There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

Evolution refers to change in a biological population's inherited traits from generation to generation. All species on Earth originated by the mechanism of evolution, through descent from common ancestors. Evolution occurs as changes accumulate over generations. Charles Darwin recognized evolution by natural selection, also called "descent with modification", as the fundamental process underlying all of life, whether viewed at a large scale above the level of species (macroevolution), in terms of formation of new species, changes within lineages, and extinction, or at a small scale within a species (microevolution), in terms of change in gene frequency. In a nutshell, evolution by natural selection can be simplified to the following principles:

In modern genetic terminology, variability of traits in a population is the expression (phenotype) of heritable traits (genes), which at least on Earth are stored in DNA (or sometimes RNA or proteins). Variability of traits ultimately originates from mutation, and new combinations of genes are continually produced via recombination as part of sexual reproduction. The result of natural selection is adaptation, like a "hand in glove" fit between organism and environment. Evolution, defined in population genetics as change in gene frequency in a population, can be influenced by other processes besides natural selection, including genetic drift (random changes, especially in small populations) and gene flow (wherein new genes come into a population from other populations). In a sense, mutation is a creative process of expansion in which new possibilities come into existence (most of which don't work so well), and this is balanced by natural selection, another creative process of contraction that reduces the possibilities to those that work best in a particular environment.

The word evolution (from the Latin e, meaning "from, out of," and volvo, "to roll," thus "to unroll [like a scroll]") was initially used in 1662, and was variously used, including with respect to physical movement, describing tactical wheeling maneuvers for realignment of troops or ships. In medicine, mathematics, and general writing early use of the term referred to growth and development within individuals.[2][3]; its first use in relation to biological change over generations came in 1762, when Charles Bonnet used it for his now outdated concept of "pre-formation", in which females carried a miniature form (homunculus) of all future generations. The term gradually gained more general meaning of progressive change. In 1832 Scottish geologist Charles Lyell referred to gradual change over long periods of time. Charles Darwin only used the word in print once, in the closing paragraph of The Origin of Species (1859), and rather favored the phrases "transmutation by means of natural selection" and "descent with modification". In the subsequent modern synthesis of evolution, Julian Huxley and others adopted the term, which thereby became the accepted technical term used by scientists.[4][5]Although in contemporary usage the term "evolution" most commonly refers to biological evolution, usage has evolved, and the word also refers more generally to "accumulation of change", including in many disciplines besides biology.

The idea that life has evolved over time is not a recent one, and Charles Darwin did not, in fact, come up with the idea of evolution in general. For example, ancient Greek philosophers, like Aristotle, had ideas about biological development.[6] Later, in Medieval times, Augustine used evolution as a basis for the philosophy of history.[6]

The first significant step in the theory of evolution was made by Carl Linnaeus.[7] His leading contribution to science was his creation of the binomial system of nomenclature in lay terms, the two-part name given to species, such as Homo sapiens for humans. He, like other biologists of his time, believed in the fixity of the species, and in the scala naturae, or the scale of life. His ideas were consistent with the Judeo-Christian teachings of his time.

Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles Darwin, was the first scientist to whom credit can be given for something starting to approach modern concepts of evolution, as noted in his contributions to botany and zoology. His writings contained many comments (mostly in footnotes and side writings) that suggested his beliefs in common descent. He concluded that vestigial organs (such as the appendix in humans) are leftovers from previous generations. The elder Darwin, however, offered no mechanism by which he believed evolution could occur.

Georges Cuvier proposed a mechanism by which the fossil record could develop over time without evolution - which by now had come into usage as a term.[8] His hypothesis, catastrophism, was that a series of disasters destroy all life within a limited area, and that living organisms move in to this newly opened area. This idea prefigures in some respects the 1970s hypothesis of 'punctuated equilibrium'.

Lamarck was the first scientist to whom credit can be given for a theory of evolution.[9] His idea centered on use and disuse, the concept being that the more an organism used a particular part of its body, the more developed that organ became within a species. It is sound only for individuals (e.g. a weightlifter will develop larger muscles over time, but will not pass this trait on to any children.) Nevertheless, modern research into epigenetics suggests that parents can induce some traits into their offspring by non-genetic inheritance, and that Lamarck was therefore not completely wrong.

By the first half of the 19th century, scientists had gathered a great deal of information on species, and had inferred that life on Earth had existed for a very long time, and that some species had become extinct.[10] Natural selection was the first theory to provide a mechanism to explain those observations. Prior to the theory of natural selection, the concept that species could change over time had been proposed, but without a satisfactory explanation.[who?]Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin came to the conclusion, independently, that competition for resources and the struggle for survival helped determine which changes became permanent and which traits were discarded.

The theory of evolution by natural selection, as we know it today, was published in a joint paper by Wallace and Darwin on 20 August, 1858, based on Wallace's observations in the Malay Archipelago and Darwin's observations over many years including those made during his voyage on HMS Beagle. Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, which suggested slow changes over very long periods of time, also contributed to the nascent theory.[11] Darwin drew heavily on his knowledge of human experience in breeding domestic animals (artificial selection), particularly the varieties produced by pigeon breeders (Darwin was one himself), for his understanding of how variations could develop within a population over time. Darwin set out his theory (at the time, a hypothesis) of natural selection in his books On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man.[12]

For more information, see Non-Darwinian evolution.

Although natural selection was the first mechanism proposed in evolutionary theory (and remains the most common), other forms of selection play a part as well. The most notable of these is sexual selection, which occurs due to some heritable preference for a trait in breeding partners. Derivation of traits through this mechanism is driven by (usually) the female's choice in mating partner rather than direct impact on fitness. Sexual selection often leads to the rise of features which would likely not occur under natural selection, such as the tail of a peacock or the long necks of giraffes.[13]

It should be noted that sexual selection can be divided into two forms, distinguishable by who actually "makes" mating decisions. The first of these is intersexual selection, and in this form of selection the limiting sex (which is usually female) will choose a partner. The other form is intrasexual selection, or mate competition. In this form of selection, one sex (usually males) competes for "mating rights" to members of the other sex.

In addition to selection, other mechanisms have been proposed, most notably genetic drift. More controversial is the importance of symbiosis (which has been recognized in the case of the origins of eukaryotes). Universally rejected is Lamarckism or directed (rather than random) variations.

The eclipse of Darwinism is a phrase to describe the state of affairs prior to the modern synthesis when evolution was widely accepted in scientific circles but relatively few biologists believed that natural selection was its primary mechanism. Instead non-Darwinian mechanisms of evolution such as neo-Lamarckism, saltationism, or orthogenesis were advocated. These mechanisms were included in most textbooks until the 1930's but were rejected by the neo-Darwinian synthesis theorists in the 1940's as evidence had proven the role of natural selection in evolution.[14]

The modern evolutionary synthesis (or neo-Darwinism) brings together ideas from several biological specialties in an attempt to explain how biological evolution proceeds. Many scientists have accepted it. It is also referred to as the "new synthesis", the "evolutionary synthesis", the "neo-Darwinian synthesis" or the "synthetic theory of evolution". The synthesis evolved between 1936 and 1947 with the reconciliation of Mendelian genetics with natural selection into a gradual framework of evolution. The synthesis of Darwinian natural selection (1859) and Mendelian inheritance (1865) is the cornerstone of neo-Darwinism.[15]

Julian Huxley (1887 1975) invented the term "modern synthesis" when he produced his book Evolution: The Modern Synthesis (1942). Other major contributors to the modern synthesis included R. A. Fisher (1890 - 1962), Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900 - 1975), Ernst Mayr (1904 - 2005), George Gaylord Simpson (1902 1984), and G. Ledyard Stebbins (1906 - 2000).

