Keeping Sticky Feet Clean

Science News_ v. 167, Jan. 8, 2005, p. 21, "Twinkle Toes: How geckos'' sticky feet stay clean" is a good one to save in you "Amazing Creation" folder.

Oh, sure, evolution can explain everything (one way or another, even if there's no evidence the explanation could work), but these little lizards' feet belong on a list of things that should give evolutionists headaches and/or nightmares. Scientists had already examined the amazing ability of these feet to stick strongly to all sorts of surfaces (using molecular/atomic scale forces!) and yet peel off easily when they need to.

Now, in a report in the Jan. 11 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers have "showed that gecko feet are 'self-cleaning.' " As near as I can figure from the description, the tiny fibers on the footpads are simply just the right size and shape that, even though they stick to surfaces, they don't stick too strongly to individual dust and dirt particles, so the particles are more strongly attracted to other surfaces than to the fibers.

Until Next Time,

David Bump
Philippians 3: 13 Brethren, I
count not myself to have
apprehended: but [this] one thing
[I do], forgetting those things
which are behind, and reaching
forth unto those things which are
before, 14 I press toward the
mark for the prize of the high
calling of God in Christ Jesus.

http://home.att.net/~david.bump

Here's Complexity in your eye...fruit fly

Nature, v. 431, 7 Oct. 2004, p. 635, "Holding it together in the eye, by Paul A. Janmey and Dennis E. Discher references "Surface mechanics mediate pattern formation in the developing retina" by Hayashi and Carthew, pp. 647-652.

There seems to be a bit of excitement here over our advancement in understanding the complex process of forming multicellular organisms. And it can be very complex: "In a developing tissue or organism containing dozens or even thousands of different cell types, the formation of uniquely structured subsets of cells is a complex process. It can involve cell motility, cell adhesion, attractive and repulsive signalling, and other factors, all of which are controlled by their own network of biochemical reactions."

The report in this issue merely deals with the formation of the fruit fly eye, "an attractive model for studying development, because it is a relatively small and simple organ, formed by a limited number of cell types." Actually, the researchers focused on just part of this "simple" organ -- to be specific, the pattern formed by clusters of four cells of the same type! They show that it is very similar to the pattern made by four soap bubbles, and demonstrate that a protein that makes cells stick together is responsible. Of course, these cells don't actually clump together as simply as soap bubbles.

"The proteins...and phospholipids that hold one cell membrane to another...are very different from the simple surfaces that partition a collection of bubbles" and "cells are filled not with fluid but with a viscoeleastic protein skeleton, both within the cell interior and lining the cell surface."

So, while "the lows of physics, which underlie all biological processes, are not always obscured by the dazzling molecular complexity of biology," the tiny scratches we have made in attempting to mine the mountain of examples of this complexity continue to indicate that the origin of such complexity cannot be explained by those laws.

Until Next Time,

David Bump
Philippians 3: 13 Brethren, I
count not myself to have
apprehended: but [this] one thing
[I do], forgetting those things
which are behind, and reaching
forth unto those things which are
before, 14 I press toward the
mark for the prize of the high
calling of God in Christ Jesus.

http://home.att.net/~david.bump

Alfred Wallace Discovers Evolution

I'll just mention that a review covering a couple books on Alfred Russel Wallace (Nature, v. 431, 7 Oct. 2004, p. 630) has some interesting material.

It notes that Wallace's "flash of insight" about natural selection as the "mechanism" by which "organisms must have evolved from earlier forms" came to him while he was "Lying ill with fever." Evolution or 'species transmutation' had been on his mind for 13 years, and three years before this bout of fever in 1858, he'd published an argument for evolution.

He'd also written to Darwin on occasion, but "Unknown to Wallace, Darwin had in fact discovered natural selection some 20 years earlier." Darwin, however, was keeping his "heretical theory" under wraps while, under the nagging of Charles Lyell, writing a giant book to make his case. Realizing the essay Wallace had sent him would give Wallace the claim to priority if published, Darwin "was thrown into a state of confusion and despair."

Lyell and Joseph Hooker got together and arranged (without Wallace knowing) for "an abstract of an unpublished manuscript" written earlier by Darwin to be "read at a meeting of the Linnean Society" along with Wallace's essay. When published together, Darwin's little abstract, dated to when it was originally written in a letter to Asa Gray, was arranged first. Topped off with his book "On the Origin of Species" (just an abstract of the huge work he never did complete) a year or two later, and with men like Lyell, Hooker, and Huxley backing him, Darwin got a lock on the fame (or infamy) of having discovered evolution in the common misconception.

As with Darwin, Wallace's education was not the best "(he left school aged 13)." He did a lot of field work (collecting) and eventually wrote a lot of books. One of these new books about him describes his "forays into spiritualism, socialism, antivaccinationism, and other unorthodox" movements.

I just thought I'd...uh... just mention that...

Until Next Time,

David Bump
Philippians 3: 13 Brethren, I
count not myself to have
apprehended: but [this] one thing
[I do], forgetting those things
which are behind, and reaching
forth unto those things which are
before, 14 I press toward the
mark for the prize of the high
calling of God in Christ Jesus.

http://home.att.net/~david.bump