Followers

Thursday, December 14, 2023

Medical Breakthroughs in 2023

 


Medical science is currently being transformed by scientific discoveries that will dramatically advance the way we diagnose and treat diseases and genetic disorders.


Alzheimers

The Alzheimer’s drug lecanemab (Leqembi) won FDA approval in July. Lecanemab removes the beta amyloid plaques in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s. Beta amyloids are the hallmark of Alzheimer’s. These proteins clump together to form plaques that destroy neurons, which are the cells that form the brain’s communication system. 

The drug does not stop the disease, but in a clinical trial, lecanemab slowed cognitive decline by about 30 percent over 18 months compared with a placebo. 

Medicare will provide coverage under certain conditions.


Muscular Dystrophy

In June 2023, the FDA approved the first gene therapy for children with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. People with this muscle-wasting disease don’t make the protein dystrophin, which helps keep muscle cells intact. The therapy helps the body produce a version of the missing protein.

The disease is progressive and most affected individuals require a wheelchair by the teenage years. Serious life-threatening complications may ultimately develop including disease of the heart muscle (cardiomyopathy) and respiratory difficulties.


Postpartum Depression (PPD)

Until August, the only medication in the United States specifically targeting postpartum depression required a 60-hour intravenous infusion in a hospital. With FDA approval of zuranolone (Zurzuvae), women suffering postpartum depression can take an oral medication at home and experience improvement in as little as three days. Zurzuvae is a medication belonging to the neuroactive steroid class. It acts on GABA receptors, providing rapid relief for postpartum depression.

Zurzuvae may cause side effects such as dizziness, drowsiness, and nausea. It may also cause headaches or sleep disturbances.


Sickle Cell Disease

On December 8, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Casgevy, the world’s first CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing therapy. The treatment helps patients produce healthy hemoglobin. In people with the disease, hemoglobin is abnormal, causing red blood cells to become hard and crescent shaped, which can block blood flow. By March 2024, the FDA will decide whether the same therapy can be used to treat beta-thalassemia, a disorder that reduces hemoglobin production.




Monday, December 11, 2023

The Vinča Culture

 

The Balkan Peninsula


The Vinča culture is named for the Serbian site southeast of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. The site was initially excavated by the Lithuanian archaeologist Marija Gimbutas.

There are hundreds of Vinča sites scattered around the Balkans. One of the largest sites was Vinča-Belo Brdo. It covered 72 acres (29 hectares) and had up to 2,500 people.

The Vinča culture occupied a region of Southeastern Europe corresponding mainly to modern-day Serbia and Kosovo, but parts of Southernmost Hungary, Western-Central Romania, Western Bulgaria, Eastern Croatia, Eastern Bosnia, Northern Montenegro and North Macedonia.


Vinča Symbols

The oldest scribed symbols found in Central Europe have been found on Neolithic artifacts (7th to 5th millennia BC) of the Vinča culture. Scholars believe that the Vinča signs represent the earliest form of writing, predating ancient Egyptian and Sumerian writing by thousands of years. 

What is known of these signs is limited since all the inscriptions are short and found on burial objects. Ritual burial accompanied by written signs among these Neolithic peoples suggests a priest-scribe caste.

According to an analysis by Shan Winn in 1973 and 1981, there are 210 signs. of that number, 30 are "core signs", with the remainder being variants and combinations.

Here are some of the Vinča signs:







Vinča artifacts include these figurines. Figurines such as these were most commonly buried under houses.



Perhaps the oldest known Vinča figurine (c. 6000 B.C.)




c. 5000 B.C.



c. 3000 B.C.





Wednesday, December 6, 2023

Trilobites Found in Ash Layers






Trilobites are extinct marine arthropods that form the class Trilobita. Trilobites form one of the earliest known groups of arthropods. The first appearance of trilobites in the fossil record defines the base of the Atdabanian stage of the Early Cambrian period (521 million years ago).

Trilobites featured three lobes on their exoskeletons and had half-moon-shaped skulls through which they breathed using their legs. These creatures have been found in layers of petrified ash within sandstone long the coast of Ko Tarutao island in Thailand. The layers were formed by ancient volcanic eruptions that settled on the sea floor, resulting in a green layer known as tuff.

"The tuffs will allow us to not only determine the age of the fossils we found in Thailand, but to better understand parts of the world like China, Australia, and even North America where similar fossils have been found in rocks that cannot be dated," said Shelly Wernette, the first author of the monograph, which details the new fossil findings.

The researchers from the University of California identified 12 types of trilobites which had previously been documented in other parts of the world, but never in Thailand.

Nigel Hughes, monograph co-author and UC Riverside geology professor, said “Because continents shift over time, part of our job has been to work out where this region of Thailand was in relation to the rest of Gondwanaland. It’s a moving, shape-shifting, 3D jigsaw puzzle we’re trying to put together. This discovery will help us do that."

The findings have been described in a monograph published in the journal Papers in Palaeontology.


