Aging

May 13, 2007

Aging could be a evolutionary process to reduce the competition within the species.

GOD

May 13, 2007

God only exists in the mind of the weak and fearful……

HGH—human growth hormoneIt is your pituitary gland that produces the ever so important HGH that your body needs. Unfortunately this gland does not secrete this as much in your older life as it did when you were still a wee one.

When we are young we need the HGH—human growth hormone—to grow our bones and organs etc. and in our adult life this hormone has a big affect on our metabolism rates as well as our immune systems and how well they perform throughout our lives.

Much of the HGH in our bodies is secreted during the time we spend sleeping and it is all due to the fact that the hypothalamus triggers the reaction in our anterior pituitary. It is our tissues, bones and muscles that get the most out of HGH though the rest of the body does benefit as well.

As we age and our bodies produce and secrete less and less human growth hormone we start to feel more tired, we start to look older and just generally feel less well not to mention that fact that we tend to get fatter.

While HGH is one of the hormones that do the body good, there are some that are not quite as helpful all the time. For example insulin. When we eat unhealthy diets filled with refined carbs and sugars the body is gong to go wild with the amount of insulin that it produces leading to adult onset diabetes. This can be deadly if not treated and even when treated is a giant pain in the butt to live with. Insulin is not the only hormone that can wreak havoc on your body though, there is also cortisol. This is the hormone known as the flight or fight hormone. This sucker ruins your tissues, even your brain tissues! That is why sometimes we start to lose our mental functioning, but when you start to take HGH it can reverse these negative effects all over your body.

Human growth hormone is actually called the anti aging hormone by many because of how much it can do for the aging human body.

A few of the many benefits that you can see (and feel!) when taking HGH are:

  • Better immune system function
  • Better mental capacity
  • Muscle gain
  • Fat loss
  • Plumped up organs, those that has previously been shrinking with age
  • More energy to do fun stuff
  • Better kidney function
  • Lower blood pressure
  • Lower cholesterol
  • Better cardiac function
  • Better bone density
  • Balanced electromagnetic field

IT is a fact that HGH and IGF-1 can help you manage the aging process better while keeping you fit and healthy. This happens by keeping the genetic codes in order on all of the different proteins, hormones and even the enzymes that you need to keep your cells working as they should be. Sure you can take vitamin C and vitamin E as they will help to keep your DNA and in check as well as your immune system functioning well, but HGH and IGF-1 will make an even bigger difference, in fact they can make all of the difference. These help you to have your DNA fixed up before the cells divide. HGH even gets the nucleic acids and the amino acids into the various cells and membranes. From there it is IGF-1 that gets the nucleic acids straight into the nucleus of the cell, straight to the heart of the DNA. This is powerful and the difference it will have on your body is outstanding.

HGH is not the only kind of endocrine hormone that is in your body.

There are many others such as:

  • Estrogen
  • Progesterone
  • Testosterone
  • Melatonin
  • DHEA

All of these hormones lower in production as we get older and more and more patients are turning to hormone replacement therapies to counteract the aging process. And while these others can help you in many ways only HGH can truly help you to prevent the signs and effects of aging.

It is during adolescence and even into your twenties that your HGH levels are the highest. For example most people at around 25 are producing 600 mg of human growth hormone. But by the time you are 60 or 70 years old you could have as little as 15 percent of that amount! That is a massive difference that affects your body in ways that can cripple your life. And the scariest part is that if you are not the healthiest eater you could be down to that 15 percent when you are only 40! And let’s face it, most of us are far from having a healthy diet each day.

The simple facts are that once you hit 21 you are losing about 14 percent of your HGH per decade. You know what this means right? It means that by the time you are seriously losing out on good health.

Here it is broken down into simple numerical values:

Okay, when we are about 20 years old we are cranking out about 500 micrograms of human growth hormone.

At the age of 40 we are secreting about 200 micrograms.

Then finally at 80 we are only producing a lowly 25 micrograms.

That is a serious difference, is it not? Shocking!

When you are walking down the street and you see those older people who are all weak and mushy looking, those that are fat and who seem to have zero interest in anything at all, those are the people who need a little pick me up in the form of HGH.

People who are lacking in their HGH even lose interest in sex and they can have a really hard time keeping track of things in their mind because their memory is just not what it used to be when they were producing enough HGH each day.

