The Bacterial Flagellum: More Sophisticated Than We Thought!

This is a schematic of a bacterium's flagellum (image in the public domain).

The bacterial flagellum is a symbol of the Intelligent Design movement, and rightly so. After all, bacteria are commonly recognized as the “simplest” organisms on the planet. Nevertheless, their amazingly well-designed locomotive system has continued to amaze the scientists that study it. In 1996, Dr. Michael Behe highlighted the intricate design of the bacterial flagellum in his book, Darwin’s Black Box. While some have tried to explain it in terms of Neo-Darwian evolution, they have not come close to succeeding.
Not only is the bacterial flagellum amazingly well-designed, it is far more versatile than anyone imagined.

Some bacteria (like Escherichia coli) have multiple flagella, which makes it very easy for an individual to navigate in water. All the bacterium has to do is adjust which flagella are spinning and how they are spinning, and the single-celled creature can do acrobatics in the water. However, the vast majority of bacteria have only one flagellum. It was thought for a long time that because of this, it is difficult for them to make sharp turns in the water.

Two years ago, this thinking changed abruptly when a group of physicists from the University of Pittsburgh showed that the bacterium Vibrio alginolyticus, which has only one flagellum, can make sharp turns with ease. They showed that in order to execute such a turn, the bacterium backs up, lurches forwards, and swings its flagellum to one side.1 The entire maneuver takes less than a tenth of a second and results in a 90-degree turn. So not only is the bacterial flagellum an exquisite “outboard motor” that propels the bacterium through the water, it is also a rudder that allows the bacterium to make sharp turns at will!

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Sofishsticated Swimming

This is a glass knifefish like the one used in the study (click for credit)

Many aspects of nature are a mystery to science, and at least part of the reason is that nature has been designed so incredibly well. There are systems running in nature that are simply too complex for us to understand and, as a result, their functions remain a mystery. Not all that long ago, for example, many biologists were silly enough to actually think the human genome was mostly junk, simply because they couldn’t understand what the vast majority of the human genome does. Of course, as we have learned more about DNA, we have learned that what was once considered “junk” is vitally important (see here, here, and here, for example). Since the Encode project published its first major results, most reasonable biologists have slowly started to realize what creationists have said all along – there really isn’t much (if any) junk DNA.

Even on a larger scale, there are many aspects of nature that are very hard to understand. A recent article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America provides an example:1

Animals often produce substantial forces in directions that do not directly contribute to movement. For example, running and flying insects produce side-to-side forces as they travel forward. These forces generally “cancel out,” and so their role remains a mystery.

Why would a moving animal expend energy to produce forces that are perpendicular to its motion? Those forces don’t contribute to the animal’s forward motion, and they tend to cancel each other out. As a result, they are often called “antagonistic forces.” Such forces seem like an utter waste of energy. Nevertheless, lots of animals do this. In addition, some animals exert antagonistic forces even when they are not moving in a given direction. Hummingbirds, for example, produce antagonistic forces when they are hovering over a flower.

To understand the purpose of antagonistic forces, the authors of the study examined the glass knifefish (Eigenmannia virescens). When this fish is “hovering” in the water, it uses its fins to produce antagonistic forces. It has been thought that these forces might improve the fish’s ability to control its position and orientation in the water, but no one understood how.2

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Overly Honest Moments in Science

An example of an "Overly Honest Method" tweet (click for image credit)

I don’t tweet. If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you know why. I have a hard enough time constraining my writing to a few hundred words, much less 140 characters. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see how scientists use Twitter to communicate what they are doing. For example, I recently wrote about a particle physicist who used Twitter to explain to people what was happening in the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. He became a bit of a celebrity as a result and has used that platform to do some serious science related to the level of radioactive contamination in Japan’s food supply.

Why in the world am I discussing a social media tool that I don’t even use? Because a reader posted a link on my Facebook page. It contains a series of tweets posted with the hashtag #overlyhonestmethods, which was started by a scientist known as “dr. leigh.” The hashtag has become a bit of a phenomenon. Essentially, scientists use it to explain the real reasons behind some of their methods.

The picture at the top of the post is a classic example of a tweet that contains the hashtag. I immediately related to it, because as a nuclear chemist, I have built a lot of systems that blew up or failed in some other spectacular way. However, when I finally got a version of the system to work, I would refer to it as “representative.” That’s just the way it is done.