Over the past decade, new conceptions of evolutionary theory have emerged going under the umbrella term of the "Extended Synthesis," which is intended to modify the existing Modern Synthesis. This proposed extended synthesis incorporates new possibilities for integration and expansion in evolutionary theory, such as Evo-devo, Epigenetic Inheritance and Niche Construction. Its proponents include Massimo Pigliucci, Gerd Mller, and Eva Jablonka.[16] In 2008 sixteen scientists met at the Konrad Lorenz Institute in Altenberg, Austria, to propose an extended synthesis.[17]

Evolutionary theory has at its core three main tenets, observations of patterns within nature. These three patterns were observed by both Darwin and Wallace, and they eventually gave rise to the modern theory of evolution by natural selection.[18]

Darwin and Wallace both noted that populations display natural variability in form, physiology, and behaviour (phenotypic variability). For example, within a population, some members may be very large, some may be very small, and most may be somewhere in the middle. This natural variability is the fundamental source upon which natural selection acts.

Having observed that natural variability exists, early evolutionary biologists also noted that some of these variants endowed their possessor with some competitive edge over other members of the species, conferring greater survival or reproduction. Although at first the implications of this fact were unclear, the writings of Thomas Malthus spurred Darwin and Wallace to recognize that individuals that have traits that enhance their ability to survive and reproduce pass on these traits to subsequent generations. Differential fitness, also known as differential reproductive success, in essence, is the process by which traits that enhance survival and reproduction gain greater representation in subsequent generations.

Only if variation is heritable, will it confer an advantage into future generations. Although early evolutionary scientists did not have the benefit of modern molecular tools, they surmised that the source of variation must in part have a heritable basis, in contrast with variation expressed solely in response to different environmental conditions. In fact, one of the first predictions made by evolutionary theory was the existence of a heritable factor, now known to be DNA!

Thus the combination of phenotypic variability, differential fitness, and heritability of fitness define evolution by natural selection. Darwin and Wallace independently came to the conclusion that those organisms best suited to their environment would survive to produce more offspring. Therefore, the heritable factor responsible would increase in frequency within the population.[19]

Evolutionary biology seeks to explain the following three broad patterns observable in all life.

Diversity is fundamental to life at all levels of organization: ecosystems, communities, species, populations, individuals, organs, and molecules.

According to the Genetic Variation Program arm of the National Human Genome Research Institute, about 99.5% of human DNA is the same from person to person. The other 0.5% accounts for a number of simple and complex traits we possess.[20] There is tremendous genetic diversity within almost all species, including humans. No two individuals have an identical DNA sequence, with the exception of identical twins or clones. This genetic variation contributes to phenotypic variation - that is, diversity in the outward appearance and behavior of individuals of the same species.

Populations must adapt to their environment to survive.

Living organisms have morphological, biochemical, and behavioral features that make them well adapted for life in the environments in which they are usually found. For example, consider the hollow bones and feathers of birds that enable them to fly, or the cryptic coloration that allows many organisms to hide from their predators or prey. These features may give the superficial appearance that organisms were designed by a creator (or engineer) to live in a particular environment. Evolutionary biology has demonstrated that adaptations arise through selection acting on a population through genetic variation.

Species evolved along different paths from a common ancestor.

All living species differ from one another. In some cases, these differences are subtle, while in other cases the differences are dramatic. Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) proposed a classification that is still used today with slight changes. In the modern scheme, related species are grouped into genera, related genera into families, and so on. This hierarchical pattern of relationship produces a tree-like pattern, which implies a process of splitting and divergence from a common ancestor. While Linnaeus classified species using similar physical characteristics, modern evolutionary biologists also base classification on DNA analysis, which can distinguish between superficial resemblances between species and those which are due to common ancestry.

Biological evolution results from changes over time in the genetic constitution of species. The accumulation of genetic variations often, but not always, produces noticeable changes in the appearance or behavior of organisms. Evolution requires both the production of variation and the spread of some variants that replace others.[21]

Genetic variation arises through two processes, mutation and recombination. Mutation occurs when DNA is imperfectly copied during replication, or by changes in genetic material caused by such mutagens as radiation, leading to a difference between a parent's gene and that of its offspring. Some mutations affect only one bit in the DNA; others produce rearrangements of, or changes in, large blocks of DNA.

Recombination occurs when genes from two parents are shuffled to produce an offspring, as happens in every instance of sexual reproduction. Usually the two parents belong to the same species, but sometimes (especially in bacteria) genes move between more distantly related organisms.

The fate of any particular genetic variant depends on two processes, drift and selection. Drift refers to random fluctuations in gene frequency, and its effects are usually seen at the level of DNA. Ten flips of a coin do not always (or even usually) produce exactly five heads and five tails; drift refers to the same statistical issue applied to the transmission of genetic variants across generations. Genetic drift is inverse to population size; that is, genetic drift has a greater effect on small populations than larger ones. For example, if a small part of a population becomes geographically isolated its members will develop new traits faster.

The principle of natural selection was discovered by Charles Darwin (1809-1882), and it is the process by which organisms become adapted to their environments. Selection occurs when some individual organisms have genes that encode physical or behavioral features that allow them to better harvest resources, avoid predators, reproduce successfully, and so forth, relative to other individuals that do not carry those genes. The individuals that have more useful (adaptive) features will tend to leave more offspring than other individuals, so the responsible genes will become more common over time, leading the population as a whole to become better adapted.

Through a variety of mechanisms, gene duplication can occur which gives rise to two identical genes in the genome. Since only one of these genes is necessary, the other gene can undergo mutations without having an adverse effect on the original function of the gene. These duplicated genes called paralogs can give rise to protein families with similar yet distinctly different functions. For example, the olfactory protein family consists of around 900 different smell receptors that all arose via gene duplication followed by unimpeded mutation.

The process that many people find most confusing about evolution is speciation, which is not a separate mechanism at all, but rather a consequence of the preceding mechanisms played out in time and space. Speciation occurs when a population changes sufficiently over time that it becomes convenient to refer to the early and late forms by different names. Speciation also occurs when one population splits into two distinct forms that can no longer interbreed. Reproductive isolation does not generally happen in one generation; it may require many thousands of generations when, for example, one part of a population becomes geographically separated from the rest and adapts to a new environment. Given time, it is inevitable that two populations that live apart will diverge by mutation, drift, and selection until eventually their genes are no longer compatible for successful reproduction.