When you want to see these daily issues disappear then you want to talk to your doctor about HGH injections. You will begin to look better feel better and actually see these signs of aging be reversed.

And if you really want to live forever—or at least longer than you would have before—then you want to combine HGH treatments with a healthy and well balanced diet. Keeping the calorie down and eating plenty of protein is always a good way to go.

You can have some tests done that are pretty simple. They will simply measure your plasma IGF-1 levels. If you are coming in at under 350 IU then you are lacking in HGH.

http://www.humanhormones.com/

March 15, 2007

In the beginning there was only one very small and very simple biological organism. As it evolved, it’s features diverged. Over the past 3.5 billion years or so, all of the various living organisms we see around us developed from this continuing divergence.

Evolution is always working within every species, always changing each species in both form and function. If a desirable mutation should occur in a very large gene pool (such as the human in China) it would be extremely slow to become a standard feature of that gene pool since it must first propagate generation by generation across the entire huge gene pool. A human feature or functional change in China might take hundreds of thousands of years, for example. If a small human gene pool (tribe) should become isolated, by geographical separation perhaps, the pool can change quite rapidly, on the order of a few thousand years. This is how the various human races came to be. If the differentiation continued and the gene pools were not mixed, eventually the different races would become different species. Modern transportation will never allow this to happen, of course.

Homo erectus existed for about 1.9 million years. It was a very successful human species and changed very slowly over that period of time. We don’t know for sure where the modern human (Homo sapiens sapiens) developed, but it seemed to be quite sudden and happened about 180,000 years ago. It’s a guess, but perhaps a small Homo erectus tribe became completely isolated under severe environmental conditions, one that caused rapid mutation selection so that the differences between erectus and sapiens occurred in a very short time. Such large scale change in a short time could only occur in a very small gene pool.

The idea of a ‘species’ is a human one, an intellectual approximation that we use to help us categorize various forms (organisms) of life. It is also a hazy concept, because every ‘species’ we define is actually in transition from one species to another and in most cases there is at least one other organism which is quite similar to the one being categorized, so similar that it is hard to call it a separate species. Even our categorization of the fossil history of man is highly controversial. Who can say exactly when Australopithecus africanus ceased to exist and Homo habilis began? Or were they merely variations in time within the same species?

So, the concept of ‘species’ is archaic. We thought that the forms of life were stable and that they could be categorized in a fixed fashion. We find, instead, that what we now see as the current set of ‘species’ around us is actually a current snapshot and that all of these ‘species’ are in transition.

The Evolution Process

March 15, 2007

Evolution is the change with time of the gene pool of a species. The mechanisms of evolution are mutation, natural selection, recombination and gene flow.

Mutation provides all initial change. A mutation occurs when the DNA does not replicate perfectly. When a mutation occurs, a new allele is created. As a first approximation, these accidents (mutations) are random (can occur at any location along the DNA). The rate of these accidents is relatively constant within a given species. If the accident occurs in a critical location (believed to be less than 10% of the total in man), the result is usually disastrous. Other areas will accept change with no immediate consequence. Once made, the mutation is perpetuated and variability within the gene pool of the species is increased. Mutations add variability to the gene pool.

Natural selection occurs when the viability of an allele is tested in real life. It makes only one test. Contrary to popular opinion, evolution does not select the fittest, strongest, or most superior organism. It is instead a question of how many offspring the organism will have which in turn will reach sufficient maturity to have its own offspring. If the effect is positive, the allele will become a permanent part of the gene pool. If the effect is very successful, it will quickly become a dominant allele. If the effect is neutral or negative, the allele will not spread rapidly through the gene pool and, usually, will disappear from the gene pool. If more than one mutation is being tested at the same time, usually the case, then it is the summed effect tested. Not all good mutations make it. Some mutations would be good at one time and bad at another, depending on the environment then. A mutation that was necessary at one time may become unnecessary at another time and be consequently negated. Most of the time, the alleles removed or negated are those that harm the organism in that environment. Natural selection removes variability from the gene pool.

The environment which an organism faces and must survive is a complex one, one which is more than climate and food supply, although those are the essential elements that serve as a starting point in the study of evolution.