If you have some time, scroll through a few of the tweets. Some of the language can be a bit foul, but the tweets give you a brief glimpse into the real world of scientific research. You might be a bit surprised at what you read!

Why Do We Have to Sleep?

Scientists might finally be understanding why we need to sleep. (click for credit)

When I was doing nuclear chemistry experiments, one of my greatest enemies was the need for sleep. Those experiments required the use of a particle accelerator, and the demand for time on the accelerator always exceeded the amount of time available. This meant that each experiment was tightly scheduled for a certain amount of time, and it was almost impossible to get any kind of extension. As a result, when the particle beam was directed to my experimental chamber, every second was precious. Generally, I would stay up for as long as I could, trying to get as much as possible from the experiment. Eventually, however, I had to go to sleep and let someone else take over. I hated that. In fact, during my main thesis experiment, I stayed up for so long that I actually feel asleep in the middle of typing commands on the computer console!

Why do we need to sleep? When I ask this question to students, I generally get a response that deals with energy. Students think that sleep somehow allows us to build up our energy reserves so we can stay active and alert while we are awake. However, that’s clearly not true. Our energy comes from the food we eat. If it were just a matter of building up energy reserves, we could eat rather than sleep.

For a long time, scientists have speculated that sleep has something to do with recovery. Being awake does something to our bodies from which we must recover, and sleep takes care of the recovery process. The problem, of course, is that no one could actually say what the body has to recover from. Well, a team of researchers led by Dr. Maiken Nedergaard, a scientist at my Alma Mater, might have figured out at least one thing from which our bodies recover when we sleep.

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Astounding: Your Baby Can Heal You!

This Facebook Meme is actually correct!

I avoided Facebook for a long time, but a few years ago, I finally gave in. Not long after I started connecting with long lost friends and finding out what everyone was eating, I learned the joys of Facebook memes. Every day now, I see lots of pictures with snarky sayings on them coming across my news feed. Some of them are funny, and some try to make a point. Many times, the ones that try to make a point are just dead wrong. They include either outright falsehoods or an incredibly mischaracterized fact. Thus, whenever I see a “science meme” or a “political meme,” I generally ignore it.

However, when the meme at the top of this article came across my newsfeed, I had to investigate it. If you have been reading this blog for a while, you might remember that almost two years ago, a talented writer named Amanda Read posted a story about how a baby’s cells reside in his or her mother long after the baby is born, and they may aid the mother in healing certain kinds of tissues. I was incredibly skeptical of the story, but when I did some investigation, I found out that it was true. Later on, I learned about a study that showed how a baby leaves DNA behind in his mother’s brain, and those “fetal remnants” might even fight against neurological disorders!

Since we are still barely scratching the surface in our understanding of the the amazing design behind pregnancy, I decided to pay attention to this Facebook meme. Of course, I knew that the statement on the left is true. All sorts of things pass through the placenta from the mother to the child, and that includes blood proteins which fight disease and shape the development of the baby’s B-cells.1 Those B-cells will affect the child’s ability to fight disease for the rest of his or her life.

I was, however, very skeptical of the statement on the right. Surprisingly, there is strong scientific evidence to back it up!

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Those Who Say Religion Is Important Are More Likely to Lie?

Statue of two gossipping ladies in the old town section of Sindelfingen, Germany. (click for credit)
There has been a lot of research regarding what personal characteristics make a person more or less likely to lie. The results of this research have been decidedly mixed. Some research suggests that pretty much everyone lies. Some research suggests that men are more likely to lie than women.1 Other research, however, shows no difference in the amount that men and women lie.2

A new study3 was recently published regarding the personal characteristics of those who tend to lie, and it has gotten some attention from the atheist community. Why? Because one of the results indicates that people who claim religion is important to them are more likely to lie for financial gain. Indeed, as one popular article on the study put it:

However, he [the author of the study] discovered other factors predicted a greater likelihood of telling an untruth — including the assertion that religion plays an important role in your life. Somewhere (or not), Christopher Hitchens is chuckling.

Now before I begin discussing the study, please understand that in my personal experience, Christians are less moral than the general population. I don’t suggest that this is a general trend; I have no idea. It is simply what I have gathered from my own personal experiences. For example, if I look back on my professional career, I have had several bosses – people who exercised authority over me at work. Some of them were atheists, and some were Christians. At least one of them would never speak about his religious beliefs. The most moral among them was one of the atheists, and the least moral among them was one of the Christians. This is consistent with my overall experiences as well. In general, I think that Christians do a very poor job of representing Christ to the world, especially when it comes to whether or not you can believe what they say.

