Archive for the ‘science’ Category

Evolution is a Thing

Posted: October 18, 2019 in Life, News and politics, science
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To the educated in science, I am not going to be talking about anything that has not been common knowledge for decades. But I have friends who think science is not essential, that education makes sinners, and asking questions that do not get answered in religious text is evil! So this is for you!

We will be talking about sciences like paleontology, molecular biology, evolutionary biologists, and general biology, you know, the birds and the bees!

Let’s start with Molecular biology, as it is there we find one of the most significant discoveries in modern times, DNA! Because DNA is universal to all life, its presence strongly suggests that all creatures on Earth evolved from a common ancestor! It also explains how the proliferation of genetic mutations (copy errors), combined with the processes of natural selection, enables evolution to happen. Ultimately, DNA is the engine that drives evolution. So every time you make a copy of yourself by procreation, no matter if you are a frog, a gnat, or a human being, sometimes there is an error in the copy, or DNA! So this is when natural selection kicks in! If that copy or DNA error makes you better able to cope with your environment, then it lives on. If it doesn’t, it becomes fertilizer! It is a brutal process that takes eons, but, it does not need a guiding hand! By that I mean no guy in the sky looking down and thinking I didn’t create that, I think I’ll drop a boulder on it!

So let’s move on to the paleontologist and evolutionary biologist, as they are both significant here as I bring up the very massive and prolific fossil record! Let point out that no, the fossil record is not some gigantic scam by millions of scientists that planted fake bones, skeletons, and fossilized plant-matter over every continent, and sub-continent of the globe to put one over on you.

Species come and go, but life does go on! This is the essential lesson of the fossil record that dates back 3.8 billion years! Oh yeah, not 6000, as some have tried to tell me! I think a few of us must have felt the Flintstones was a documentary! Hell, gators, whales, and sharks have been around for just a tad longer! In the case of the shark, about 450 million years. The alligator developed into what we see today about 85 million years ago, but has relatives that date back 200 million years! The whale was once a land animal, and they still have vestigial evidence of the legs they used to use to move around! They evolved into whales about 50 million years ago. The hippo is their nearest relative! The fossil record is considered to be anything found that is over 10,000 years old. We can date fossils using another scientific method called carbon dating. We are all carbon-based creatures! So by measuring the carbon-12 and carbon-14 that it contains, we can determine the age. What they do is to measure the difference between the two as the radioactive carbon-14 decays at a constant and measurable rate, so we can date the fossils we find!

So, evolution is real, with real science behind it! You cannot solve our problems if you do not understand the planet you live on and how it came to be! You also cannot understand how to nurture it, heal it, without this knowledge. All scientific knowledge is crucial if we are going to continue to live in this world without destroying it and ourselves. Science is the most critical survival tool in your arsenal, not your damn gun! Ok, get off your high horse, I am not advocating getting rid of your weapons, I can see that argument going off the rails already!

I wrote this blog because I just saw another article where schools in our country are refusing to teach evolution. Case in point, the new Florida Education Chair just stated that he would not support evolution being taught in that state as factual, making the old argument that it is just a theory! He does not understand that in the realm of science, a theory is generally accepted as true! Now a hypothesis would be accurate for his argument, but again, he does not understand or know his words! A person who has sway over education should know his words and their meaning! But you have to be adequately educated! You cannot understand the world you live in if you are not educated in how it came to be! This is not some off the wall new deal; evolution has been an accepted fact for a very long time by 97% of scientists the world over. There is just too much evidence to back it up!

My other pet peeve is history. Again, you cannot know why the world is the way it is without knowing the history that shaped it! Some politician said recently that history is not important, because it was in the past. He and the Florida guy must get their education from the same source! Illegitimate U.

Socialism is Alive in the GOP

Posted: March 4, 2019 in climate change, Health and wellness, Life, News and politics, science
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Let’s start with a few facts. There are no true socialist countries in the world, never have been. There are countries that spout socialist ideas and like the Soviet Union, as it was called during the cold war era, mixed socialism and communism ideologies together, but was neither. It was a dictatorship or a monarchy take your pick! The communist party owned everything, controlled everything, and gave the populace enough to sustain the workforce, not much else!

So Trump wants you to believe, and why you would not just automatically assume anything he said was a lie with his record, that the Democratic Party wants us to become a socialist country! That liberals want to destroy capitalism using climate change as its driving force! That his wall and his rule are necessary to keep our country from being overrun and decimated by non-white criminals, and by any green initiatives, again an attack on capitalism, according to Trump! That he is a religious icon and that Christianity is under attack and the Christian Bible should rule our education and our government. In that vein, he states that the Constitution is too restrictive and the rules need to be rewritten! His words, not mine!

