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Melville on Science vs. Creation Myth

From Melville's under-appreciated Mardi: On a quest for his missing love Yillah, an AWOL sailor...

Non-coding DNA Function... Surprising?

The existence of functional, non-protein-coding DNA is all too frequently portrayed as a great...

Yep, This Should Get You Fired

An Ohio 8th-grade creationist science teacher with a habit of branding crosses on his students'...

No, There Are No Alien Bar Codes In Our Genomes

Even for a physicist, this is bad: Larry Moran, in preparation for the appropriate dose of ridicule...

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Michael WhiteRSS Feed of this column.

Welcome to Adaptive Complexity, where I write about genomics, systems biology, evolution, and the connection between science and literature, government, and society.

I'm a biochemist

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The journal Evolution: Education and Outreach is coming out with an issue devoted to the evolution of the eye, and some of the articles are already online.

This journal is non-technical, aimed at both teachers and interested science readers, so you don't have to be a biologist to make sense of these articles.
Of course not. Then why do we have advocates of intelligent design pseudoscience evaluating the Texas state science standards for evolution? Among the intelligent design proponents evaluating the Texas science curriculum is Stephen Meyer, an armchair non-scientist who has proven over and over that he doesn't grasp even the basics of the theory he claims to be so astutely criticizing.

From the Dallas Morning News:
Social conservatives on the State Board of Education have appointed three evolution critics to a six-member committee that will review proposed curriculum standards for science courses in Texas schools.

Your desires for genome voyeurism, that is. Harvard geneticist George Church has managed to get 10 people to fork over a big chunk of change to have their entire genomes sequenced - that is, the entire thing, not just the SNPs that you get from 23andMe for $400.  Not only did those people pay to have their genomes sequenced, but they agreed to sign away their privacy and expose their naked genomes to the world. Go check it out at www.personalgenomes.org.

The NY Times has the backstory.
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If you've been reading this blog via feed, it's time to come pay the home page a visit. Scientific Blogging has received its long-awaited makeover, and the place looks great. And if you're been thinking of starting a science blog, now is a great time to come over and start writing.

The US Presidential candidates on fostering science and technology innovation:

For decades, the United States dominated the technological revolution sweeping the globe. The nation’s science and engineering skills produced vast gains in productivity and wealth, powered its military and made it the de facto world leader.

As many readers here know, evolution isn't just some esoteric topic disconnected from the rest of biology. It's a core theory that is underlies all of biology. Today our department heard a talk from Dr. Sudhir Kumar, a U of Arizona Arizona State University scientist who is using evolutionary theory to improve our ability to predict which mutations are likely to cause disease (PDF).