Working alongside with natural selection (death and survival pressure), spatial evolution is caused by individuals with random variation that are selected nonrandomly by how fast they travel away from home populations. The faster the individuals, the faster the individual she or he mates with, leading to fast offspring. This is both behavioral and morphological. The individuals 'race' their way to become a distinct species. Examples of Spatial evolution are new. For example, Australian researchers have detailed a new mechanism of evolution that is not based on natural selection but rather on how populations of organisms, such as cane toads, move around.[22][23]

Common descent explains the many shared features (homologies) of the majority of the organisms on the planet. There is an enormous amount of evidence that suggests all living organisms derived from a common ancestor long ago. For instance, all vertebrate embryos have the same body plan and look very similar in early development. We have the genetic code, which is all but identical in every known organism, from bacteria to humans. We have the shared presence of pseudogenes in similar species. All simians, including us humans, have an inactive gene, L-gulonolactone oxidase, which was originally used to synthesize Vitamin C. Then, we have the evidence for convergence, which explains relationships for all species, from fungal slime you find in shower stalls to sequoia. The tree of life between simple anatomical similarities is strikingly similar to a tree constructed from genetic molecular similarities. Then, there are others, including cool stuff like chromosome fusion, endosymbotic theory, retroviruses, Hox genes, and deep homology, oh my.

Considering all of this, evolution has the intricacy and the reality of quantum mechanics. But you don't see unqualified people running around and decrying quantum mechanics, do you? Well actually you do, but opposition to quantum mechanics is widely considered fringe kookery, while opposition to evolution is treated by many people as a reasonable position.

So yes, in other words, evolution is a theory.

Evolutionary concepts can also be applied to non-biological processes. Universe formation, evolutionary algorithms in computer science and the development of languages are three such subjects. The study of etymology is one component of analyzing how languages have evolved, and parallels biological evolution (for example) in the way the same language diverges over time into two different languages when two populations that speak the same language become geographically isolated.

Another example of non-biological evolution is the evolution of technology and innovation, which, while being (mostly) intelligently-designed,[24] is (mostly) not random. James Burke studied, authored books, and hosted television programmes on the evolution of technology through a historical context.

Models of cultural evolution, such as memetics, have been devised and applied over the years with varying degrees of success.[25]

Somewhat confusingly, the word "evolution" is also used in some sciences in a way that has no relation to the biological concept whatsoever. When an astronomer speaks of "stellar evolution", (s)he is taking about the changes that happen to a star over very long periods of time, as it progresses from gas cloud to protostar to main sequence star to post-main-sequence giant to stellar remnant. When a cosmologist speaks of "cosmic evolution", (s)he is talking about the changes in the size/shape/nature of the universe over time, sometimes on very long time scales, and sometimes at very brief time scales (such as fractions of a second after the Big Bang). Neither of these uses of the word "evolution" has anything to do with populations, heritable traits, selection criteria, descent, or any of the other hallmarks of "evolution" as the term is used in biology.

Creationists consequently confuse the biological and non-biological meanings of the word "evolution" and they claim that the Theory of Evolution includes the origin of the universe and the origin of life. The biological theory of evolution as proposed by Darwin and others has nothing to say about either the origin of the universe or the origin of life on Earth, though some biologists have extended the theory to the very beginning of life.[26]

We can allow satellites, planets, suns, [the] universe, nay whole systems of universes, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act.

There are a number of broad arguments creationists/anti-evolutionists make. Specific claims are examined at our common descent page. They're mostly arguments born of a lack of understanding what evolution by mutation and natural selection actually is, though rarely they're advanced by more savvy creationists as direct misrepresentations and distortions of the theory of evolution.

Often creationists ask how likely it is that all this complex life could have come about by random chance. They suggest that since individual events, such as the abiogenetic formation of proteins, emergence of RNA, organization of unicellular into multicellular organisms, etc., are purportedly so highly improbable that the entire chain events culminating in the existence of even a single complex organism could not have happened as described. Therefore, God did it. As creationism is largely a program of negative apologetics (e.g. an attempt to show a claim that is viewed as contrary to Christian faith is internally inconsistent or irrational according to the Christian perspective), arguments such as this are in essence arguments from incredulity with the proponent denying a fact (in this case the statistical probability that such and such essential event will have occurred) in order to draw the unsupported conclusion that some other cause (the Christian God) was at work.

The implied argument that a god or "designer" was at work is itself fraught with more untenable problems. Putting aside that the illusion of design is itself problematic, and assuming for the sake of argument that "design" is even identifiable in biological systems, if "random chance" is inadequate to account for some outcome, one is simply making unsupported assertions to contend that it is more probable that a designer was at work. If the causes are "designers" about which nothing is known, if they are capable of doing anything, if it is not known how or why they act, if it is not known when they acted (or will act), or if it is not known what they did (or did not, or could, or would), the causes are not enough to account for the results. If so, "design" in this sense is indistinguishable from random chance.

Nonetheless, evolution by natural selection isn't a random process. While genetic mutations may appear randomly, the natural selection of specific traits to produce a statistically significant allele (gene variation) frequency in a discrete population of organisms is highly deterministic. If a gene aids survival with respect to any particular environmental stressor, then it is selected by means of the survival and reproduction of the individuals carrying that gene and perpetuates in the population of organisms. If the trait is detrimental to survival, it will leave organisms vulnerable to a particular environmental stressor and through attrition lower the frequency of the allele(s) contributing to that trait in the subject population.

Many creationists hold erroneous beliefs about evolution such as that which is expressed by the statement "I accept microevolution, but not macroevolution." (This is the position of YEC nincompoop Kent Hovind.) Microevolution is supposed to be evolution that doesn't result in a new species, and macroevolution is supposed to be evolution that does lead to a new species. This argument is akin to someone saying that while one believes that wind can sometimes erode rock, one doesn't believe it can change the rock's shape. Micro- and macroevolution describe the same process, but with a difference in operational time. If one accepts microevolution, they must also accept macroevolution, since the former inevitably leads to the latter if given a long enough time period and the separation of breeding isolates. One cannot simply accept one and not the other. In biology, macroevolution is a broad subject of which speciation is only one part. This argument against speciation may be an attempt by creationists to reserve the power to produce a species for God alone.

Some creationists have abandoned the attempt to deny that new species can appear (and disappear) by natural means, in favor of drawing a barrier, not between species, but between baramins (also known as "kinds"), some sort of collection larger than species. To date, there has not been given any indication of just what sort of a thing a baramin is, what is the nature of the barrier between baramins, or how one might detect the barrier (or suspect its non-existence) in any particular case, other than the uninformative "baramins are those things that present a barrier to evolution."

