Reflectorites
Below are web article summaries with links for the period 1-10 January
2000, in descending date order.
The new format will just be a link, headlines and/or an early paragraph and
my comments (if any) in square brackets. This should be less time-
consuming for me to produce and easier for you to read .
Steve
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http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000110/sc/science_genome_3.html
Yahoo! Monday January 10 ... Company Has Sequences of 90 Pct of
Human Genome By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Corporate researchers said on Monday they
had sequenced 90 percent of the human genome -- the collection of human
genetic material -- and said they thought this covered 97 percent of all the
human genes... Also at:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/humangenome000110.html
ABCNEWS ... Human Genome 90% Done. Company Has Sequence
Nearly All Human Genes WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 - Corporate researchers
said today they had sequenced 90 percent of the human genome - the
collection of human genetic material - and said they thought this covered
97 percent of all the human genes .... &
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_597000/597540.stm BBC
... Monday, 10 January, 2000 ... Human gene race nears end ... By BBC
News Online Science Editor Dr David Whitehouse ... The private gene-
hunting company Celera Genomics have announced that they have 97% of
all human genes in their grasp ... [The article discusses concerns that the
company, Craig Venter's Celera Genomics will try to patent the genes,
restricting research. Venter claims he only will patent a few hundred, and
the rest will be on his web database and CD, but he will charge a fee for
accessing it. He isn't called `the Bill Gates of genetics' for nothing!]
http://www.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/01/10/primates.peril/index.html
CNN ... Report: After century of survival, many primates face extinction
The golden bamboo lemur tops the list of endangered primates ... January
10, 2000 ... WASHINGTON (CNN) -- After surviving the 20th century
with no extinctions, dozens of primate species face the threat of
disappearing forever, according to a report released Monday by
Conservation International. ... [Included in this group are gorillas and
orangutans. Now if they are among man's closest living relatives, with such
high IQs (for non-human animals) that they can even be taught (at least in
the case of gorillas), to use sign language, why are the apes now on the
verge of extinction? If high intelligence has such a powerful selective
advantage, then why have the apes not gone further with it? I will ask
Elaine Morgan's question again: "If we are so closely related to them [the
apes] ... then why are we not more like them?" (Morgan E., "The Scars of
Evolution", 1990, p1)].
http://www.sciencenews.org/20000108/bob3.asp Science News. Week of
Jan. 1, 2000; Vol. 157, No. 1. A Dark View of the Universe. Halos of
invisible matter give galaxies surprising breadth. By R. Cowen ... Three
new reports shed light on the distribution of dark matter in the universe.
Two of the studies indicate that invisible halos of this material provide
enormous breadth and bulk to galaxies. The halos extend 1.5 million light-
years from each galaxy's center and contain at least as much mass as 5
trillion suns. ... [More on how much of the universe's missing mass turns
out not to be exotic things like WIMPS and MACHOS but just dull and boring
dust!]
http://www.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/01/07/iguana.elnino.enn/index.html
CNN ... Galapagos iguanas shrink to survive El Nino ... January 7, 2000
By Environmental News Network staff. Scientists have discovered that
iguanas on Ecuador's Galapagos Islands shrink to survive a shortage of
food during El Nino, according to a report in Thursday's issue of Nature ...
Also at: http://www.sciencenews.org/20000108/fob2.asp Science News
Week of Jan. 1, 2000; Vol. 157, No. 1 ... The question of shrinking might
never have gotten serious thought if Wikelski's team hadn't built up so
many years of data, muses Gordon M. Burghardt of the University of
Tennessee at Knoxville. He grumbles, "Such studies are typically not
valued highly enough to fund by governments or foundations, but they have
the potential to unlock many secrets." [More on this report of non-
Darwinian morphological change on the Galapagos. Judy Stamps, a
professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California at Davis
points out in the article that "You have to remember that bone is living
tissue that is constantly being replaced, just like muscle". If that is the case
then maybe a lot of what is thought to be evolutionary change (e.g.