Abstract:

Tuff-bearing upper Cambrian to lowermost Ordovician strata on Ko Tarutao island, Satun province, southernmost peninsular Thailand, contain a rich trilobite fauna relevant to global biostratigraphy, peri-Gondwanan palaeogeography and shifting evolutionary mode. This area of Sibumasu, a lower Palaeozoic marginal Gondwanan terrane, is shown to have been closely associated with Australia, North China (Sino-Korea) and other continental fragments from the supercontinent's northern equatorial sector, including South China at that time. Shared faunas also suggest a Kazakhstani and Laurentian association. Collections from eight sections yielded 10 newly discovered species and one new genus from ancient shoreface and inner shelf siliciclastic deposits. With the new taxa and revision of taxa known previously, we refine the age of the upper two formations of the Tarutao Group to the middle of Cambrian Stage 10, and lower–middle Tremadocian. Two biozones are erected for Sibumasu: the Eosaukia buravasi Zone, encompassing all Cambrian sections from Ko Tarutao, and the Asaphellus charoenmiti Zone, encompassing the Tremadocian fauna discussed herein. The new genus is Tarutaoia and new species are Tsinania sirindhornae, Pseudokoldinioidia maneekuti, Pagodia? uhleini, Asaphellus charoenmiti, Tarutaoia techawani, Jiia talowaois, Caznaia imsamuti, Anderssonella undulata, Lophosaukia nuchanongi and Corbinia perforata. Other taxa reported for the first time from Tarutao are Mansuyia? sp., Parakoldinioidia callosa Qian, Pseudagnostus sp., Homagnostus sp., Haniwa mucronata Shergold, Haniwa sosanensis? Kobayashi, Lichengia simplex Shergold, Pacootasaukia sp., Wuhuia? sp., Plethopeltella sp., Apatokephalus sp., Akoldinioidia sp. 1 and Koldinioidia sp.


Friday, December 1, 2023

The Fish That Landed



Tiktaalik roseae is a 375-million-year fossil fish that was discovered in the Canadian Arctic in 2004. Its discovery is believed to shed light on a point in evolutionary history when the very first fish ventured out onto land. It is sometimes referred to as a "fishapod".

Tiktaalik roseae is a genus of extinct lobe-finned fish from the late Devonian period, when the earliest forests appeared along with land animals such as arthropods (myriapods, arachnids and hexapods). Tiktaalik had some features like those of four-legged animals. It is an example of an ancient sarcopterygian fish which adapted to a swampy oxygen-poor water habitat. The creature is regarded by evolutionists as a transition from fish to tetrapod.

What I find exciting about this discovery is the critical method and logistics of the exploration over four summers in the Alaskan Arctic. Tiktaalik was discovered through a well-conceived methodically launched project to find a predicted specimen and demonstrates the predictive capacity of paleontology. 

The discovery by Daeschler, Shubin, and Jenkins was published in the April 6, 2006, issue of Nature and quickly recognized as a transitional form. Jennifer A. Clack, a Cambridge University expert on tetrapod evolution, said of Tiktaalik, "It's one of those things you can point to and say, 'I told you this would exist,' and there it is."
Neil Shubin, one of the paleontologists who discovered tiktaalik, holding a cast of its skull.

"After five years of digging on Ellesmere Island, in the far north of Nunavut, they hit pay dirt: a collection of several fish so beautifully preserved that their skeletons were still intact. As Shubin's team studied the species they saw to their excitement that it was exactly the missing intermediate they were looking for. 'We found something that really split the difference right down the middle," Daeschler said.

Ahlberg and Clack’s review explains Tiktaalik's importance:

The Nunavut field project had the express aim of finding an intermediate between Panderichthys and tetrapods, by searching in sediments from the most probable environment (rivers) and time (early Late Devonian). Second, Tiktaalik adds enormously to our understanding of the fish-tetrapod transition because of its position on the tree and the combination of characters it displays.

Martin Brazeau, gloats:

"Creationists haven't said a lot about Tiktaalik, and it's no surprise. However, a few responses have trickled out and they more or less run in the same vein. I thought this was a rather telling remark on Tiktaalik posted over on Dembski's blog. We're treated to an excerpt of the pre-transformation version of the DI's original response that goes:

I especially like Crowther’s last sentence which I present in its original form (bold type included): “There’s a problem with the Darwinist position that runs even deeper than this, however: If Darwinian evolution is an undisputed fact, as its chief defenders routinely claim, why is this fossil find being billed as such an crucial piece of evidence?”

Icing on the cake! I love it!!!

What I love even more is all this rhetoric and absolutely no reference to the actual fossil material. So, I'll take that as meaning that these guys have nothing to say about its transitional status. The real icing on the cake is all this puff and no real substance.

Unfortunately, the media's response to the discovery is not quite the same as the palaeontological community's interpretation of it. Therefore, by responding to these articles, creationists and their ilk are just blowing smoke. The importance of Tiktaalik has nothing to do with proving the fish-tetrapod transition. That's pretty much taken care of by a wealth of data from the past 100 years."

