This is just ridiculous. This is an article about science education in Arkansas. I have been very slow to accept the idea that biblical history carries so much weight in the American educational system. Thinking back, I don’t remember being explicitly taught evolution, but all but one science teacher I ever had felt quite comfortable saying, “millions of years.” Apparently that is taboo in some parts of our country.
Its easy to write off anti-evolution as an outspoken, but backwater movement.(Fun too) But this article shows that this is not the case. Arkansas has been independently ranked 37th in the nation for education. OK so their kids aren’t all Ivy League bound, but they aren’t dead last. (Hey Arizona, I guess you guys are better off going to school on Martin Luther King Day. Maybe it might help you guys catch up.)
This passage is just shocking.
According to his survey, about 20 percent are trying to teach evolution and think they are doing a good job; 10 percent are teaching creationism, even though during the workshop he discusses the legally shaky ground on which they stand. Another 20 percent attempt to teach something but feel they just do not understand evolution. The remaining 50 percent avoid it because of community pressure. On an e-mail to members of a list he keeps of people interested in evolution, Randy reported that the latter 50 percent do not cover evolution because they felt intimidated, saw no need to teach it, or might lose their jobs.
By their own description of their classroom practices, 80 percent of the teachers surveyed are not adequately teaching evolutionary science. Remember that these are just the teachers who are in a professional development workshop in science education! What is more disturbing is what Randy went on to say about the aftermath of these workshops. “After one of my workshops at a [state] education cooperative, it was asked that I not come back because I spent too much time on evolution. One of the teachers sent a letter to the governor stating that I was mandating that teachers had to teach evolution, and that I have to be an atheist, and would he do something.”
So basicly the Arkansas educational system has been bullied into mandating ignorance. Yikes! No wonder the Clintons abandoned that state for New York.
Maybe this awesome Doonesbury will cheer you up.
posted by futureBen at 1:15 pm
The J Craig Venter Institute is one of the most modern innovative research centers in the world today. Dr. Venter has stirred his share of controversy with his “shotgun” approach to sequencing. In the late 90’s there was a concern in the scientific community that there was too much data to be meaningful. This notion seems laughable today as Information Technology has caught up to the flood of data, yielding some incredible advances.
Already Dr. Venter has moved past Genomics into what is now called Metagenomics. His recent expedition on the Sorcerer II consisted of sampling seawater every 200 miles in an around the world sailing trip. A common reaction to this is rejection of the idea that anything meaningful could be gained from Venter’s around the world boondogle. But there is a genius behind the Sorcerer expedition. Venter’s thesis is that the ocean can be considered a single living organism with specialized genetics to handle environmental differences. In this view determining species is unimportant. What maters is the genome of the environment. The Metagenome.
What does this mean to the rest of the world? One of the major efforts of the Venter intitute is Synthetic Biology. Why? With a collection of environmental metagenomes a clever Biologist can determine just what genes are necesary to thrive and construct or modify organisms accordingly. Another application is biosynthesis or biogeneration. The Venter instute is working on generating Hydrogen as a fuel source.
This type of forward thinking will lead to biotech’s next great expansion. Data is the key. For this reason The Venter Institute has partnered with UCSD to start CAMMERA: Cyberinfrastructure for Advanced Marine Microbial Ecology Research and Analysis. Once completed this optical network will allow researcher from all over the world to datamine the ever growing sequence information being generated. What discoveries and innovations this will lead to is anyone’s guess.
posted by futureBen at 5:03 pm
I noticed a post on boingboing about computer designed antennas about to be used in a NASA experiment. It led me to The Evolvable Systems Group at NASA’s Ames research center. From their site:
“The Evolvable Systems Group investigates computer algorithms that automate the design and optimization of complex engineering systems for current and future NASA missions. Our overall goal is to dramatically increase mission reliability and science return through development and application of adaptive and evolutionary algorithms.”
This is the ultimate form of biomimicry. A human mind comes up with the specs and some seed designs for the algorithm and an evolutionary design and test series is played out virtually. To be clear about this, the algorithms can only optimize the parameters you have thought to model, so there are some limitations. This makes these methods immediately applicable to well worn models like molecular and electromagnetic force fields. I can think of dozens of engineering and systems biology problems that are still having their parameters worked out and would be great applications for these methods.
posted by futureBen at 11:34 am
I have been getting buried under my project lately, but I wanted to quickly present Caltec’s Biological Imaging Center. The center, headed by Scott Fraser. The imaging part is interesting enough, but what fascinates me is how this group pioneers new ways of seeing.
