Chiang kai chek: a brief history.

 Chiang Kai-shek, Wade-Giles romanization Chiang Chieh-shih, official name Chiang Chung-cheng, (born October 31, 1887, Fenghua, Zhejiang province, China—died April 5, 1975, Taipei, Taiwan), soldier and statesman, head of the Nationalist government in China from 1928 to 1949 and subsequently head of the Chinese Nationalist government in exile on Taiwan.

Chiang was born into a moderately prosperous merchant and farmer family in the coastal province of Zhejiang. He prepared for a military career first (1906) at the Baoding Military Academy in North China and subsequently (1907–11) in Japan. From 1909 to 1911 he served in the Japanese army, whose Spartan ideals he admired and adopted. More influential were the youthful compatriots he met in Tokyo; plotting to rid China of the Qing (Manchu) dynasty, they converted Chiang to republicanism and made him a revolutionary.

In 1911, upon hearing of revolutionary outbreaks in China, Chiang returned home and helped in the sporadic fighting that led to the overthrow of the Manchus. He then participated in the struggles of China’s republican and other revolutionaries in 1913–16 against China’s new president and would-be emperor, Yuan Shikai.

After these excursions into public life, Chiang lapsed into obscurity. For two years (1916–17) he lived in Shanghai, where he apparently belonged to the Green Gang (Qing Bang), a secret society involved in financial manipulations. In 1918 he reentered public life by joining Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang. Thus began the close association with Sun on which Chiang was to build his power. Sun’s chief concern was to reunify China, which the downfall of Yuan had left divided among warring military satraps. Having wrested power from the Qing, the revolutionists had lost it to indigenous warlords; unless they could defeat these warlords, they would have struggled for nothing.

Shortly after Sun Yat-sen had begun to reorganize the Nationalist Party along Soviet lines, Chiang visited the Soviet Union in 1923 to study Soviet institutions, especially the Red Army. Back in China after four months, he became commandant of a military academy, established on the Soviet model, at Whampoa, near Guangzhou. Soviet advisers poured into Guangzhou, and at this time the Chinese communists were admitted into the Nationalist Party. The Chinese communists quickly gained strength, especially after Sun’s death in 1925, and tensions developed between them and the more conservative elements among the Nationalists. Chiang, who, with the Whampoa army behind him, was the strongest of Sun’s heirs, met this threat with consummate shrewdness. By alternate shows of force and of leniency, he attempted to stem the communists’ growing influence without losing Soviet support. Moscow supported him until 1927, when, in a bloody coup of his own, he finally broke with the communists, expelling them from the Nationalist Party and suppressing the labour unions they had organized

Meanwhile, Chiang had gone far toward reunifying the country. Commander in chief of the revolutionary army since 1925, he had launched a massive Nationalist campaign against the northern warlords in the following year. This drive ended only in 1928, when his forces entered Beijing, the capital. A new central government under the Nationalists, with Chiang at its head, was then established at Nanjing, farther south. In October 1930 Chiang became Christian, apparently at the instance of the powerful Westernized Soong family, whose youngest daughter, Mei-ling, had become his second wife. As head of the new Nationalist government, Chiang stood committed to a program of social reform, but most of it remained on paper, partly because his control of the country remained precarious. In the first place, the provincial warlords, whom he had neutralized rather than crushed, still disputed his authority. The communists posed another threat, having withdrawn to rural strongholds and formed their own army and government. In addition, Chiang faced certain war with Japan, which, after seizing Manchuria (Northeast Provinces) in 1931, showed designs upon China proper. Chiang decided not to resist the coming Japanese invasion until after he had crushed the communists—a decision that aroused many protests, especially since a complete victory over the communists continued to elude him. To give the nation more moral cohesion, Chiang revived the state cult of Confucius and in 1934 launched a campaign, the so-called New Life Movement, to inculcate Confucian morals.