First of all, the mutation process is not altogether random. An intricate process called recombination developed early in sexual animals. This process serves to mix the alleles available in the two parental gene sets to provide more variability against the environment. It also results in many reproduction errors (mutations). Repair functions were developed by evolution for DNA errors to offset this error propensity. Since both the dissection means and the repair means are relatively fixed processes, then both the dissection errors and the errors in repair will follow certain patterns. When these coincide, a new allele is formed. Mutations, then, occur in clusters around particular loci not yet known or cataloged. Certain defects occur, therefore, with a given frequency, which are wholly the result of the process and not the assumption of a defective ancestral gene.

Another factor which enters into genetic change is that the product of a purely random process (and a large part of human mutations fit that description) will drift to one side or another until an outside force interferes with the drift. For example, the human is now growing larger. If this is the result of genetic drift, it will continue until some other process interferes, such as a shortage of food.

Most of the struggle in life is the struggle for enough food to avoid starvation and an ability to survive the climate. This was the entire struggle at the beginning, but as life became more complex, the selection process also became more complex. Once life began, however, other life became a part of its environment. The food chains were started.

The basic element of species survival is the ability of the individual to survive long enough to insure the survival of its offspring to the point when they also have offspring. If the offspring require no care, then the immediate death of the parent is of no consequence. In the case of the higher animals, those which require care during their maturation, the life of the caring parent must extend through that maturation period (and, of course, the parent must perform its function properly).

If an animal must endure an environment in which its population is normally controlled by predators, it is usual that the young suffer a higher death rate than the adults. In such cases the parents will usually live through several breeding seasons, to offset losses of their young. Some animals resort to large numbers of offspring, thereby feeding the predators, with enough left over to continue the species.

As animals became more complex, they themselves began to be an appreciable part of their own selection (survival) environment. Herein lies the most complex of all genetic processes, and examples abound. Sexual selection (based on an appearance which is sexually attractive) is probably (not for sure) the most common of these. There are times when sexual selection actually harms the ability of the species to survive. There are thousands of examples, but to select one, consider the Cardinal, a beautiful small bird that is quite common in North America. Somewhere back in time, the drab little hens, who had drab little roosters as soul-mates, took a liking to the color red and began choosing mates based on a hint of red in their feathers. Since they mated with roosters who had red in their makeup, their offspring tended to have red in their feathers, which suited the next generation of hens just fine. Quite quickly the rooster was a bright red, and the best target in the world for a predator. The predator, usually a hawk, could lock on to that bright red target and have a meal in no time. As a result the Cardinal rooster is quite skittish, and he should be, but without the red there is no sex and his genes end.

Recombination occurs in sexually reproducing organisms, such as the human. The parent has two sets of chromosomes in each cell, one from its father, the other from its mother. The sperm and the egg carry only one set in each. The one set carried by the sperm or egg is not a whole set from either grandparent but is a mixture of the two. Both original sets of chromosomes, in the case of each parent, are dissected and scrambled, then reformed with entirely new combinations of alleles from both grandparents. This process adds variability to the offspring and allows testing of new allele combinations. Recombination allows new combinations of the variability in the gene pool

Gene flow occurs when populations of a species that have been separated are united and the differing sets of alleles in each gene pool flow into the gene pool of the other. Our species, suddenly reunited with widespread transportation, is an excellent example of this effect. Gene flow distributes the variability in the gene pool.

March 15, 2007

Life is a fact in the universe. Life exists. It exists within the same rules in the universe that everything else must follow. Evolution is a reactive process. Evolution is a requirement of life. The life produced by evolution is a part of the universe, as is a galaxy and a grain of sand. Evolution has no compassion and it has no goals. A given strain of life, while undergoing evolution and enduring a given environment, either survives or does not. The survival of a species rests on the sum total of the individual actions of each member within that species. Action by any member of a species, which is contrary to the survival of that species, is perverse (contrary to nature).

Evolution is obviously no friend of man or his culture. It brought us here, then dumped the whole problem on us. Through sex it has a hammerlock on us that will be painful no matter what we do. It appears that we either return to the tooth and claw so that nature can cleanse and maintain our gene pool, or watch ourselves sink back to the status of the beginning man. The first would allow us to retain our stature at the cost of losing our humanity. The latter is slower, but we lose both our stature and our humanity. Each choice is equally unacceptable. One thing is clear: Slow degeneration is the default condition.