One wonders why Brazeau even cares what creationists think. Does he harbor a certain fear that maybe the scheme he presents could point to a Creator?


Thursday, October 26, 2023

Women in the American Scientific Affiliation


Janel M. Curry, Executive Director of the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA)


Dorothy F. Chappel


Roles of women in STEM fields, including social and natural sciences, have changed significantly since WWII. Studying the inclusion of women in the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) provides a distinctive gender-based case study related to Christian mission and the evangelical Christian community. Analysis of fifty years of newsletters, leadership statistics, and membership numbers illuminates the story of women over time. The history of women in the ASA parallels the larger advancement of women, while also illuminating unique challenges within the evangelical Christian context.

Read "Women in the American Scientific Affiliation: Past, Present, and Future" by Janel M. Curry and Dorothy F. Chappel



Saturday, October 21, 2023

The Genesis Rulers Through the Lens of Anthropology






Dr. Tim Daughtry, a Christian Apologist, reviews The First Lords of the Earth: An Anthropological Study


The book of Genesis is typically read and interpreted by Christians and Jews in one of two ways. In one approach, Genesis is treated as a literal and accurate description of human origins and early human history. In this literalist view, Adam and Eve were not only real people, but they were also the first people on Earth. In the other approach, Genesis is read as a series of folk stories and myths that reveal important truths about humanity when interpreted allegorically. In this view, Adam and Even are characters in the creation story rather than real people who existed in history. The important point in this mode of interpretation is not that Adam and Eve were real historical characters but that that the story reveals important truths about human pride, disobedience, estrangement from God, and the hope of reconciliation.

In The First Lords of the Earth, Alice Linsley offers a fresh perspective through the lens of Biblical anthropology. Drawing from over forty years of research into Genesis along with scientific studies of ancient cultures, symbols, beliefs, and linguistic analysis, Linsley makes the case that the important figures of Genesis were not only real people but were members of the early Hebrew caste of ruler-priests who moved from Africa into the Fertile Crescent and Ancient Near East. As just one example, she makes the case that the Adam and Eve of Genesis were not the first humans, but neither were they mythical archetypes. Instead, Adam was a real ruler who lived in a vast area around the Nile River and whose sons Cain and Seth married the daughters of Enoch, who lived at the same time. The book’s exploration of early Hebrew kinship, marriage, and ascendancy patterns places these and later Biblical characters in an evidence-based historical context and provides rich anthropological context for the Scriptural accounts of the lives of later figures such as Abraham, Noah, and Joseph. The title of the book derives from the anthropological evidence that these and other early figures in Scripture were powerful ruler-priests with extensive domains in the lands described in the Bible.

The book offers a detailed look at a number of factors of early Hebrew culture, but one of the most interesting was the evidence that belief in God Father and God Son, along with a Messianic hope, was an important theme in Hebrew thought going back 6000 years that foreshadowed the beliefs of Christianity. Linsley makes a powerful case that the foundations of Christianity were present in early Horite and Sethite Hebrew beliefs that were present long before Abraham’s time.

The First Lords of the Earth is an excellent resource for a wide range of readers, including those interested in early Hebrew history for its own sake and for those who want to deepen their understanding of Scripture.


END


Related Reading: The First Lords and Their Authority; The First Lords and Messianic Expectation; The Adam and Eve of History


Tuesday, October 3, 2023

The 2023 Nobel Prize Awards

 

Methods for vaccine production before the COVID-19 pandemic. 
© The Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine. Ill. Mattias Karlén


The 2023 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine will go to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their discovery that modifying mRNA – a form of genetic material your body uses to produce proteins – could reduce unwanted inflammatory responses and allow it to be delivered into cells. While the impact of their findings may not have been apparent at the time of their breakthrough over a decade ago, their work paved the way for the development of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, as well as many other therapeutic applications currently in development. 

As of 2023, 116 Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine have been awarded to 215 men and 13 women. The first one was awarded in 1901 to the German physiologist, Emil von Behring, for his work on serum therapy and the development of a vaccine against diphtheria.

Vaccination stimulates the formation of an immune response to a particular pathogen. This gives the body a head start in the fight against disease in the event of a later exposure. Vaccines based on killed or weakened viruses have long been available, exemplified by the vaccines against polio, measles, and yellow fever. In 1951, Max Theiler was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for developing the yellow fever vaccine.

Yellow fever was fairly common and claimed many lives in the tropics. The disease is caused by a virus and is transmitted to people by insects and also from one person to another. Max Theiler succeeded in transmitting the virus to mice, which paved the way for more in-depth research. When the virus was transmitted between mice, a weakened form of the virus was obtained that could make apes immune. In 1937 Theiler succeeded in obtaining an even weaker variant of the virus. This variant, 17D, came to be used as a human vaccine.

