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Prions Evolve Despite Having No DNA
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists from the Scripps Research Institute have shown for the first time that 'lifeless' organic substances with no genetic material — prions similar to those believed responsible for Mad Cow disease and similar, rare conditions in humans — are capable of evolving just like higher forms of life. The discovery could reshape the definition of life and have revolutionary impacts on how certain diseases are treated."
demise. You don't unpleasant mod points and The fruitless
If only individuals of a species that exhibit a certain trait ("fur color", "eye color", "drug resistance") survive and have offspring, will their descendants not share that certain trait, just like most puppies have the same fur as their parents, like most babies with blonde curly hair have parents that also had blonde curly hair?
There is a population of moths that exhibit a random mixture of black and white pigments, most individuals look like this:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Biston.betularia.7200.jpg
Some individuals of this Peppered Moth have an all black or all white coat, so we have three types of moths: random color, all black, all white.
Some weather or climates heavily select on certain coat colors, because white moths stand out like a sore thumb in 1900's coal-covered forests in England and black moths have a snowball's chance in Hell in light forests and snow covered terrain. Random colored moths blend in best in most environments and while they are more visible in either extreme environmental condition, their chances of survival are fair enough.
Imagine we would spray paint the entire forest black with coal dust, for centuries, just like it was in England, we just need to assume we never run out of coal to do that. Imagine the moths are not really bothered by the coal dust and their overall food sources and their predators conditions remain stable. Now all random and white colored moths are always eaten first by birds, for centuries, selected heavily, that is.
Now imagine we have another species of moth, a blindingly yellow type, say the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Brimstone.
Both species are exposed to the same environment of a pitch-black coal dusted forest. Both have identical predators and food sources.
The Peppered Moth survives in their black-coated variant, while the Common Brimstone, presenting a yellow eat-me sign to all the birds in the area will be swiftly eradicated.
Have the moths adapted to their environment? Has selective pressure brought one species to extinction? Will random and white colored Peppered Moths reappear if the heavily coal-dusted forest clears up after 50 years? Would they also reappear if the forest remained black for 500 or 5000 or 5 million years?
Are Rebublicans technically life-forms?
How'd those housing starts go in November? Oh, down 19%?
How are the continuing job loses going? Oh, another 200,000 jobs lost?
How's that withdrawal from Iraq going?
Nice to see our DHS Secretary telling us all how well the system worked when a jihadi got on a plane with a bomb.
I hear Gitmo is going to be closed any decade now.
And just wait until you see the asshattery unleashed when Khalid Sheikh Mohammad et al are tried in a standard criminal court.
Think you can come up with a health care "reform" that relies even more on bribery and political payoffs and pisses even more people off?
Nice to see we have a Democratic Senate Majority Leader who thinks it's great that the President is "light-skinned and doesn't speak with a Negro dialect".
No fucking wonder Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev) is polling about 30 points behind his probably election opponent.
How about forcing people to buy health insurance even if they don't want it? Where are all the libertarians-of-convenience who got so up in arms over the freedoms lost when a relatively small number of phone calls to known Al Qaeda related phones where intercepted without warrants? Where are all those JACKASSES when Democrats propose laws that would literally unconstitutionally under penalty of jail time force millions of people into private contracts that they don't want and cost thousands of dollars a year?
Democrats. TOO DUMB TO KNOW THEY'RE DUMB
(Note here: I haven't taken as much as highschool biology classes. If I say something that is completely off here, I'd appreciatete someone correcting me)
What they are saying is that "Yeah... You could originally have had just a pair of birds and they evolved to different species... But it doesn't make sense for a squirrel to gain wings through natural selection". And in fact, they are correct there. A trait can develop further over numerous generations but in order to introduce a completely new trait, natural selection just doesn't cut it. There needs to be a mutation. And the mutation needs to not hamper reproduction (this is a big problem: Animals often shun anything different). In fact it needs to be so beneficial that the new traits will slowly spread and then evolve further.
To my understanding, even scientists are puzzled about those phases. (I chose my squirrel -> bird examples because as a bird-enthusiast I've seen a few documents about development of wings. Also the news featured on /. a while ago) What creationists are saying "We just don't believe that can happen. There just isn't much proof about that.". The normal, non-fundamentalist christians (Many protestant churches at least, though I think that even Vatican has accept evolution now) just say "Yeah, that can happen but how do we know that god doesn't influence that phase? Yeah, there isn't scientific evidence of such - and can't be - but I choose to believe so anyways."
While I am personally atheist, neither of those really seems that horrible way to think. Or even that idiotic... The problem with creationists really isn't their lack of faith in evolution. It is what they choose to believe as more credible alternative.
How'd those housing starts go in November? Oh, down 19%?
8 years of republican rule drow the country to horrible depression and debt. Yes, democrats haven't been able to stop that in a year. Whooppedoo. Whether democrats have done good or bad decisions is nearly irrelevant here. There hasn't been enough time that their policies (especially long-term ones) could even theoretically have reflected to financial sector that much.
There is no way you can blame the current economic situation as a whole on democrats.
How are the continuing job loses going? Oh, another 200,000 jobs lost?
Same thing here.
How's that withdrawal from Iraq going?
I'm with you here. The government should certainly have progressed much faster in getting rid of Bush-era mess. They really haven't done well there. Even so, you can't blame the Iraq (or Afghanistan) mess on current government.
Nice to see our DHS Secretary telling us all how well the system worked when a jihadi got on a plane with a bomb.
And wasn't able to cause any damage... Yeah, it is true that current government should have removed all those unnecessary and inefficient post-911 security stuff from the airports. They (and their voters) should be ashamed that this hasn't happened yet. Even so, you should have hard time blaming democrats on those, either.
I hear Gitmo is going to be closed any decade now.
And just wait until you see the asshattery unleashed when Khalid Sheikh Mohammad et al are tried in a standard criminal court.
This is getting old at this point. "Republicans did something horrible when they were in charge. Democrats haven't cleared all the mess yet. Ergo, democrats are horrible."
Nice to see we have a Democratic Senate Majority Leader who thinks it's great that the President is "light-skinned and doesn't speak with a Negro dialect".
No fucking wonder Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev) is polling about 30 points behind his probably election opponent.
...
I'm not even answering to this one.
Think you can come up with a health care "reform" that relies even more on bribery and political payoffs and pisses even more people off?
How about forcing people to buy health insurance even if they don't want it? Where are all the libertarians-of-convenience who got so up in arms over the freedoms lost when a relatively small number of phone calls to known Al Qaeda related phones where intercepted without warrants? Where are all those JACKASSES when Democrats propose laws that would literally unconstitutionally under penalty of jail time force millions of people into private contracts that they don't want and cost thousands of dollars a year?
Private contracts? Well, at least the original drafts included government supported options.
That said... Yeah. The current plan for health care reform is horrible abomination. Not a single country with socialized medicine does it like that. It has the downsides of both systems. They really should ditch it.
Democrats. TOO DUMB TO KNOW THEY'RE DUMB
Aside from that last point about health care reform, your whole post was a collection "Republicans have messed up so througly that democrats haven't fixed those things yet" points. I certainly would think of democrats as the lesser evil based on that.