Real Science Friday: Blue Whales Talk Across 2,000 Miles!

[Jefferson]

RSF: Blue Whales Talk Across 2,000 Miles!

This is the show from Friday August 12th, 2011.

SUMMARY:



* But What If Jonah's Not In Heaven? Then you can ask him, the young boy said to his teacher. Real Science Friday co-hosts Fred Williams and Bob Enyart discuss Ken Ham's current Answers magazine articles on:
- the size and abilities of the blue whale
- the latest find of soft tissue in allegedly million-year-old fossils.
Also, two stories in the news are discussed...

* Four-time Texas Multi-million Dollar Lottery Winner: Joan Ginther of Texas won $5M, $2M, $3M, and then $10 million dollars in a Texas scratch lottery game. Her recently publicized PhD in statistics from Stanford University has led many to conclude that she is not "lucky" but has figured out a way to give herself a winning edge. Bob and Fred talk about probabilities and how powerfully mathematics can inform you on whether something has actually happened by chance, or by some other method. For example, the appearance of a single protein, let alone a reproducing, living cell. Correction: Contrary to what Bob said on air, the same person winning a multi-million dollar pay off four times over would happen not once every septillion years, but once every quadrillion years!



* Albert Einstein's Laboratory: As discussed on a recent program, James Nickel, in his best-selling Mathematics: Is God Silent?, shows how mathematicians (and theoretical physicists for that matter) turn away from the physical universe and yet make astounding discoveries that help to explain the world of matter and energy. A common atheistic cliché refutes itself: "You can only know what your five senses tell you." In reality, mathematicians use only their minds, and their discoveries come decades or even centuries before their real-world counterparts find affirmation through observational science. Time Magazine's Albert Einstein: The Enduring Legacy says that today's "high precision instruments such as atomic clocks and lasers... have shown that he was absolutely on target with the equations he worked out with nothing more than a pencil." Yet to Einstein, the non-physical realm of "ideas" shouldn't even exist and that non-physical mathematics could describe so beautifully the physical universe was incomprehensible. Again, these phenomena are answered only by that which Einstein denied: that the universe was designed in the mind of God, so its workings can be discovered by the mind of men who are made in God's image. So in accurate science, as Johann Kepler is paraphrased, we are thinking God's thoughts after Him. Exploring astounding and unexpected symmetries with Einstein, mathematicians often describe their work as an aesthetic pursuit of beauty. So picking up pencils and ignoring their five senses, the mathematicians who turn away from the physical world to the non-material world of ideas, seeking pleasure from pure intellectual elegance, often end up being the ones who come closest to describing the physical nature of the cosmos. Atheists and agnostics like Albert Einstein struggle with the design in nature and its comprehensibility because these suggest that the universe originated with the desire for beauty in the mind of a personal Creator.





Today’s Resource: Have you browsed through our Science Department in our online store? Check out especially Walt Brown’s In the Beginning and Bob’s interviews with this great scientist in Walt Brown Week! You’ll also love Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez’ Privileged Planet (clip), and Illustra Media’s Unlocking the Mystery of Life (clip)! You can consider our BEL Science Pack; Bob Enyart’s Age of the Earth Debate; Bob's debate about Junk DNA with famous evolutionist Dr. Eugenie Scott; and the superb kids' radio program Jonathan Park: The Adventure Begins!

 

[The Barbarian]

Bob and Fred talk about probabilities and how powerfully mathematics can inform you on whether something has actually happened by chance, or by some other method. For example, the appearance of a single protein, let alone a reproducing, living cell. Correction: Contrary to what Bob said on air, the same person winning a multi-million dollar pay off four times over would happen not once every septillion years, but once every quadrillion years!

Of course, the key is that a protein doesn't appear by chance. Evolution takes whatever random mutations are handy and starts pruning by natural selection. And observably, it works.

A new, irreducibly complex enzyme system evolved in E. coli not by chance, but by a series of mutations selected from the many others, that happened to increase the activity of the protein.

 

[Persephone66]

So is Bob trying to prove that a man can live inside a whale?

 

[griffinsavard]

RSF: Blue Whales Talk Across 2,000 Miles!

This is the show from Friday August 12th, 2011.

SUMMARY:



* But What If Jonah's Not In Heaven? Then you can ask him, the young boy said to his teacher. Real Science Friday co-hosts Fred Williams and Bob Enyart discuss Ken Ham's current Answers magazine articles on:
- the size and abilities of the blue whale
- the latest find of soft tissue in allegedly million-year-old fossils.
Also, two stories in the news are discussed...