The 2023 Nobel Prize in physics will go to a team of 3 scientists who used lasers to clarify the behavior of electrons, and many prior Nobels have honored basic research. Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier developed "experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter". They have given us new tools for exploring the world of electrons inside atoms and molecules.


Friday, September 22, 2023

Huge Spider Fossil Found in Australia


 Photo credit © Michael Frese



The second largest spider fossil has been found in Australia. It dates to 11-15 million years ago. It is around five times bigger than similar spider species living today. In terms of size, it’s comparable to a modern wolf spider at around 50 millimeters or 2 inches toe-to-toe.

The spider is named "Megamonodontium mccluskyi", a reference to its nearest living relatives, a group of tiny brush-footed trapdoor spiders from the genus Monodontium. The latter name is after Dr Simon McClusky who discovered the fossil in June 2020.

Read more here: Astonishing 15-Million-Year-Old Spider Fossil is the Second Largest Ever Found


Thursday, September 14, 2023

Tips for STEM Teachers





If you are teaching STEM-related courses, congratulations because you are trailblazing a generation of engineers and technology experts. This is an opportunity to be at the forefront of something that could potentially shake up the job market in the years to come.

If you are looking for encouragement and advice, here are some tips that should help anyone who teaches a STEM-related course.


1. Integrate All Four STEM Subjects

As stated earlier, STEM combines four subjects: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. As a STEM teacher, you should familiarize yourself with all these subjects and be ready to integrate them into your teaching methods. As a result, the students will get real-world, meaningful learning. 

As a STEM educator, you help your students apply what they learn to real-life situations. You can do that by setting up practical lessons where their knowledge is tested, and they have to use what they have learned to solve real-life problems.

This should help them develop thinking, investigative, reasoning, and creative skills that should come in handy in this modern and technology-oriented world.


2. Have a Good STEM Curriculum

It can be relatively hard to find a STEM curriculum that has been set out by the relevant educational authorities, particularly because it doesn’t exist. However, several sites have put up agood and reliable STEM lesson guides.

One of the most popular and highly recommended ones is eFGI for Teachers. Here, you will find a variety of tools to boost your students’ math and science skills, as well as ideas on how to enliven the classroom with engineering projects.

They have lesson plans, class activities, outreach programs, and also web resources, among a host of other things that could guide you to make your STEM lessons as interactive and educative as possible.

Another site that offers good and reliable lesson guides is TeachEngineering. However, you must be cautious in the STEM teaching guides you use because not every guide that claims to be a STEM guide is actually a STEM guide.

Here are a few things you can use to determine if the guide is suited for STEM lessons.

A good STEM lesson is guided by the seven-step engineering design process in solving problems:

Focuses on real-world problems.

Provides for multiple right answers and reiterates the importance of failure as a part of learning.

Involves students in productive teamwork.

Teaches students to access reliability of information.

Helps students to develop critical thinking and ability to analyze data.

Applies rigorous math and science content.

Immerses students in hands-on inquiry and open-ended exploration.

Supports a teaching process that is mainly student-centered and inquiry-based.

Requires students to tap into their design skills and create a prototype of the solutions.

Using this checklist, you can now know which online teaching curriculum is good enough for you to use and can include in your STEM teacher preparation.




Thursday, July 20, 2023

First Lords is a Paradigm-Shifting Book

 


Dear Readers,

It has been a long time coming, but my book The First Lords of the Earth: An Anthropological Study is now available to purchase on Amazon. Options include Kindle, paperback, and hard cover, and all are priced to accommodate the book lover on a tight budget.

This book identifies the social structure and religious beliefs of the early Hebrew ruler-priest caste (6000-4000 years ago), their dispersion out of Africa, their territorial expansion, trade routes, and influence on the populations of the Fertile Crescent and Ancient Near East. It includes diagrams showing the kinship pattern of the biblical Hebrew.

It exposes a widely held misconception that the early Hebrew had a patriarchal social structure. For that to be true, descent, inheritance, residence, authority, and the right to rule would be vested exclusively with males. This book shows that none of these features of the Hebrew social structure suggest a strict patriarchy. 

The rulers listed in Genesis were Hebrew and the social structure of the Hebrew ruler-priest caste was unusual for that time in that it exhibited considerable gender balance. The binary feature of their social structure and its balance of male-female authority is addressed in great detail in my book. These are evident also in the male-female narrative couplets found in the Bible.

There are many examples: the distinct duties/responsibilities of the mother's house versus the father's house; male prophets-female prophets; male rulers-female rulers; inheritance by male heirs-inheritance by female heirs, patrilocal residence-matrilocal residence; Hebrew patronymics-Hebrew matronymics; and in the Hebrew double unilineal descent pattern, both the patrilineage and the matrilineage are recognized and honored, but in different ways. 

The blood symbolism of the Passover associated with Moses has a parallel in the blood symbolism of the scarlet cord associated with Rahab. The abusive behavior of drunken Noah toward his sons has a parallel in the abusive behavior of drunken Lot toward his daughters.

