Evolution Engineered

• 17May

  Quantum Darwinism – Research in Desperate Need of a Name Change!

  Just for Fun, Science No Comments

  I have to admit, I’ve never heard of this branch of scientific research before today.

  From Wikipedia:

  Quantum Darwinism is a theory explaining the emergence of the classical world from the quantum world as due to a process of Darwinian natural selection; where the many possible quantum states are selected against in favor of a stable pointer state. [Emphasis mine]

  The emphasised portion has been a peripheral intellectual interest of mine for a while, but I never knew someone actually gave it a name. Quantum Darwinism just does not sound as cool as quantum physics or string theory. I mean even a proto-scientific endeavour like Intelligent Design has a way cooler name. Some scientists need a lesson in marketing!

  In all seriousness, the PhysOrg.com article, New evidence for quantum Darwinism found in quantum dots, was the first exposure I had to QD. I don’t know if this research will lead to anything substantive, but I think I will wait for the Cliff’s Notes Dr. Heddle’s Depressed Bruin fan Art’s* layman’s version before commenting further.

  Now let’s have some fun. I suggest a naming contest to give a sexier, cooler name to QD. I mean, even Quantum Natural Selection is better than QD!!

  *Sorry Art. I couldn’t resist. At least you’ll get the Oilers’ leftovers at the draft this year!

• 11Mar

  The Anthropic Principle – The Physicist’s “Rule-of-Thumb”?

  Engineering, Science 7 Comments

  Dr. David Heddle from the blog, He Lives, has an excellent post on The Antrhopic Principle. While the post as a whole is a great read, this part drew my engineering interest:

  In its proper place the Anthropic Principle can be quite useful. But it must be remembered: it can be a guide—but it is never an explanation.

  Dr. Heddle goes on to demonstrate how the Anthropic Principle (AP) can be used as a guide, but it got me thinking about a thing engineers like to use: rule-of-thumbs. Like the AP, rule-of-thumbs are not explanations (they have no basis in theory or empirical design), but are based on engineering tradition and/or aesthetics. To give an example, when sizing a beam for a specific span, L, structural engineers limit the beam depth (d) to a minimum of L/20 or L/30*. Now it is possible that a more shallow and robust beam would be just as adequate (if not more so) to resist applied loads (strength, stability and deflection). However, the more shallow beam would not “look” right. Doing a rough cost-benefit analysis, a deeper beam** is a “cheaper” alternative to client uneasiness. Using this rule-of-thumb as a starting point for design can also a time saver for the engineer.

  However, there is generally no theoretical nor experimental (empirical) basis for the L/20 beam depth rule-of-thumb. It also is not an explanation for the specific beam chosen (i.e. how the beam responds to applied loads). The L/20 rule-of-thumb is just a design guide to assist the engineer in the design process.

  So that gets me thinking, based on linked post, is the AP a physicist’s rule-of-thumb? If Dr. Heddle’s example is accurate, IMO, it would appear to be so. Ain’t it cool how concepts can transcend disciplines?

  *For example, if L = 9 metres (29.5 ft), then using L/20, minimum beam depth = 450 mm (approximately 18 inches).

  **In most circumstances, the deeper beam would weigh less than the more shallow and robust beam, thus saving money on material. That said, the price of steel these days is relatively cheap.

• 22Feb

  Self-Replicating RNA Designed

  Design, Engineering, FLE, OOL, Science 20 Comments

  “Life-like evolution in a test tube” is the title of an article at Cosmos Magazine that describes a potential breakthrough in Origin-of-Life (OOL) research.  (HT RichardtHughes at AtBC )

  For the first time, scientists have synthesized RNA enzymes – ribonucleic acid enzymes also known as ribozymes – that can replicate themselves without the help of any proteins or other cellular components.

  If true, this could help shed light on the RNA-World and create many different and intriguing lines of research. 

