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Worst Jobs in Science: Year Three
mmoyer writes "Popular Science just published their annual rankings of the worst jobs in science. Highlights of this year's list include a human lab rat, orangutan pee collector, and, surprisingly, a NASA ballerina. Think your science job belongs on the list? You can nominate your job as well. Slashdot also covered the worst jobs in science in 2004 and in 2003."
NASA Ballerina link if www.popsci.com give up
i n_ballerina.mpeg
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/mpeg/115084ma
From http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/1/l_0 11_01.html
Evolution of the Eye:
When evolution skeptics want to attack Darwin's theory, they often point to the human eye. How could something so complex, they argue, have developed through random mutations and natural selection, even over millions of years?
If evolution occurs through gradations, the critics say, how could it have created the separate parts of the eye -- the lens, the retina, the pupil, and so forth -- since none of these structures by themselves would make vision possible? In other words, what good is five percent of an eye?
Darwin acknowledged from the start that the eye would be a difficult case for his new theory to explain. Difficult, but not impossible. Scientists have come up with scenarios through which the first eye-like structure, a light-sensitive pigmented spot on the skin, could have gone through changes and complexities to form the human eye, with its many parts and astounding abilities.
Through natural selection, different types of eyes have emerged in evolutionary history -- and the human eye isn't even the best one, from some standpoints. Because blood vessels run across the surface of the retina instead of beneath it, it's easy for the vessels to proliferate or leak and impair vision. So, the evolution theorists say, the anti-evolution argument that life was created by an "intelligent designer" doesn't hold water: If God or some other omnipotent force was responsible for the human eye, it was something of a botched design.
Bilogists use the range of less complex light sensitive structures that exist in living species today to hypothesize the various evolutionary stages eyes may have gone through.
Here's how some scientists think some eyes may have evolved: The simple light-sensitive spot on the skin of some ancestral creature gave it some tiny survival advantage, perhaps allowing it to evade a predator. Random changes then created a depression in the light-sensitive patch, a deepening pit that made "vision" a little sharper. At the same time, the pit's opening gradually narrowed, so light entered through a small aperture, like a pinhole camera.
Every change had to confer a survival advantage, no matter how slight. Eventually, the light-sensitive spot evolved into a retina, the layer of cells and pigment at the back of the human eye. Over time a lens formed at the front of the eye. It could have arisen as a double-layered transparent tissue containing increasing amounts of liquid that gave it the convex curvature of the human eye.
In fact, eyes corresponding to every stage in this sequence have been found in existing living species. The existence of this range of less complex light-sensitive structures supports scientists' hypotheses about how complex eyes like ours could evolve. The first animals with anything resembling an eye lived about 550 million years ago. And, according to one scientist's calculations, only 364,000 years would have been needed for a camera-like eye to evolve from a light-sensitive patch.
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Is there a response? What incremental, random changes produced an eye such that each step conferred an evolutionary advantage?
It's well understood; the progression is roughly: light sensitive cell, opaque pigment in back, retreat into concavity, formation of pinhole camera, transparent covering, fixed lens, adaptable lens. Each of those has distinct and individual evolutionary advantages, sometimes related to improved predator evasion and sometimes merely related to improved protection of the existing structure. It seems to have happened several times in evolution, so it's not even anything unusual; if we ever encounter aliens, they probably have eyes, too.
The problem for teachers is that ID can't be tested using the scientific method, the system of making, testing and retesting hypotheses that is the bedrock of science.
That's false. ID can be tested (in the same way astronomy can be), and the answer is: there is not a shred of evidence to support ID. Every single test of evolution has come down on the side of evolution (mutation and selection) and against intelligent design (interference of an intelligent agent in the development of different life forms on earth). ID has the form of a scientific theory, but it happens to be an incorrect scientific theory according to overwhelming evidence.
Insightful?! WTF!
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
When in college, I worked in a lab analyzing waste water produced by local industry. part of the job involved collection of samples. Some of the man-holes were nice (like at the brand-new CD ROM manufacturing plant.) Others..... One was at a plant that made pet food. The waste from that process was mixed with the normal sewage one would find coming out of a building with lots of humans. Need I say more?
If so, I'd like an example-- because I've never heard of a creature with a deep, light-sensitive pit in its body.
Google search terms: "light-sensitive pit bacteria".y es_part_one_opening_up_the_russian_doll.php
First entry: http://www.corante.com/loom/archives/2005/02/15/e
Next?
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The example that comes immediately to mind are the heat-sensitive "pits" found on pit-vipers and pythons. They detect infra-red light in almost this exact way.
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Actually, that's not a bad dance job. Pay, benefits, reasonable hours. Ask any working dancer. It's a tough life, and you burn out young. At the higher levels, the injury rate is very high. New York City Ballet used to have the highest workmens's compensation premium in the state.
The "robot touch avoidance" demo has been done before, several times, both with mechanical switches and a short-range microwave system. The IR distance measurement system came from a Stanford project in the 1970s.
For those who dont want to RTFA
10. Orangutan-Pee Collector
9. NASA Ballerina
8. Do-Gooder
7. Semen Washer
6. Volcanologist
5. Nuclear-Weapons Scientist
4. Extremophile Excavator
3. Kansas Biology Teacher
2. Manure Inspector
1. Human Lab Rat
Clearly, Google is the next Microsoft.
It's for same reason that they didn't like a solar system model that was heliocentric: The Earth is described in the Bible as being completely static and unchanging. Plate tectonics kinda go against that...
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
Eh? I'm assuming you studied physics in Kansas too. Here's a simplified version of how it works:
See? That wasn't so hard. No lasers involved, just a gigantic nuclear furnace. Already accepted by most major religions.
If so, I'd like an example-- because I've never heard of a creature with a deep, light-sensitive pit in its body.
They're called flatworms.
My spoon is too big.
Every change had to confer a survival advantage, no matter how slight.
This is a common misconception about evolution. The only thing "necessary" is for the organism displaying the trait to reproduce. Nothing else. The trait can confer absolutely no advantage, and even cause disadvantage, as long as enough organisms with the genes for that trait reproduce. The trait need not even be expressed, as long as a gene that creates it is passed on. (Big example: recessive genes.)
So, to recap, every change did not have to conver advantage. The gene for that trait merely had to be passed on.
I have to object. That was most certainly not ballet. It was modern dance. Someone at Popular Science needs to spend 2 seconds doing some research!
There's nothing magic about a light sensitive cell. Many chemicals have photovoltaic properties which can be directly sensed by a nerve cell. Those chemicals even have other uses besides just light sensing in an organism.
Behe's arguments are a failure of imagination. He can't imagine how something could come to be, so he says that it's impossible. Then later, we figure out that it was possible, and Behe was wrong.
The latest example is Behe's flagellum motor. Turns out that a very slightly different protein is a potent toxin that some bacteria produce. Behe's flagellum motor turns out not to be composed of useless component parts (like his mousetrap) at all. It was simply a failure of his imagination.
All of Behe's arguments will fall to increased understanding eventually. The biochemical components of a light sensitive cell are no different.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!