Live tweets from Great Read at Birmingham opening event

Here are the live tweets from Great Read at Birmingham opening event, sorted from earliest to latest

66. mjpallen: @mjpallen @greatreadatbham @unibirmingham live tweet under #GRAB2011 hashtag
65. mjpallen: #grab2011 ken miller up on stage; textbook author, daughter had to read his book at school; she gave up biology for history :-)
64. mjpallen: #grab2011 Ken testified in George and Pennsylvania; pervasive problem in US education and local politics; evolution in Ohio local politics
63. mjpallen: #grab2011 “vote for proevolution candidate you vote for sin“ 2 of republican presidential candidates creationist; creationist museums
62. mjpallen: #grab2011 antievolution bills pop up all over; problem coming to UK and Germany; Uk scientists published letter defending evolution
61. mjpallen: #grab2011 creationist conference in Malvern, UK; now describing Dover trial why lawsuit? 1st amendment http://t.co/VffLhax0
60. mjpallen: #grab2011 Ken lead witness in Dover trial Goals: show ID not science; show it is religion.
59. mjpallen: #grab2011 Conservative judge, so ID people thought easy time coming
58. mjpallen: #grab2011 > 9 hours cross examination: like PhD viva over and over again. Trial showed collapse of ID as credible theory; icons of ID trashed
57. mjpallen: #grab2011 ID claim: evo cannot make irreducibly complex systems; Michael Behe; missing part makes it nonfunctional; mousetrap example
56. mjpallen: #grab2011 flagellar components alone have no function say ID ppl. Only designer can make it. But even Darwin knew of change of function
55. mjpallen: #grab2011 testable to see if flagellar components can do anything if not all together; take away all but 10 parts of flagellum; still works
54. mjpallen: #grab2011 works as type III secretion system; counters irreducible complexity claim. ID is wrong! Cites Pallen and Matzke paper. testability
53. mjpallen: #grab2011 ID textbook Pandas and People; textbook evolved from creationist book with "creation" changed to ID; Barbara Forest testimony
52. mjpallen: #grab2011 1987 book changed because creationism deemed in law religious; Dover trail covered by BBC in War on Science; showing clip fr Nova
51. mjpallen: #grab2011 "judgment day" overblown rhetoric in nova show; received award; back to Dover case; Dec 20 2005; verdict ID not science!
50. mjpallen: #grab2011 struggle continues; "only a theory" book written to contain antirationalism antiscience; US lagging in science & math; Nature edop
49. pathogenomenick: Ken miller shows this great antievolution poster #GRAB2011 http://t.co/ur6sP88h http://t.co/ur6sP88h
48. mjpallen: #grab2011 whoisyourcreator.com nonsense on web; abundance of human fossils; Darwin's tree from Origin dead ringer for human evo tree!
47. mjpallen: #grab2011 new findings all the time; e.g. A. sediba; Matzke study on hominin brain size; sustained increase in brain size; no gap in record
46. mjpallen: #grab2011 chimp genome confirms predictions from elsewhere; chromosomes 46 in man; 48 in great apes; chr 2 is fusion of two chimp chromosome
45. mjpallen: #grab2011 fused chromsome has telomere in middle; 2 centromeres; one inactive; DNA seqs are facts; no ID explanation for this
44. mjpallen: #grab2011 evolution doesn't imply Dawkinsism acc to Miller. Dan Dennett says God/evo not compatible; Miller says yes; Dobzhansky was X-ian
43. mjpallen: #grab2011 nothing in biology makes sense in light of evolution; Dobzh also supported compatabilitism; evo is process of creation he said
42. mjpallen: #grab2011 pope says evolution God do mix! St Augustine wrote universe evolved; Miller says scientists question 5th C mystic; but Mendel monk
41. mjpallen: #grab2011 Mendel did expts even tho religious Augustinian; Darwin not religious; agnostic not atheist; said that theism and evo compatible
40. mjpallen: #grab2011 http://t.co/ANooECt7 Now cites Darwin first notebook tree; then closing words of Origin See also http://t.co/0gdYwcOP http://t.co/ANooECt7http://t.co/0gdYwcOP
39. mjpallen: #grab2011 John Hawks now on the stage; science changes year by year; ancient genomes teach us about our own gene functions
38. mjpallen: #grab2011 focus on late stages in human evolution <1m years; Neanderthal means "brute" in vernacular;not fair; Darwin met Neanderthal fr Gib
37. mjpallen: #grab2011 Neander valley ripped up by mining; site was carpark; dug up in 2000 or so; found new remains; jigsaw fit to old bones; DNA found
36. mjpallen: #grab2011 Haekel drew mad trees; Homo stupidus for Neanderthals! now lots of evidence of culture; bone techn; shells w. holes for ornament;
35. mjpallen: #grab2011 cut feathers from birds; Neander hyoid bone suggests they talked; reconstruction of voice like Dame Edna/Steve Perry/Journey :-)
34. pathogenomenick: Lol at John hawks' impression of neandertals communicating: a rendition of don't stop believing by journey #GRAB2011
33. GreatReadatBham: @johnhawks just sang to us as Journey in describing the voice of Neanderthals #GRAB2011
