More on evolution by design vs. Design by evolution.

 

The Design Connection in Biological Tracking Systems

Brian Miller

In my last article, I summarized a lecture presented at CELS (Conference on Engineering in Living Systems) that presented a model for adaptation based on the engineering principles employed in human engineered tracking systems. Now I will address the connection between these principles and the design inference.  

As a review, biological adaptation is often driven by systems that employ three subsystems:

• Sensors that monitor specific environmental conditions.
• Logic-based analyzers such as switches that trigger responses when certain conditions occur. 
• Mechanisms that drive targeted output responses.

Irreducible Complexity and Timescales 

To say that such tracking systems could not have evolved gradually almost goes without saying. Many examples of NGE do not even directly help an individual organism but only an entire population acting in concert. For instance, increasing the mutation rate to rapidly generate targeted genetic variation will often assist only a few lucky individuals to survive extreme threats such as an antibiotic.  

More generally, not only are all tracking systems irreducibly complex, but they require the subsystems to be meticulously integrated. And the integrating components, such as switches (here, here), correspond to far greater amounts of information than what could have been generated in the available timeframes. This challenge is highlighted by the fact that timescales (waiting times) grow exponentially with the amount of required new information (here, here).

The Design Connection

The presence of highly controlled adaptive mechanisms directly correlates to life employing top-down design that must meet numerous tight engineering constraints. If organisms resulted from haphazard undirected processes, their design constraints would be few and highly flexible. Altering anatomy and/or physiology should then be relatively easy, and the same undirected processes could potentially drive the changes. In contrast, the presence of numerous tight constraints correlates with altering the system being far more difficult. Significant changes would typically require highly specified and coordinated modifications. 

Szallasi et al. in Systems Modeling in Cellular Biology tacitly came to this same conclusion:

An often noted reservation against the type of analogies between biological and engineered systems we brought forward states that these two types of complex systems arise in fundamentally different ways, namely through evolution versus purpose-driven, top-down design (see, for example, Bosl and Li (2005)). Clearly, evolvability is of paramount importance for living systems (Kirschner and Gerhart, 1998). Here, we think of evolvability simply (maybe naively) in the sense of controlled and structured change in lineages, rather than cells, on long time scales in response to perhaps large variations in the environment. At the population level (of all engineered systems of one type), evidently progress in engineering fulfills similar criteria. [Emphasis added.]

P. 32

Note how the authors do not describe evolution using such traditional terms as “random” and “undirected.” Instead, they describe change as “controlled” and “structured.” Their description of evolvability sounds less like neo-Darwinian evolution than like technological innovation. 

Evolution by design vs. Design by evolution.

 

Nearly All of Evolution Is Best Explained by Engineering

Brian Miller

In recent articles, I have summarized lectures at CELS (Conference on Engineering in Living Systems) that described an engineering model for adaptation and explained how adaptation derives from organisms’ internal capacities (here, link). Now I will summarize another CELS lecture that expanded upon these themes by outlining a second complementary engineering model for adaptation. 

Comparing Models

Standard evolutionary theory assumes that genetic variation expands through DNA mutating or otherwise altering randomly. Concurrently, natural selection and other processes transform species over time gradually through numerous, successive, slight modifications. The results are unpredictable, and in different subpopulations they can vary greatly. 

In stark contrast, the presented engineering-based model assumes that organisms adapt to the environment using the same engineering principles seen in human tracking systems (here, here). More specifically, they continuously monitor the environment and track pre-specified environmental conditions. When the right conditions occur, internal mechanisms induce pre-determined responses such as targeted genetic changes, physiological adjustments, and/or anatomical alterations. These adaptive processes are directed by irreducibly complex systems that consistently include three components:

• Sensors to detect pre-specified environmental conditions such as temperature.
• Logic-based analyzers that determine if specific criteria are met such as the temperature exceeding a set point. When criteria are met, the analyzers send signals to trigger the appropriate responses. 
• Processes that generate predetermined output responses when triggered, such as growing thinner hair.

