take drastic action to stop it, even if that means wrecking the economy.

Skeptics of the first idea are labeled “creationists.” Often, they are expelled from science altogether. And if global warming alarmists have their way, skeptics of the second idea may soon be criminally prosecuted.

Note the hypocrisy. Organizers describe the march as “a call to support and safeguard the scientific community.” But then they silence and expel those who won’t bow to the community’s majority opinion — the “scientific consensus.”

History should teach us to be wary of consensus. In 1750, the scientific consensus held that maggots are generated spontaneously in rotting garbage. In 1900, it held that atoms consist of electrons orbiting a nucleus like planets around the sun. In 1910, it held that the continents had never moved. In 1940, it held that protein, not DNA, is the stuff of heredity.

All of these views turned out to be wrong. And the history of science is full of other such cases.

The Message of the March: Ignore the Evidence and Trust Us

Some of our newly elected politicians refuse to bow to the scientific consensus on evolution and global warming. So defenders of the consensus are marching to pressure them to submit.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a big supporter of the march. So is the National Center for Science Education (NCSE).

The AAAS vigorously defends evolution. The NCSE insists “there is no scientific debate” over evolution. And they strongly oppose criticisms of it. They were in classic form last month in Indiana. The Indiana Senate had resolved that students should be “informed” about “scientific evidence” regarding evolution and develop “critical thinking skills.” The NCSE called this language “antiscience.” Why? It might lead students to raise uncomfortable questions about the evidence for evolution.

As a biologist I know there is a scientific debate over the evidence for evolution. There are dissenters. And some are willing to speak out publicly even though doing so may threaten their careers.

The reason for the dissent is simple. The evidence does not support Darwinian evolution. Mutation and natural selection have never been observed to produce anything more than minor changes within existing species.

In place of evidence-based science, Darwin and his followers have relied on materialistic philosophy. That philosophy says only matter and physical forces are real. It says mind, spirit, free will, God and intelligent design are illusions.

In 1859, Darwin wrote that he “would give absolutely nothing” for his theory if it required “miraculous additions at any one stage of descent.” He allowed only unguided natural processes. In other words, Darwinism is materialistic.

For many in the nineteenth century, this was its most attractive feature. As Historian Neal Gillespie explained, “It was more Darwin’s insistence on totally natural explanations than on natural selection that won their adherence.”

As a scientist, I am bothered by this. Science is supposed to seek truth by testing hypotheses against the evidence. But evolution is materialistic story-telling. And the story persists even when the evidence contradicts it. I call this “zombie science,” and I describe many examples of it in my book of the same name. I’ll mention just one here. Students are shown drawings of some embryos of animals with backbones. In the drawings, all the embryos look similar in their earliest stages. Darwin believed this showed that we evolved from fish. But the story is false. Worse, mainstream biologists have long known that the drawings are false. They know that human and fish embryos look very different in their early stages. But many textbooks recycle the lie year after year anyway. Why? Because the materialistic story must be true.

The Sky is Falling

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is a big supporter of the March for Science. The UCS started as a leftist political movement in the 1960s, and it still champions various progressive causes. One of these is environmental activism. According to the UCS, “an overwhelming majority of climate scientists” believe in manmade global warming. More than that, “there is no debate” among scientists over global warming. None. Nada.

The AAAS and NCSE are also determined to enforce the consensus on global warming.

But there is a scientific debate over manmade global warming. Some climate scientists think the evidence does not support the consensus. The way to address the question is to debate the issue. It’s to weigh the evidence pro and con. Yet the UCS would silence dissenting scientists.

What really matters in science is not an opinion poll. It is the evidence. And some scientists argue persuasively that the evidence does not support Darwinian evolution or manmade global warming.

So the March for Science is not really about “evidence-based policies.” It is about enforcing the scientific consensus. It is about materialistic philosophy and progressive politics. And you’d better believe it!

Jonathan Wells, Ph.D. is a senior fellow of Discover Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. He’s the author of Icons of Evolution, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Evolution and Intelligent Design, and the new book Zombie Science: More Icons of Evolution.

Source/Fonte: The Stream

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A SBPC apoia essa marcha de conformidade de pensamento - Síndrome de Soldadinhos de Chumbo, onde todo o mundo pensa a mesma coisa e ninguém pensa em mais nada. Pobre ciência tupiniquim!!!

Unpaywall: leia gratuitamente alguns artigos científicos

Instale a extensão do Unpaywall nos browsers Chrome e Firefox, e leia gratuitamente alguns artigos científicos.

Nature dando espaço para o estruturalismo? Edição especial sobre o livro On Growth and Form, de D'Arcy Thompson.

The 100-year-old challenge to Darwin that is still making waves in research

On Growth and Form showed how physical and mathematical forces affect natural selection.

12 April 2017

Source/Fonte: Wild Horizons/UIG via Getty

The shape of this chambered nautilus is one of many biological features that D’Arcy Thompson used maths to explain.

This year marks the centenary of what seems now to be an extraordinary event in publishing: the time when a UK local newspaper reviewed a dense, nearly 800-page treatise on mathematical biology that sought to place physical constraints on the processes of Darwinism.

And what’s more, the Dundee Advertiser loved the book and recommended it to readers. When the author, it noted, wrote of maths, “he never fails to translate his mathematics into English; and he is one of the relatively few men of science who can write in flawless English and who never grudge the effort to make every sentence balanced and good.”

The Dundee Advertiser is still going, although it has changed identity: a decade after the review was published, it merged with The Courier, and that is how most people refer to it today. The book is still going, too. If anything, its title — alongside its balanced and good sentences — has become more iconic and recognized as the years have ticked by.