In December 1936 Chiang was seized by one of his generals who believed that Chinese forces should concentrate on fighting the Japanese instead of the communists. Chiang was held captive for some two weeks, and the Sian (Xian) Incident, as it became known, ended after he agreed to form an alliance with the communists against the Japanese invaders. In 1937 the mounting conflict between the two countries erupted into war (see Sino-Japanese War). For more than four years China fought alone until it was joined by the Allies, who with the exception of the Soviet Union declared war on Japan in 1941. China’s reward was an honoured place among the victors as one of the Big Four. But internally Chiang’s government showed signs of decay, which multiplied as it resumed the struggle against the communists after the Japanese surrendered to the United States in 1945. Civil war recommenced in 1946; by 1949 Chiang had lost continental China to the communists, and the People’s Republic of China was established. Chiang moved to Taiwan with the remnants of his Nationalist forces, established a relatively benign dictatorship over the island with other Nationalist leaders, and attempted to harass the communists across the Formosa Strait. The chastened Chiang reformed the ranks of the once-corrupt Nationalist Party, and with the help of generous American aid he succeeded in the next two decades in setting Taiwan on the road to modern economic development. In 1955 the United States signed an agreement with Chiang’s Nationalist government on Taiwan guaranteeing its defense. Beginning in 1972, however, the value of this agreement and the future of Chiang’s government were seriously called in question by the growing rapprochement between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. Chiang did not live to see the United States finally break diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1979 in order to establish full relations with the People’s Republic of China. After his death in 1975 he was succeeded temporarily by Yen Chia-kan (C.K. Yen), who was in 1978 replaced by Chiang’s son Chiang Ching-kuo.

Among the reasons for Chiang’s overthrow by the communists, one frequently cited is the corruption that he countenanced in his government; another was his loss of flexibility in dealing with changing conditions. Growing more rigid in his leadership over the years, he became less responsive to popular sentiment and to new ideas. He came to prize loyalty more than competence and to rely more on personal ties than on ties of organization. His dependence on a trusted clique also showed in his army, in which he favoured narrow traditionalists over many abler officers. Chiang initially maintained his position as republican China’s paramount leader by shrewdly playing off provincial warlords and possible Nationalist rivals against each other and later by his adroit cultivation of American military, diplomatic, and financial support for his regime. His overthrow by the communists can perhaps be traced to his strategy during World War II; he generally refused to use his U.S.-equipped armies to actively resist China’s Japanese occupiers and counted instead on the United States to eventually defeat Japan on its own. He chose rather to preserve his military machine until the time came to unleash it on the communists at the war’s end and then crush them once and for all. But by that point Chiang’s strategy had backfired; his passive stance against the Japanese had lost him the prestige and support among the Chinese populace that the communists ultimately gained by their fierce anti-Japanese resistance. The morale and effectiveness of his armies had decayed during their enforced passivity in southwestern China, while the communists had built up large, battle-hardened armies on the strength of their appeal to Chinese nationalist sentiment. Finally, it can be said that Chiang “lost China” because he had no higher vision or coherent plan for making the deep social and economic changes needed to bring Chinese society into the 20th century. From his purge of the Nationalists’ communist partners in 1927 and his subsequent alliance with the landowning and mercantile classes, Chiang inexorably followed an increasingly conservative path that virtually ignored the plight of China’s oppressed and impoverished peasantry. The peasants formed almost 90 percent of China’s population, though, and it was their support, as demonstrated by the communist victory, which proved crucial in once more establishing a strong central government that could achieve the modern unification of China.

Technology without a technologist?

 

Can New Proteins Evolve?

Douglas Axe@DougAxe

Editor’s note: This excerpt is from a chapter by Douglas Axe  in the newly released book The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos. 