The resulting changes are targeted, rapid, and often reversible. They are also predictable and repeatable. And their magnitude can range from minor alterations to dramatic transformations, but changes are bounded and predefined. 

Over the past few decades, every facet of the engineering model has been increasingly affirmed by everyone from mainstream biologists to third-wave evolutionists to leading creationists (here, here, here, here). The strongest supportive evidence comes from studies of what have been termed natural genetic engineering (NGE) and phenotypic plasticity. 

Natural Genetic Engineering

NGE refers to genetic alterations that are not random. Instead, they result from cells employing highly complex machinery to direct targeted DNA modifications. Leading researcher James Shapiro describes the processes in a 2016 review article:

Combinatorial coding, plus the biochemical abilities cells possess to rearrange DNA molecules, constitute a powerful toolbox for adaptive genome rewriting. That is, cells possess “Read–Write Genomes” they alter by numerous biochemical processes capable of rapidly restructuring cellular DNA molecules. Rather than viewing genome evolution as a series of accidental modifications, we can now study it as a complex biological process of active self-modification.

He further elaborates on the editing systems in a 2017 review article:

Like all classes of cellular biochemistry, NGE DNA transport and restructuring functions are subject to control by regulatory circuits and respond to changing conditions…NGE activities typically affect multiple characters of the variant cell and organism. Consequently, major phenotypic transformations can occur in a single evolutionary episode and are not restricted to a gradual accumulation of ‘numerous, successive, slight modifications.’

One could contest Shapiro’s claims about what NGE accomplished in the past, but his general description clearly matches the engineering model’s central features. The regulatory circuits that respond to environmental conditions correspond to sensors integrated with logic mechanisms. And the transport and restructuring functions correspond to specified output responses. In addition, the DNA modifications are targeted, rapid, and bounded as the engineering model expects.

NGE has been identified in all domains of life from the simplest to the most complex. Yeast cells respond to nutrient starvation by increasing the mutation rates at specific locations referred to as mutational hot spots. And the remarkable diversity in dog breeds is not the result of completely random mutations, but it also results from mutational hot spots that allow for increases in targeted genetic variation that can drive rapid adaptation. Biophysicists John Fondon and Harold Garner noted:

The high frequency and incremental effects of repeat length mutations provide molecular explanations for swift, yet topologically conservative morphological evolution…We hypothesize that gene-associated tandem repeats function as facilitators of evolution, providing abundant, robust variation and thus enabling extremely rapid evolution of new forms.

Equally striking, plant genomes contain DNA segments known as transposable elements (TEs) that can move to new locations, allowing them to alter the activity of local genes. Specific environmental stimuli can initiate relocation to target locations (here, here), and stimuli can activate the TEs, resulting in adaptive benefits. For instance, TEs modify gene regulation in maize to confer drought tolerance, alter flowering time, and enable plants to grow in toxic aluminum soils (here, here).

Phenotypic Plasticity

Phenotypic plasticity refers to an organism’s ability to transform its anatomy and physiology in response to environmental stimuli. The changes do not result from genetic alterations but from internal adaptive mechanisms. Developmental biologist Ralf Sommer enumerated these mechanisms’ essential components in a 2020 review article:

…plasticity requires developmental reprogramming in the form of developmental switches that can incorporate environmental information. However, the associated molecular mechanisms are complicated, involving complex loci, such as eud-1, that function as switches and GRNs. While still early, it is likely that switch genes point to a general principle of plasticity because other examples of plasticity also involve complex switch mechanisms.

The “incorporation of environmental information” tacitly implies the presence of sensors and signal transmission pathways. The switch incorporating the sensory output equates to a logic-based analyzer, and the gene regulatory network (GRN) activity corresponds to the output response. In summary, the core components perfectly match those of the engineering model for adaptation. 

Phenotypic plasticity has been observed in numerous species in diverse taxa. Gulls of the family Laridae track the sodium level in their blood with sensors in heart vessels. When the level reaches a threshold, gulls generate a specialized gland that extracts excess sodium from the blood and excretes it through the beak. If the gull migrates to a freshwater environment, the gland disappears. 