32. mjpallen: #grab2011 Neander trading across long distances; cultural and complex. Vindija cave perfect site; shin bone yielded lots of DNA; 1.4x genome
31. GreatReadatBham: follow @mjpallen live feed #GRAB2011
30. mjpallen: #grab2011 more evidence from DNA than from all fossil record; some redheads MCR1 mutations unique to Neanders, not same as AMHs. not all red
29. mjpallen: #grab2011 Siberia at edge of range; low DNA variability among Neanderthals; genealogy possible; 100s of specimens; healed fractures seen
28. mjpallen: #grab2011 bony injuries in Neanders same as rodeo riders; amputation of arm; blind, lame; hunting large mammals; even rhinos; tough life
27. mjpallen: #grab2011 ambush hunters like cougars; chronic disabilities; osteoA; starch grains fr tooth calculus; lots of new science here, cannibalism?
26. mjpallen: #grab2011; men in one site all related; women not. enamel hypoplasia; starvation; dead kids; synchrotron scanning of life history
25. mjpallen: #grab2011 neanderthals live fast die young; Denisova cave in Altai mountains; rugged country; horse country; vertical limestone; few caves
24. mjpallen: #grab2011 David Reich calls it magical place; cold place zero deg C; like fridge; chimney over cave; size of lecture theatre with high roof
23. mjpallen: #grab2011 sheep layer on top; beneath that remains of human; bracelets; pinky bone has yielded best ancient DNA ever! But only 6% DNA human
22. mjpallen: #grab2011 79% DNA no hit Neander mitochondrial DNA variation low; Denisovan DNA is outgroup to humans and Neanderthals; tooth yielded same
21. mjpallen: #grab2011 does Neander and Denisovan DNA survive in humans? ABO polymorphisms for >2m years; not useful; need to find consistent patterns
20. mjpallen: #grab2011 Neanderthal genes more often resemble non-Africans; 3% of our genomes; skeletal evidence of mixture too from mandibular foramen
19. mjpallen: #grab2011 paper out any moment shows Denisovan DNA in Melanesians and Aborigines at 5% or less. Long distance away! Mystery.
18. mjpallen: #grab2011 we don't know what Denisovan skeletons looked like; missing popn movements; mixtures now established between AMH and archaics
17. mjpallen: #grab2011 evidence of admixture in East African pygmies, unkn source. Neanderthals and Denisovans form clade; how can this info be useful?
16. mjpallen: #grab2011 we can explain some heritability; mentions Galton @uniBirmingham alumnus; 300 genes now explain 20% of height variation
15. mjpallen: #grab2011 Hawks using Neander and Denisova genomes to discover new genes underling phenotypes in modern humans; showing genetic maps; HAR1
14. mjpallen: #grab2011 human accelerated region; humans very diff from other primates here; Denisova diff from humans and Neanders in HAR1! Moreancestral
13. mjpallen: #grab2011 Hawks now comparing his own genome to Neanderthals! His androgen receptor is Neanderthal and may make him bald!
12. mjpallen: #grab2011 Hawks now closing with ode to power of evolutionary thinking! and phew can take rest from live tweeting. Thanks for listening! Bye
11. GreatReadatBham: #grab2011 evolution organises knowledge, including complex, real-world data about Neanderthals per @johnhawks
10. pathogenomenick: @mjpallen: #grab2011 Hawks now comparing his own genome to Neanderthals!" impressively nerdy python output in slide :)
9. gilbertjacka: RT @pathogenomenick: Ken miller shows this great antievolution poster #GRAB2011 http://t.co/ur6sP88h http://t.co/ur6sP88h
8. GreatReadatBham: #grab2011 thanks to @johnhawjohn and Ken Miller for a great launch to GRAB 2011 on evolution @unibirmingham
7. pathogenomenick: Wonder if freshers know how lucky they are to see ken miller and John hawks in 1 day- not all biology lectures will be like that! #GRAB2011
6. scienceboy86: RT @GreatReadatBham: #grab2011 thanks to @johnhawjohn and Ken Miller for a great launch to GRAB 2011 on evolution @unibirmingham
5. GreatReadatBham: And thanks to all the great @unibirmingham students who came along! #grab2011
4. JoshRosenau: RT @mjpallen: #grab2011 "vote for proevolution candidate you vote for sin!" 2 of republican presidential candidates creationist; creationist museums
3. JoshRosenau: RT @mjpallen: #grab2011 new findings all the time; e.g. A. sediba; Matzke study on hominin brain size; sustained increase in brain size; no gap in record
2. johnhawks: RT @GreatReadatBham: #grab2011 evolution organises knowledge, including complex, real-world data about Neanderthals per @johnhawks
1. GreatReadatBham: #grab2011 next event Cap Benjamin Kirkup US Army on evolution of antibiotic resistance 5pm Tues 27/9 Poyntyng Large

Great Read at Birmingham

This week, all the new undergraduates at the University of Birmingham (~6000 students) will receive a copy of the same book in their Welcome Packs and be asked to read it before arriving to encourage to engage with academic ideas and to create a shared experience for all new students. That book is The Rough Guide to Evolution!