There is binary balance in the New Testament narratives also. Jesus restored the widow of Nain's deceased son to his mother (Luke 7:11-17). Jesus restored Jairus' deceased daughter to her father (Mark 5:21-43).

When Jesus was presented in the temple His identity as Messiah was attested by the priest Simeon and the prophetess Anna.

To understand the gender distinctions and binary balance of the early Hebrew, we must dismiss the false narrative that their social structure was patriarchal.

Readers say this book brings the figures of the Old Testament to life.

The research took 40 years, but I was able to make a rather complex subject easy to understand. I hope you will buy the book and discover answers to some perennial questions, such as:

  • Who were the Horite Hebrew and the Sethite Hebrew?
  • Where is the oldest known site of Horite Hebrew worship?
  • Why did so many Hebrew men have two wives?
  • What was the difference in status between wives and concubines?
  • What types of authority did the biblical Hebrew recognize?
  • What were some symbols of authority among the early Hebrew?
  • How did their acute observation of the patterns in Nature inform their reasoning?
  • If Judaism is NOT the Faith of the early Hebrew, what did they believe?

It is ancient history, anthropology, and biblical studies wrapped into one fascinating read. I hope you will find it helpful and informative.

Best wishes to you all,

Alice C. Linsley


Wednesday, June 14, 2023

Donkeys Descend from Wild East African Asses

 

Donkeys were first domesticated from wild asses around 7,000 years ago in East Africa, perhaps helping humans adapt to more arid conditions (Credit: Eric Lafforgue/Getty Images)


Donkeys were first domesticated from wild asses around 7,000 years ago in East Africa. This is slightly earlier than previously believed. Further, the researchers concluded that all modern donkeys living today appear to be descended from this single domestication event.

In both Egypt and Mesopotamia, donkeys were considered important enough to be buried with humans, in some cases, even with kings or rulers, according to Laerke Recht at the University of Graz in Austria. She says that donkeys made a huge difference in humanity's ability to transport goods over long distances by land due to the animals' endurance and ability to carry heavy burdens.

"While rivers such as the Euphrates and Tigris in Mesopotamia and the Nile in Egypt could be used for transport of heavy and/or bulk goods, donkeys meant a massive increase and intensification of contacts over land," she says.

Recht says this coincided with the increasing use of bronze during in the third millennium BC. "Donkeys could carry the heavy copper over long distances and into areas where it could not be found naturally (or only in very small amounts), including Mesopotamia." 

Ludovic Orlando has been leading a project that sequenced the DNA from the donkey skeletons found at the site of a Roman villa in the village of Boinville-en-Woëvre. This was part of a larger study to trace the origin of domestication of donkeys and their subsequent spread to other parts of the world. The research is providing surprising insights into the history of our own species through our relationship with these versatile animals.

"These were gigantic donkeys," says Orlando, director of the Centre for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse, at the Purpan Medical School in Toulouse, France. "These specimens, which were genetically linked to donkeys in Africa, were bigger than some of the horses."

Read more here.


Saturday, June 10, 2023

Sound Used to Improve Reef Complexity

 

A speaker is installed on the seafloor to play the sounds of a healthy reef ecosystem in the hopes of encouraging coral larvae settlement. (Photo by Dan Mele, © Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)


Aran Mooney has found that by recording the sounds of a healthy reef and playing them back to coral larvae, the larvae may settle where they normally wouldn’t—on a damaged reef in need of restoration.

Larvae placed in acoustically transparent cups and isolated from all other environmental cues were more likely to settle onto the reef and grow when the cups were placed on a vibrant, noisy reef than on a degraded one lacking a complex soundscape.

Although that seems like bad news for damaged reefs, coral larvae’s attraction to healthy reef sounds could prove to be a powerful tool in reef restoration efforts.


Read more here.


Wednesday, May 24, 2023

Our Amazing Sun





Did you know that "The sun lies at the heart of the solar system, where it is by far the largest object. It holds 99.8% of the solar system's mass and is roughly 109 times the diameter of the Earth — about one million Earths could fit inside the sun.

The surface of the sun is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5,500 degrees Celsius) hot, while temperatures in the core reach more than 27 million F (15 million C), driven by nuclear reactions. One would need to explode 100 billion tons of dynamite every second to match the energy produced by the sun, according to NASA.

The sun is one of more than 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. It orbits some 25,000 light-years from the galactic core, completing a revolution once every 250 million years or so. The sun is relatively young, part of a generation of stars known as Population I, which are relatively rich in elements heavier than helium. An older generation of stars is called Population II, and an earlier generation of Population III may have existed, although no members of this generation are known yet.

Read more here.


Friday, May 19, 2023

Dinosaurs on Noah's Ark?

 


Join us at the next CWiS Live! this Sunday, May 21 at 5:30 pm ET / 2:30 pm PT and/or on Tuesday, May 23 at 7:30 pm ET / 4:30 pm PT.