Irreducible complexity is a fancy name for the "watchmaker" argument. In a nutshell, irreducible complexity describes an organ (or other facet of a living thing) which the ideology's supporters claim could not have evolved in small gradual steps. It is claimed to be so complex that it cannot be reduced into other parts. In fact, every example of irreducible complexity Behe and others have come up with has been shown to not be irreducibly complex (for example, the incremental stages towards the "irreducibly complex" human eye that are found in the sight organs of other living organisms).[28]

For any theory to be accepted as scientific it must be falsifiable. In other words, it must be capable of making statements which could theoretically be disproved. Evolution's opponents claim that the theory of evolution does not have this property, although this claim can be easily rejected. Theoretically, evolution could be falsified if scientists discovered an organism so complex and unique, with absolutely no explainable path as to how it could have evolved. Such an organism has not been found. Similarlyand ironicallythere are the demands made by some creationists that they be shown, say, a dog giving birth to a cat before they'll accept evolution. Such an event, if it occurred, would falsify (or at least strongly challenge) evolution, since speciation doesn't happen in a single generation and modern animals don't evolve into other modern animals.

Sometimes the phrase "evolution is only a theory" will be heard. This phrase rests on the common use of "theory" to mean what scientists call a "hypothesis," i.e., is something that is possible but not proven. Science, however, uses "theory" in a much different sense, namely as a testable model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or observation. This sets it at a significantly higher level of reasoning than "wild and unproven guess," which is what is implied when this argument is mentioned. Also unlike "wild guesses", scientific theory is among the best explanations for phenomena, and scientists who successfully create new theories will often be famous. As Sheldon Cooper once said, "Evolution isn't an opinion, it's fact."[29] Note that creationists don't say that gravity is "only a theory." And if anyone says you can't directly observe evolution, send them to Professor Lenski.

Strictly speaking, evolution is something that happens in the world of life, and should be distinguished from a theory of evolution, which is (according to the above definition) a model of how evolution occurs. Thus evolution bears the same relationship with a theory of evolution as flight with a theory of flight, or sound with a theory of sound, or planetary motion with a theory of planetary motion. This is often expressed in the saying that "Evolution is both a theory and a fact", that is to say, the word "evolution" can refer not only to the process (the "something that happens"), but also to a fact that it is observed under such-and-such circumstances, and to a theory that is involved with the process ("how it happens", "what the consequences are of it happening").[30]

One creationist claim is that there is a lack of support for evolution among scientists. This claim has for example been articulated, "Interestingly, ever since Charles Darwin's book The Origin of Species was published in 1859, various aspects of the theory have been a matter of considerable disagreement even among top evolutionary scientists."[31] To counter this claim one need only note that scientists' disagreements are about details over the way that evolution functions - and not about the historical fact of it.

One counter-argument is that evolution is incompatible with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which derives from an inaccurate, oversimplified statement of this law: "everything in the world becomes more disordered over time," and that evolution would involve an increase in order over time as species evolve. However, the precise statements given by Kelvin and Clausius consider isolated, closed systems in which neither energy nor matter are transferred in or out the Earth is far from an isolated system as energy is radiated into the Earth system from the Sun, and the only true closed system in the universe is the universe.

Furthermore, the word "disorder" is used incorrectly as an analogy to the more difficult-to-understand concept of entropy, and misinterpreted to imply that "order" is equivalent to intricacy of species on Earth, making this a weak argument from analogy. Entropy, simply put, is how far a system is from equilibrium. For example the Sun is far from equilibrium with its surroundings, but as the Sun ages and more fuel is burned, the energy is radiated from the small volume (the Sun) to a large volume (the Solar System), bringing the Sun closer to equilibrium with its surroundings. The Second Law of Thermodynamics therefore holds true for the Earth-Sun system, and evolution of species on Earth is of no relevance to the universe obeying the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Because the Second Law of Thermodynamics is based upon statistical physics, the universe does not even need to obey the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and therefore evolution would not need to obey or disobey the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is an empirical law based on observations by scientists. The universe could, hypothetically, momentarily arrange itself in a state of slightly lower entropy than previously; however, the statistical chances of the universe doing this are, for all intents and purposes, nil. By analogy, shuffling a deck of cards and getting them in order or throwing a broken plate on the floor and returning it to pristine condition are both plausible, but the chances are so small as to be approximately zero.

Many simulations of evolution (of digital creatures) towards some goal exist. Some of the best are documented here:

In which creatures made of nodes and muscles frantically try to run to the right. Code publicly available; run it online![32]

In which randomly generated octagons with wheels frantically try to drive to the right. Run it online![33] Code not publicly available; explanation available.[34]

Or, "Evolution IS a Blind Watchmaker". Watch a bunch of gears, ratchets, clock hands, and springs frantically try to accurately tell time, and simultaneously disprove the watchmaker analogy. Code publicly available.[35]

Read the original here:

Evolution - RationalWiki

Theres a story that weve been telling about the origin of our species. It goes something like this: Around 200,000 years ago, in East Africa near modern-day Ethiopia the first Homo sapiens diverged from an ancestral species, perhaps Homo erectus. From there, we spread, in a linear manner over millennia north into Europe, and then through the rest of the world.

That story, it turns out, is wrong or at least woefully incomplete. In two papers published in Nature Wednesday, anthropologists say theyve found evidence that the dawn of our species may have actually been much earlier.

Their evidence is remains of human ancestors, dating at around 300,000 years old, that look a lot like Homo sapiens and were found in the Jebel Irhoud cave in Morocco thousands of miles from Ethiopia.

Thats significant because its much older than anything else in Africa we could relate to our species, Jean-Jacques Hublin, the director of human evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and a lead author on one of the papers, said. This represents the very root of our species, the oldest Homo sapiens ever found in Africa or elsewhere.

Or maybe not. Whether these remains truly represent the root of humanity depends on what your definition of what humanity is. And on that question, theres surprising nuance and disagreement.

These specimens pieces of skull, jaw, and assorted other body parts of five individuals are not new to paleoanthropology.

The first pieces of them were discovered in the 1960s by miners clearing a hillside in Morocco. And they were a curiosity. Scientists at the time assumed the fossilized remains along with fragments of their stone tools relatively new, maybe only 40,000 years old.

But something didnt add up: The specimens looked more primitive than what youd find from 40,000 years ago. Their facial structures looked modern, but parts of the skull that surround the brain were smaller in some key areas.

When the authors of the Nature paper got the chance to reanalyze the site in recent years, they gathered fragments of flint that had been exposed to fires made by the occupants.

The dating technique they used is called thermoluminescence. And its pretty cool.

When those early humans put their flint tools into the fire all those millennia ago, the heat released electrons from the rocks crystalline structure. Since, those electrons have been slowly replenished over time from solar radiation. In the modern day, scientists heat up those pieces of flint, and the reaccumulated electrons are released, measured, and can give scientists a date for when they were initially fired. Thats how they got 300,000 years (give or take a few tens of thousands of years).

Hublin says these individuals were not modern humans like us, but a slightly earlier form of Homo sapiens, one with a less developed brain and perhaps other differences in its DNA. And he says these differences between us and them are proof that evolution occurs over a gradient. It also shows the biggest evolutionary change weve undergone in the past 300,000 years is in the size of our brains.

And all this evidence, he says, points to a pan-Africa hypothesis of human development.

The hypothesis: No, we did not just emerge in Eastern Africa. As of 300,000 years ago, our ancestors were already spread around the continent (paleoanthropologists have identified a probable Homo sapiens skull in South Africa dating back 250,000 years).

