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Technologies Based on Evolution

Here is a good discussion of one of the more common biostratigraphicly useful fossils, foraminifera (or frorams, after you've counted 10,000 of the bugs). It's very basic, but seems pretty good.

ETA: Scratch that last phrase. It's from the UCMP, which is one of the federally recognize fossil repositories for fossils in California. It's good.
 
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Dinwar said:
Farming. Check out the USSR's failed attempt at agriculture in an industrialized country based on some other theory. End result: Hundreds of thousands to millions dead.
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Lysenkoism

ETA: D'rok beat me to it.
 
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Tony said:
I've been trying to find technologies that have been developed or improved based on knowledge gained through research into evolution, but they have (surprisingly) hard to find on the web. Can anyone help me out?
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Have you looked at technological advances in breeding, such as animal husbandry, cloning, fertility drugs, etc.? The horse and dog racing industry? How about steroids and other performance enhancers? Even over the counter medication has improved greatly as our understanding of biological evolution has progressed.

:cool:
 
There are two things in play. The observed fact of Evolution allows the dating of relative strata from fossils and has therefore been useful in in the geological science since long before Darwin. This is where prospecting comes in. Not just fossil fuels but this aspect of geology is brought to bear in mineral prospecting too. However the applications to oil are obvious - we're looking for the carboniferous and seeing where the oil or gas has gone from there. Coal likely as not stayed put.

Then there's the theory we have which explains this observed fact. The theory of evolution through natural selection.

This theory explains how designs can be refined through inheritance and mutation. Bolstered by mendelian genetics it makes astoundingly accurate predictions about the biological world and enables our in depth understanding of the tree of life. This bears many practical fruits in epidemiology especially where the short life cycles of parasitic organisms allows researchers to trace the source of infections.

Six bulgarian medical workers have this technology to thank for proving to the world that they are innocent of the charges laid against them by the Libyan government,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV_trial_in_Libya#Genetic_Analysis_first_published_in_Nature

Without such definitive evidence would European governments have worked so hard to negotiate their release from their death sentences? Who knows.

Then there's the way that this process can produce and refine designs. Simulating this process has allowed us to use computers to generate efficient designs for a multitude of products.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm#Problem_domains

Examples of problems solved by genetic algorithms include: mirrors designed to funnel sunlight to a solar collector, antennae designed to pick up radio signals in space, and walking methods for computer figures. Many of their solutions have been highly effective, unlike anything a human engineer would have produced, and inscrutable as to how they arrived at that solution.
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Solar Collectors
Antennas
Walking Robot

This barely scratches the surface.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA215.html
 
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Lysenkoism, from what I recall was Lamarckism-based and appealed to Joe Stalin's idea of creating a 'New Soviet Man", wherein soviet ideals and characteristics would be inherited by the offspring of properly educated soviet citizens.

It was adopted as soviet dogma, and led to the soviet system falling decades behind the west in biology, genetics, and fieldsl dependent on them like agriculture and animal husbandry.
 
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Offtopic; sorry.

AvalonXQ said:
Gawdzilla said:
The oil search companies rely on the fossils they find in cores to determine when they're close to oil-bearing strata.
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That... is remarkable. Could you link to a good, straightforward article that I could link people to explaining this fact?
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I suspect, no. The statement isn't true. Fossils are used to determine geologic age and/or depostional environment, and assist structural and stratigraphic interpretations of the subsurface strata. They are not directly associated with traps that are capable of producing oil or gas.
 
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AlBell's statement is true, but it's also true that oil companies use biostratigraphy to determine the nature of the sediment they're in extensively. They're why we have as good a record of microfossils as we do--oil companies have money, which is something academic institutions lack. And biostrat with microfossils is VERY time-consuming.
 
AlBell said:
Offtopic; sorry.


I suspect, no. The statement isn't true. Fossils are used to determine geologic age and/or depostional environment, and assist structural and stratigraphic interpretations of the subsurface strata. They are not directly associated with traps that are capable of producing oil or gas.
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And yet as linked earlier
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/fosrec/Wetmore.html
and also from the same site http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/fosrec/ONeill.html it's clear that oil exploration is aided by paleontologists who rely on the observed facts of evolution to date strata.
 
All current reseach in biotechnology and most research into medicine is based upon evolution.

Better painkillers?
Anti cancer drugs?
Alzheimer, parkinson research?
Drugs to help you quit smoking?
Insuline production?

All products of and made possible by applying the theory of evolution, which enables us to look into what things do in other organisms and extrapolate it towards humans, without having to perform nazi-like experiments ON humans to see the results.
 
The entire fields of evolutionary psychology and evolutionary medicine. The power, significance and potential of those two fields to improve well-being on earth dwarfs all other human endeavors. In my non-humble opinion.
 
Lukraak_Sisser said:
All current reseach in biotechnology and most research into medicine is based upon evolution.

Better painkillers?
Anti cancer drugs?
Alzheimer, parkinson research?
Drugs to help you quit smoking?
Insuline production?

All products of and made possible by applying the theory of evolution, which enables us to look into what things do in other organisms and extrapolate it towards humans, without having to perform nazi-like experiments ON humans to see the results.
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All of that stuff is tested on humans, that's what clinical trials are for. Animals models are not that predictive, but they are useful for basic research.
 
ThunderChunky said:
All of that stuff is tested on humans, that's what clinical trials are for. Animals models are not that predictive, but they are useful for basic research.
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Yes, its tested on humans, but its developed based on data gathered from yeast and mice. Of all the materials designed 99% never make it to human trials as trials in other organisms show no or adverse effects. And we can only do that because we use the TOE to find the similarities between organisms.
Clinical trials are the very end of a years or decades long process.

If we could only test on humans because mice are created differently and therefore unrelated clinical trials would have fatality rates well above 80% and would cost hundreds of thousands of human subjects.
 
Lukraak_Sisser said:
Yes, its tested on humans, but its developed based on data gathered from yeast and mice. Of all the materials designed 99% never make it to human trials as trials in other organisms show no or adverse effects. And we can only do that because we use the TOE to find the similarities between organisms.
Clinical trials are the very end of a years or decades long process.

If we could only test on humans because mice are created differently and therefore unrelated clinical trials would have fatality rates well above 80% and would cost hundreds of thousands of human subjects.
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They are tested on animal models, but those tests aren't predictive of the outcomes of the clinical trials.
 
Joey McGee said:
The entire fields of evolutionary psychology and evolutionary medicine. The power, significance and potential of those two fields to improve well-being on earth dwarfs all other human endeavors. In my non-humble opinion.
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evolutionary psychology?....are you serious?
 
Tony said:
I've been trying to find technologies that have been developed or improved based on knowledge gained through research into evolution, but they have (surprisingly) hard to find on the web. Can anyone help me out?
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I think you mean natural selection and not evolution. Isn't practically all biology and its sister sciences such as medicine now firmly anchored in this revolutionary theory?
 
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