Cichlid fish demonstrate phenotypic plasticity for multiple traits. Muschick et al. in a 2011 study raised Midas cichlids on food with different hardnesses. The different diet groups developed significantly different pharyngeal jawbones, and the differences resembled qualitatively the differences in jawbones found in specialized species. Härer et al. in a 2019 study exposed Midas cichlids to light of different frequencies. In response to a change in frequency, the cichlids switched the expression of cone opsin genes crucial for color vision in only a few days. Other such mechanisms likely exist, based on the observation that cichlids rapidly converge to the same basic forms repeatedly. 

As a final example, fish residing in cave environments display distinctive traits such as reduced eyes and pigmentation. The standard evolutionary story is that these traits gradually developed through natural selection. But experiments over the past decade on the effects of exposing fish to cave-like conditions are changing the narrative. 

Rohner et al. in a 2013 study raised A. mexicanus embryos in water with low conductivity mimicking cave conditions. The embryos developed into adults with significantly smaller eyes. Corral and Aguirre in a 2019 study raised A. mexicanus in different temperatures and different levels of water turbulence. The variant conditions resulted in adult fish differing in vertebral number and body shape. For instance, fish raised in more turbulent water displayed more streamlined bodies and extended dorsal and anal fin bases that improved their mobility in that environmental condition. And Bilandžija et al. in a 2020 study raised the same species in darkness, and the fish developed many cave-related traits such as resistance to starvation and altered metabolism and hormone levels. Future research will likely uncover even more examples where cave-specific adaptations result not from random mutations but from internal mechanisms. 

Future Research

The engineering model not only best fits the latest experimental and observational data, but it can help guide future research. Whenever a species rapidly and predictably adapts to a specific environmental condition (here, here, here), investigators can expect that changes are directed by sensors, logic-based analyzers, and output response mechanisms. They can then focus research on identifying and understanding these components. 

Traditional evolutionary processes do play a part in biological adaptation, but mounting evidence demonstrates that their role is relatively minor in the drama of life (here, here). Instead, engineered adaptive mechanisms that direct targeted modifications perform on center stage. 

Marcus Garvey: a brief history.

 Marcus Mosiah Garvey Sr. ONH (17 August 1887 – 10 June 1940) was a Jamaican political activist, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator. He was the founder and first President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL, commonly known as UNIA), through which he declared himself Provisional President of Africa. Ideologically a black nationalist and Pan-Africanist, his ideas came to be known as Garveyism.

Garvey was born to a moderately prosperous Afro-Jamaican family in Saint Ann's Bay, Jamaica, and apprenticed into the print trade as a teenager. Working in Kingston, he became involved in trade unionism before living briefly in Costa Rica, Panama, and England. Returning to Jamaica, he founded UNIA in 1914. In 1916, he moved to the United States and established a UNIA branch in New York City's Harlem district. Emphasising unity between Africans and the African diaspora, he campaigned for an end to European colonial rule across Africa and the political unification of the continent. He envisioned a unified Africa as a one-party state, governed by himself, that would enact laws to ensure black racial purity. Although he never visited the continent, he was committed to the Back-to-Africa movement, arguing that some people of African descent should migrate there. Garveyist ideas became increasingly popular and UNIA grew in membership. However, his black separatist views—and his relations with white racists such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) to advance their shared interest in racial separatism—divided Garvey from other prominent African-American civil rights activists such as W. E. B. Du Bois who promoted racial integration.