The University believes that attending an institution like @uniBirmingham is about grappling with complex, multi-faceted, and even controversial ideas. As an academic community, the University welcomes and enjoys debate and hopes that this choice of book will stimulate discussion.

The idea behind the the Great Read at Birmingham initiative was proposed by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor David Eastwood, and is based on many successful similar programmes run in North America. But no British university has ever implemented a programme on this scale before!

There will be University-wide activities around the book during Welcome Week and the first term. Schools and departments will also use the book in study skills modules or in other ways.

Events kick off with Great Read at Birmingham Guest Talks in Welcome Week

Thursday 22 September 2011 15:30-17:00
As part of the Great Read at Birmingham initiative, "Rough Guide to Evolution" author Professor Mark Pallen welcomes two great speakers on evolution to our University, speaking back to back in Welcome Week in the Barber Institute Concert Hall.

This is open only to students at @uniBirmingham. Limited spaces available. First come, first served!

THE EVOLUTION WARS: WHY DO THEY CONTINUE AND WHY DO THEY MATTER?

Professor Ken Miller is a biochemist, textbook author, a Christian and an articulate spokesman for evolution. He played a key role laying out the evidence for evolution in the landmark Dover trial in 2005 and brings the full power of his engaging oratory to our first year students in his talk.

NATURAL SELECTION, NEANDERTHAL GENOMES AND THE MYSTERY OF DENISOVA CAVE
Professor John Hawks is an expert on human evolution and a keen blogger. He will bring us all up to date with evidence for and ramifications of interbreeding between humans, Neanderthals and the mysterious Denisovans with his fascinating talk.

Web page: http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/welcome/grab.aspx

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Great-Read-at-Birmingham/245600152143735

Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/greatreadatbham

Human evolution over or speeding up?

"Compare and contrast..." goes the start of many an exam question. Well, in catching up on my reading of blogs and news media, I have just come across an interesting pair of articles, ripe for the compare-and contrast-treatment:

• How We Evolve by BENJAMIN PHELAN from Seed magazine, which claims that human evolution has sped up recently.
  
• Evolution is complete: so where do we go from here? by STEVE JONES in the Daily Telegraph, which claims that human evolution has stopped!
  

I will leave it to you the reader to work through the two articles and do your own "compare-and-contrast" assessment, but my own inclination is to side with Phelan rather than Jones on this. 

In fact, it seems odd that Jones is still publishing articles like this, because he has been making this point for a decade or more and this is nothing new in the Telegraph article. When  Jones first started saying human evolution is over, we were still in the history-is-over epoch, before 9/11, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and the reassertion of Russian military and political power. 

Even back then, I found several problems Jones' argument:

• It reeks of first-world complacency, when infant mortality is still so high in the Third World and populations are still being decimated by HIV, TB and malaria.
  
• Even if the vast majority of people survive to reproductive age, the fact that even a small number do not is still enough to drive evolution. As Darwin said: "A grain in the balance will determine which individual shall live and which shall die, -- which variety or species shall increase in number, and which shall decrease, or finally become extinct."
  
• Even if the vast majority of people survive to reproductive age, in an era of contraception and family planning, not all will have the same number of children. Any genetic difference that underlies this differential in reproductive success will still be the subject of natural selection. It’s a matter of speculation what affect fertility control will have on the human gene pool. When procreation is a matter of choice, rather than an inevitable consequence of passion, perhaps there will be a selective pressure for children to become steadily more manageable: if your first child is a terror, you might choose not to have any more! And conversely, whatever genes make people like children will be selected for!
  
• If evolution is defined as any change in the frequency of alleles in the human gene pool, then lifting the selective pressure against what would, before modern society and medicine, have been deleterious genes or combinations of genes, then we are clearly in an era of massive evolutionary change. For example, is it really plausible that the rise in Caesarian sections is not having some effect on the distribution of genes underlying pelvic anatomy or determining the likelihood of other complications during labour?

Add to that the arguments in the Seed article and in the articles cited therein, and I see little or no cogency in Jones' arguments. I will leave the last word to Darwin:

“But Natural Selection, as we shall hereafter see, is a power incessantly ready for action, and is as immeasurably superior to man's feeble efforts, as the works of Nature are to those of Art.”

Additional reading:

Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution, Hawks et al, PNAS
Not the end of evolution again! by John Wilkins on the Evolving Thoughts blog