I am always interested in looking at studies that try to quantify whether or not my personal experiences are representative of a general trend. When I first heard about this new study, then, I wasn’t surprised about its conclusions. However, a detailed look at the study did offer one surprise.

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Christianity and Science – What History REALLY Tells Us

This is part of a stained-glass window called "Education." It is found in room 102 of Linsly-Chittenden Hall at Yale University, and it portrays science and religion in harmony. (click to see the entire piece)

You hear it all the time. Science and Christianity are in conflict. For example, Dr. Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote:1

The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome—not by favour of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable.

and that was back in 1899. My favorite atheist, Dr. P.Z. Myers, says it more succinctly:

Christian faith is at odds with science

The problem, of course, is that such statements are demonstrably false. Indeed, as I have written before, historical scholarship has shown that modern science is a product of Christianity (see here and here).

I recently ran across an excellent essay by Dr. Michael Keas that makes this point very well. I strongly recommend that you read it in its entirety, but there are two quotes from it that I would like to highlight.

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Yet Another Benefit of Homeschooling

Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services (Kevin Concannon) has lunch with schoolchildren on October 12, 2011. The study being discussed shows that lunch is when traditionally-schooled children eat less healthy foods than homeschooled children. (click for credit)

I have written several articles on the academic benefits of homeschooling (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). However, the benefits go far beyond academics. Homeschooled students are, on average, better socialized than their peers. They are more actively engaged in their faith than their peers, and they are more satisfied with life than their peers.1 They even sleep better than their peers!

Adding to that list of benefits, a recent study shows that homeschooled children are less likely to be obese than their peers.2 The study compared 47 homeschooled and 48 traditionally-school children, age 7-12. They measured the children’s fat mass, trunk fat, total body fat, and physical activity. They also asked the children what they had been eating. The researchers found that the homeschooled children had lower values in all three fat measurements. In addition, the homeschooled children reported better diets. As the title of the article aptly puts it:

Home-schooled children are thinner, leaner, and report better diets relative to traditionally schooled children

What was the main difference between the eating habits of the two groups? Not surprisingly, it was lunch. The traditionally-schooled children ate a lot more calories, sodium, and sugar at lunch than the homeschooled children did. Since lunch is the most likely meal to be eaten at school, the take-home message here is that the traditionally-schooled children are not being fed poorly by their parents. They are being fed poorly by their school.

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Fusion Milestone? Yes, But Not The One Reported

This is the reaction chamber at the National Ignition Facility. (public domain image)

“Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab.” That’s how the BBC reported it. The science editor, Paul Rincon, wrote:

The BBC understands that during an experiment in late September, the amount of energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel – the first time this had been achieved at any fusion facility in the world.

Popular Science titled its report, “The National Ignition Facility Just Got Way Closer To Fusion Power.” Right under that headline, one reads:

In a major first, an experiment in the California lab got more energy out of its fuel than went into the fuel. We’re one step closer to ignition, when the reaction becomes self-sustaining.

Before you start having dreams of clean, limitless power, however, you need to know what actually happened at the National Ignition Facility. So let’s start from the beginning to find out what all the hype is about.

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A Tribute to My First Grade Teacher

Linda L. Knight
Last week, I spoke at a memorial service for Linda L. Knight. She was my teacher in first grade, and she later became a friend of mine. She was an important part of my life, so I want to share the approximate text of my eulogy. I say “approximate” because I never write down my public presentations. I just use some notes and have a rough outline in my head of what I will say. Thus, what follows isn’t exactly what I said. It is, however, as near as I can remember it. Because I was speaking to her friends, most of whom live in the same town, there are some local references that many people won’t understand. Please don’t let that get in the way of the message.

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William Arthur Ward once said:

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.

Linda Knight was a great teacher. She inspired me. I can honestly say that if it hadn’t been for her inspiration, I would not be the scientist I am today. The impressive thing about this is that she wasn’t one of my college teachers. She wasn’t one of my high school teachers. She wasn’t even one of my middle school teachers. She was my first grade teacher. Nevertheless, her inspiration sticks with me to this day. Titus 2:7-8 says:

Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned…

That’s exactly how Linda Knight taught. She was an incredible role model, she taught with dignity and integrity, and the things she taught us were sound.

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