And they were on the move, and spreading their genes. The idea is that there is no [one] Garden of Eden in Africa, or if there is a Garden of Eden, it is Africa, Hublin says.

I ran Hublins paper and conclusions by two other anthropologists Ian Tattersall, the curator emeritus of human origins at the American Museum of Natural History, and John Hawks, a professor at the University of Wisconsin. And while they dont doubt the dating of these findings, they do question whether we can really call these specimens Homo sapiens.

After all, they do have some significant differences with us when it comes to the shape of their brains, which is a defining characteristic of our kind.

I think you have to be fairly rigorous [with] what you admit into Homo sapiens, Tattersall says. There are plenty of people out there who are willing to take a much looser view of what Homo sapiens is, and would be happy to cram this into Homo sapiens as a matter of convenience, or a matter of philosophy even. I wouldnt go along with that.

Hublin is firm in his belief that these are indeed Homo sapiens. Evolution exists, he responds. The reality is that there is a continuous line of evolution between early sapiens like Irhoud and humans of today without any breaking point along this line.

I do think theres a really interesting story here, but we dont quite know what it is

Evolution is not a straight line. Its one that produces many branches (most of which die off). Those branches can also join back together in the future. Those rejoined branches sprout branches. Some of those branch off and recombine. Others die. Its a tangled mess.

The lineages are constantly splitting, dying, and rejoining. Its believed our line split off from our closest relatives, the Neanderthals, around 500,000 years ago. But its not clear when we became human. Evolution doesnt always provide clean cutoffs from one form of a species to the next.

Are these Moroccan specimens truly our ancestors? We cant know. Did they give rise to our ancestors who lived in East Africa? Maybe. Or are they an offshoot of the main line, a group that was on their way to becoming their own distinct species but then died off? Also possible.

As long we have properly identified the actors in the play, were not going to understand the plot, Tattersall says. I do think theres a really interesting story here, but we dont quite know what it is.

At the very least, Tattersall says this evidence pushes back the start date of the middle Stone Age the age when people started to make sharp blades out of stone.

That we dont know how human these people were makes me appreciate the complexities of evolution a bit more.

Hawks says to imagine youre holding your mothers hand, your mother is holding her mothers hand, and the chain continues all the way back 300,000 years. What were talking about is about 10,000 to 15,000 [people] in a row the population of a small town is what connects you to that time frame, he says.

Youre connected to the person at end of the chain, yet they dont look quite like you. Their face is the same, but their skull is a little smaller. Maybe they have a harder time keeping up with the fast pace of your conversation. That person is both like you and something different at the same time.

The fossil record isnt this neat, however. I cant connect the dots yet, Hawks says. There are too few dots. Just too few. We dont have all the links in the chain from our mothers now to our mothers 300,000 years ago.

What is true: Each year, our human story grows more complicated and fascinating. Just in the past decade weve learned, through DNA evidence, that we mated with Neanderthals, Denisovans, and probably several other species of the genus Homo. Weve learned that at one time our world was inhabited by several subspecies of human. And we interacted with them.

Still, theres so much we dont know. And meanwhile, we keep making startling new discoveries: like the short-bodied Homo naledi that lived around 250,000 years ago and could have been in contact with our ancestors. Our experience in Stone Age Africa however it went wasnt simple.

More:

The story of human evolution in Africa is undergoing a major rewrite - Vox

Recently, new school rappers primarily Lil Uzi Vert, Jaden Smith, and Young Thug have been criticized for how they dress. Uzi dresses like hes the missing member of The Clash, while Thugger and Jaden have broken gender barriers time and time again sporting dresses and other accessories, but for some reason people are shocked. Why though?

Since the 70s, hip hop has been changing and expanding its identity as more rappers and artists enter the game with their own unique personalities and swag. From MC Hammerss vibrant parachute pants, to Kris Kross rocking their clothes backwards, to Kanye West sporting a leather skirt, rap has always had fearless artist who arent afraid to push the boundaries of fashion. So, for those concerned about what Uzi and Jaden are rocking (were looking at your rap old heads), hip hop has already been doing for decades. They are just continuing the trend.

Lets take a look at the evolution of rule breaking style moments in hip hop fashion.

Before Kanye and Pharrell, Notorious B.I.G. was one of the fashion trendsetters in hip hop. Remember his influential style moments in the video below.

The rest is here:

The Evolution of Hip Hop Style That Broke All the Rules - VH1.com (blog)

June 7, 2017 (A) Switchgrass root hair growth promotion in the presence of the dark septate endophyte (DSE) fungus, cidomelania panicicola. Warm season C4 grasses such as switchgrass rely on their symbiome to persist in stressful environments such as the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, USA.(B) Symbiosis between the water fern Azolla and the cyanobacteriumAnabaena that involves vertical inheritance of the cyanobacterium via the mega-spore apparatus of the water fern. This is a transverse section of the megaspore apparatus that shows themegaspore (m), the floats (f), and the cyanobacteria (c; red region at the top of the megaspore apparatus).(C) Examples of the obligate lichen symbiosis. Top two rows show examples of lichen species present in the southern Appalachian Mountains. The lower row shows light micrographs of different types of algal associations (indicated witharrows, from L to R: Trebouxia, Trentepohlia, Nostoc) in lichen thalli. Credit: (A) Images prepared by E. Walsh, Rutgers University.(B) Image prepared by H. Schneider.(C) Images by E.A. Tripp and J.C. Lendemer.

In 1859, Charles Darwin included a novel tree of life in his trailblazing book on the theory of evolution, On the Origin of Species. Now, scientists from Rutgers University-New Brunswick and their international collaborators want to reshape Darwin's tree.

A new era in science has emerged without a clear path to portraying the impacts of microbes across the tree of life. What's needed is an interdisciplinary approach to classifying life that incorporates the countless species that depend on each other for health and survival, such as the diverse bacteria that coexist with humans, corals, algae and plants, according to the researchers, whose paper is published online today in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

"In our opinion, one should not classify the bacteria or fungi associated with a plant species in separate phylogenetic systems (trees of life) because they're one working unit of evolution," said paper senior author Debashish Bhattacharya, distinguished professor, Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources, in the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Studies. "The goal is to transform a two-dimensional tree into one that is multi-dimensional and includes biological interactions among species."

A tree of life has branches showing how diverse forms of life, such as bacteria, plants and animals, evolved and are related to each other. Much of the Earth's biodiversity consists of microbes, such as bacteria, viruses and fungi, and they often interact with plants, animals and other hosts in beneficial or harmful ways. Forms of life that are linked physically and evolve together (i.e. are co-dependent) are called symbiomes, the paper says.

The authors propose a new tree of life framework that incorporates symbiomes. It's called SYMPHY, short for symbiome phylogenetics. The idea is to use sophisticated computational methods to paint a much broader, more inclusive picture of the evolution of organisms and ecosystems. Today's tree of life fails to recognize and include symbiomes. Instead, it largely focuses on individual species and lineages, as if they are independent of other branches of the tree of life, the paper says.