You are invited to attend "Writing as a Christian Woman in Science: personal experience from Baby Dinosaurs on the Ark with Janet Kellogg Ray." We will be listening to Janet talk about her recent book, Baby Dinosaurs on the Ark?: The Bible and Modern Science and the Trouble of Making It All Fit. She will share her personal story as a Christian Woman in Science and discuss the book publishing process as a professional writer in science and faith. This will be an enlightening time for those interested in the science and faith dialogue, as well as those interested in publishing their own work one day.

Janet is the author of Baby Dinosaurs on the Ark? The Bible and Modern Science, and the Trouble of Making It All Fit, A Study Guide for Baby Dinosaurs on the Ark, and releasing in October, The God of Monkey Science: People of Faith in a Modern Scientific World.

Join Zoom Meeting on May 21 or 23:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85174704294


A Study Guide for BABY DINOSAURS ON THE ARK?: https://amzn.to/3mLJ9Fu

Check out this book review by CWiS member, Kristine Johnson.




Friday, April 28, 2023

Male Sea Lions Rebounding




California sea lions have managed to maintain -- and, in the case of males, increase -- their average body size as their population grows and competition for food becomes fiercer. This is in contrast to other marine mammals, whose average body size tends to decrease as their numbers increase. Researchers report that sexual selection was a strong driving force for males to grow bigger and to strengthen muscles in their neck and jaw that help them fight for mates. Both male and female sea lions evaded food shortages by diversifying their diets and, in some cases, foraging further from the shore.

To explore how California sea lion ecology has changed as their population has grown, the researchers analyzed museum specimens of adult male and female California sea lions collected in central and northern California between 1962 and 2008. To estimate changes in body size, they compared the overall size of more than 300 sea lion skulls collected over the years. They also measured other skull features, such as the size of muscle attachment points, which allowed them to assess changes in sea lion neck flexibility and biting force.

Read more here.


Friday, March 31, 2023

Women Excel in STEM



A medieval transcription of Euclid's Elements featuring a woman teaching geometry.


Science has the power to expand our horizons and helps us to see how great God is…Our response to what we see in the world is rational, emotional and active: worship as well as systematic theology. - Ruth Bancewicz


From Presidents and CEOs of organizations, to researchers, science writers, and journalists, Christian women in STEM are leaders in their fields and paving the way for others to follow. As Women’s History Month draws to a close, we highlight the work of ten Christian women in various STEM fields, including astrophysics, engineering, biology, and climate science. We also include science communicators who are doing the important work of sharing science with lay Christian audiences through writing and journalism. Of course this is not an all inclusive list of Christian women in STEM. There are countless others throughout history who have pioneered and unlocked discoveries in their fields. And there are many more contemporary Christian women in STEM fields like Mary Schweitzer who found the first evidence of soft tissue in a 68-million year dinosaur bone, Carol Hill whose research gave us a better understanding of the age and origin of the Grand Canyon, and Katherine Johnson, a NASA mathematician whose work helped send Apollo to the Moon.

Christian women are also leading important conversations on the intersection of faith and science, which has traditionally been dominated by white male voices. Faith and science organizations like the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) was previously led by rocket scientist Leslie Wickman, the Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Society (DoSER) program has been led by astrophysicist Jennifer Wiseman, and BioLogos is currently led by astronomer Deb Haarsma. Christian sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund has dedicated her career to understanding how scientists and religious people perceive each other, helping combat misconceptions and bridge the communication gap between faith and science communities on important topics like Climate Change, COVID-19, and evolution.

Despite numerous role-models, Christian women still remain underrepresented in STEM, and the numbers are even starker for Christian women of color. Being a woman in STEM comes with its own set of challenges, but there are also challenges that are unique to Christian women. In an interview with BioLogos, Loryn Phillips, a graduate student in biology and member of the Christian Women in Science (CWiS) leadership board shared: “On top of the challenges that already come with being a woman in science, Christian women in science carry additional burdens. We don’t want to lose the respect of our colleagues or jeopardize our careers because we identify as Christian, especially when we desire to be public and vocal about sharing God’s majesty in our work with others.” Sadly even in the Church, Loryn shared that Christian women in science face the challenge of, “feeling ashamed or not feeling safe to discuss their research for fear of ridicule or judgment, and feeling alone.” There is still work to be done, but thankfully there isn’t a shortage of Christian women role-models in STEM for the next generation of women and girls to look up to and see themselves represented.


Read more here: 10 Christian Women to Know: STEM Edition - Post - BioLogosSister Mary Celine Fasenmyer; Sister Mary Gervase; Agnes Giberne: A Lover of Science; Christian Women in Science, Technology and Engineering


Monday, February 13, 2023

Pangaea, Rodinia, Columbia, and Kenorland

 

Scientists theorize that supercontinents have formed in cycles throughout Earth's history. Pangaea was the most recent one, and it broke up approximately 200 million years ago. Some scientists believe we are in the middle of the formation of a new supercontinent that will include the mountains formerly known as the Mediterranean Sea

This should not create anxiety. The movement of Earth's plates is very slow. It will be another 50 million years before the Mediterranean Sea disappears as the African Plate and the Eurasian plate join.





