Month: September 2022

SPIDER DEAD-ENDS. "In the short term, inbreeding is expected to result in the expression of recessive deleterious alleles with the consequent reduction in fitness (i.e., inbreeding depression) of the offspring of close relatives. Further, even after the most damaging recessive deleterious alleles have been removed from a population due to repeated cycles of inbreeding, inbred individuals are expected to suffer from reduced fitness due to loss of heterosis." https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Leticia_Aviles/publication/259116856_The_Evolution_of_Inbred_Social_Systems_in_Spiders_and_Other_Organisms_From_Short-Term_Gains_to_Long-Term_Evolutionary_Dead_Ends/links/00b4952a0304203a9d000000.pdf View in LinkedIn

CRYSTAL DEFECTS are common, and the perfect crystal does not exist. https://lnkd.in/di6Db2a View in LinkedIn

SELF-SELECTING ERRORS. "During the formation of a crystal, certain kinds of lattice imperfections usually replicate as a necessary part of the crystallization process. In so far as those imperfections that replicate are thus self-selecting, any crystallization process is likely to involve a rudimentary biological evolution. Under simple laboratory conditions, such evolution would be limited by the absence of any selection pressure for the elaboration of very complex imperfection patterns." https://lnkd.in/dDfWeDF View in LinkedIn

REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM. "To suppose that the eye…could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree." (Darwin, 1859). http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.12416/full View in LinkedIn

THE PERFECT EYE. "Despite a lack of molecular details available at the time, he offered a rational hypothesis to explain this seemingly impossible puzzle, ‘If numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist…then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real." (Darwin, 1859). http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.12416/full View in LinkedIn

FAR FROM PERFECT. "Darwin's hypothesis concerning the evolution of the complex eye through stepwise selection is being corroborated. Not only is the human eye homologous to those simpler light-sensitive organs in other animal lineages, but as an organ developed via the opportunistic twists and turns of evolutionary processes, it is also far from being a perfectly engineered machinery, and exhibits major flaws from a designer's perspective." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.12416/full View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this two weekend section on imperfection in nature. One striking lesson is that the development of some bad traits are irreversible, such as molting in insects, and this can forever block a future work-around that could lead to a lineage without molting. Ninety nine percent of all species that ever existed went extinct; for sure some were by catastrophic events, but many must have been by a fatal irreversible trait that locked them into an evolutionary dead end. View in LinkedIn

NANO INCREASES COSMIC MUTATION RISK. An Intel patent application: "Cosmic ray induced computer crashes have occurred and are expected to increase with frequency as devices (for example, transistors) decrease in size in chips. This problem is projected to become a major limiter of computer reliability in the next decade." http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2580933/cosmic-rays-what-is-the-probability-they-will-affect-a-program View in LinkedIn

SINGLE EVENT UPSETS. "Electronics makers have known for decades about "single event upsets," computer errors from radiation created when cosmic rays strike the atmosphere." https://lnkd.in/dkrN6nP View in LinkedIn

CONTEMPORARY EXAMPLE. "Are cosmic rays really causing Toyota's woes? With more than 3,000 complaints to U.S. regulators of random sudden acceleration problems in Toyota models, several researchers say single event upsets deserve a close look." http://web.archive.org/web/20100322200332/http://www.freep.com/article/20100316/BUSINESS0104/3160361/1318/Are-cosmic-rays-really-causing-Toyotas-woes View in LinkedIn