The authors believe that an enhanced tree of life will have broad and likely transformative impacts on many areas of science, technology and society. These include new approaches to dealing with environmental issues, such as invasive species, alternative fuels and sustainable agriculture; new ways of designing and engineering machinery and instruments; enlightened understanding of human health problems; and new approaches to drug discovery.

"By connecting organisms to their microbial partners, we can start detecting patterns of which species associate under specific ecological conditions," Bhattacharya said. "For example, if the same microbe is associated with the roots of very different plants that all share the same kind of habitat (nutrient-poor and high in salt, for example), then we have potentially identified a novel lineage that confers salt and stress tolerance and could be used to inoculate crop plants to provide this valuable trait."

In general, any question that would benefit from the knowledge of species associations in symbiomes could be addressed using SYMPHY, he said.

"We'd actually have trees interacting with trees, and that sort of network allows you to show connections across multiple different organisms and then portray the strength of the interactions between species," he said.

The scientists are calling for the U.S. National Science Foundation, National Natural Science Foundation of China and other funding agencies to support a working group of diverse researchers who would propose plans to create the new SYMPHY system.

"What we wish to clearly stress is that we are not engaged in Darwin-bashing. We consider Darwin a hero of science," Bhattacharya said. "New technologies have brought radical new insights into the complex world of microbial interactions that require a fresh look at how we classify life forms, beyond classical two-dimensional trees."

"We should also aim to unify systematics (methods of classifying life) research under the SYMPHY umbrella so that departments with different specialties, such as zoology, botany, microbiology and entomology, work together to portray how biotic interactions impact species evolution, ecology and organismal biology in general," he added.

Explore further: Microscopic soil creatures could orchestrate massive tree migrations

More information: Trends in Ecology and Evolution (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2017.05.002

Warming temperatures are prompting some tree species in the Rocky Mountains to "migrate" to higher elevations in order to survive.

The first ever global database of trees on Wednesday revealed that 9,600 tree species are threatened with extinction and identified a total of 60,065 in existence.

How can we depict diversity? Biologists of the 19th century faced this question as they became aware not only of the huge variety of plant and animal species, but also of the connections between these species. Ultimately ...

A new paper published Jan. 13 in Science reveals that the relationship between soil fungi and tree seedlings is more complicated than previously known. The paper was co-written by Ylva Lekberg, an assistant professor of soil ...

Forests, especially tropical forests, are home to thousands of species of treessometimes tens to hundreds of tree species in the same foresta level of biodiversity ecologists have struggled to explain. In a new study ...

Evolutionary distances that conservationists use to identify and target distinct species may be unreliable, Oxford University research suggests.

Economists agree that natural ecosystems store large quantities of wealth, but the challenge of measuring that wealth has prevented it from being included in typical accounting systems.

According to recent studies, declines in wild and managed bee populations threaten the pollination of flowers in more than 85 percent of flowering plants and 75 percent of agricultural crops worldwide. Widespread and effective ...

A team led by University of Idaho researchers is calling into question a widely publicized 2016 study that concluded eastern and red wolves are not distinct species, but rather recent hybrids of gray wolves and coyotes. In ...

In 1859, Charles Darwin included a novel tree of life in his trailblazing book on the theory of evolution, On the Origin of Species. Now, scientists from Rutgers University-New Brunswick and their international collaborators ...

You've been there: Trying to carry on a conversation in a room so noisy that the background chatter threatens to drown out the words you hear. Yet somehow your auditory system is able to home in on the message being conveyed ...

Worms, it appears, are good at keeping secrets.

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why not a 3d tree, one dimension being genetic relations and another being spacial relations and the third being time

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Scientists propose a new paradigm that paints a more inclusive picture of the evolution of organisms and ecosystems - Phys.Org

My 2000 Mathematical Intelligencer article, A Mathematicians View of Evolution,presented two arguments against Darwinian evolution. The first was the more traditional argument from irreducible complexity showing that, contrary to what Darwin believed, major advances in the evolution of life, like major advances in the evolution of software (I focused on my own partial differential equation solving software), cannot be built up through many very small improvements. I have since written several Evolution News posts on this topic, most recently Why Similarities Do Not Prove the Absence of Design.

The second point was that the development of an advanced civilization on a previously barren planet seems to violate in a most spectacular way the more general statements of the second law of thermodynamics, at least the basic principle underlying this law, even if the Earth is an open system. I have written on this topic for Evolution News numerous times in the last few years, most recently Why Should Evolutionary Biology Be So Different?I have continued to develop this argument further in scientific papers, which have passed peer-review four times (most recently inPhysics Essays), and editor-review twice, as documented in the video below.

Although many other mathematicians and physicists find these arguments persuasive, the understandable reaction of most biologists seems to be, How can you possibly say anything important about evolution without even discussing the details of evolutionary theory? But it is important to remember that this is not a new argument I invented. It is the age-old, intuitive observation that there is something very unnatural about advanced civilizations arising spontaneously on barren planets. My contribution is only to show how absurd is the compensation argument always advanced to silence anyone who draws the obvious conclusions.

Since I am not a biologist, my contributions to the debate about intelligent design versus Darwinism have been limited. Nearly everything I have written since the 2000 MI article has just expanded on one of the two points made there. My latest and clearest such contribution is a video (above) that I produced with the help of my brother Kirk. It presents these same two points, in reverse order: the second law argument is presented in the first 13 minutes.

But I believe anyone who takes the time to watch this video will realize that you can indeed draw some important conclusions about evolution without becoming an expert on evolutionary theory. In fact I think he or she will realize that sometimes it helps to step back from the details and look at the bigger picture, which is what I have always tried to do.

Photo credit: Math professor, by Ed Brambley via Flickr.

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What Can a Mathematician Contribute to the Evolution Debate? - Discovery Institute

In a scene in the newest film adaptation of Wonder Woman, the heroine (Gal Gadot), dressed as her alter ego Diana Prince, comes to the aid of a friend by destroying a gunmans weapon. She hurls the bully across the pub, where he lands in a hard crash. Watching the scene, Sameer, an associate of Wonder Womans comrade Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) exclaims, Im both frightened and aroused.

Looking more closely at Wonder Womans 75-year-old history, it becomes clear that the heroine has consistently evoked mixed feelingswhether fear, awe, or attraction. Her body in particular has been a canvas upon which authors, artists, and audiences have negotiated womens shifting gender roles and beauty standards from the 1940s through today. Tracing how Wonder Womans appearance has evolved in the comics and film and TV adaptations reveals the ways her creators tried to respond to anxieties about womens independence; in playing with her proportions, skin color, and costumes, the architects of Wonder Womans image over time have both empowered and objectified her, though the line between the two is often blurry.

When Wonder Woman made her cover debut in January 1942, the superhero was modeled after a new feminine ideal. According to the scholar Jill Lepore, the Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston was inspired by the Varga Girl centerfolds in Esquire magazine for their cosmopolitanism and exoticism. For Marston, it was important that Wonder Woman have a sexy and feminine appearance to counteract what he called the blood-curdling masculinity of comics at the time. As a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for All-American Comics, Marston used his background as a psychologist to advise the newly formed D.C. Comics on how to fight accusations by concerned parents and culture critics about the mediums violent content.