Darwin's Finches) is just fluctuations around a species' norm? The comment
about data that does not fit the prevailing values being ignored is
noteworthy from an ID perspective. If materialistic-naturalistic science
does not value ID then presumably they will not notice any evidence for
ID?]
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/chinaspace000107.html
ABCNEWS ... China's Close Encounters. Searching Space for the Real
and the Unreal The Journal of UFO Research on sale at a newsstand in
Beijing. UFO sightings have been reported across China recently,
prompting a spate of stories and a growing interest in what may be out
there. (AP Photo). By Kevin Platt. The Christian Science Monitor.
BEIJING- Long isolated by great walls of xenophobia, China is curiously
entering the new century by trying to build bridges of communication with
extraterrestrials. ... [It's interesting how once a population learns about
what UFOs look like, they start seeing them! As for the Chinese SETI (or
since Chinese writing goes from right to left should that be ITES?), maybe
ET has been sending us signals in Chinese? :-)]
http://www.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/01/05/clonedcalves.ap/index.html
CNN ... Study shows cells can be kept longer before cloning January 5,
2000 ... STORRS, Conn. (AP) -- Ear cells from a prize Japanese bull,
frozen and then cultured in a lab over several months, have produced
successful clones, challenging the notion that cells become too stale to
duplicate. ... [The article says the great significance of this is that "clones
could be made from cells that have been kept in the laboratory long enough
to do the meticulous -- and slow process of manipulating genes"].
http://cnn.com/2000/HEALTH/aging/01/03/aging.population/index.html
CNN ... Science takes cellular approach to explore aging process January
4, 2000 ... (CNN) -- Carl Nolting, still working and vigorous at 78, seems
to have found the fountain of youth and in the coming millennium, experts
say, many more of us will join him with long, active lives. Immortality,
though, may take a little longer. ... [An interesting summary of the cellular
processes in ageing. It can't all be telomeres because as the report says,
some organs like "the brain, the heart, the muscle, the kidney, etc. ... never
divide at all and they never replicate their nuclear DNA so their telomeres
can't get shorter and, therefore, that couldn't affect their longevity...".]
http://www.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/01/03/threadsnakes.enn/index.html
CNN ... Snakes hold thread of evolution evidence ... January 3, 2000 ... By
Environmental News Network staff. Only six to eight inches long, the
diminutive threadsnake boasts a unique feeding system that may have great
evolutionary and ecological importance, according to a recent study. [The
article goes on to say that "The evolutionary origin of snakes has been
contentious," Kley [Nate Kley, evolutionary biologist and herpetologist at
the University of Massachusetts at Amherst] said, ... "people do not know
from which lizards snakes evolved."]
http://www.sciencenews.org/20000101/fob3.asp Science News. Week of
Jan. 1, 2000; Vol. 157, No. 1. Mom's eggs execute Dad's mitochondria. By
J. Travis. ...Scientists have now found that during a sperm's creation, its
mitochondria-energy-producing units that power all cells-acquire molecular
tags that mark them for destruction once the sperm fertilizes an egg. This
death sentence, a protein called ubiquitin, may explain why mammals
inherit the DNA within mitochondria only from their mothers, a biological
curiosity geneticists have used to trace human evolution (SN: 2/6/99, p.
88). ... [This may save the Mitochondrial Eve hypothesis?]
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"When we consider the remote past, before the origin of the actual species
Homo sapiens, we are faced with a fragmentary and disconnected fossil
record. Despite the excited and optimistic claims that have been made by
some paleontologists, no fossil hominid species can be established as our
direct ancestor...The earliest forms that are recognized as being hominid
are the famous fossils, associated with primitive stone tools, that were
found by Mary and Louis Leakey in the Olduvai gorge and elsewhere in
Africa. These fossil hominids lived more than 1.5 million years ago and had
brains half the size of ours. They were certainly not members of our own
species, and we have no idea whether they were even in our direct ancestral
line or only in a parallel line of descent resembling our direct ancestor."
(Lewontin R.C., "Human Diversity", Scientific American Library: New
York NY, 1995, p163).
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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