What enables a long chain of linked amino acids to perform highly specific molecular functions with machine-like precision? The answer is machine-like structure. Figure 2 shows one example (among thousands) of these remarkable structures. The multipart machine depicted is an ATP synthase — an assembly of 22 protein molecules that produces the energy molecule ATP. Biochemists refer to this as an enzyme because it accomplishes a chemical conversion (making ATP from ADP). But it’s no exaggeration to call it a molecular machine as well. Operating as a sophisticated nano-generator, the ATP synthase has a rotor (consisting of the parts labeled c-ring, y, and E) that spins at 8,000 rpm!

Figure 2: Structure of a bacteria l ATP synthase. (A) Schematic diagram showing the protein parts. (B) Images of the ATP synthase, from different angles. obtained with a method called cryogenic electron microscopy. (C) Molecular details (not of concern here). This figure is token from H. Guo. T Suzuki. J.L. Rubinstein (2019) ‘Structure of a bacterial ATP synthase.’ eLife 2029:8:e43128. https://elifesciences.org/articles/43128/tfigl (accessed August 24, 2020), under CC BY 4.0 license.

But how do long chains of linked amino acids form stable parts to make machines like this? The short answer is that it’s possible for the different amino acids to be arranged along the chain in such a way that the whole thing locks into a specific three-dimensional form. The process is called protein folding, with the term fold referring to the overall form. Figure 3 illustrates the basics.

I emphasized the word possible there for a reason. A random gene would specify a random sequence of amino acids, which would flop around without folding. Chains like that are rapidly broken back down into amino acids to keep them from interfering with cellular processes. Very special amino acid sequences are needed for protein chains to fold into stable structures. 

Measuring the Remarkable

It’s possible to measure just how special these sequences must be. Because random genes are hopeless, the best way to do this is to start with a natural gene that specifies a selectable trait by producing a protein that imparts this trait. Laboratory methods exist for introducing random mutations into the chosen gene. This can be done in a controlled way by restricting how many changes occur or by confining the mutations to a small portion of the gene. By starting with a gene that specifies a working protein and by controlling in this way the extent to which the gene is mutated, experimenters can produce large numbers of mutant versions of the gene, some of which will almost certainly still work.

Building on earlier work of this kind, I applied the method to a natural gene that enables bacteria to inactivate penicillin-like antibiotics. The trait in this case is antibiotic resistance, which is very easy to select for in the lab. First, one simply puts the bacteria on petri dishes with a small amount of penicillin. Cells carrying a mutant version of the gene specifying an enzyme that’s still able to break penicillin will form visible colonies on the petri dishes, whereas cells with inactive genes will die. I chose four clusters of amino acids, ten each, for my experiments. In each experiment, I heavily mutated the gene locations for one cluster, resulting in many mutant genes, each of which specified a mutant version of the enzyme with a jumble of amino acids in those ten locations. Of roughly 100,000 mutant genes tested per cluster, some were found to work in three of the clusters. None in the fourth. Testing more mutants presumably would have turned up some that worked in that fourth cluster. In any case, I was able to estimate from these results a fraction of mutants that work for each cluster, though this fraction is really an upper-bound estimate for the fourth cluster. 

Figure 3: The construction of proteins from amino acid s. Amino acids are linked one by one in the precise sequence specified by a gene, to form a long, flexible chainlike molecule (upper right). The amino-acid sequences specified by most natural genes have the highly special property of causing the who le chain to fold into a well-defined three-dimensional structure. an example of which is shown in the lower left. Scientists use simplified representations to make it easier to see the features of these folded protein structures. the most common one being the “ribbon” diagram. shown for the same protein (called beta-lactamase) in the lower right. Each coil in a ribbon diagram represents an element of structure called an alpha helix, and each arrow represent s a beta strand. These two elements make up most of the structures of all proteins. with the connections between the elements called turns or loops. Although the loops look floppy, like spaghetti. they usually have a firmly fixed structure just like the rest of the protein. (Reprinted from Undeniable, with permission.)

From these experimentally based estimates, I calculated the fraction of mutants that would be expected to work if the entire gene had been mutated in a similar way. This fraction is closely related to another fraction that carries a great deal of significance for protein evolution. But before we talk about what this important fraction turned out to be, let’s take some time to understand evolutionary thinking well enough to put this fraction in its proper context…..