I first learned of the center at a ASCII meeting here in New York. David Kremers is (or was) an artist in residence there. He presented several projects the center was working on. Namely showing more than 3 dimensions of data in a single image. At the time it made less sense to me, but now that I am working with MRI I understand much better the need to present a huge amount of information in a single image. Take the time to check out the center website, and Scott Fraser’s labpage.
posted by futureBen at 11:52 am
MIT hosts a database of “Standard Biological Parts.” The idea is that a Synthetic Biologist can pick and choose these “biobricks,” and assemble a biological machine in the black box style of engineering. Now normally I just complain about the science or new technology featured. This is clearly a work in progress and I will do my best to suspend judgement. They readily admit that this system will be replaced with better paradigms. Here are my thoughts.
I’m doing my best to decipher this biobricks parts registry. I recognize a lot of the names, but their descriptions are are incomplete or less than accurate. Also, with extensive research done on every gene in here and a century of foundation science, why would they make up a whole new lexicon of descriptive terms? Perhaps they want to break from the old, but at the same time they separate the designer from the complexity of the components. An unfortunate side effect is that this obscures the nature of the components. Somtimes it is hard to figure out whether the componet is functioning on the DNA, RNA or protein level. They need to go a lttle deeper before I would use it.
In my own work I keep all of my components such as tags and reporters in a databse that includes their sequences and restriction sites. When I need something I have the all of the data right there. Yes it does get confusing sometimes. I have repeatedly introduced frame shifts or cut out an IRES between bicistronic genes. But the reason for that is my components are not refined yet either. (And I am dyslexic)
Granted, there are some interesting creations made using biobricks, I respect their efforts and hope to contribute to the Synthetic Bio community. However, biobricks seem on par with a scripting language. This is great for doing basic things and maybe that is all we can do with our current understanding. A more fundamental method of design will come however and with it we will accomplish so much more.
posted by futureBen at 1:09 pm
This article in the BBC online news is so depressing. How can I convince the children of the world that science is, “all that?” Perhaps when people stop being defensive by acting so proud of their own ignorance. That is the hardest part about science, and what people just do not understand. You have to get used to being wrong a whole lot. And get used to people PROVING you are wrong in front of all your friends. Or even proving yourself wrong. It can be really hard on your ego, and it is too much for a lot of people. Scientists who can’t take that kind of pressure wander the halls of science mere shadows of their former selves. They are called, “Product Reps.”
posted by futureBen at 1:34 pm
Rollover to turn the light off
The Nagy lab has been making very impressive GFP mice for years. They focus on using transgenic mice and embryonic stem cells to better understand development and genetic disease. Check out the massive library of flurorescent mice made by the Nagy Lab and their colleagues. Each one uses an inducible promoter to permanently activate the fluorescent marker. Very handy. If you have library access, pull Dr. Nagy’s latest review article in Development 2005 Dec;132(23):5130-2.
posted by futureBen at 10:05 pm
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I’m probably just in a bad mood today, but this report from The Interdisciplinary Canter for Technology Analysis & Forecasting at Tel-Aviv University really annoys me. I’m not entirely sure why though. It may be somewhat accurate for all I know, the annoying part is the commoditization of things that haven’t happened yet. Every investor wants little chips that do things better and cheaper so that they can reduce overhead and raise profit. If a nano/biotech revolution did sweep the world, they don’t understand that it could also destroy commerce. Imagine self replicating and self repairing medical diagnostic equiptment. How do you sell it when anybody can just make a copy? The ultimate technologies will be not only accesible but manufacturable by the smallest mountain village. And the only comodities will be innovation and raw materials. The true revolution will be a reconciliation between industrial and agrarian. And that will be all kinds of bad for multinational corporations and globalization. It is my fervent hope that every single widget they are hoping for is rendered obsolete by something they couldn’t possibly imagine. And all of their planing and panel discussion will have wrought nothing but their doom! As long as I’m dreaming, I would be the creator of that technology. And I would laugh…into the night. I am also bothered by all of those little technologesque illustrations so liberally applied. Those are way tacky.
posted by futureBen at 10:23 am
Genetic Savings and Clone offers to clone your prized cats for $32,000. Instead of transfering the nucleus from the donor to an egg this company tranfers over the packaged DNA. The idea behind Chromatin Transfer, I presume, is that the epigenetic milleu of the egg nucleus properly regulates the donor DNA to develop properly.
What is interesting about this company isn’t so much the technology, or even if its a good idea to clone a cat when there are so many up for adoption. What interests me is that its a biotech company that deals in a luxury item. At what point will geneticly modified animals become affordable?(If you call $32,000 affordable.) The initial overhead would be much higher, but once a new line was developed it could be bred normaly. Yeah, right. The company that did that would be legislated right out of existence.
posted by futureBen at 7:48 pm
