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- Better chow yields more milk: A more nutritious form of corn for dairy cows boosts farm profits, teen investigator finds
- Fuzzy future: Kids may suffer impaired vision from spending too little time outdoors, studies suggest
- Building with moon rocks: Working on the moon with lunar soil and grit could prove easier, more efficient and less costly than using earthly materials
Web edition: August 14, 2009
Print edition: August 29, 2009; Vol.176 #5 (p. 30)
Since Charles Darwin sketched out evolution’s process 150 years ago, a landslide of data has swept scientists into a more detailed understanding of how life’s variety emerged. In Life Ascending, Lane, a biochemist, describes how 10 evolutionary inventions transformed the living world. These “inventions” — a term Lane uses to convey the astonishing creativity of nature, not the idea of deliberate creation — result from natural selection, he contends, the driving force behind Darwinian evolution.
In chapter-length treatments, the author engagingly blends background information on the discovery and function of each invention with data from the latest analyses and experiments. The first great invention, life itself, may have developed billions of years ago at hydrothermal vents dotting the ocean floor, Lane recounts. He walks readers through the process by which DNA, another invention, enabled an organism to pass genetic material to its offspring. And he explains how photosynthesis enabled some organisms to glean energy from sunlight, supercharging Earth’s atmosphere with oxygen in the process.
Other inventions include the complex cell (which includes a nucleus and various organelles), movement (which allows animals to roam in search of food) and sight (an ability so important that 95 percent of all modern-day animal species possess it). Warm-bloodedness, consciousness, sex and death round out Lane’s tally.
Besides documenting evolution’s major innovations, Life Ascending offers a fascinating look at how scientists have come to understand evolution with an ingenuity rivaling that of nature herself.
W.W. Norton, 2009, 344 p., $26.95.
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Recapitulation of some earlier notes on the
Scientific Comprehension Of The Origin, Drive, Nature And Purpose Of Life
A. Uniqueness Of science among human artifacts
ALL aspects of our culture are, of course, anthropoartifacts, including science. Yet among those artifacts science has a distinct uniqueness for us.
During the recent several centuries in the course of human history humans have been developing science at an accelerating rate as a provider of convincing, ever closer approaching, approximate models of the real world.
B. Origin and nature of life
Astronomically there are two "physics", a "classical physics" system of and between galactic clusters, and a "quantum physics" system WITHIN the galactic clusters.
The onset of big-bang's inflation started gravity, followed by formation of galactic clusters that behave as Newtonian bodies while continuously reconverting their shares of pre-inflation masses back to energy, that continuously fuels their ongoing expansion, and of endless intertwined evolutions WITHIN the clusters in attempts to resist this reconversion.
As mass is just another face of energy it is commonsensible to regard not only life, but mass in general, as a format of temporarily constrained energy.
It therefore ensues that whereas the in-space expanding cosmic constructs, the galaxies clusters, are - overall - continuously converting their original pre-inflation mass back to energy, the overall evolution WITHIN them, within the clusters, is in the opposite direction, temporarily constrained energy packages such as black holes and biospheres and other energy-storing mass-formats are precariuosly forming and "doing best" to survive as long as "possible"...
C. The drive and nature of Earth life
Earth life Genesis, formation of the first genes, was a phenomenon of serendipitous occurrence, in a supportive environment, of 'favourably-coursed' energy potential between in-coming sun's radiation and polymerizing-precipitating RNA-related oligomeric configuration.
The drive of Earth life and of its evolution is to enhance the functionality and survivability of Earth's genes, in order to maintain and enhance Earth-biosphere's temporary constrained energy storage and to maintain the biosphere BIO as long as possible.
It is the genes, life's prime strata organisms, that evolve, and the evolution of genomes, the 2nd stratum of life, and of the 3rd life stratum cellular organisms, is an interenhancing consequence of their genes' evolution.
D. The formation of Earth life
Earth Life: 1. a format of temporarily constrained energy, retained in temporary constrained genetic energy packages in forms of genes, genomes and organisms 2. a real virtual affair that pops in and out of existence in its matrix, which is the energy constrained in Earth's biosphere.
Earth organism: a temporary self-replicable constrained-energy genetic system that supports and maintains Earth's biosphere by proliferating and maintenance of genes.
Gene: the primal Earth's organism. (1st stratum organism)
Genome: a multigenes organism consisting of a cooperative commune of its member genes. (2nd stratum organism)
Cellular organisms: mono- or multi-celled Earth organisms. (3rd stratum organism)
E. Update of underlying life sciences conception is thus feasible
- First were independent individual genes, Earth's primal organisms.
- Genes aggregated cooperatively into genomes, multigenes organisms, with genomes' organs.
- Simultaneously or consequently genomes evolved protective-functional membranes, organs.
- Then followed cellular organisms, with a variety of outer-cell membrane shapes and
functionalities.
This conception is a scientific, NOT TECHNICAL, life-science innovation.
It is tomorrow's comprehension of life and of its evolution.
IT IS FRAUGHT WITH INTRIGUING DARWINIAN EVOLUTION IMPLICATIONS.
IT IS FRAUGHT WITH INTRIGUING TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS POTENTIALS.
F. The purpose of OUR, human, life
The purpose of OUR life and of its promotion is ours to formulate and set. It derives solely from our cognition.
Suggesting,
Dov Henis
(Comments from 22nd century)
EVOLUTION Beyond Darwin 200
[Link was removed] #entry396201
[Link was removed] #1407
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