Back to Proteins

Returning now to proteins, what do they add to the picture? The answer is that they exemplify the commonsensical principles by which we rightly reject purpose-free accounts of life. We can fully grasp and affirm these principles without turning to the subject of proteins (or any other technical subject), but in proteins we find elegant confirmation.

The important fraction I referred to above is the likelihood that a random chain of amino acids would have the special physical properties needed to fold into a stable structure that’s suitable for a particular function. Putting that in evolutionary terms, assuming a particular new capability that can be achieved with a new protein fold would benefit an organism, and that a genetic mistake in that organism has produced a gene sequence that differs substantially from what existed before, this fraction is the probability that the new gene happens to encode a new protein that performs the desirable new function. Using the results of my experiments on the penicillin-resistance enzyme, I estimated this probability to be in the ballpark of:

1/100,000,000,000,000,000,000,00

Mao Zedong: a brief history.

 Mao Zedong (December 26, 1893 – September 9, 1976), also known as Chairman Mao and popularly rendered as Mao Tse-tung, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founding father of the People's Republic of China (PRC), which he ruled as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from the establishment of the PRC in 1949 until his death in 1976. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist, his theories, military strategies, and political policies are collectively known as Maoism.

Mao was the son of a prosperous peasant in Shaoshan, Hunan. He supported Chinese nationalism and had an anti-imperialist outlook early in his life, and was particularly influenced by the events of the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 and May Fourth Movement of 1919. He later adopted Marxism–Leninism while working at Peking University, and became a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), leading the Autumn Harvest Uprising in 1927. During the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the CCP, Mao helped to found the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, led the Jiangxi Soviet's radical land policies, and ultimately became head of the CCP during the Long March. Although the CCP temporarily allied with the KMT under the Second United Front during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), China's civil war resumed after Japan's surrender, and Mao's forces defeated the Nationalist government, which withdrew to Taiwan in 1949.

On October 1, 1949, Mao proclaimed the foundation of the PRC, a Marxist–Leninist single-party state controlled by the CCP. In the following years he solidified his control through the Chinese Land Reform against landlords, the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, the "Three-anti and Five-anti Campaigns", and through a psychological victory in the Korean War, which altogether resulted in the deaths of several million Chinese. From 1953 to 1958, Mao played an important role in enforcing planned economy in China, constructing the first Constitution of the PRC, launching the industrialisation program, and initiating the "Two Bombs, One Satellite" project. In 1955–1957, Mao launched the Sufan movement and the Anti-Rightist Campaign, with at least 550,000 people persecuted in the latter, most of whom were intellectuals and dissidents. In 1958, he launched the Great Leap Forward that aimed to rapidly transform China's economy from agrarian to industrial, which led to the deadliest famine in history and the deaths of 15–55 million people between 1958 and 1962. In 1963, Mao launched the Socialist Education Movement, and in 1966 he initiated the Cultural Revolution, a program to remove "counter-revolutionary" elements in Chinese society which lasted 10 years and was marked by violent class struggle, widespread destruction of cultural artifacts, and an unprecedented elevation of Mao's cult of personality. Tens of millions of people were persecuted during the Revolution, while the estimated number of deaths ranges from hundreds of thousands to millions, including Liu Shaoqi, the 2nd Chairman of the PRC. After years of ill health, Mao suffered a series of heart attacks in 1976 and died at the age of 82. During Mao's era, China's population grew from around 550 million to over 900 million while the government did not strictly enforce its family planning policy.