* Four-time Texas Multi-million Dollar Lottery Winner: Joan Ginther of Texas won $5M, $2M, $3M, and then $10 million dollars in a Texas scratch lottery game. Her recently publicized PhD in statistics from Stanford University has led many to conclude that she is not "lucky" but has figured out a way to give herself a winning edge. Bob and Fred talk about probabilities and how powerfully mathematics can inform you on whether something has actually happened by chance, or by some other method. For example, the appearance of a single protein, let alone a reproducing, living cell. Correction: Contrary to what Bob said on air, the same person winning a multi-million dollar pay off four times over would happen not once every septillion years, but once every quadrillion years!



* Albert Einstein's Laboratory: As discussed on a recent program, James Nickel, in his best-selling Mathematics: Is God Silent?, shows how mathematicians (and theoretical physicists for that matter) turn away from the physical universe and yet make astounding discoveries that help to explain the world of matter and energy. A common atheistic cliché refutes itself: "You can only know what your five senses tell you." In reality, mathematicians use only their minds, and their discoveries come decades or even centuries before their real-world counterparts find affirmation through observational science. Time Magazine's Albert Einstein: The Enduring Legacy says that today's "high precision instruments such as atomic clocks and lasers... have shown that he was absolutely on target with the equations he worked out with nothing more than a pencil." Yet to Einstein, the non-physical realm of "ideas" shouldn't even exist and that non-physical mathematics could describe so beautifully the physical universe was incomprehensible. Again, these phenomena are answered only by that which Einstein denied: that the universe was designed in the mind of God, so its workings can be discovered by the mind of men who are made in God's image. So in accurate science, as Johann Kepler is paraphrased, we are thinking God's thoughts after Him. Exploring astounding and unexpected symmetries with Einstein, mathematicians often describe their work as an aesthetic pursuit of beauty. So picking up pencils and ignoring their five senses, the mathematicians who turn away from the physical world to the non-material world of ideas, seeking pleasure from pure intellectual elegance, often end up being the ones who come closest to describing the physical nature of the cosmos. Atheists and agnostics like Albert Einstein struggle with the design in nature and its comprehensibility because these suggest that the universe originated with the desire for beauty in the mind of a personal Creator.





Today’s Resource: Have you browsed through our Science Department in our online store? Check out especially Walt Brown’s In the Beginning and Bob’s interviews with this great scientist in Walt Brown Week! You’ll also love Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez’ Privileged Planet (clip), and Illustra Media’s Unlocking the Mystery of Life (clip)! You can consider our BEL Science Pack; Bob Enyart’s Age of the Earth Debate; Bob's debate about Junk DNA with famous evolutionist Dr. Eugenie Scott; and the superb kids' radio program Jonathan Park: The Adventure Begins!

I love this stuff keep it coming. We know that....

1 John 5:19 We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.

 

[Jukia]

I love this stuff keep it coming. We know that....

1 John 5:19 We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.

The stuff you get from Pastor Bob and his buddies is often misleading. But then your quote of 1John5:19 is not entirely accurate either.

 

[TeeJay]

=The Barbarian;2754777]Of course, the key is that a protein doesn't appear by chance. Evolution takes whatever random mutations are handy and starts pruning by natural selection. And observably, it works.

A new, irreducibly complex enzyme system evolved in E. coli not by chance, but by a series of mutations selected from the many others, that happened to increase the activity of the protein.

Barbarian, if you were to get saved, you would have the mind of Crist and you would see more clerarly. But you are in the dark. God's word is for those "with ears to hear and eyes to see." You don't get these special eyes or ears apart from God.

I must correct you again. "Evolution" is an abstract concept that can't reason, or act, or select or do anything. Can you give me a list of beneficial mutations that scientists have identified?

Tom

 

[Stripe]

:mock: Evolution.

:think:

:mock: Evolutionists.

 

[Granite]

So, like I've asked before: does Enyart really believe he's smarter than the scientists he regularly cherrypicks, quote mines, and or dismisses?

 

[The Barbarian]

Barbarian, if you were to get saved

Tom, so long as you won't let Christ come first in your life, that kind of "saved", I can do without. I'll go with the old-fashioned kind, that puts God first.

you would have the mind of Crist and you would see more clerarly. But you are in the dark. God's word is for those "with ears to hear and eyes to see." You don't get these special eyes or ears apart from God.

Your pixie dust for clear vision looks remarkably like Kool-aid, Tom. You don't need magic. You just need to accept the evidence.

I must correct you again. "Evolution" is an abstract concept that can't reason, or act, or select or do anything.

It's directly observed to make populations more fit. Even many creationists now admit that.