His solution was a female superhero guided by love. The final artwork by Harry G. Peter depicted Wonder Woman with white skin, her hair styled into impeccable 1940s waves. A red and gold corset with a plunging back was paired with star-spangled culottes that accentuated her curves. In a few months, the duo pushed boundaries of propriety and changed Wonder Woman into tighter, shorter shorts. Her strapless bustier began to expose varying degrees of cleavage.

Through the end of World War II, Wonder Womans brazen attire was coupled with plotting that promoted womens social and economic freedom. For example, in Issue #5, the heroine advocates for mothers and wives to join the Womens Army Auxiliary Corps (WAACS) and the United States Womens Naval Reserves in order to combat a cruel husbands domination. Via these storylines, Wonder Woman adeptly married the message of womens empowerment spread by war propaganda (for example, Rosie the Riveter) and the look of the pin-up girls adorning mens barracks.

However, after the war, Wonder Womans salacious dress and independence came under scrutiny as gender roles were re-solidified. In the early 50s, shortly after Marstons death, the psychiatrist and author Fredric Wertham argued that comics were inspiring youth delinquency and that Wonder Woman, in particular, was espousing homosexuality. Wonder Womans storylines, which saw the hero frequently bound and punishing her female nemeses with a good spanking, had been accused of lewdness before, but because she was also an important tool in galvanizing a new work force during the war, this material was overlooked.

One notable cover, created a few years before the industry began regulating itself with the Comics Code, hints at changes to come that would give Wonder Woman more marriage-centered stories. In the 1950 Issue #97 of Sensation Comics, Wonder Woman becomes the editor of the Hopeless Hearts Department of a newspaper. The cover shows Wonder Woman (in costume) typing a response to Steves letter submission which reads, Dear Wonder Woman, When will you marry me? Steve is looking over her shoulder expectantly, just shy of looming.

Werthams outspokenness quickly drew a following, pressuring the comics industry to make changes.The Code, adopted in 1954, toned down the increasingly amped-up sexiness of women in comics including Lois Lane, Betty and Veronica of the Archie comics, and Black Cat. The Code prohibited suggestive and salacious illustrations, stressing that all characters shall be depicted in dress reasonably acceptable to society and that women were to be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities. Wonder Womans costume was adjusted to cover more skin. Wertham equated Wonder Womans lesbianism with misandry, and storylines about heterosexual love became more prevalent alongside changes that made her smaller.

In 1968, the editors made Wonder Woman younger and thinner. This 60s rebranding was a crucial turning point in the history of the character. On the cover of her debut issue (#178), she is depicted literally painting over her past by defacing an iconic Wonder Woman poster. In this issue, the heroine gives up her warrior powers and decides to fight crime as Diana Prince, a small-business owner. Her costume was replaced by a series of swingy color-blocked dresses with leggings that could easily be acquired in Dianas groovy fashion boutique and in stores across America.

Though The New Wonder Woman comics introduce Diana as an almost waif-like modern girl, as the issues progress, Diana returns to various states of voluptuousness and undress. This increasing departure from the rebrand maps onto the growing visibility of the womens movement. The feminist and co-founder of Ms. Magazine Gloria Steinem lamented the New Wonder Woman and attempted to resurrect Marstons original vision for the hero by compiling a retrospective of his work. That same year, Wonder Woman graced the cover of Ms. with the headline Wonder Woman for President.

During this time, DC Comics was trying to find a way to respond to the historical significance of the womens and black-power movements. The introduction of Nubia, Wonder Womans black half-sister, was an attempt to introduce diversity into the DC universe and simultaneously create more feminist storylines. The cover of Issue #206 in July 1973 shows Nubia and Wonder Woman facing off, virtually identical except for skin color. In some stories, Wonder Woman was a white savior archetype, helping Nubia liberate African women, yet the artwork played with the shades of their skin, emphasizing their contrast or similarity.

According to Steinem, DCs engagement with feminism and race was in part an effort to appease activists such as herself. The writer Laura Wolff Scanlan quotes Steinem, who remembers the person in charge of Wonder Woman calling me up from DC Comics. He said, Okay. She has her magical powers back, her lasso, her bracelets, she has Paradise Island back, and she has a black African Amazon sister named Nubia. Now will you leave me alone!

Wonder Woman got back her powers in 1973, and by that time, her first television adaptation was already in production. Largely influenced by the Diana Prince era of the comics, the 1974 ABC made-for-television movie cast a blonde actress, Cathy Lee Crosby, in the titular role. The actress most resembled Twiggy, the uber-mod British model who ruled the 1960s. The film premiered to dismal reviews, but executives still believed Wonder Woman was a franchise worth pursuing.

A year later, the Wonder Woman series debuted on ABC, starring Lynda Carter, who was the physical opposite of Crosby. Carter, a Latina actress and former model, had dark hair and an athletic, slim frame. Carters Wonder Woman was compatible with comic-book artwork that played with Wonder Womans racial and ethnic ambiguity and that would reach a height in the 1990s. The series kept Wonder Woman at the forefront of popular culture until it ended in 1979, but the comic book struggled to stay relevant in the following decade.

By 1987, Wonder Womans print comic sales were down, and a revolving door of writers and artists struggled to find a firm identity for the character. DC decided to rewrite Wonder Womans history and start from scratch. The writer and artist George Perez, a staunch feminist, created a new origin story influenced by Greek mythology. Perez also brought on Steinem as a consultant, resulting in plotlines that emphasized socio-cultural issues such as ageism, domestic abuse, and discrimination. Wonder Womans costume was more functional, and the covers rarely showed her in a suggestive pose. Instead, she has an active body, constantly involved in battle. This was aligned with Perezs goal to redress the overly sexual representation of the heroine. However, when Perezs run at the comic ended in 1992, artists and authors were quick to revert to drawing Wonder Woman for a male audience.

During the mid 90s and especially during the tenure of the writer and artist Mike Deodato, comics became what the cartoonist Trina Robbins identifies as not merely a boys club, but a Playboy Club. Wonder Womans body was a spectacle, the physical ideal of the time. She had muscular arms and legs that ranged from gymnast-like to bodybuilder big; she also had a tiny torso, flowing raven hair, and large, round breasts. Her costumes lower half changed to a high-cut, hipbone-exposing thong bottom.

The bad-girl art of Deodato, as it was called, aimed to be provocative and sexual, harkening back to good-girl art of the 40s and 50s in which characters such as Phantom Lady and Invisible Scarlet ONeil were regularly depicted in bikinis or lingerie. This drawing style gained a new resonance in the 90s as the Amazonian supermodel of the 80s gave way to the heroin chic bodies of models like Kate Moss and Jaime King. As discussions about this gaunt body type (and the social transgressions it represented, such as drug abuse and eating disorders) came to the fore, Wonder Womans artists pushed back, appearing to mimic instead the voluptuousness of Playboy icons Pamela Anderson and Anna Nicole Smith. Though these women represented a hypersexuality that media outlets were quick to judge, it seems as though their bodies were still easier to understand as a feminine ideal than the rail-thin ones of models.