The Pangaea supercontinent existed during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras. Pangaea is the most recent supercontinent to have existed and the first to be reconstructed by geologists.

Rodinia (Russian родина, meaning "motherland" or "birthplace") was a Neoproterozoic supercontinent that assembled 1.1–0.9 billion years ago and broke up 750–633 million years ago. Rodinia's continental fragments reassembled to form Pannotia 633–573 million years ago (shown below). 

Pannotia was named by Powell (1995, University of Western Australia) based on the term "Pannotios" proposed by Stump in 1987 for "the cycle of tectonic activity common to the Gondwana continents that resulted in the formation of the supercontinent."




Another of Earth's supercontinents is called Columbia (Nuna or Hudsonland) and is thought to have existed approximately 2,500 to 1,500 million years ago in the Paleoproterozoic Era (from 2,500 to 1,600 million years ago). Zhao et al. 2002 proposed that the assembly of the supercontinent Columbia was completed by global-scale collisional events during 2.1–1.8 billion years ago. Other sources give 1,820–1,350 million years ago.

Columbia consisted of proto cratons that made up the cores of the continents of Laurentia, Baltica, Ukrainian Shield, Amazonian Shield, Australia, and possibly Siberia, North China, and Kalaharia as well.

Kenorland was one of the earliest known supercontinents on Earth. It is thought to have formed during the Neoarchaean Era c. 2.72 billion years ago by the accretion of Neoarchaean cratons and the formation of new continental crust.

Tuesday, February 7, 2023

2023 "Year of Open Science"


In a time when many distrust Science or feel that their input is neglected, NASA proposes a corrective.

NASA has declared 2023 as the Year of Open Science to celebrate the benefits and successes of open science and to inspire more scientists to adopt open science practices. NASA's Year of Open Science is part of the five-year Transform to Open Science (TOPS) mission and the Open Source Science Initiative (OSSI). TOPS is an ambitious plan to accelerate open science practices and major scientific discoveries by increasing understanding and adoption of open science practices and broadening participation by historically excluded communities. 

In 2023, TOPS will release an introductory open science curriculum, engage with historically underrepresented groups, and develop incentives for open science practices. 

The success of the Year of Open Science will be driven by collaborations with individuals, teams, and organizations who are ready to transform the culture of scientific research into one that celebrates openness and inclusion.


Strategic Objectives

Open Science creates more advanced and inclusive research faster, builds a more just and equitable world, and ensures that minds from all walks of life can participate in science. TOPS is NASA’s ambitious plan to accelerate open science practices. It’s a 5-year journey that will: 

Accelerate major scientific discoveries.

Broaden participation by historically excluded communities.

Increase understanding and adoption of open science principles and techniques.

Open Science will broaden participation, increase accessibility to knowledge, and embrace new technologies that can respond to these changes at scale. 

If your organization wishes to create an open science infrastructure, TOPS will show you how.



Monday, January 30, 2023

Dr. Judith Curry Deserves a Fair Hearing

 


Dr. Judith Curry is a true climatologist. She once headed the department of earth and atmospheric sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, until she gave up on the academy so that she could express herself independently. She once told a journalist, “Independence of mind and climatology have become incompatible.”

She added, "Climatology has become a political party with totalitarian tendencies,” she charges. “If you don’t support the UN consensus on human-caused global warming, if you express the slightest skepticism, you are a ‘climate-change denier,’ a stooge of Donald Trump, a quasi-fascist who must be banned from the scientific community.”

The climate models used by scientists working for the United Nations cannot explain why the climate suddenly cooled between 1950 and 1970, giving rise to widespread warnings about the onset of a new ice age.

Curry notes that between 1910 and 1940, the planet warmed during a climatic episode that resembles our own, down to the degree. The warming cannot be blamed on CO2 emissions because the carbon-dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels were relatively small in those years. Curry says, “almost half of the warming observed in the twentieth century came about in the first half of the century, before carbon-dioxide emissions became large.”

Speaking of climate changes, she points to natural factors, of which there are many. These factors reveal far greater complexity than is generally acknowledged by global warming alarmists.




The following organizations are in agreement that climate changes: the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the National Academies of more than 30 other countries, the American Association for the advancement of science (AAAS), the American Meteorological Society (AMS), The American Institute of Physics (AIP), The Geological Society of America (GSA), The American Physical Society (APS), and the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

However, among the scientists in these organizations there is a range of positions as to which factors contribute most to warming. All tend to agree that solar radiance and Earth-Sun geometry are very significant. Yet we hear about this less than we hear about the danger of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel energy sources.