A big hope for the far future lies in the genome project. In time we can clean up our genome, streamline it down to size, and then maintain it free of defects. This would take care of our problems with evolution but it might be way far in the future. Many will say that this is an impossible job. The amount of technical work, alone, is staggering. The mechanics of cleaning up the genome of all humankind all over the world appears impossible. Pre-conception examinations of the haploid DNA may be a possibility and it would fit in with a need for centralized genetic control. This may also turn out to be an impossible job. The only recourse then will be to start a process by which a new super-DNA structure is introduced into the population on a scheduled basis, one that will not mix, thus starting a new species to replace our own. Either technique will provide a great challenge to overcome fears and objections.

The Evolution Process

March 15, 2007

Evolution is the change with time of the gene pool of a species. The mechanisms of evolution are mutation, natural selection, recombination and gene flow.

Mutation provides all initial change. A mutation occurs when the DNA does not replicate perfectly. When a mutation occurs, a new allele is created. As a first approximation, these accidents (mutations) are random (can occur at any location along the DNA). The rate of these accidents is relatively constant within a given species. If the accident occurs in a critical location (believed to be less than 10% of the total in man), the result is usually disastrous. Other areas will accept change with no immediate consequence. Once made, the mutation is perpetuated and variability within the gene pool of the species is increased. Mutations add variability to the gene pool.

Natural selection occurs when the viability of an allele is tested in real life. It makes only one test. Contrary to popular opinion, evolution does not select the fittest, strongest, or most superior organism. It is instead a question of how many offspring the organism will have which in turn will reach sufficient maturity to have its own offspring. If the effect is positive, the allele will become a permanent part of the gene pool. If the effect is very successful, it will quickly become a dominant allele. If the effect is neutral or negative, the allele will not spread rapidly through the gene pool and, usually, will disappear from the gene pool. If more than one mutation is being tested at the same time, usually the case, then it is the summed effect tested. Not all good mutations make it. Some mutations would be good at one time and bad at another, depending on the environment then. A mutation that was necessary at one time may become unnecessary at another time and be consequently negated. Most of the time, the alleles removed or negated are those that harm the organism in that environment. Natural selection removes variability from the gene pool.

The environment which an organism faces and must survive is a complex one, one which is more than climate and food supply, although those are the essential elements that serve as a starting point in the study of evolution.

First of all, the mutation process is not altogether random. An intricate process called recombination developed early in sexual animals. This process serves to mix the alleles available in the two parental gene sets to provide more variability against the environment. It also results in many reproduction errors (mutations). Repair functions were developed by evolution for DNA errors to offset this error propensity. Since both the dissection means and the repair means are relatively fixed processes, then both the dissection errors and the errors in repair will follow certain patterns. When these coincide, a new allele is formed. Mutations, then, occur in clusters around particular loci not yet known or cataloged. Certain defects occur, therefore, with a given frequency, which are wholly the result of the process and not the assumption of a defective ancestral gene.

Another factor which enters into genetic change is that the product of a purely random process (and a large part of human mutations fit that description) will drift to one side or another until an outside force interferes with the drift. For example, the human is now growing larger. If this is the result of genetic drift, it will continue until some other process interferes, such as a shortage of food.

Most of the struggle in life is the struggle for enough food to avoid starvation and an ability to survive the climate. This was the entire struggle at the beginning, but as life became more complex, the selection process also became more complex. Once life began, however, other life became a part of its environment. The food chains were started.

The basic element of species survival is the ability of the individual to survive long enough to insure the survival of its offspring to the point when they also have offspring. If the offspring require no care, then the immediate death of the parent is of no consequence. In the case of the higher animals, those which require care during their maturation, the life of the caring parent must extend through that maturation period (and, of course, the parent must perform its function properly).

If an animal must endure an environment in which its population is normally controlled by predators, it is usual that the young suffer a higher death rate than the adults. In such cases the parents will usually live through several breeding seasons, to offset losses of their young. Some animals resort to large numbers of offspring, thereby feeding the predators, with enough left over to continue the species.

As animals became more complex, they themselves began to be an appreciable part of their own selection (survival) environment. Herein lies the most complex of all genetic processes, and examples abound. Sexual selection (based on an appearance which is sexually attractive) is probably (not for sure) the most common of these. There are times when sexual selection actually harms the ability of the species to survive. There are thousands of examples, but to select one, consider the Cardinal, a beautiful small bird that is quite common in North America. Somewhere back in time, the drab little hens, who had drab little roosters as soul-mates, took a liking to the color red and began choosing mates based on a hint of red in their feathers. Since they mated with roosters who had red in their makeup, their offspring tended to have red in their feathers, which suited the next generation of hens just fine. Quite quickly the rooster was a bright red, and the best target in the world for a predator. The predator, usually a hawk, could lock on to that bright red target and have a meal in no time. As a result the Cardinal rooster is quite skittish, and he should be, but without the red there is no sex and his genes end.