  That said, there’s an obvious caveat: these RNA molecules were designed. For a purely natural RNA-World scenario to be true, scientists would have to show that a self-replicating RNA could have arisen through natural means, and last time I checked, they ain’t even close to demonstrating this.

  Keep in mind I am NOT questioning whether evolutionary mechanisms exist. It is obvious that they do exist and function in nature. However, take a good look at what Dr. Joyce and his colleagues did: they took their knowledge of how living things work and change/evolve, and used it to create an RNA molecule that “evolves” (or runs under the properties of known evolutionary mechanisms). This is very similar to what engineers do, using their knowledge of the known world/universe to create an object or system to suit some predetermined function(s) or design objective(s). In essence, what Joyce et al. did was attempt to engineer life.

  As if to reinforce the engineering aspect of the research, the article goes on to say:

  The ultimate goal is to create genetic systems that behave like life, and are for all intents ‘life’ as we know it, but arose without using biological systems.

  “The aim is to create systems that have inventive capabilities, that can develop novel solutions to challenges posed by the environment. But that we don’t have yet,” [molecular biologist Gerald Joyce] said. …

  [Joyce continues] “They are synthetic genetic systems, and they are evolving. But they’re not living because they don’t yet show the capacity to invent functions out of whole cloth [independently from basic building blocks].

  “The idea is to given them enough information wherewithal [build up enough genetic informaton] so they can start inventing their own solutions, rather than just optimising existing solutions,” he added.

  To recap, Joyce et al. “create[d] … [synthetic] genetic systems that behave like life” (i.e. replicate and pass on genetic information – a simple design objective). Further research will have the goal of ”… creat[ing] systems that have inventive capabilities, that can develop novel solutions to challenges posed by the environment.” (i.e. predetermined function). To accomplish this, the researchers aim to “give them enough information wherewithal [build up enough genetic informaton] so they can start inventing their own solutions, rather than just optimising existing solutions…”

  Golly gee! That sure sounds a lot like engineering and front-loading to me.

  “Front-loading is the investment of a significant amount of information at the initial stage of evolution (the first life forms) whereby this information shapes and constrains subsequent evolution through its dissipation.”
  p.147, The Design Matrix by Mike Gene

  I thought FLE/design couldn’t lead to fruitful research. Silly me!

  All kidding aside, this could set the stage for interesting new OOL research. Stay tuned!

• 04Jan

  The Earth is Warming…So What?!

  Global Warming, Science 7 Comments

  In the Alberta engineering community, there’s a lively (and mostly civil) debate occurring on global warming*. Being an engineer in Alberta,  I figure why should I leave the debate out of EE.

  That said, there are limits to the debate that I will allow here at EE. Those limits are perhaps best described by my position on the subject:

  1. I accept that the Earth may be in the midst of a warming trend.

  2. I have not seen any evidence that has withstood scrutiny that humans are the cause of this trend.

  3. I have not seen any evidence that has withstood scrutiny that this warming trend is catastrophic/runaway/etc.

  So let’s have some fun with this. The asylum is now open.

  *This debate can be (mostly) found in the “Reader’s Forum” section of the APEGGA newsletter: The PEGG. It’s interesting to follow – once you get past the kooks on the extreme ends of the spectrum.

• 04Jan

  Evidence for Dark Matter?

  Media, Science No Comments

  This one’s been in the EE closet for a while, and I’m just getting around to clearing it out.

  Here is an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal:

  “A Dark Matter Breakthrough?”by Lawrence Krauss

  Note the hesitant language used throughout the article. IMHO, this is a breath of fresh air that is sorely needed in popular science articles.

• 04Jan

  “Peer review … is limited and vulnerable to compromise.”

  Global Warming, Science No Comments

  MacLean’s magazine recently had a great article profiling Stephen McIntyre, a global warming realist who, along with Ross McKitrick, helped to break the so-called “smoking gun” of global warming, Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” graph.

  Some excerpts:

  The truth is that McIntyre, 62, little resembles the caricature of a wild-eyed climate-change “denier.” He is scrupulous about focusing his criticism on statistical procedures and disclosure practices. He is polite to, and about, climate scientists. He refuses to make grand categorical statements of the “Global warming is just commie horse puckey” type, preferring to remain agnostic, and he discourages such talk on his website, Climate Audit.

  Spanish paleoclimatologist Eduardo Zorita of Germany’s GKSS Research Centre, who has clashed at times with both McIntyre and the climate-research elite, says that “in the realm of science, it doesn’t really matter by whom and why a study is criticized. It only counts whether or not the criticism is reasonably well-founded, is logical, and relevant for the final results.” [emphasis mine]

  The world of mining [McIntyre worked for Noranda during its heyday as well as other smaller resource firms] is one in which everyone is constantly aware of how engineering results can be tampered with or misrepresented to rip off investors. And in 2003, when McIntyre first saw the hockey stick graph, it reminded him uncomfortably of some stock promoter’s over-optimistic revenue projection. McIntyre asked lead “hockey stick” author Michael Mann for the underlying data and was startled when Mann had trouble remembering where he had posted the files to the Internet. “That was when the penny dropped for me,” McIntyre says. “I had the sense that Mann was pulling together the data for the first time—that nobody had ever bothered to inquire independently into the hockey stick before.”

  To McIntyre, a scientist’s data and code stand in the same relationship to a finished paper that drilling cores do to a mining company press release. “If you’re offering securities to the public,” McIntyre observed in a May 2008 talk at Ohio State University, “there are complicated and expensive processes of due diligence, involving audits of financial statements, independent engineering reports, opinions from securities lawyers and so on. There are laws requiring the disclosure of adverse results.” Peer review in scientific journals is good, he suggested, but it is limited and vulnerable to compromise. “There is far more independent due diligence on the smallest prospectus offering securities to the public than on a Nature article that might end up having a tremendous impact on policy.” [emphasis mine]

• 24Sep

  THIS is Science????!!!

  Media, Science 4 Comments

  “It is time to make a radical change in our present geocentric mindset for life as we know it on Earth,” said Dr Leitner. “Even though this is the only kind of life we know, it cannot be ruled out that life forms have evolved somewhere that neither rely on water nor on a carbon and oxygen based metabolism.”

  Exotic Life Beyond Earth? Looking for life as we don’t know it – PhysOrg.com

  Nor is it likely we will ever confirm it.

• 01Sep

  Democracy, Meritocracy, or Aristocracy

  Books, Science 6 Comments

  In his book The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next, Lee Smolinmakes the case that theoretical physics research has been in a state of stagnation for more than 20 years, and he places a large portion of the blame on the dominance of string theory in American universities. According to Smolin, one of the reasons for this is tenured professors whose specialty is string theory favour hiring younger professors who are interested in string theory research. There wouldn’t ordinarily be a problem with this except that:

  a. string theory is not a single theory but rather a “landscape” of theories (up to 10^500 different theories),

  b. string theory does not make predictions that can be readily tested,

  c. even when newly uncovered evidence shows that string theory is wrong (ex: the universe’s expansion is accelerating), string theorists don’t discard but rather amend the theory.

  To help combat this dominance, Smolin suggests (among other things) that science should adopt democratic rule where dissenting voices can have a turn without fear of punishment. This is in direct contrast to what another physics researcher has to say about science:

  Science more or less dispenses with all criteria except number one. Science is a meritocracy, one of the few true meritocracies. What has always been relevant in science is: what is the quality of your work? and, to a lesser extent, what is the volume of your work?

  I concur. This is how science should work. Not by democratic voting, but by the merits of one’s work.

  However, if Dr. Smolin’s portrait of the state of physics research is true (and if physics is representative of the natural sciences in general), then it is apparent that science is not a meritocracy, but rather an aristocracy, where the rulers (the tenured professors) generally determine the direction of research.

  So which is it? Democracy, meritocracy, aristocracy, a combination or two or more, or something else entirely?

• 30Jul

  Tom’s Challenge to ID Critics

  Approaches, ID, Science 22 Comments

  Tom Gilson from Thinking Christian has recently written a review on “Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design”by Bradley Monton. While it served its purpose and piqued my interest for reading this book in the future, it was this paragraph that caught my attention:

  More than once in my blogging I have offered ID antagonists a bit of tongue-in-cheek “strategy advice.” I tell them, “I’m going against my own best interests with this, but if you want to attack intelligent design, you really ought to quit aiming at the wrong targets. You attack it as creationism, but it isn’t that. You attack it as being an anti-science campaign, but it isn’t that, either. You attack it as a theocratic political ploy, and that’s not what it is, either. Here’s my advice: If you want to defeat ID for what it really is, maybe you should to attack it for what it really is: a scientific and philosophical approach to exploring origins.”

  I’ve said it many times at EE that ID is (currently) lacking in scientific results – a point both supporters (i.e. Del Ratzsch) and critics (i.e. David Heddle) make; it is a valid argument.

  However, that does not automatically wipe out ID’s legitimacy as “a scientific and philosophical approach to exploring origins”. On this blog and elsewhere, all arguments to prove this either fall short or hit the wrong target.

• 27May

  73 To 0

  Politics, Science 32 Comments

  There is an interesting post by Bradford at Telic Thoughts entitled A Public Policy Scientific Consensus? Bradford ends the post by asking a highly relevant question:

  …what policies would one advocate based exclusively on consideration of one’s scientific credentials?

  The first commenter, Tom Gilson, made an outstanding observation using embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) as an example to drive home his point.

  Here’s one high-profile current example (the same principle extends to other science-related issues): “Science says we should support saving lives through embryonic stem cell research.”

  The value statement buried in there is that already-born humans are of greater worth or value than not-yet-born humans. People may disagree on whether that’s true or not, but their disagreement is not based in science.

  One way to test that is by offering a response based in religion. “The Bible shows us that human life has the highest dignity and worth, right from the start, and we believe that applies from zygote to blastocyst to embryo and on until the end; and the Bible says it is wrong to sacrifice the lives of the helpless innocent.”

  Set aside for a moment whether that belief is right or wrong. Can it be countered (or supported) scientifically? If not, then how can anyone think ESCR policy decisions are science decisions? Sure, science informs the decision: Does ESCR have life-saving potential? What are its financial costs? What are the alternatives? And so on. These things enter into the moral balance, certainly. But it’s an information/advisement role, as you said. Science’s role does not–indeed, cannot–extend to making policy decisions. (emphasis mine)

  That reminded me of a statistic I heard of comparing the number of treatments using adult stem cells versus embryonic stem cells. The score is shocking: 73 to 0 in favour of adult stem cell treatment. It’s not even close! I don’t have the funding numbers in front of me, but I bet that ESCR funding is greater than that of Adult Stem Cell Research (ASCR), which would make the score even more lopsided. Using a football analogy, this would be like the University of Minnesota-Morris constantly whupping the likes of Florida, Oklahoma, Texas, USC, Ohio State, (well, you get the point).

  Why bring up the score? Referring to the emphasised portion of Tom’s comment, science has obviously come up with viable alternatives to ESCR. Combine that with a nasty habit of embryonic stem cells forming tumours, it seems that ESCR being lobbied as a potential miracle cure is not from a purely scientific standpoint. There has to be something else supporting ESCR.

  This is not to say that ESCR has no scientifc value nor should the government mandate all ESCR to cease. The point is that there is something more than science behind lobbying for more ESCR funding. If science is to advise on public policy, it should recommend (without argument) that ASCR is the more promising avenue, not ESCR.

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