In the past decade and a half, Wonder Womans artists and writers have aimed to leave behind her sex-symbol image with varying degrees of success. The cartoonist Cliff Chiang, who drew Wonder Woman from 2012 to 2015, spoke to Nerdist about an artists responsibility to change the comics industrys trend toward scantily clad and sexily contorted women: Its not like when Im drawing [that] my hand slips and suddenly its sexy ... These are conscious decisions someone is making, and there are many of them. It doesnt accidentally happen. As creators, its important for us to reign that in. The stakes of Wonder Woman's representation becomes starkly clear when real women don the costume and become subject to the same objectification as the fictional character. A 2011 television reboot starring Adrianne Palicki never made it to air amid criticism based on leaked on-set photos. The first version of the costume consisted of a corset and tight, shiny blue pants and was slammed for being too trashy, too bad porn-y.

In a 2016 interview with Jimmy Kimmel, the actress Gal Gadot addressed initial reactions by some fans that she was not well endowed enough to portray the Amazon princess. Gadot, like the male actors portraying superheroes, underwent extensive training and bulking to look the part, yet slenderness, emphasized by the films much-criticized brand partnership with Think Thin protein bars, remains an essential aspect of the character. By Western standards, being feminine means being slim, taking up less space, and having less physical power. Whether her muscles are larger or smaller, or her body is covered or exposed, Wonder Womans thinness is the only consistent aspect of her look.

For too much of her history, Wonder Womans body has been modified to keep her from being powerful, physically and politically. Yet, for many, Wonder Woman endures as a feminist icon. For others, these contradictory characterizations of Wonder Woman are enough reason to dismiss her outright. However, these conflicting and seemingly incompatible versions of Wonder Woman are arguably what make her an exceptional character. Possibly more so than her male superhero counterparts, Wonder Woman is bound to historyand therefore bound to be ever-changing. But Wonder Woman also has immense powers for change, and her ability to galvanize women should not be underestimated.

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The Fitful Evolution of Wonder Woman's Look - The Atlantic

There are at least 7,000 diagnosed rare diseases, affecting 30 million people in the U.S. These figures from Global Genes, a rare disease advocacy organization, are likely an underestimate given that new rare diseases continue to be discovered.

Some clinical syndromes currently lack a clear diagnosis at all because they have never been seen before. The unmet need is staggering; the mean time to diagnosis of a rare disease is 4.8 years from symptom onset, and patients will see an average of seven physicians prior to receiving an accurate diagnosis. Furthermore, the Kakkis EveryLife Foundation found that about 95 percent of rare diseases have no FDA-approved treatment leaving physicians with few options beyond supportive and/or symptomatic care.

Fortunately, progress in the overall care of patients with a rare disease is strengthened by a uniquely strong community of patients, caregivers, and advocacy groups.

While a rare disease was defined in the U.S. by the Orphan Drug Act as comprising fewer than 200,000 patients, by that standard most cancers would be considered rare.

But in oncology, rare is generally held to a different standard: an incidence as low as less than six per 100,000, according to RARECARE. Furthermore, a 2017 study from the American Cancer Society uncovered that patients with rare tumors make up about 20 percent of the overall cancer patient population.

Unfortunately, like rare disease in general, patients with rare cancers suffer from delays in diagnosis as well as a lack of effective treatments, robust clinical trial data, and evidence-based practice guidelines. In oncology, this means demonstrably poorer outcomes compared to more common cancers, putting patients with rare cancers at a disadvantage. Indeed, a recent analysis of U.S. epidemiological data confirmed that five-year relative survival rates for rare cancers continue to lag behind those of more common ones. Increased awareness about rare cancers combined with new strategies for developing strong evidence-backed treatments and specialist partnerships will help the outcomes of rare cancers catch up with their more common cousins.

Prior to the advent of molecular genetics, the understanding of and approach to treating cancer was fairly blunt. Tumors were characterized primarily by the tumors site (breast, pancreas, lung, etc.) and histology (cell type). With this understanding, surgery was the ultimate targeted therapy, while non-specific, harsh chemotherapeutic approaches and other invasive procedures were customized on a tumor-by-tumor basis. Over time, molecular markers unique to specific tumor types started to be identified and utilized for diagnostic purposes as well as to inform treatment strategies.

Finally, the first treatment rationally designed to specifically target the unique genetic defect of a cancer was created Gleevec (imatinib) was approved by the FDA for use in patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) in 2001. This breakthrough transformed CML from a death sentence to a chronic disease for many patients and heralded a turning point in the era of targeted therapy.

The success of Gleevec and its positive impact on the lives of patients validated a targeted approach to cancer and was a catalyst for even more enthusiasm about deciphering its genetic underpinnings, revealing that all tumors have unique molecular signatures. Common tumors that have long been characterized by virtue of their location and histology. They can now be broken down based on their molecular profile, giving rise to multiple rare subgroups. For example, one subtype of non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) characterized by a particular tumor-promoting chromosomal rearrangement and known as ALK-positive NSCLC, is quite rare (less than 5 to 7 percent of all NSCLC). This kind of molecular characterization has had profound implications for drug development, since those unique tumor drivers can be specifically targeted. Indeed, there are now four FDA-approved drugs for ALK positive NSCLC.

Subdividing tumors based on molecular profile supports an understanding of oncology as an even more complex and heterogeneous disease than once thought. Rare subgroups have been identified, not only of NSCLC, but of other common tumors like breast cancer and melanoma, as well. As cancers are further defined based on molecular profiles, the number of rare cancers rise. Why does this matter? Clearly, these tumor-promoting molecular drivers can be capitalized upon for further, more targeted drug development.

In addition, some of these drivers are not unique to just one tumor type. For example, mutations in the gene BRAF have been found to be important in subgroups of melanoma, NSCLC, thyroid cancer, and others. Clinical trials are being increasingly designed to enroll patients with tumors characterized by molecular marker, regardless of the organ affected. This has led to a newer research approach-called a basket trial, in which patients tumors are first screened by DNA sequencing. Based on the genetic background of the tumor and its identified mutations, one of many drug candidates is chosen to be tested in that patient. Not only is this design flexible and efficient, it also addresses a key challenge in studying rare cancers, namely, the limited number of patients available for clinical trials. Several basket trials are well underway.

The shift in how we think about and characterize cancer is already changing the way new drugs are developed, how theyre tested, and how they are integrated into clinical practice. It also supports the endeavor of achieving a truly personalized form of precision medicine. Furthermore, multidisciplinary team-based approaches are increasingly important; rare cancers typically require a very high-level of specialization and collaboration primarily found at expert centers. As more rare cancers are identified, both new entities and genetically-defined rare subtypes of more common cancers, the way healthcare professionals partner together to care for a patient throughout the journey will likely evolve as well. There are likely additional paradigm shifts in store.

Read more from the original source:

Evolution in Rare Oncology: Rethinking 'Common' Cancers - Drug Discovery & Development