Recombination occurs in sexually reproducing organisms, such as the human. The parent has two sets of chromosomes in each cell, one from its father, the other from its mother. The sperm and the egg carry only one set in each. The one set carried by the sperm or egg is not a whole set from either grandparent but is a mixture of the two. Both original sets of chromosomes, in the case of each parent, are dissected and scrambled, then reformed with entirely new combinations of alleles from both grandparents. This process adds variability to the offspring and allows testing of new allele combinations. Recombination allows new combinations of the variability in the gene pool

Gene flow occurs when populations of a species that have been separated are united and the differing sets of alleles in each gene pool flow into the gene pool of the other. Our species, suddenly reunited with widespread transportation, is an excellent example of this effect. Gene flow distributes the variability in the gene pool.

When executed, it produces a human.

This section is repeated in Man, the Digital Machine. It is included here for continuity of thought.

The DNA which describes each individual is in a digital code. The code is made up of four possible values. In number form, these could be expressed as 0, 1, 2, 3, but are normally expressed as four letter values: A, C, G, and T. These are always paired with their reciprocal value (see the text OneLife for more detail). Note that the DNA description of all living things is made up of only four basic construction blocks. There are about three billion of these base pairs in the human genome. These are used in groups of three, called codons. Each codon consists of three base pairs, each of which may carry one of four possible values. The number of codon values which can be expressed in three elements of four values each is 64. Normally these values would be assigned as 0, 1, 2, etc. through the number 63. Instead, all possible codons are expressed in the following table:

AAA AAC AAG AAT ACA ACC ACG ACT
AGA AGC AGG AGT ATA ATC ATG ATT
CAA CAC CAG CAT CCA CCC CCG CCT
CGA CGC CGG CGT CTA CTC CTG CTT
GAA GAC GAG GAT GCA GCC GCG GCT
GGA GGC GGG GGT GTA GTC GTG GTT
TAA TAC TAG TAT TCA TCC TCG TCT
TGA TGC TGG TGT TTA TTC TTG TTT

Note that this list contains all of the possible codons, there are no CAA.5 or CTT 1/2 codons. The beauty of things digital is the simplicity and precision. There are 64 precise arrangements of base pairs and only 64. All life is constructed in response to these precise codon values, and no other.

Most of these sixty-four combinations are used to produce 20 protein building blocks, called amino acids, from which the human organism is constructed. Some of the others are duplicates, and some are called “stop” codes. The following list shows the correspondence between the codon values and the 20 amino acids which in man will be produced from that coding:

Amino Acid Codons which code for that amino acid
Alenine GCA GCC GCG GCT    
Cysteine TGC TGT        
Aspartic acid GAC GAT        
Glutamic acid GAA GAG        
Phenylalanine TTC TTT        
Glycine GGA GGC GGG GGT    
Histidine CAC CAT        
Isoleucine ATA ATC ATT      
Lysine AAA AAG        
Leucine TTA TTG CTA CTC CTG CTT
Methionine ATG          
Asparagine AAC AAT        
Proline CCA CCC CCG CCT    
Glutamine CAA CAG        
Arginine AGA AGG CGA CGC CGG CGT
Serine AGC AGT TCA TCC TCG TCT
Theonine ACA ACC ACG ACT    
Valine GTA GTC GTG GTT    
Tryptophan TGG          
Tyrosine TAC TAT        

The substance of the human body is constructed from proteins, which in turn are constructed from these 20 amino acids.

As the program in the genome is read codon by codon from a starting code to a codon stop code, the sequence of codons dictate the construction of a protein. A particular series of codons will describe a particular protein which the cell can produce. Such a sequence is called a gene. In the case of man, more than 80,000 different proteins are manufactured in the cells from these digital formulas to form and maintain the overall organism. Some of these proteins are quite complex. The final assembly may total many thousands of various amino acids, all arranged precisely. The genome, then, is a precise digital formula which describes the construction of an entire human being. These instructions include precise formulas for the material used to build the body and precise assembly instructions as well.