A controversial figure, Mao is regarded as one of the most important individuals in the twentieth century. He is also known as a political intellect, theorist, military strategist, and poet. During Mao's era, China was involved in the Korean War, the Sino-Soviet split, the Vietnam War, and the rise of Khmer Rouge. He ruled China as an autocratic and totalitarian regime responsible for mass repression as well as destruction of religious and cultural artifacts and sites. The government was responsible for vast numbers of deaths with estimates ranging from 40 to 80 million victims through starvation, persecution, prison labour, and mass executions. Supporters of Mao have credited him with transforming China from a semicolony to a powerful sovereign state, with increased literacy and life expectancy.

A stake through heart for the junk DNA zombie?

Oxford Journal: “The Days of ‘Junk DNA’ Are Over ”

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC 

Thanks to a friend for passing along a new article at the Oxford University Press journal Genome Biology & Evolution (GBE), by several authors (from German and French universities), which opened its discussion section with the sentence “The days of junk DNA are over.” 

That by itself would be significant. Equally noteworthy, however, is the fact that GBE social media editor Casey McGrath — an evolutionary biologist employed by the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution (SMBE), the academic sponsor of GBE and its sister journal Molecular Biology and Evolution — wrote a Highlight article calling attention to the observation that “Junk DNA” is “No More.” McGrath’s article, “‘Junk DNA’ No More: Repetitive Elements as Vital Sources of Flatworm Variation,” is open access.

None of this is accidental. Since project ENCODE provoked outrage among evolutionary biologists such as Dan Graur over a decade ago, there has been a concerted campaign to defend the notion of junk DNA, often explicitly in the context of anti-intelligent design sentiments. Graur, at the University of Houston, famously argued in 2013, in a major speech in Chicago to the SMBE, that “if ENCODE is right, then evolution is wrong.” 

Younger evolutionary biologists such as Casey McGrath are watching all this. We should not assume McGrath has any ID sympathies; almost certainly, she does not. But questions about the possible functional roles of apparent “junk” DNA are just too interesting to allow oneself to be intimidated into silence by academic bullies such as Graur.

Karl Marx: a brief hhistory.

 Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist and socialist revolutionary. Born in Trier, Germany, Marx studied law and philosophy at university. He married Jenny von Westphalen in 1843. Due to his political publications, Marx became stateless and lived in exile with his wife and children in London for decades, where he continued to develop his thought in collaboration with German thinker Friedrich Engels and publish his writings, researching in the British Museum Reading Room. His best-known titles are the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto and the three-volume Das Kapital (1867–1883). Marx's political and philosophical thought had enormous influence on subsequent intellectual, economic and political history. His name has been used as an adjective, a noun, and a school of social theory.

Marx's critical theories about society, economics, and politics, collectively understood as Marxism, hold that human societies develop through class conflict. In the capitalist mode of production, this manifests itself in the conflict between the ruling classes (known as the bourgeoisie) that control the means of production and the working classes (known as the proletariat) that enable these means by selling their labour-power in return for wages. Employing a critical approach known as historical materialism, Marx predicted that capitalism produced internal tensions like previous socioeconomic systems and that those would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system known as the socialist mode of production. For Marx, class antagonisms under capitalism—owing in part to its instability and crisis-prone nature—would eventuate the working class's development of class consciousness, leading to their conquest of political power and eventually the establishment of a classless, communist society constituted by a free association of producers. Marx actively pressed for its implementation, arguing that the working class should carry out organised proletarian revolutionary action to topple capitalism and bring about socio-economic emancipation.

Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and his work has been both lauded and criticised. His work in economics laid the basis for some current theories about labour and its relation to capital. Many intellectuals, labour unions, artists, and political parties worldwide have been influenced by Marx's work, with many modifying or adapting his ideas. Marx is typically cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science.

Adam Smith: a brief history.

 Adam Smith FRSA (baptized 16 June [O.S. 5 June] 1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish economist, philosopher, pioneer of political economy, and a key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. Also known as ''The Father of Economics'' or ''The Father of Capitalism,'' Smith wrote two classic works, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). The latter, often abbreviated as The Wealth of Nations, is considered his magnum opus and the first modern work of economics. In his work, Adam Smith introduced his theory of absolute advantage.

