Month: February 2020

A Newly-Discovered Component of Blood!

This transmission electron microscope image shows the structure of the newly-discovered blood component: functional mitochondria enclosed in vesicles.
(click for credit)

I have been teaching science for 34 years. I have been writing science textbooks for 27 years. I can’t tell you how many times I have written about blood and its components. Indeed, I am writing a 7th-grade textbook right now (Science in the Atomic Age), and it has a couple of sections on the properties and characteristics of human blood. As usual, I discuss the cellular components of blood (red blood cells, white blood cells, and blood platelets) as well as the chemical components of blood (blood clotting factors, water, electrolytes, various proteins, etc.). I honestly thought we understood blood pretty well. However, God’s creation is so complex and intricate, it still surprises us. In a recently-published paper, scientists have found that blood contains something no one ever noticed before, and it is neither cellular nor chemical. It is something in between!

To understand what was found, you need to know that cells in fungi, plants, animals, and people contain small structures that are responsible for burning chemicals from your food and packaging the resulting energy into small units that the cells can use. Those structures are called mitochondria. While most of a cell’s DNA is held in the nucleus of the cell, there is some DNA found in the mitochondria. Not surprisingly, it is called mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) to distinguish it from the DNA found in the nucleus, which is called nuclear DNA (nDNA).

I had learned quite some time ago that there was a lot more mtDNA in blood than nDNA, but that always made sense to me. Red blood cells have neither, because they eject their nucleus and mitochondria when they mature. However, white blood cells have both. When someone extracts DNA from blood, he or she is getting the nuclear DNA from the white blood cells. Well, each cell has several mitochondria and only one nucleus, so the white blood cells will contribute more mtDNA than nDNA to blood. In addition, blood platelets have mitochondria but no nucleus, so they are contributing a lot of mtDNA and no nDNA.

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Our Best Computer is Positively PRIMITIVE Compared to the Human Brain

A small selection of the connections in the human brain (left) and the world’s most powerful supercomputer (right).
Image on left by the PIT Bioinformatics Group. Image on right by the OLCF at ORNL.
Creative commons licensing. Click for specifics.

I have been working on my new book, Science in the Atomic Age, which (Lord willing) will be published this summer. In the section where I cover the nervous system, I compare a mouse brain and a human brain to computers. It’s rather fascinating. Below, you will find a slightly-edited excerpt from that discussion. Please note that the students have already learned that neurons are cells found in nervous tissue and that the integumentary system is the system of organs that makes your skin:

The brain has three major divisions: the cerebrum (suh ree’ brum), the cerebellum (sehr’ uh bell’ uhm), and the brain stem. The cerebrum is in charge of most of the really complicated things that the brain does. For example, it receives signals from your eyes and interprets them so that you can see. It receives signals from your ears and interprets them so you can hear. It receives signals from all the nervous tissue in your integumentary system so that you can figure out what you are touching as well as things like whether you are too warm, too cold, or comfortable. It also helps you learn, and it stores your memories. All this takes a lot of work, so it requires a lot of neurons.

How many neurons? The average adult cerebrum contains about 20 billion neurons. That number doesn’t mean very much by itself, so by comparison, the average adult mouse cerebrum contains about 2.5 million neurons. So the human cerebrum contains about 10,000 times as many neurons as a mouse’s cerebrum. Of course, a mouse is much smaller than a person. By weight, a person is about 3,000 times as heavy as a mouse. At least part of the difference between a mouse’s cerebrum and a person’s cerebrum is due to that. But people are much more intelligent than mice, and the number of neurons in the cerebrum must also be related to that.

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68% of the Universe May Not Exist!

The history of the universe, according to the standard model of cosmology (click for credit)

Unsuspecting students are often taught “facts” that are anything but actual facts. Consider, for example, what NASA says about the nature of the universe:

It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest – everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter – adds up to less than 5% of the universe. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn’t be called “normal” matter at all, since it is such a small fraction of the universe.

What is this thing called “dark energy” that supposedly makes up more than half of the universe? NASA honestly says that no one has any idea. However, NASA assures students that we know that 68% of the universe is made up of it.

Of course, what NASA (and most astrophysicists) neglect to tell students is that the entire existence of dark energy, including its amount in the universe, is based on a myriad of assumptions, some of which are almost certainly not true. Nevertheless, they assure students that they know dark energy exists and that most of the universe is made up of it. The cold, hard truth, however, is that everything we know about dark energy is based on models, and those models are built on assumptions. If the assumptions are wrong, the models could be wrong, and if the models are wrong, the whole idea of dark energy could be wrong.

This issue was brought front and center with the recent publication of a paper that challenges one of the assumptions that is instrumental in the conclusion that dark energy exists. If the results of this paper are confirmed, dark energy will be thrown into the same trash bin as phlogiston, luminiferous ether, and the impossibility of quasicrystals.

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The Inquisition Is Furious About Brazil!

The logo of the Intelligent Design Research Institute at Mackensie University in Brazil. (click for source)

Bill Nye says and writes a lot of ignorant things (see here, here, here, here, and here, for example). While it is hard to choose the most ignorant statement he has ever made, this one has to be in the top five:

Denial of evolution is unique to the United States.

I have already shown how that statement is 100% false, and anyone who even casually investigates the issue would know that it is false. However, as the links above show, investigation is definitely not one of Nye’s strong suits! I was reminded of his incredibly ignorant statement when I read this article, from the journal Science.

Like Bill Nye, the author of the article doesn’t seem to understand how to investigate an issue. Nevertheless, the article has some interesting content. It seems that the federal government in Brazil has appointed Dr. Benedito Guimarães Aguiar Neto to head an agency called CAPES, which oversees Brazil’s graduate study programs. This is noteworthy, because Dr. Neto was instrumental in forming an Intelligent Design Research Center at Mackenzie Presbyterian University in Brazil. Of course, this infuriates the Scientific Inquisition, because Intelligent Design has been officially declared as heresy by the High Priests of Science. To have someone who believes in heresy positioned in a powerful educational office is unthinkable! As the article tells us, one Brazilian biologist has said:

It is completely illogical to place someone who has promoted actions contrary to scientific consensus in a position to manage programs that are essentially of scientific training.

Of course, that very statement is incredibly anti-science, because almost all of the great scientific advancements in history come from the very act of questioning the scientific consensus. I would think that every institution of higher education should have many high-level officials who challenge the scientific consensus.

As I said, the author of the article doesn’t seem to be able to investigate an issue, since he calls Dr. Neto a “creationist.” I realize that the term is very broad, but there is no indication that Dr. Neto is a creationist. In fact, all he has stated is that Intelligent Design should be introduced in Brazil’s basic educational curriculum. I suspect that he is an advocate of intelligent design for that reason, but that doesn’t make him a creationist. Dr. David Berlinski is an advocate of Intelligent Design, and he doesn’t even believe in God. However, if you are a lazy writer, it is easier to falsely label a person than it is to actually investigate what that person believes.

In any event, I can’t help but see this as a step in the right direction. The progress of science depends on questioning the scientific consensus. Whether or not it was intentional, Brazil’s government decided to appoint someone who is skeptical of the consensus in a position of influence when it comes to science education. Not only does this further demonstrate that Bill Nye’s statement is breathtakingly ignorant, but it also gives us more indication that the biological sciences are slowly emerging from the quagmire of NeoDarwinism and getting ready to truly advance.