Modern computers use binary arithmetic, where each position (bit) has a value of 0 or 1. Since larger numbers are needed, a handier concept is a byte, consisting of eight bits and capable of a value from 0 to 255. The codon set can be represented by assigning values from 0 to 63 and so fits well within a byte. The three billion byte genome representation will fit in any hard disk of 3 gigabytes are more, well within the size range of modern desk-top computers. This is the data base which describes man in such detail that it can actually construct an entire human including all of the instructions for his development and demise. This is the raw data from which knowledge may be obtained. Every particle of man is described in precise detail. Since his instinct detail is also fixed by this coding, that will also be analyzed and cataloged. Since man is driven by his instinct in all social actions, the initial propensity for a particular set of social drives is inherent in his DNA coding and so may be uncovered individual by individual.

The gene is the primary carrier of inherited characteristics. The gene that controls a certain characteristic has a particular physical location in the genome. Due to past mutations, many genes will have structural variability within the population of a species. When two genes have the same purpose (for example eye color) but differ in physical construction (same example blue and brown), they are called alleles. A gene may have many alleles within a given species. The total of all of the genes in the population, including their alleles, is called the gene pool of that species.

DNA and Replication

March 15, 2007

About 100 billion copies of our DNA are distributed throughout our body. Each copy is alive (it can reproduce itself) and is identical to every other copy. DNA has many functions within the life-form. Without DNA, we could not be born. We could not live. We could not grow. Nothing in our body would function. We could not reproduce. In fact, our body could not form. It controls our growth and development from conception. It determines our appearance (size, weight, color of eyes, skin texture, etc.). Indirectly it controls all of our bodily and mental functions (since it details the physical and operating characteristics of all of our components). It even to some extent controls our length of life. DNA functions in all life-forms in the same way.

No other tissue in our body is alive. None can reproduce without DNA. All tissue other than DNA is built in response to action taken by DNA and its only purpose is to serve the needs of the DNA. DNA performs functions necessary for its own survival. It performs functions necessary for our survival. It reproduces itself. It performs functions that allow us to reproduce. Even in our own reproduction, it is our DNA that is reproducing. DNA works in the same way in all other life-forms. Of the entire body of any life-form, whether plant or animal, the parts of its body that bring life to its existence are the DNA in each cell in its body. Life is distributed throughout the body of every living thing.

DNA has a code that is quite similar in construction to that used in modern digital computers. The code used in computers is called binary and consists of two numbers: 0 and 1. These numbers are then combined to specify entities needed by humans: 0001 becomes the binary equivalent of our number 1, 1111 is the binary equivalent of our number 15, and 01010001 is the binary equivalent of the capital letter Q. Although the computer works in binary, its output to us is then converted to our language so that we can understand it. DNA encodes with a slightly more complex system. Unlike the computer that uses 0 and 1, and unlike humans that use a decimal system 0 through 9, DNA uses a system of four conditions. This system could be symbolized as 0, 1, 2, and 3, but is not normally done so. Instead, DNA may be visualized as a code made up of four conditions: A, T, C, and G. These are called bases and they may appear along the length of the DNA in any order. These bases are complex organic molecules that provide the fundamental genetic building blocks for the description of the overall organism that the DNA will construct and maintain.

is a molecule of adenine. is a molecule of cytosine.
is a molecule of guanine. is a molecule of thymine.

The upper and lower red lines indicate the sugar-phosphate “glue” that holds the sequence of bases together. Between these two “rails” are shown four bases in schematic form. The two vertical base combinations are called base pairs and are joined with hydrogen bonds. Note that the base pairs are not joined with adjacent pairs except through the common rails. In physical form, DNA consists of two strings of bases in the form of a ladder with base pairs forming each rung. The ladder is then twisted to form a helix. Each rung of the ladder is constructed of only four possible combinations of base pairs. Two of these are shown. The other two are obtained by inverting those shown. A will only pair with T and C will only pair with G. The four possible conditions for any rung on the DNA ladder are AT, TA, CG, and GC.

To describe an organism, these bases are coded into a long string of DNA. This DNA coded string must be quite long. The human description is about 3 billion base pairs long and consists of 24 DNA strings, called chromosomes. The overall genetic material that describes any organism is called its genome. The genetic material in each human consists of 2 sets of 23 chromosomes in each of about 10 billion cells in the body.

The top row in the figure below provides a code for making the substances used in the organism. The lower row of the pair contains the same genetic information, but its code is the reciprocal of the code in the upper row. Wherever a T appears in the top row, its reciprocal A appears in the lower. AT, CG and GC are the other possibilities.