Committed to the belief that black people needed to secure financial independence from white-dominant society, Garvey launched various businesses in the U.S., including the Negro Factories Corporation and Negro World newspaper. In 1919, he became President of the Black Star Line shipping and passenger company, designed to forge a link between North America and Africa and facilitate African-American migration to Liberia. In 1923 Garvey was convicted of mail fraud for selling the company's stock and imprisoned in the United States Penitentiary Atlanta for nearly two years. Many commentators have argued that the trial was politically motivated; Garvey blamed Jewish people, claiming that they were prejudiced against him because of his links to the KKK. Deported to Jamaica in 1927, where he settled in Kingston with his wife Amy Jacques, Garvey continued his activism and established the People's Political Party in 1929, briefly serving as a city councillor. With UNIA in increasing financial difficulty, in 1935 he relocated to London, where his anti-socialist stance distanced him from many of the city's black activists. He died there in 1940, although in 1964 his body was returned to Jamaica for reburial in Kingston's National Heroes Park.

Garvey was a controversial figure. Some in the African diasporic community regarded him as a pretentious demagogue and were highly critical of his collaboration with white supremacists, his violent rhetoric, and his prejudice against mixed-race people and Jews. He nevertheless received praise for encouraging a sense of pride and self-worth among Africans and the African diaspora amid widespread poverty, discrimination, and colonialism. In Jamaica he is widely regarded as a national hero. His ideas exerted a considerable influence on such movements as Rastafari, the Nation of Islam, and the Black Power Movement.

Neopaganism: a brief history.

 Modern Paganism, also known as Contemporary Paganism and Neopaganism, is a collective term for religious movements influenced by or derived from the various historical pagan beliefs of pre-modern peoples. Although they share similarities, contemporary Pagan religious movements are diverse, and do not share a single set of beliefs, practices, or texts. Most academics who study the phenomenon treat it as a movement that is divided into different religions; others characterize it as a single religion of which different Pagan faiths are denominations.

Adherents rely on pre-Christian, folkloric, and ethnographic sources to a variety of degrees; many follow a spirituality that they accept as entirely modern, while others claim prehistoric beliefs, or else attempt to revive indigenous, ethnic religions as accurately as possible. Academic research has placed the Pagan movement along a spectrum, with eclecticism on one end and polytheistic reconstructionism on the other. Polytheism, animism, and pantheism are common features of Pagan theology.

Contemporary Paganism has sometimes been associated with the New Age movement, with scholars highlighting both their similarities and differences. The academic field of Pagan studies began to coalesce in the 1990s, emerging from disparate scholarship in the preceding two decades.

Yet more on natures engineers vs. Darwin.

 

Insects and Design: Ant and Honeybee Engineers

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC

Yesterday we began looking at arthropods that engineer things. Another arthropod family displays enviable skill at architecture. If you’ve ever watched ants busily tunneling in an ant farm, you may have noticed that the intricate finished product rarely collapses. Why is that? Engineers would like to know, since cave-ins pose a serious threat to miners’ safety. It turns out that ants, with no foreman or architect, instinctively build on the principle of natural arches as they remove sand grains one by one. This was found by scientists at Caltech, who wrote about “The Science of Underground Kingdoms.” A short video in the article notes that ant colonies can extend down 25 feet, host millions of inhabitants, and last for decades. 

Jose Andrade, a Caltech mechanical engineer, was impressed with the intricate casts of ant tunnels that have been made by pouring molten metal into them and retrieving the architecture (see photo in the article). He asked, “What are ants thinking (if anything)?” Do they dig blindly, or just “know” what to do? He teamed up with biologist Joe Parker to investigate. What they figured is that the know-how is not in the individual ant, but in the colony. They call it a “behavioral algorithm.” 

“That algorithm does not exist within a single ant,” he says. “It’s this emergent colony behavior of all these workers acting like a superorganism. How that behavioral program is spread across the tiny brains of all these ants is a wonder of the natural world we have no explanation for.” 

To survive, ants have to build according to the laws of physics. It might be that ants have sensors that help them avoid removing particles that provide load bearing, much as Jenga players pull out sticks that keep the pile from collapsing. The remaining sticks create a “force chain” that stabilizes the pile.

As ants remove grains of soil they are subtly causing a rearrangement in the force chains around the tunnel. Those chains, somewhat randomized before the ants begin digging, rearrange themselves around the outside of the tunnel, sort of like a cocoon or liner. As they do so, two things happen: 1.) the force chains strengthen the existing walls of the tunnel and 2.) the force chains relieve pressure from the grains at end of the tunnel where the ants are working, making it easier for the ants to safely remove them.

The research was published in the PNAS by de Macedo et al., “Unearthing real-time 3D ant tunneling mechanics.” The Abstract says that natural arches form as the ants instinctively know which grains to remove.

We discover that intergranular forces decrease significantly around ant tunnels due to arches forming within the soil. Due to this force relaxation, any grain the ants pick from the tunnel surface will likely be under low stress. Thus, ants avoid removing grains compressed under high forces without needing to be aware of the force network in the surrounding material. Even more, such arches shield tunnels from high forces, providing tunnel robustness.

Honeybee Engineering

One more example of arthropod architecture is the honeycomb. Everyone is familiar with the hexagonal cells that honeybees build, but bees (and engineers using fabricated honeycomb material) face a problem building the hexagons around corners and curves. A photo in the Cornell Chronicle shows the problem: the growing honeycombs start in different locations and will eventually merge. One cannot use perfect hexagons at the junctions, but prefab materials, used in “everything from airplane wings, boats, and cars, to skis, snowboards, packaging and acoustic dampening materials,” tend to be manufactured in straight lines, not curves. Because bees are good at solving this interface problem, “Engineers may learn from bees for optimal honeycomb designs.”

Challenges arise when space constraints or repairs require engineers to keep a structure mechanically strong when linking together industrial honeycomb panels that each have cells of different sizes. High performance computers used with 3-D printers may solve this problem in the future, but could bees provide a more efficient and adaptable strategy?

A new study finds they can. It turns out that honey bees are skilled architects who plan ahead and create irregular-shaped cells and a variety of angles to bridge together uniform lattices when limited space constrains them.

By careful observation, Cornell engineer Kirsten Petersen noticed that bees are as frugal as possible with their “expensive” material, beeswax.

As a result, the bees employ other shapes — pentagons or heptagons — in order to link together panels of perfectly hexagonal drone and worker cells. Along with building cells of different shapes, the bees also build irregular-sized cells, and sometimes even combine multiple types of irregular cells. The authors refer to these pairs and triplets of irregular cells as “motifs” and show that particular combinations occur more often than expected by chance.

The bees even seem to be “thinking ahead” as they construct “intermediate cells” to link dissimilar combs together. All the while, they keep the structure strong and robust around curves and corners. As part of the study, 

Coauthor Nils Napp, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in the College of Engineering, developed a theoretical computer model that allowed them to analyze configurations, and test optimal ways cells might fit together in a continuous manner under the space constraints. They used the model to ask, how much better could the bees do? “And it turns out, not that much better,” Petersen said.

Petersen attributes this engineering know-how to evolution, but those in the design community know to expect that kind of narrative gloss added like whitewash on the engineered structure. Is any gloss needed? Not really. One can observe these ingenious arthropod engineers, understand what they do, and apply it. The whitewash can be sandblasted off without damaging the structure.

Nevertheless, the origin of these capabilities in arthropods must be addressed at some level. If the arthropod body plan mystically “emerged” by evolution, did the engineering expertise of a spider, ant, or honeybee also emerge by unguided natural processes? The same answer applies that Stephen Meyer gave in Darwin’s Doubt: complex specified information is a hallmark of design. Only an intelligent cause provides the best explanation for it, wherever it is encountered. Chance never does. By default, then, intelligent causes should be preferred for the origin of engineering expertise in arthropods.

Yet another look at the thumb print of JEHOVAH.

 

Oxford’s John Lennox: Why Science and the Universe Itself Call for a Creator

David Klinghoffer

Oxford mathematician John Lennox is a star of the new Science Uprising episode, “Big Bang: Something from Nothing?” He’s also priceless as a character: brilliant scientist, the Irish grandfather you wish you had, amiably listing off fact after fact about the universe to confound any scientific atheist. In bonus material from the episode, Professor Lennox discusses problems including that the universe has a beginning, that it was wonderfully fine-tuned for our existence from the start, or indeed before the start. Also that there is something at all rather than nothing, a truth that atheists Stephen Hawking, Lawrence Krauss, and others have sought to smooth other. Lennox tells here why they fail. None of this is what you would expect given a materialist picture of reality. But a Biblical one? That’s a different story.

 Watch Episode 7 of Science Uprising, if you haven’t already, and then enjoy more from Dr. Lennox as he explains why science and the universe call for a creating deity:

Barbarians at the gate?

 

In Science — But Not Just in Science — Who Can Still Believe the “Elites”?

David Klinghoffer

Mark Tapscott at Instapundit enjoyed the new Science Uprising episode, “Big Bang: Something from Nothing?”:

‘SCIENCE UPRISING’ AND THE ELITES: Just as there is a gathering revolt against the political elites in this country, so there are a growing number of smart folks with lots of PhDs on their walls who have had it with being blackballed, denied tenure, kicked out of research granting because they dissent from the current secular materialist orthodoxy.

Discovery Institute’s latest episode of “Science Uprising” provides an introductory summary of Intelligent Design evidence, but more importantly, it also makes clear that this debate isn’t going away any time soon. If anything, like the Flat Earthers of the past, the secular materialists could be in for some surprises. And don’t miss those ‘Chicken and Egg’ dilemmas, either.

That is a smart connection to draw. Whether in science, medicine, politics, or other areas, the comforting old assumption — how elites can be trusted to tell the truth and look out for our best interests — seems more hollow by the day. Who can really believe that anymore? Watch Episode 7 now:

Natures engineers vs. Darwin.

 

Arthropod Architects Amaze Engineers

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC

Arthropods are often described as the most diverse phylum of animals, and the most numerous, too. There are well over a million species of arthropods known today, and other extinct ones in the fossil record. 

Three traits define arthropods: an exoskeleton, paired jointed appendages, and a body plan segmented into head, thorax, and abdomen (but sometimes the thorax and abdomen are fused). Arthropods (phylum Euarthropoda, or true arthropods) are subdivided into in five subphyla: Trilobites (extinct), Chelicerates (horseshoe crabs, spiders, mites and scorpions), Myriapods (millipedes and centipedes), Crustaceans (lobsters, crabs, crayfish, shrimp), and Hexapods (insects). Children are most familiar with chelicerates and hexapods; they learn early that spiders have eight legs and insects have six legs (generally speaking). An occasional centipede or millipede or “pill bug” arouses their fascination, too. They soon recognize spiders, but may have trouble realizing that flies, beetles, butterflies, praying mantises, honeybees, crickets, gnats, and aphids are all classified as insects. Today and tomorrow we’ll offer some news about insects and spiders whose architectural skills fascinate scientists.

The earliest arthropod body plan “explodes” onto the scene in early Cambrian strata, meaning that by their first appearance, arthropods had brains, nerves, muscles, a gut, locomotion, sensory equipment, and the ability to reproduce. The most famous of the Cambrian arthropods, the trilobites, with their complex eyes and coordinated legs, inhabited every part of the world. Other Cambrian arthropods, known from Canada’s Burgess Shale and from China, include Marrella, Anomalocaris, and some bivalve forms, although classification of extinct species is sometimes contentious. Some of these are “brought to life” in Illustra’s film Darwin’s Dilemma and further scrutinized in Stephen Meyer’s work, Darwin’s Doubt). Except in some details, the Cambrian species look familiar and would appear at home in the world today. If their complex body plans could emerge in a geological instant, why stop there? Did some of these extinct arthropods also possess complex behaviors and engineering know-how? We may never know, but we know what we can observe today.

Chelicerata: Spider Engineers

Bioengineers already envy spider silk for its exceptional strength and flexibility. A lesser-known but enviable quality is web architecture. Orb webs are admirable for their symmetry, but what about the irregular “tangle webs” that look chaotic, with silk strands going every which way? The tangle web, it turns out, is functionally beautiful; “it filters in prey and protects the spider from predators.” It is also well-built to be strong and resilient.