Smith studied social philosophy at the University of Glasgow and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was one of the first students to benefit from scholarships set up by fellow Scot John Snell. After graduating, he delivered a successful series of public lectures at the University of Edinburgh, leading him to collaborate with David Hume during the Scottish Enlightenment. Smith obtained a professorship at Glasgow, teaching moral philosophy and during this time, wrote and published The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In his later life, he took a tutoring position that allowed him to travel throughout Europe, where he met other intellectual leaders of his day.

Smith laid the foundations of classical free market economic theory. The Wealth of Nations was a precursor to the modern academic discipline of economics. In this and other works, he developed the concept of division of labour and expounded upon how rational self-interest and competition can lead to economic prosperity. Smith was controversial in his own day and his general approach and writing style were often satirised by writers such as Horace Walpole.

Judaism: a brief history.

 Judaism (Hebrew: יַהֲדוּת‎, Yahadut; originally from Hebrew יְהוּדָה, Yehudah, "Judah", via Greek Ἰουδαϊσμός Ioudaismos; the term itself is of Anglo-Latin origin c. 1400 ) is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion comprising the collective religious, cultural, and legal tradition and civilization of the Jewish people, also sometimes called Israelites. Judaism is considered by religious Jews to be the expression of the covenant that God established with the Children of Israel. It encompasses a wide body of texts, practices, theological positions, and forms of organization. The Torah is part of the larger text known as the Tanakh or the Hebrew Bible, and supplemental oral tradition represented by later texts such as the Midrash and the Talmud. With between 14.5 and 17.4 million adherents worldwide, Judaism is the tenth largest religion in the world.

Within Judaism there are a variety of religious movements, most of which emerged from Rabbinic Judaism, which holds that God revealed his laws and commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai in the form of both the Written and Oral Torah. Historically, all or part of this assertion was challenged by various groups such as the Sadducees and Hellenistic Judaism during the Second Temple period; the Karaites during the early and later medieval period; and among segments of the modern non-Orthodox denominations. Some modern branches of Judaism such as Humanistic Judaism may be considered secular or nontheistic. Today, the largest Jewish religious movements are Orthodox Judaism (Haredi Judaism and Modern Orthodox Judaism), Conservative Judaism, and Reform Judaism. Major sources of difference between these groups are their approaches to Jewish law, the authority of the Rabbinic tradition, and the significance of the State of Israel. Orthodox Judaism maintains that the Torah and Jewish law are divine in origin, eternal and unalterable, and that they should be strictly followed. Conservative and Reform Judaism are more liberal, with Conservative Judaism generally promoting a more traditionalist interpretation of Judaism's requirements than Reform Judaism. A typical Reform position is that Jewish law should be viewed as a set of general guidelines rather than as a set of restrictions and obligations whose observance is required of all Jews. Historically, special courts enforced Jewish law; today, these courts still exist but the practice of Judaism is mostly voluntary. Authority on theological and legal matters is not vested in any one person or organization, but in the sacred texts and the rabbis and scholars who interpret them.

Judaism has its roots as an organized religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Modern Judaism evolved from ancient Israelite religion around 500 BCE, and is considered one of the oldest monotheistic religions. The Hebrews and Israelites were already referred to as "Jews" in later books of the Tanakh such as the Book of Esther, with the term Jews replacing the title "Children of Israel". Judaism's texts, traditions and values strongly influenced later Abrahamic religions, including Christianity and Islam. Hebraism, like Hellenism, played a seminal role in the formation of Western civilization through its impact as a core background element of Early Christianity.

Jews are an ethnoreligious group including those born Jewish, in addition to converts to Judaism. In 2019, the world Jewish population was estimated at about 14.7 million, or roughly 0.25% of the total world population. About 46.9% of all Jews reside in Israel and another 38.8% reside in the United States and Canada, with most of the remainder living in Europe, and other minority groups spread throughout Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Australia.