Can you give me a list of beneficial mutations that scientists have identified?

Sure. Random wandering of the net...

A single clone of E. coli was cultured at 37 C (that is 37 degrees Celsius) for 2000 generations. A single clone was then extracted from this population and divided into replicates that were then cultured at either 32 C , 37 C, or 42 C for a total of another 2000 generations. Adaptation of the new lines was periodically measured by competing these selection lines against the ancestor population. By the end of the experiment, the lines cultured at 32 C were shown to be 10% fitter that the ancestor population (at 32 C), and the line cultured at 42 C was shown to be 20% more fit than the ancestor population. The replicate line that was cultured at 37 C showed little improvement over the ancestral line.

Bennett, A.F., Lenski, R.E., & Mittler, J.E. (1992). Evolutionary adaptation to temperature I. Fitness responses of Escherichia coli to changes in its thermal environment. Evolution, 46:16-30.

...


The coreceptor mutation CCR5Δ32 influences the dynamics of HIV epidemics and is selected for by HIV

Amy D. Sullivan Janis Wigginton, and Denise Kirschner†

Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-0620

Abstract

We explore the impact of a host genetic factor on heterosexual HIV epidemics by using a deterministic mathematical model. A protective allele unequally distributed across populations is exemplified in our models by the 32-bp deletion in the host-cell chemokine receptor CCR5, CCR5Δ32. Individuals homozygous for CCR5Δ32 are protected against HIV infection whereas those heterozygous for CCR5Δ32 have lower pre-AIDS viral loads and delayed progression to AIDS. CCR5Δ32 may limit HIV spread by decreasing the probability of both risk of infection and infectiousness. In this work, we characterize epidemic HIV within three dynamic subpopulations: CCR5/CCR5 (homozygous, wild type), CCR5/CCR5Δ32 (heterozygous), and CCR5Δ32/CCR5Δ32 (homozygous, mutant). Our results indicate that prevalence of HIV/AIDS is greater in populations lacking the CCR5Δ32 alleles (homozygous wild types only) as compared with populations that include people heterozygous or homozygous for CCR5Δ32. Also, we show that HIV can provide selective pressure for CCR5Δ32, increasing the frequency of this allele.


The mutation blocks the entry point for the virus, hence no infection.

N Engl J Med 1998 Jan 8;338(2):79-85

Polymorphisms in the coagulation factor VII gene and the risk of myocardial infarction.

Iacoviello L, Di Castelnuovo A, De Knijff P, D'Orazio A, Amore C, Arboretti R, Kluft C, Benedetta Donati M Department of Vascular Medicine and Pharmacology, Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri, Santa Maria Imbaro, Italy.

BACKGROUND: High blood levels of coagulation factor VII are associated with a risk of ischemic vascular disease. Although factor VII levels may be genetically determined, the relation between genetic polymorphisms of factor VII, factor VII blood levels, and the risk of myocardial infarction has not been established. METHODS: We performed a case-control study of 165 patients with familial myocardial infarction (mean [+/-SD] age, 55+/-9 years) and 225 controls without a personal or family history of cardiovascular disease (mean age, 56+/-8 years). The polymorphisms involving R353Q and hypervariable region 4 of the factor VII gene were studied. Factor VII clotting activity and antigen levels were also measured. RESULTS: Patients with the QQ or H7H7 genotype had a decreased risk of myocardial infarction (odds ratios, 0.08 [95 percent confidence interval, 0.01 to 0.9] and 0.22 [95 percent confidence interval, 0.08 to 0.63], respectively). For the R353Q polymorphism, the RR genotype was associated with the highest risk, followed by the RQ genotype and then by the QQ genotype (P<0.001). For the polymorphism involving hypervariable region 4, the combined H7H5 and H6H5 genotypes were associated with the highest risk, followed in descending order by the H6H6, H6H7, and H7H7 genotypes (P<0.001). Patients with the QQ or H7H7 genotype had lower levels of both factor VII antigen and factor VII clotting activity than those with the RR or H6H6 genotype. Patients with the lowest level of factor VII clotting activity had a lower risk of myocardial infarction than those with the highest level (odds ratio, 0.13; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.05 to 0.34). CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that certain polymorphisms of the factor VII gene may influence the risk of myocardial infarction. It is possible that this effect may be mediated by alterations in factor VII levels.

There are a lot more. How many more would you like to see?

 

[Vaquero45]

So, like I've asked before: does Enyart really believe he's smarter than the scientists he regularly cherrypicks, quote mines, and or dismisses?

Could someone hit Granite on the nose with a rolled up newspaper and put him outside? He did it again...

 

[Stripe]

:wave2: