|
Reader's Favorites
Media Casualties Mount Administration Split On Europe Invasion Administration In Crisis Over Burgeoning Quagmire Congress Concerned About Diversion From War On Japan Pot, Kettle On Line Two... Allies Seize Paris The Natural Gore Book Sales Tank, Supporters Claim Unfair Tactics Satan Files Lack Of Defamation Suit Why This Blog Bores People With Space Stuff A New Beginning My Hit Parade
Instapundit (Glenn Reynolds) Tim Blair James Lileks Bleats Virginia Postrel Kausfiles Winds Of Change (Joe Katzman) Little Green Footballs (Charles Johnson) Samizdata Eject Eject Eject (Bill Whittle) Space Alan Boyle (MSNBC) Space Politics (Jeff Foust) Space Transport News (Clark Lindsey) NASA Watch NASA Space Flight Hobby Space A Voyage To Arcturus (Jay Manifold) Dispatches From The Final Frontier (Michael Belfiore) Personal Spaceflight (Jeff Foust) Mars Blog The Flame Trench (Florida Today) Space Cynic Rocket Forge (Michael Mealing) COTS Watch (Michael Mealing) Curmudgeon's Corner (Mark Whittington) Selenian Boondocks Tales of the Heliosphere Out Of The Cradle Space For Commerce (Brian Dunbar) True Anomaly Kevin Parkin The Speculist (Phil Bowermaster) Spacecraft (Chris Hall) Space Pragmatism (Dan Schrimpsher) Eternal Golden Braid (Fred Kiesche) Carried Away (Dan Schmelzer) Laughing Wolf (C. Blake Powers) Chair Force Engineer (Air Force Procurement) Spacearium Saturn Follies JesusPhreaks (Scott Bell) Science
Nanobot (Howard Lovy) Lagniappe (Derek Lowe) Geek Press (Paul Hsieh) Gene Expression Carl Zimmer Redwood Dragon (Dave Trowbridge) Charles Murtaugh Turned Up To Eleven (Paul Orwin) Cowlix (Wes Cowley) Quark Soup (Dave Appell) Economics/Finance
Assymetrical Information (Jane Galt and Mindles H. Dreck) Marginal Revolution (Tyler Cowen et al) Man Without Qualities (Robert Musil) Knowledge Problem (Lynne Kiesling) Journoblogs The Ombudsgod Cut On The Bias (Susanna Cornett) Joanne Jacobs The Funny Pages
Cox & Forkum Day By Day Iowahawk Happy Fun Pundit Jim Treacher IMAO The Onion Amish Tech Support (Lawrence Simon) Scrapple Face (Scott Ott) Regular Reading
Quasipundit (Adragna & Vehrs) England's Sword (Iain Murray) Daily Pundit (Bill Quick) Pejman Pundit Daimnation! (Damian Penny) Aspara Girl Flit Z+ Blog (Andrew Zolli) Matt Welch Ken Layne The Kolkata Libertarian Midwest Conservative Journal Protein Wisdom (Jeff Goldstein et al) Dean's World (Dean Esmay) Yippee-Ki-Yay (Kevin McGehee) Vodka Pundit Richard Bennett Spleenville (Andrea Harris) Random Jottings (John Weidner) Natalie Solent On the Third Hand (Kathy Kinsley, Bellicose Woman) Patrick Ruffini Inappropriate Response (Moira Breen) Jerry Pournelle Other Worthy Weblogs
Ain't No Bad Dude (Brian Linse) Airstrip One A libertarian reads the papers Andrew Olmsted Anna Franco Review Ben Kepple's Daily Rant Bjorn Staerk Bitter Girl Catallaxy Files Dawson.com Dodgeblog Dropscan (Shiloh Bucher) End the War on Freedom Fevered Rants Fredrik Norman Heretical Ideas Ideas etc Insolvent Republic of Blogistan James Reuben Haney Libertarian Rant Matthew Edgar Mind over what matters Muslimpundit Page Fault Interrupt Photodude Privacy Digest Quare Rantburg Recovering Liberal Sand In The Gears(Anthony Woodlief) Sgt. Stryker The Blogs of War The Fly Bottle The Illuminated Donkey Unqualified Offerings What she really thinks Where HipHop & Libertarianism Meet Zem : blog Space Policy Links
Space Future The Space Review The Space Show Space Frontier Foundation Space Policy Digest BBS AWOL
USS Clueless (Steven Den Beste) Media Minder Unremitting Verse (Will Warren) World View (Brink Lindsay) The Last Page More Than Zero (Andrew Hofer) Pathetic Earthlings (Andrew Lloyd) Spaceship Summer (Derek Lyons) The New Space Age (Rob Wilson) Rocketman (Mark Oakley) Mazoo Site designed by Powered by Movable Type |
A Touch Of Toxin There's an old saying that there are no poisons per se--only toxic doses. Many things that are toxic in large quantities can be harmless, even beneficial, in small ones (which is why the Delaney Clause--the federal mandate requiring products to be banned if they cause cancer in lab mice in any quantities, is absurd). Now, we have another example of it, that may have staggering scientific consequences. Ultra-violet light is often used to kill micro-organisms, so as a major component of sunlight, it's always been seen as an impediment to the development of life on a young earth. But now researchers have found that it may, under some circumstances, actually contribute to building organic links, and may have contributed to the early development of replicating systems. Posted by Rand Simberg at May 29, 2003 04:56 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.transterrestrial.com/mt-diagnostics.cgi/1282 Listed below are links to weblogs that reference this post from Transterrestrial Musings.
