Measurements of “beamforming” showed the researchers that a coiled cochlea carries more information than a straight cochlea when detecting vertically-displaced sounds. They believe the brain uses this extra information for vertical sound orientation. They plan to test this hypothesis further.
Measurements of “beamforming” showed the researchers that a coiled cochlea carries more information than a straight cochlea when detecting vertically-displaced sounds. They believe the brain uses this extra information for vertical sound orientation. They plan to test this hypothesis further.
“The finding that vertical sound localization can be improved purely by geometric changes supports the argument that the cochlea’s coiled shape is useful not just for conserving space,” they said. “The results could be helpful for designing cochlear implants and echolocation systems, in which sound waves are used to detect objects.”
Every part of our bodies, from the molecules to the organs, is so exquisitely designed, it’s amazing the whole body works as well as it does with its trillions of parts. Even if some things are wearing out or not working well in your body, you have plenty of reasons to be thankful. Use what works and glorify your Creator for giving you a gift that is “fearfully and wonderfully made,” even down to the detailed level of advanced acoustical engineering.
Every part of our bodies, from the molecules to the organs, is so exquisitely designed, it’s amazing the whole body works as well as it does with its trillions of parts. Even if some things are wearing out or not working well in your body, you have plenty of reasons to be thankful. Use what works and glorify your Creator for giving you a gift that is “fearfully and wonderfully made,” even down to the detailed level of advanced acoustical engineering.
Lady Luck is often clearly the stated referee of evolutionary events, but the vast number of times evolution wins suggests design afoot.
Lady Luck is often clearly the stated referee of evolutionary events, but the vast number of times evolution wins suggests design afoot.
In “Lucky You! Accidents of evolution that made us human” on New Scientist, Clare Wilson was unabashed in stating that “Evolution is a game of chance.” Here’s how she started her story with hysterical drama:
EARTH, several million years ago. A cosmic ray blasts into the atmosphere at close to the speed of light. It collides with an oxygen atom, generating a shower of energetic particles, one of which knocks into a DNA molecule within a living creature.
EARTH, several million years ago. A cosmic ray blasts into the atmosphere at close to the speed of light. It collides with an oxygen atom, generating a shower of energetic particles, one of which knocks into a DNA molecule within a living creature.
That DNA molecule happens to reside in a developing egg cell within an ape-like animal living in Africa. The DNA is altered by the collision — mutated — and the resulting offspring is slightly different from its mother.
The mutation gives the offspring an advantage over its peers in the competition for food and mates, and so, as the generations pass, it is carried by more and more of the population. Eventually it is present in nearly everyone, and so the altered version of the DNA should really no longer be called a mutation — it’s just one of the regular 23,000 or so genes that make up the human genome.
The mutation gives the offspring an advantage over its peers in the competition for food and mates, and so, as the generations pass, it is carried by more and more of the population. Eventually it is present in nearly everyone, and so the altered version of the DNA should really no longer be called a mutation — it’s just one of the regular 23,000 or so genes that make up the human genome.
While cosmic rays are thought to be one source of mutations, DNA-copying errors during egg and sperm production may be a more common cause. Whatever their origins, these evolutionary accidents took us on a 6-million-year journey from something similar to a great ape to us, Homo sapiens.
While cosmic rays are thought to be one source of mutations, DNA-copying errors during egg and sperm production may be a more common cause. Whatever their origins, these evolutionary accidents took us on a 6-million-year journey from something similar to a great ape to us, Homo sapiens.
Surely a string of lucky wins like that qualifies as lottery jackpot of the past billion years, but evolutionary theory is chock full of similar stories of lucky wins – not just for humans, but for every cell, plant and animal on the globe. Wilson listed six such accidents that “made us human” but hardly a day passes without evolutionists claiming multiple lottery winnings that beat astronomical odds. Here are some recent examples:
Fast-folding protein machines by chance: Science Daily admitted that there exists an “astronomically large number of other possible forms” that protein chains can fold into, but somehow they get it right every time, even within fractions of a second too quick to observe. How did that happen? According to evolutionary thought, the universe’s premiere gambler, evolution, had plenty of opportunities to roll the dice: “Proteins are made of long linear chains of amino acids, which have evolved over millions of years to self-assemble extremely rapidly — often within thousandths of a split second – into a working nanomachine.”