The book is On Growth and Form by D’Arcy Thompson. This week, Nature offers its own appreciation, with a series of articles in print and online that celebrate the book’s impact, ideas and lasting legacy.

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FREE PDF GRATIS: Nature

See specially/Vide especialmente

"Testando" a teoria do multiverso: Bayes, ajuste fino e tipicidade.

Testing the Multiverse: Bayes, Fine-Tuning and Typicality

Luke A. Barnes

(Submitted on 6 Apr 2017)

Theory testing in the physical sciences has been revolutionized in recent decades by Bayesian approaches to probability theory. Here, I will consider Bayesian approaches to theory extensions, that is, theories like inflation which aim to provide a deeper explanation for some aspect of our models (in this case, the standard model of cosmology) that seem unnatural or fine-tuned. In particular, I will consider how cosmologists can test the multiverse using observations of this universe.

Comments: 19 pages, 3 figures. Conference proceedings: to appear in "The Philosophy of Cosmology", edited by Khalil Chamcham, Joseph Silk, John D. Barrow, and Simon Saunders. Cambridge University Press, 2017

Subjects: Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO); History and Philosophy of Physics (physics.hist-ph)

Cite as: arXiv:1704.01680 [astro-ph.CO]

(or arXiv:1704.01680v1 [astro-ph.CO] for this version)

Submission history

From: Luke Barnes [view email] 

[v1] Thu, 6 Apr 2017 01:35:35 GMT (283kb,D)

FREE PDF GRATIS: arXiv

Descoberta a sexta base do DNA? Será? Nada mais a respeito?

An Adenine Code for DNA: A Second Life for N6-Methyladenine

Holger Heyn, Manel Esteller 

Published Online: April 30, 2015

Open Archive

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2015.04.021 | 

Article Info

Publication History

Published online: April 30, 2015

Summary

DNA N6-methyladenine (6mA) protects against restriction enzymes in bacteria. However, isolated reports have suggested additional activities and its presence in other organisms, such as unicellular eukaryotes. New data now find that 6mA may have a gene regulatory function in green alga, worm, and fly, suggesting m6A as a potential “epigenetic” mark.

FREE PDF GRATIS: Cell

Sistematizando as doze virtudes teóricas

Synthese

pp 1–33

Systematizing the theoretical virtues

Authors

Authors and affiliations

Michael N. Keas1

Email author

View author's OrcID profile

1.History and Philosophy of Science, Faculty of HumanitiesThe College at SouthwesternFort WorthUSA

Open Access Article

First Online: 10 March 2017

DOI: 10.1007/s11229-017-1355-6

Cite this article as:

Keas, M.N. Synthese (2017). doi:10.1007/s11229-017-1355-6

Source/Fonte: Adaptive Landscapes, via http://adaptive-landscapes.org/

Abstract

There are at least twelve major virtues of good theories: evidential accuracy, causal adequacy, explanatory depth, internal consistency, internal coherence, universal coherence, beauty, simplicity, unification, durability, fruitfulness, and applicability. These virtues are best classified into four classes: evidential, coherential, aesthetic, and diachronic. Each virtue class contains at least three virtues that sequentially follow a repeating pattern of progressive disclosure and expansion. Systematizing the theoretical virtues in this manner clarifies each virtue and suggests how they might have a coordinated and cumulative role in theory formation and evaluation across the disciplines—with allowance for discipline specific modification. An informal and flexible logic of theory choice is in the making here. Evidential accuracy (empirical fit), according to my systematization, is not a largely isolated trait of good theories, as some (realists and antirealists) have made it out to be. Rather, it bears multifaceted relationships, constituting significant epistemic entanglements, with other theoretical virtues.

Keywords

Theoretical virtues Inference to the best explanation Epistemic value Aesthetics Prediction Science–technology relations

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Máquinas moleculares construídas pelo homem: se o design na natureza é ilusão, por que correr atrás do vento???

DOI: 10.1039/C5CS00874C (Tutorial Review) Chem. Soc. Rev., 2016, 45, 6118-6129

Man-made molecular machines: membrane bound

Matthew A. Watson and Scott L. Cockroft * 

EaStCHEM School of Chemistry, University of Edinburgh, Joseph Black Building, David Brewster Road, Edinburgh, EH9 3FJ, UK. E-mail: scott.cockroft@ed.ac.uk

Received 25th November 2015

First published on the web 2nd March 2016

Abstract

Nature's molecular machines are a constant source of inspiration to the chemist. Many of these molecular machines function within lipid membranes, allowing them to exploit potential gradients between spatially close, but chemically distinct environments to fuel their work cycle. Indeed, the realisation of such principles in synthetic transmembrane systems remains a tantalising goal. This tutorial review opens by highlighting seminal examples of synthetic molecular machines. We illustrate the importance of surfaces for facilitating the extraction of work from molecular switches and motors. We chart the development of man-made transmembrane systems; from passive to machine-like stimuli-responsive channels, to fully autonomous transmembrane molecular machines. Finally, we highlight higher-order compartmentalised systems that exhibit emergent properties. We suggest that such higher-order architectures could serve as platforms for sophisticated devices that co-ordinate the activity of numerous transmembrane molecular machines.

Key learning points

(1) Illustrative examples of natural transmembrane molecular machines.

(2) The conceptual basis of molecular machines, categorisation of machine behaviour.

(3) The state of the art of synthetic molecular machines operating in solution and at interfaces.

(4) The progress towards and the future of man-made transmembrane molecular machines.

FREE PDF GRATIS: Chem Soc Rev