Earth's climate varies from region to region and from age to age. Therefore, it is misleading to speak of "climate change". Instead, we should speak of "climate changes" over vast periods of time. The Pleistocene glacial epoch (2,600,000-11,700 years ago) saw substantial variations in the extent of glaciers and ice sheets. These variations were driven by changes in the distribution of solar radiation across Earth’s surface. The insolation pattern is strongly affected by the geometry of Earth’s orbit around the Sun and by the orientation, or tilt, of Earth’s axis relative to the direct rays of the Sun.

Worldwide, the most recent glacial period, or ice age, culminated about 21,000 years ago in what is called the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). During this time, continental ice sheets extended well into the middle latitude regions of Europe and North America, reaching as far south as present-day London and New York City. Global annual mean temperature appears to have been about 4–5 °C (7–9 °F) colder than in the mid-20th century.

The Sahara was once wet, and with on-going reforestation projects and changes in monsoons, it will likely be wet again.

The Botswanan basin in southern Africa was once a sea, filled by water from the Angolan Highlands. Thousands of stoneage tools have been found there. 

At its peak, Mega Lake Chad covered more than 400,000 square kilometers (150,000 square miles), making it the largest lake on Earth today.

Researchers identified two distinct environments at the South Pole at the close of the Permian Period. There was a warm rainforest with tree-ferns, palm trees, and baobab trees at the lower elevations, and a cooler mountainous region dominated by beech trees and conifers.

NASA bases climate change on a 136-year record. According to NASA, 16 of the 17 warmest years in the 136-year record all have occurred since 2001, with the exception of 1998. What happened to make 1998 different? This marked the completion of Earth's axial precession, a cycle of about 25,800 years (Earth's Great Year). Obviously, we have no climate records going back that far.

In the cycle of Earth’s Great Year, the line off the North Pole axis (extending toward Polaris) scribes a complete circle in the heavens about every 25,800 years. A complete cycle takes between 25,000 and 28,000 years, depending on the amount of Earth's wobble. One cycle is Earth’s Great Year. Climate and atmospheric changes appear to become more acute toward the end and beginning of a new year.

Judith Curry is not alone in her consideration of natural causes. In June 2013, Dr. Roy W. Spencer wrote, "Hundreds of millions of dollars that have gone into the expensive climate modelling enterprise has all but destroyed governmental funding of research into natural sources of climate change. For years the modelers have maintained that there is no such thing as natural climate change…yet they now, ironically, have to invoke natural climate forces to explain why surface warming has essentially stopped in the last 15 years!"



Monday, January 16, 2023

Self-Healing Concrete

 


A section of the First Century BC Roman wall of Empuries (Ampurias) in Spain. 
The base of the wall was made of calcareous rock while the upper portion is of Roman concrete (opus caementicium).  Photo by Mark Cartwright, Creative Commons


Cement is a human-made conglomerate comprised of sand and gravel aggregates with calcined lime and clay. It is mixed with water to form mortar or mixed with sand, gravel, and water to make concrete. Concrete is a mixture of broken stone or gravel, sand, and cement. In ancient times concrete often contained crushed seas shells.

Cement-matrix composites include concrete (containing coarse and fine aggregates), mortar (containing fine aggregate, but no coarse aggregate), and cement paste (containing no aggregate, whether coarse or fine).

The ancient Romans built extremely durable sea walls using a concrete made from lime and volcanic ash to bind with rocks. Rather than eroding in the presence of sea water, the material gained strength from the exposure. Scientists have discovered that elements within the volcanic material reacted with sea water to strengthen the construction.

“Contrary to the principles of modern cement-based concrete, the Romans created a rock-like concrete that thrives in open chemical exchange with seawater,” reports Marie Jackson (University of Utah) in the journal American Mineralogist.

Mixing the concrete with limestone-producing bacteria allowed for cracks to self-heal. The bacteria, either Bacillus pseudofirmus or Sporosarcina pasteurii, are found in highly alkaline lakes near volcanoes, and are able to survive for up to 200 years without oxygen or food. They are activated when they come into contact with water. They then use the calcium lactate as a food source, producing limestone that closes up the cracks.

Related reading: Ancient Roman Concrete was Incredibly Strong


Tuesday, January 3, 2023

Massive Fish Nest Colony

 

J ALFRED WEGENER INSTITUTE, PS124 OFOBS TEAM


Off the coast of Antarctica, icefish congregate in a deep breeding colony. Some 60 million nests of Jonah’s icefish (Neopagetopsis ionah) stretch across at least 240 square kilometers of seafloor. 

Jonah’s icefish create circular nests with hard rock centers where the fish can lay over 1,000 eggs. Nest-building species of fish were known to gather in the hundreds. Many fish create nests, from freshwater cichlids to artistically inclined pufferfish, but an abundant food supply and a zone of warm water have drawn the exceptionally large group of Jonah's Icefish.

Deep sea biologist Autun Purser of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany, and colleagues discovered the massive colony in 2021 while on a research cruise in the Weddell Sea, located between the Antarctic Peninsula and the main continent.

Read more here.