DNA strand prior to replication:
 
2 DNA strands after replication:

DNA reproduces by division. The top two rows in the above figure show a fragment of DNA before it starts to reproduce. When the DNA replicates, it is immersed in a soup of bases from which it will select the “food” that it needs as it grows. Other “helper” chemicals are also present. The DNA unzips on one end. The zipper moves down the strand at a steady pace. Behind the zipper, the two strands are separated. Unattached bases are floating on all sides. One by one, the proper complementary base is selected and attached to the free-floating half-strand. When the zipper has completely separated the two halves of the original strand of DNA and the two halves have completely filled their new complementary halves, the process is complete. The two separate but identical DNA strands result.

DNA coding resembles computer binary coding in another way. Early personal computers used a series of binary numbers that were eight positions long, such as 11001110 or 00011101. This was termed an eight bit wide word. An eight bit word can encode all of the letters of the alphabet, for use in a word processor, for example, or it can provide numbers from 0 to 255 for use in computation. Modern personal computers are much more versatile, using word lengths of 32 or even 64 bits in length. Another common coding system is used in our written language. It uses 26 possible conditions (a…z) and variable word lengths to provide a written symbol (code) for every spoken word. DNA uses a much simpler system, which is only three positions wide, called codons. ATC, TCG, and TTT would be examples of individual codons. Since a word length has three possible positions and four possible conditions in each position, sixty-four possible combinations are possible. Not all these combinations (codons) provide unique functions. DNA codons specify the construction of 20 possible amino acids. These amino acids may be further combined to form more than 100,000 substances to be used in cell construction and maintenance (in turn building and maintaining the host organism).

March 15, 2007

Evolution is known fact. It can be demonstrated. No reasonable person can dispute it. Evolution is by far the most important natural process to the human. His very thought and structure came from this process. No human can properly assess his own position in the universe without knowledge of the evolutionary process. Evolution developed the modern human species, and so has a bright side. Evolution also has a dark side. The future of the species depends on knowledge about evolution becoming widespread.

There are three forces in opposition to real knowledge about evolution:
  1. Religious rejection – A large part of the public view certain knowledge as being anti-God. The study of evolution is an example. These reject the information contained in this text, rather than embrace real knowledge about the real world. They prefer dogma over fact and faith over reason and logic.
This group not only practices evangelism to spread their beliefs, they are militant in their support of those beliefs. As a result, they not only deny provable and measurable fact in favor of dogma, they will also deny any philosophy derived therefrom, even though it may parallel their own.
  2. Academic protection of the campus elitist ideology – the academic professionals truncate and distort scientific knowledge in order to further political aims toward an egalitarian (socialist) society. They call it ‘humanizing’ science. This is intellectual hypocrisy at its worst. Politically correct knowledge is the result.
This group is not only far more righteous than the religious in support of their dogma, it is also more militant in defending it. Whereas the religious will seek conversion within the free will of the convert, socialist ideologues will use any measure to force their dogma on the public.
  3. Public apathy – The conflict between the forces described above leaves a majority of the public confused. As a result, a large percentage does not care. The future of mankind does not concern them. These seek instant self-gratification. As long as they can satisfy their own drives, they are content.
These need factual education.
Evolution as a process is composed of two parts:
  1. An organism reproducing mechanism that provides variable organisms. Changes to the organism are largely random and effect future generations. They are made without regard to consequences to the organism.
  2. A changing environment which screens organism changes. The environment provides stress on the variable organisms that selectively allows, through competition, certain changes to become dominant and certain others to be eliminated, without consideration for the future of the mechanism. That same process provides mechanism (organism) disintegration if a strong screening environment is not present. Evolution is a two-way process which does not always work to the long term advantage of the organism and in fact often becomes quite deadly to a given species and thereby eradicates it.

The evolutionary process is bidirectional in its effect. It may, depending on the environment, either improve a given characteristic or decay it. Since the first step in the process is largely random and most organisms are quite complex, almost all of the variations are harmful. A characteristic of a species advances if the environment is harsh, since most harmful variations to that characteristic will be eliminated through death and suffering at a rapid rate, leaving only the inconsequential and helpful changes in the lineage. If the environment is benign with respect to the capability of the species then the harmful changes are not eliminated and the species will degenerate to a point of balance with the environment.

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