Reducibly Complex

On this day in 1997, the successful cloning of an adult mammal was announced: a female lamb named “Dolly” that was born July 5th, 1996. The accomplishment of a group of scientists supervised by Ian Wilmut at Roslin Institute, Edinburgh, Scotland, was primarily the work of biologist Keith Campbell. Dolly was the first mammal ever successfully cloned from a cell of an adult animal. Using microscopic needles, scientists had replaced the nucleus of an egg cell with the nucleus from a parent udder cell. The resulting embryo was implanted into the womb of a third, surrogate sheep. Dolly’s DNA was matched to show she was a clone. Dolly lived until February 14th, 2003, when she was put down due to the effects of a progressive lung disease.

I genuinely wonder when (NOT if) we humans will ever clone other humans. I’m not sure where I stand on the ethical issue with cloning of humans. I don’t have a fundamental problem with cloning humans (and I certainly don’t have a religious objection), but the practicality of it bothers me; is it really necessary to clone entire humans?

As for cloning organs, I have no problem with that at all. I think that, should research provide a viable process, the production of human organs by means of cloning has the potential to help in a lot of medical ways, providing “donor” organs for people in need of transplants.

This is kind of old news, but it is new news to me. I don’t know why, but I found this particularly interesting.

From Scientific American:

“Researchers have discovered two living species—so recently that they have yet to be named—of this Alavesia fly, a genus that had previously only been seen preserved in Cretaceous-era amber in Spain and Burma. 
 

The flies, captured in dry streambeds along Namibia’s highest mountain, the Brandberg Massif, have wings only about 0.08 inch (two millimeter) long. The discovery came out of a 2002 bug inventory on the plateau-like mountain (which predates the separation of the southernmost four continents) that also yielded a new suborder of carnivorous insects known as Mantophasmatodea. The new species of this ancient “dance fly” genus were only recognized by researchers Bradley Sinclair, an entomologist at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and Ashley Kirk-Spriggs, who leads the Entomology department at the South Africa National Museum, in 2007.”

Pretty damn cool.

Happy 200th birthday to Dr. Charles Darwin. Later this year (in November) we will also be saying happy 150th anniversary to the release of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Indeed today, Darwin Day, is a special day.

Today is also the celebration of the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States and a person largely responsible for the ending of slavery in the U.S. in the 1860’s. Kudos on this day go to you, too, Abe.

(Note: Today is the “celebration” of Academic Freedom day by proponents of Intelligent Design. Lets just say for now that Academic Freedom is being misused and misinterpreted by the ID crowd. I’ll have a post about that soon, but we’ll let it go for now).

On this day in 1932, the “neutron” was described in an article in the journal Nature by its discoverer, James Chadwick, who coined the name for this neutral particle he discovered present in the nucleus of atoms. By bombarding beryllium with alpha particles, Chadwick discovered the neutron for which he received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1935.

There was a time when it was believed that the atom was the smallest particle there is, that nothing smaller could be discovered. We knew nothing about the neutron, proton, electron, quarks, etc. I think of what has happened in the field of science in the last 150 years, and I’m astonished. It was only about 75 years ago that we first learned of neutrons, but think of the amazingly huge amount of knowledge that is based solely on that discovery. This same line of thinking can be applied to other aspects of physics, biology, genetics, astronomy, medicine, and all the sciences alike.

So, it’s been a long while since I’ve been able to post to the blog. I just finished moving (actually, I still haven’t even come close to being unpacked), and it has sucked most all of my spare time out of me for the last month.

Rest assured…NEW POSTS SOON!