So now, let’s look at a few things from a world point of view. If climate change is not happening, and we are not accelerating it (humankind) then why is it that we are the only country, the only one, on the entire planet not to actively engage in the fight to combat it! Or why, on the world stage, are we the only industrial nation not to provide universal health care to its citizens, even though we spend way more than they do on healthcare, have less positive outcomes, a lower life expectancy than all to them! Again, the only one! When everyone else on the planet says one thing, and you are the lone holdout, does that not suggest you may be on the wrong side of a said issue? Especially since our own Pentagon has told us that climate change is the #1 most dangerous threat to our national security! That prestigious organizations across the globe like NASA and our own National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have said that climate change is real, it is caused in large part by our industry and lack of restraint. And that it will be devastating to our economy, safety, and quality of life. Yes even under the Trump admin they still say the same thing!

Now let us dwell on the title of this article for just a moment. Trump only cares about power, money, and adulation, as do a majority of his fellow Republicans, they just do not take it the edge of lunacy, but they protect their President because he is their scapegoat. Get it while you can and screw the rest mentality exists in our political representatives, and if you are honest, more prolific as a GOP trait. In that pursuit, they have given out corporate welfare by the trillions, including huge perks to the most wealthy among us. At the same time write-offs that policeman, firefighters, and teachers used to get were abolished, in favor of the rich being able to write off the maintenance and storage costs of their private jets! If you block any attempt to barter for the best prices for drugs, what possible moral road have you just gone down, or are we protecting oligarchs and their bottom line? Of course, we are! They never replaced the Affordable Care Act with the big beautiful and so much better plan Trump promised! They, Republicans, are not even trying to create one, they never intended to! The ACA messed with the oligarch’s profit margins and that could not be allowed to happen. And since money now has as much standing as our citizenry, it just stood up and bought what it wanted, or those that have it did, anyway!

I do not know if you are aware, but the countries that inhabit the planet earth do not consider us a capitalist country, but an oligarchy! They no longer trust us, and think we are a threat to the health of the planet and its safety! And no matter what Trump says, he is not respected, but rather he is feared among our allies for his ignorance, his innate fascination with dictators, any so-called strong man, and people who have absolute power over their respective populations. This is power he admires and wants! This is why countries that used to be our allies are looking elsewhere because we are now thought of as a bullying nation, not a bastion of peace or safety for the globe, not any longer!

So Trump, our Liar in Chief, has already started on his campaign of misinformation and outright lies to make the American people think that he is at war and that he is our savior! Just fact check the CPAC speech, there was no truth in anything he said! It was all misdirection, obfuscation, and prevarication! If you cannot bear to vote democratic, at least try and elect someone who has some integrity, some moral values! I am sure there must be a Republican candidate that has not been accused of sexual misconduct, is not under investigation, convicted, or confessed to multiple crimes out there somewhere, find he or she and get rid of the orange menace!

Climate Change Critics (The real Facts)

Posted: January 2, 2019 in climate change, News and politics, science
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Climate Change Critics

(The Real Facts)

The Trump administration released its first major climate report, the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4) on November 23, 2018. The two-part report by the United States Global Change Research Program(USGCRP) was the result of two years of work by a team from 13 federal agencies with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as the lead administrator. The first volume released in October 2017, [39]

A 2018 CRS cited

The first volume, entitled “Climate Science Special Report” (CSSR) released on October 2017 said that, “Detection and attribution studies, climate models, observations, paleoclimate data, and physical understanding lead to high confidence (extremely likely) that more than half of the observed global mean warming since 1951 was caused by humans!

The U.S. Global Change Research Program reported in June 2009[41] that:

Observations show that warming of the climate is unequivocal. The global warming observed over the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases. These emissions come mainly from the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas), with important contributions from the clearing of forests, agricultural practices, and other activities.

Arctic Climate Impact Assessment[edit]

In 2004, the intergovernmental Arctic Council and the non-governmental International Arctic Science Committee released the synthesis report of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment:[42]

Climate conditions in the past provide evidence that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are associated with rising global temperatures. Human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas), and secondarily the clearing of land, have increased the concentration of carbon dioxide, methane, and other heat-trapping (“greenhouse”) gases in the atmosphere…There is an international scientific consensus that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.[43]

Academies of science (general science)[edit]

Since 2001, 34 national science academies, three regional academies, and both the international InterAcademy Council and International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences have made formal declarations confirming human-induced global warming and urging nations to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. The 34 national science academy statements include 33 who have signed joint science academy statements and one individual declaration by the Polish Academy of Sciences in 2007.

A consensus, based on current evidence, now exists within the global scientific community that human activities are the main source of climate change and that the burning of fossil fuels is largely responsible for driving this change. The IPCC should be congratulated for the contribution it has made to public understanding of the nexus that exists between energy, climate, and sustainability.

American Geophysical Union states that human activities are changing Earth’s climate. At the global level, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases have increased sharply since the Industrial Revolution. Fossil fuel burning dominates this increase. Human-caused increases in greenhouse gases are responsible for most of the observed global average surface warming of roughly 0.8 °C (1.5 °F) over the past 140 years.Because natural processes cannot quickly remove some of these gases (notably carbon dioxide) from the atmosphere, our past, present, and future emissions will influence the climate system for millennia.

European Federation of Geologists

The EFG recognizes the work of the IPCC and other organizations, and subscribes to the major findings that climate change is happening, is predominantly caused by anthropogenic emissions of CO2, and poses a significant threat to human civilization.

European Geosciences Union

Asserts that the IPCC represents the state-of-the-art of climate science supported by the major science academies around the world and by the vast majority of science researchers and investigators as documented by the peer-reviewed scientific literature.[83]

National Association of Geoscience Teachers

Adopted a position statement on climate change in which they assert that “Earth’s climate is changing [and] “that present warming trends are largely the result of human activities“:

The American Meteorological Society

There is unequivocal evidence that Earth’s lower atmosphere, ocean, and land surface are warming; sea level is rising; and snow cover, mountain glaciers, and Arctic sea ice are shrinking. The dominant cause of warming since the 1950s is human activities. This scientific finding is based on a large and persuasive body of research.

The Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society

Global climate change and global warming are real and observable … It is highly likely that those human activities that have increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have been largely responsible for the observed warming since 1950. 

World Meteorological Organization

The WMO concurs that “scientific assessments have increasingly reaffirmed that human activities are indeed changing the composition of the atmosphere, in particular through the burning of fossil fuels for energy production and transportation.” The WMO concurs that “the present atmospheric concentration of CO2 was never exceeded over the past 420,000 years;” and that the IPCC “assessments provide the most authoritative, up-to-date scientific advice.” 

I could go on for pages and pages, one scientific organization after another worldwide that support that climate change is here and that human activity is responsible for most of it! I am just pointing out to all you climate change deniers that finding one or two individuals that do not support climate change and our role in it is just that, one or two individuals. The real scientific communities around the globe agree that it is real, that we, the human equation along with our love of fossil fuels is responsible!

You can find links to all of these organizations and more by just accessing Wikipedia and Climate Change. You do not have to take any Wikipedia author’s claim, as I said, the links to every one of my examples are there, and you can check them all out yourself. Every time one of you anti-science idiots decides to go out and find someone pissed off they are not getting enough attention as proof there is no climate change, or that it is not human interaction accelerating it, I am going to clobber you with this blog! The evidence is glaring, the facts easily available. Quit letting an oligarch, bent on selling you his fossil fuel wares convince you atmospheric contamination is false and there is no climate change, as a result, be your example!

 

 

The Trail to Modern Humanity

Posted: September 20, 2018 in science
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This information was gleaned from the science and tech division of the Daily Mail, as are the artists renditions and graphs you will see in this article.

 

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Hybrid Neanderthal love child is found in a cave in Siberia: Teenage daughter of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father who lived 50,000 years ago reveals how humans’ ape-like cousins frequently interbred!  

A prehistoric 13-year-old girl who lived 50,000 years ago was the love child of two separate species of ancient human ancestor, according to a new DNA analysis of her remains.

A study of a tiny bone fragment found in a cave in Russia shows the teenager had a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father, giving fresh insight into how the now-extinct species interacted.

The find suggests that our ape-like cousins mated far more frequently than researchers thought, according to archaeologists.

Neanderthals and Denisovans share a common ancestor with humans and roamed Eurasia as far back as 400,000 years ago having migrated from Africa.

The pair of human-like species then intermingled with modern humans when they arrived on the continent 40,000 years ago, with members of three species sometimes crossbreeding.

This means that tiny amounts of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA can be found in our genome today! As much as 2% of our DNA was passed on to us from Neanderthals.

Research also shows that two modern genomes, one from Oceana and another from East Asia have distinct Denisovan ancestry.

“Previous studies that Neanderthals and Denisovans must have occasionally had children together,” said study coauthor Viviane Slon of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

“But I never thought we would be so lucky as to find an actual offspring of the two groups.”

Archaeologists came to their finding after sequencing the DNA of bone found in the Denisova Cave in Siberia’s Altai Mountains.

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The ancient individual is only represented by a single fragment so small that researchers call it a ‘bone needle’.

‘The fragment is part of a long bone, and we can estimate that this individual was at least 13 years old,” said Dr. Bence Viola, an archaeologist at the University of Toronto who was not involved in the study.

After sequencing the genome of the young girl, scientists found she was the child of a Neanderthal mother and Denisovan father – putting her among the first specimens to show direct evidence the species mixed.

“An interesting aspect of this genome is that it allows us to learn things about two populations – the Neanderthals from the mother’s side, and the Denisovans from the father’s side,” said co-author Dr. Fabrizio Mafessoni.

Thousands of ancient hominin bones were uncovered in the Denisova Cave in 2012, including the 120,000-year-old toe bone of a Neanderthal and the first ever evidence of a Denisovan – the phalanx of a child who lived between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago.

It is commonly believed that a common ancestor of the two species migrated from Africa to Eurasia between 400,000 and 300,000 years ago and then split.

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The traditional “Out of Africa” model suggests that modern humans evolved in Africa and then left in a single wave around 60,000 years ago.

The model often holds once modern humans left the continent, a brief period of interbreeding with Neanderthals occurred.

This explains why individuals of European and Asian heritage today still have ancient human DNA.

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There are many theories as to what drove the downfall of the Neanderthals.

Experts have suggested that early humans may have carried tropical diseases with them from Africa that wiped out their ape-like cousins.

Others claim that plummeting temperatures due to climate change wiped out the Neanderthals.

The predominant theory is that early humans killed off the Neanderthal through competition for food and habitat.

How the story is changing in light of new research

Recent findings suggest that the ‘Out of Africa’ theory does not tell the full story of our ancestors.

Instead, multiple, smaller movements of humans out of Africa beginning 120,000 years ago were then followed by a major migration 60,000 years ago.

Most of our DNA is made up of this latter group, but the earlier migrations, also known as “dispersals”, are still evident.

This explains recent studies of early human remains which have been found in the far reaches of Asia dating back further than 60,000 years.

For example, H. sapiens remains have been found at multiple sites in southern and central China that have been dated to between 70,000 and 120,000 years ago.

Other recent finds show that modern humans reached Southeast Asia and Australia prior to 60,000 years ago.

Based on these studies, humans could not have come in a single wave from Africa around this time, studies have found.

Instead, the origin of man suggests that modern humans developed in multiple regions around the world.

The theory claims that groups of pre-human ancestors made their way out of Africa and spread across parts of Europe and the Middle East.

(I support the above hypothesis, as I have done other studies that support the multiple group theory! Opinion by John love)

From here the species developed into modern humans in several places at once.

The argument is by a new analysis of a 260,000-year-old skull found in Dali County in China’s Shaanxi Province.

The skull suggests that early humans migrated to Asia, where they evolved modern human traits and then moved back to Africa.

 

Physicists Have Discovered A New Form Of Matter Called Excitonium

Posted: December 10, 2017 in science
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An international team of physicists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of California, Berkeley, and University of Amsterdam, claim they have finally proven the existence of a new form of matter called excitonium, almost 50 years after it was first theorized. Upon studying non-doped crystals of the transition metal dichalcogenide titanium diselenide (1T-TiSe2),…

via Physicists Have Discovered A New Form Of Matter Called Excitonium — Sparkonit

Forbidden Writings of Jesus Discovered

Posted: December 7, 2017 in Christmas, Life, News and politics, science
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Biblical scholars at the University of Texas, Austin have discovered an oldest known copy of a heretical Christian writing that describes Jesus’ secret teachings to his brother James. The biblical texts, which relate to the First Apocalypse of James, contain information about the heavenly realm and future events, including James’ inevitable death, according to news…

via Researchers Discover Forbidden Texts Of Jesus’ Secret Revelations To His Brother James — Sparkonit

Why Is Sleep So Good For Your Memory? — Sparkonit

Posted: November 26, 2017 in science
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Researchers at the University of York have shown that sleep strengthens new and old versions of the same memory to similar extents. Instead of overwriting the old version of the memory, the brain generates and stores multiple (new and old) versions of the same experience, helping you use your memory in the most flexible and…

via Why Is Sleep So Good For Your Memory? — Sparkonit

Lightning Creates Antimatter in The Atmosphere by Sparkonit

Posted: November 24, 2017 in science
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Lightning is one of the most incredible natural phenomenons and there’s a lot we don’t know about it. Now, a study at Kyoto University, Japan has found that lightning strikes can set off photonuclear reactions in the atmosphere, and the gamma rays – emitted in lightning – react with the air to produce radioisotopes and…

via Lightning Creates Antimatter In The Atmosphere – And It’s Powerful Enough To Set Off Nuclear Reactions, Study Finds — Sparkonit

The Facts, Nothing But The Facts!

Posted: October 12, 2017 in Health and wellness, Life, News and politics, science
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This is in response to a post about how Democrats were originally for slavery and were opposed to civil rights! Well I had to respond, actually a friend asked for my opinion, and she got a little more than she bargained for, I am sure! So here goes! 

If you look at history and the platforms of both parties they have completely switched ideologies since the days of Lincoln. So what used to be the democrats is actually represented by republicans, and vice-versa. It of course is not as simple as just switching names, but the Democratic Party of old does not exist as such anymore, has not probably in our lifetime! So what is claimed is accurate, just not accurate to ascribe those attributes to the current party. The democrats have lots of problems which they need to solve, but if you look at what Republicans are trying to do right now, for example getting rid of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, trying to completely shut down the education and environmental agencies in total, trying to open up open pit mining in the heart of the last remaining natural Salmon fishery, closing down or vastly reducing our park systems and opening them up to mining and oil interests, I cannot see this as in our interest. The premise of the Republican Party is a solid one, but Republicans now in power are not abiding by or even resembling such a premise. I used to be a staunch Republican, but when they became bought and paid for, I had to leave. Not saying there are not bought and paid for Democrats, but way less in my opinion. If you dig into social security, it is income deduction based, does not affect the debt, and would be solvent if left alone and not the Fed piggy bank. But employers, especially large ones, have to match the Soc. Sec. contribution. Now they figure all that in when deciding how much salary to pay an individual, along with 401k matching, health care, vacation time, etc. But that is the driving force to the GOP hatred of this particular program, and in other forms of imagined attacks on their bottom line tend to foment hatred for all healthcare programs! Why after seven or eight years did the Republicans not build their own healthcare bill instead of trying to shove a hastily thrown together bill down our throats in secret to try and fool us into thinking they had our interest at heart! Because they never intended to offer a healthcare plan. They thought we would let them  get rid of the ACA and then they would just ignore cries for a new program until it faded away!  Big business, pharmaceuticals, petroleum companies, and others, all make billions, even trillions in profit, and they need to keep increasing profit or their stockholders get nasty! So that is what is being legislated, not our needs or wants or desires. Politicians get their money for re-election from these sources so you and I do not figure into their machinations in congress anymore. We have always been a socialist democracy. Otherwise there would be no fire, police, emergency response teams, paramedics, interstate highways, and the list goes on. So you have to decide if backing a person who acts like a bully in a grade school sandbox, who lies every single day, tells you exactly what you want to hear but has no intention of actually doing any of it, who changes horses midstream on policy weekly, and who cannot let any slight go no matter how insignificant it is! So he undermines his own secretary, his cabinet members flee in disgust, almost all of his appointments are still empty, he has no takers, despite his blaming democrats or Obama for everything. Tillerson almost left this summer! The buck stops at the Presidents desk, but he does not know that! Sorry for going postal here, but I have a lot of pent up rage at what is going on. I spend long hours reading bills, studying history, and looking at foreign news, even Russian outlets along with British, Irish, etc., to try and get the real picture of our world and our place in it. We are not the jewel of the earth anymore, we are more like a cancer! Education and science are scoffed at right now, and we are going to be sorry for letting those two slip our grasp. We need to start paying attention to science and education again or we are going to fail as a country! Our esteem in the world by our peers has diminished by leaps and bounds. This is not my opinion, it is a fact! You cannot replace a scientist with multiple degrees with a used car salesmen in an agency based on science and expect him to make the right choices for our well being. I am talking about the Environmental Protection Agency, oh and NASA as well! Anyway, I will shut up now, but I was asked!

 

Nasa found that the Moon had an Atmosphere 3 to 4 Billion yrs. Ago!

Posted: October 9, 2017 in science
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A new study at NASA has found that our moon had a more prominent atmosphere than it does today – around 3 to 4 billion years ago – which formed as a result of intense volcanic eruptions that spewed giant cloud of gas above the surface faster than they could escape to space. The surface…

via Study Shows Our Moon Once Had An Atmosphere — Sparkonit