Delaney Clause
Excerpt: Good Lord. If you want to hear some scientific insanity, read about the Delaney Clause, which seeks to ban any product found to cause cancer... Weblog: Dean's World Tracked: May 30, 2003 12:04 AM
Comments
Interesting article. One of the things I like about basic scientific research is that it has the effect of nullifying bigotries... eventually. I also find that when something is true, things just seem to fall into place. More and more pieces just seem to fit. Circles inside circles vs. Keplers elliptical orbits is a model example. That doesn't seem to be the case here. To overcome the RNA/DNA chicken and egg, naturally the simpler RNA is the focus, simpler being very relative. The article includes a number of sleight of hand tricks that could easily be overlooked for someone intent on reaching an evolutionary conclusion. A few points: 1) It doesn't say RNA is immune to the destructive nature of UV, only that one of three components is more effecient at absorbing UV. The sugar and phosphate components of RNA degrade under UV, where the article strongly suggests (simply by not mentioning it) that they would not because they are protected. I wonder what would happen to their computer model if the computer itself were subjected to sufficiently strong UV for a period of time? It wouldn't need to be geological time either! 2) RNA is much more likely to form long chains than other organic molecules. So what's the absolute probability? Instead of no chance at all, we have 1 over the age of the universe? What is it? 3) Now we jump to UV being the natural selector - so somehow all that UV is no longer an obstacle. 4) Then we propose that UV replace those electrical sparks as the energy source for change. Again removing these delicate chemicals immediately from the source of this supposed force of life. They do mention split seconds. Hey, maybe that's how it all worked, but it still seems like circles within circles to me. Perhaps they imagine they can stretch them enough to produce ellipses? Posted by ken anthony at May 29, 2003 05:49 PMBTW, I agree with you completely that the 'Delaney Clause' if it's as you state, is complete absurd. Posted by ken anthony at May 29, 2003 05:53 PMRand: the Delaney Clause article you linked to is from 1996. Do we know that this clause is still in effect? Have you got any references on that? Dean Posted by Dean Esmay at May 31, 2003 01:12 AMKen, I think you misunderstand what the article has said. For one, your "absolute probability" statement appears to assume that there is exactly one RNA complex available on the entire young Earth -- whereas there would more likely be molar quantities of suitable precursors, even in relatively small geographical areas. There needn't be an especially high rate of success when a) the successful molecules reproduce, and b) there are 10^n (where n is not a small number) simultaneous experiments proceeding in parallel. Next, UV is the selector -- so the impact of UV is very naturally reduced on those UV-resistant "survivors". What's so hard to understand about that? And finally, chemical reactions (including polymerization) do typically take place in "split seconds"; I'm not sure what your criticism of their statement is supposed to mean... Posted by Troy at May 31, 2003 01:52 AMI don't know for sure, Dean, but I don't recall hearing that it had been revoked. It's possible that it was, though, since it was what did in saccharine, and I think that's available again. I wasn't necessarily complaining about it as a current artifact of law (and it was actually put into force back in the fifties)--I was just pointing out the absurdity of the general principle, because many still subscribe to it. Posted by Rand Simberg at May 31, 2003 10:12 AMI think you mean cyclamates. Saccharine is still with us, but cyclamates are still banned--although they shouldn't be. You're right about the general attitude it reveals though. But I've got a friend ragging all over me about this now becuase we discovered the article is so old. Of course he also went apes**** when I pointed out the fact that arsenic is a nutrient, so what are you gonna do? Posted by Dean Esmay at May 31, 2003 02:11 PMTroy, I did find the article interesting and appreciate that Rand takes the time to bring such things to our attention. It's one of the reasons I enjoy visiting his blog. I personally feel that where humans are concerned there is no such thing as unbias, we all have our axes to grind. So an article that may seem objective or balanced to one may not to another. In this case, and perhaps unfairly, I thought some of the things unsaid were worth commenting upon. As to your 3 points... Perhaps you are assuming that molar quantities of likely precursors self-evidently assumes they must result in RNA? I would think you could stop the presses with that one. Saying something is likely does not constitute proof, does it? On the contrary, UV is demonstratably destructive even to the components (precursors?) of RNA. I'll give you the second point, certainly UV could be described as a selector. I'll let the second part of my third statement stand for itself. You are right that I was unclear with regard to my mention of split seconds. From the article... 'There is a small probability that RNA bases hit by UV light may be energised for a split second to a state where they can chemically react with another molecule to form another link in the chain' My comment wasn't really about the split second itself, rather it had to do with what would be happening immediately after should this small probability have occured. Which is that if left exposed to the UV there would be a very large probability of degradation that would completely overwhelm any small probability of the event occuring. I think that's a rather important point to have been left out. I'd like to think that the standards for scientific articles was something better than you might expect from the NY...Times! But perhaps I'm just an idealist? Still, the main thrust of the article about UV resistance was interesting. Posted by ken anthony at June 1, 2003 11:37 PMPerhaps it would help if mentioned why I thought the article was interesting? Being an INTJ, I like to understand the meaning of thing free of bigotry or prejudice. Anyone familier with Meyer-Briggs would know that INTJ's are natural scientists. My mind is full of all those powerful childlike questions that others have long since dismissed. So when I read an article that says RNA has some resistance to UV, I don't think about some conjectured old soup, I think about UV hitting living things today, right now. It seems to me that kind of resistance might have practical application to living things and I wonder what it would mean to living things today if that resistant didn't exist. This childlike wonder at the world can lead to some powerful insights. So how far does UV penetrate a body (a few layers of skin or more?) What would the impact be without this resistance? Personally, I think these are very interesting questions. Posted by ken anthony at June 2, 2003 09:15 AMPost a comment |