Seven researchers at MIT and one from Berlin investigated “In situ three-dimensional spider web construction and mechanics” and wrote up their findings in PNAS. Calling spiders an “evolutionary success” but also “nature’s engineers,” they say,

Learning how spiders used their silks and webs to adapt to environmental pressures have fascinated many fields of research such as biomedicine, biology, and engineering. Because of silk’s nanoscale size and the complex web architecture, little is known about the architecture and mechanics of three-dimensional (3D) spider websduring construction. This work comprehensively investigates the structure, mechanics, and functionality of a 3D spider web under construction, using consistent imaging and computational simulations methods. This work could inspire efficient spider-inspired fabrication sequences or fiber geometries in engineered materials, as demonstrated here for 3D-printed prototype materials. [Emphasis added.]

Of interest to them was a spider’s ability to build “lightweight and high-performance web architectures often several times their size and with very few supports.” This ability would be helpful for spacecraft, for instance, where light weight is a priority. Human construction often takes advance planning, collection of materials and a large team of workers to put a structure together. A spider does all the work herself.

The MIT research team took careful photographs of a 3D web under construction from different angles, and then 3D-printed the parts and put them together. What they found is that the spider first builds an escape route, and then keeps the growing web architecturally sound throughout construction. The spider continues to reinforce the original plan. A tangle web also must withstand the force of a prey hitting it. Because stress is localized at all times, the web is robust against failure. If a fiber breaks, 

the load is transferred to its connecting fibers. Because of redundancy in the structure and the nonlinear behavior of dragline silk, the spider web does not fail catastrophically at any stage of construction.

The paper waxes eloquent about the web-building spider’s skill set, too much so to quote it all here. Suffice it to say they were excited at what they observed and how the information might be used by engineers.

Expanding our knowledge of spiders’ web construction, silk recycling, web monitoring, and repair methods could inspire novel self-sufficient, self-repairable, and self-monitored smart structures. This knowledge can also inspire artistic, design, and architectural interventions — such as complex and large-scale tensile structures — via creative collaborations that both engage and inform materials and engineering sciences.

Already ruling as kings?

  1Corinthians4:8NWT2013"Are you already satisfied? Have you begun ruling as kings  us? I really wish that you had begun ruling as kings, so that we might begin ruling as kings." 

The true church is pursuing no 'dominion' over the present civilisation.

1Corinthians6:2,3NWT2013"Or do you not know that the holy ones will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you,are you not competent to try very trivial matters? Do you not know that we will judge angels..."

It is clear that some have allowed ambition to color their interpretation of this text. The context clearly indicates that this is referring to the millenium when the true church is united with her Lord in heaven, it is then that we receive dominion over angels and men(see revelation20:1-3). From the earlier cited text it is clear that our brother Paul ,and those of like mind did not consider themselves as being entitled to any dominion in the present age.

Galatians6:14NIV"May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,through which the world has been crucified to me,and I to the world."

Through the sacrifice of our Lord the true Christian is dead to the present civilisation ,i.e he is of no value to its ambitions, just as it is of no concern to him. Thus when it comes to its corrupt and corrupting politics,less is more.

1John2:17NIV"The world and its desires pass away,but whoever does the will of God lives forever"

The present civilisation is doomed by divine decree. That being the case how could the Christian make common cause with human attempts to ,in effect, frustrate the divine will. For lovers of righteousness the removal of the present failed civilisation to make way for Jehovah's kingdom is the very best news see Daniel 2:44.

Jeremiah7:16NIV"So do not pray for this people nor offer any plea or petition for them;do not plead with me,for I will not be listening to you."

The true church has not been set up to give any aid or comfort to doomed attempts at patching up the present civilisation. Indeed it would be cruelty of the worst sort to participate in such deception, rather we urge men to abandon such false hopes and turn to the JEHOVAH the one true hope see revelation14:6,7.

Genesis19:14NIV"So Lot went out and spoke to his sons in law, who were pledged to marry his daughters. He said"hurry and get out of this place,because the LORD is about to destroy the city. But his sons in law thought he was Joking."

For more than a century now the brothers have been warning Christendom that her political ambitions are going to be her doom (see Revelation17:16,17). Like Lot's sons in law Christendom as a class has chosen to take lightly the warning of Jehovah's servant ,and are thus setting themselves up for a similar outcome.

JEHOVAH the barbarian?

  In this post I would like to treat with the issue of Jehovah's destruction of the Canaanite nations as recorded in the old testament of the holy bible see Deuteronomy9:1-6.This account is often advanced some as a defeater for the Bible's claim of divine inspiration the argument being that the Israelites were instructed to engage in conduct now universally (or at least largely) regarded as abhorrent and hence said instructions could not have originated from the morally superior being Jehovah God is proclaimed be in those same scriptures see exodus34:6,7.

  First I'd like to point to what I regard as a bit of a fudge on the part of most who advance this line of reasoning i.e their failure to treat the bible narrative as a united whole.Basically what happens in these rants is that parts of the account are rejected as unhistorical and then the remainder is attacked as immoral or senseless.If the consistency/morality of any narrative is to be properly appraised then that narrative must be examined as a united whole,to attack a watered down version of said narrative is to be misleading.

 We all know that morality is context specific.For instance if my neighbour is late on his car payments and the institution that is his creditor sends its agents to repossess his car both his creditor and their agents would be blameless before the law,if I however decided to take possession the same vehicle (though I may employ the same methods as the aforementioned creditors)I would be in breach of law.

 So then can we really properly evaluate the Bible's narrative while excising the main character and his actions from that narrative.The narrative begins by revealing Jehovah as the creator of life and all that is necessary to sustain and render it enjoyable see Genesis1.Hence Jehovah is the owner of life it is his property to give and to repossess according to his own righteous standards.

  So where does this leave us?Has the bible given a warrant to any self-styled religious teacher to call for the death of anyone who ruffles his feathers?

  The Bible's narrative tells us that Jehovah God revealed himself so spectacularly to Moses and Israel that even the nation's  enemies were forced to confess his superiority see exodus8:19.

 e.g deuteronomy4:32-34" “For ask now concerning the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and ask from one end of heaven to the other, whether any great thing like this has happened, or anything like it has been heard. ³³ Did any people ever hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and live? ³⁴ Or did God ever try to go and take for Himself a nation from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?"

  So we are not here talking about voices in anyone's head or long winded debates among academics.The epistemic warrant for Israel's and the surrounding nations' concluding that Moses and Israel were being led by the angel of the original God,the creator of the earth and sky was of a far higher order.The Canaanites made themselves the target of God's righteous wrath because their wickedness was regarded by him as a spiritual contaminant to the land he had designated as a sanctuary for true worship not because of their race see Deuteronomy9:5,6.That is why when the then prostitute Rahab and some the Hivite peoples decided to switch allegiances they became objects of Jehovah's mercy see Joshua2:9-13,Joshua9:3-9.

  Noteworthy here is the fact that the miracles wrought by Jehovah's angel through Moses were universally acknowledged.But only a minority were able get past their pride and stubbornness to realise that taking up arms against the deity amounted to collective suicide but those who did turn to Jehovah were not rejected on grounds of race.I also want to point out that the option of fleeing was also available so it was not even necessary to adopt the religion of the Hebrews if one found that unpalatable.

  The Canaanites of their own free will decided that that piece of dirt was worth dying for at the hands of its creator and real owner.

 When the Israelites turned around and adopted the same disgusting mores as the Canaanites they too were expelled from the holy land,as they were warned,see Leviticus18:25-28,2kings25:27-30,further demonstrating that Jehovah's actions are never ethnically motivated.So the Canaanites were given fair warning and the opportunity to avoid destruction.Jehovah is certainly not to blame for their poor decision making.