Public Acceptance of Evolution

Ever since the Gallup Poll reported that 44% of the population of the United States does not accept an evolutionary origin for the human species, while 47% appeared committed to a belief in human evolution, people have been curious as to find out what the world thinks of Evolution. Examples even floats around in our own backyard, here at newsvine.

In a paper published on August 11th, a group of scientist published an article in the famous Science magazine on “Public Acceptance of Evolution”. The study itself shows the openness of the Scandinavian countries, namely Iceland, Denmark, and Sweden, towards the theory of Evolution, comparing it to close mindedness of the American countries (represented, in this study, only by the U.S.A. unfortunately…).

Over the past 20 years, the percentage of U.S. adults accepting the idea of evolution has declined from 45% to 40% and the percentage of adults overtly rejecting evolution declined from 48% to 39%. The percentage of adults who were not sure about evolution increased from 7% in 1985 to 21% in 2005.

It appears that 20 years of debate on Evolution has only been able to confuse people even more, or to the least, not been able to convince many people into believing Evolution.

This pattern is different from that seen in Europe and Japan. Looking first at the simpler true-false question, our analysis found that significantly (at the 0.01 to 0.05 level by difference of proportions) (11) more adults in Japan and 32 European countries accepted the concept of evolution than did American adults (see figure, right).

A trend in the U.S. has the science educators worrying that the population does not know enough on the basics of evolution and biology, “Because of the rapidly emerging nature of biomedical science, most adults will find it necessary to learn about these new concepts through informal learning opportunities”.

Obviously, some questions remain unanswered, but it does open the door to bigger studies on the same topic, including more American countries. It would definitively be interesting to include Canada, U.S.A., Mexico, along with other Latin American countries to get a definite picture of the trend in the Western countries. This article sure provides a great tool for investigating the need for more education on Evolution Theory in high school and college.

Reference is, Jon D. Miller, Eugenie C. Scott, and Shinji Okamoto (2006) “Public Acceptance of Evolution” Science Aug 11 2006: 765-766.

To Care or Not To Care

Mother Nature is a powerful and wonderful thing. So much so that, we as citizen of the world, should do everything in our power to save it. Or should we ?

It is accepted by scientist that Earth is around 4.5 billion years old. In her lifetime, it has gone through five major mass extinction episodes, which has wiped out most of the living organisms on its surface each time. Some of those organisms have survived through all of them, but that is not the point of this article. What is the point of this rambling, you ask ?

What has prompted this article was reading the article [2] on how the Great Barrier Reef shows signs of adaptation to the warmer waters of Australia, which did not surprise me at all. As an evolutionist, I believe (or know for a fact ?) that things a continually changing and evolving. But what really caused me to react is the fact that a lot of people talk and write on how we should be blamed for wrecking nature and not helping her in return. I can’t help but reply to these people: “Mother Nature is 4.5 billion years old and can, and will, take care of herself. We should be worrying about ourselves.” We should stop pretending that global warming will eventually kill Earth (It might kill all of us, yes!). Which is probably what we are doing subconsciencly.

I am not opposed to the people devoting their lives to saving life on earth, heck I am!, but I wish to make sure that we have the right intentions in mind. Saving Mother Nature and Earth, however noble it may be, might be a goal that we will never really achieve (and might mean wasted energy). My thoughts, therefore, on the subject is to enjoy Earth as it is right now, lose the wasting habits, start recylcing, and stop fooling ourselves about our role in Earth life cycle. Let’s preserve nature as we like it and enjoy it as much as possible.

In the meantime, here is a quote I appreciate from an article [1] that you should read:“The disappearance of our planet is still 7.5 billion years away, but people really should consider the fate of our world and have a realistic understanding of where we are going,” said UW astrophysicist Donald Brownlee. “We live in a fabulous place at a fabulous time. It’s a healthy thing for people to realize what a treasure this is in space and time, and fully appreciate and protect their environment as much as possible.”

Referenced articles:
[1] ‘The end of the world’ has already begun;
[2] Hope for coral as oceans warm;

Worldwide Tropical Cyclone Names

An hurricane approaching Florida I was reading the article : “Hurricane Wilma batters Florida” from the bbc website, I found out that there are 21 official names for cyclone named every year and that they use the same first letter for each one every year. This is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s initiative, which is obviously an american research center.

Don’t get me wrong here, I am not complaining about the americans. I just think it’s kind of cute of them to name all of the hurricanes and cyclones after human names. I mean, it’s an interresting concept. You should check out the website at
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutnames.shtml to learn more about the names. Apparently, this year was the first to use one of the Greek alphabet names (alpha) because they had 22 Tropical Cyclone in the atlantic ocean so far. Funny that you would adopt a system that allowed such a low degree of freedom in terms of the number of possible names. I mean, what happens when they go through the 28 characters of the Greek alphabet ? For the curious out there, here is a list of the Greek alphabet:

• α (Alpha)
• β (Beta)
• γ (Gamma)
• δ (Delta)
• ε (Epsilon)
• ϝ (Digamma)
• ζ (Zeta)
• η (Eta)
• θ (Theta)
• ι (Iota)
• κ (Kappa)
• λ (Lambda)
• μ (Mu)
• ν (Nu)
• ξ (Xi)
• ο (Omicron)
• π (Pi)
• ϻ (San)
• ϙ (Qoppa)
• ρ (Rho)
• σ (Sigma)
• τ (Tau)
• υ (Upsilon)
• φ (Phi)
• χ (Chi)
• ψ (Psi)
• ω (Omega)
• ϡ (Sampi)

On another note, I just realized that 15 out of 28 Greek letters appear in my masters thesis so far. Hmm, I’ll see if I can squeeze the other 13 somewhere in there. I’m sure that it can be done.