West Virginia University is celebrating the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin with DarwinFest, a series of talks and presentations examining the naturalist’s work – from his travels to his influential theory on evolution.

“Darwin: Evolutionary Science and Its Impacts on Society”; an interdisciplinary celebration involving colleges and schools across the University – will be held from February through early April. The events, which are free and open to the public, will feature leading scholars and scientists from around the world.

Darwin, who was born Feb. 12, 1809, is known as the father of evolution for his theory that all life develops through a process he called natural selection. 2009 also marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of “On the Origin of Species,” Darwin’s seminal work on the subject.

“These speakers and presenters will explain Darwin’s complex work in terms the average person will understand,” interim Provost E. Jane Martin said. “They will also show Darwin’s influence on modern life, from science and medicine to human relationships and religion.”

The activities are supported by various academic and administrative units, including Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, the President’s Office and University Relations.

In addition to the lectures, the WVU Libraries will offer a display and recommended reading for the event. A Web site highlighting all DarwinFest activities and participants is in the works.

Events and dates follow. More information will be released at a later date.

“The Life and Travels of Charles Darwin,” Feb. 5, 2009 – 7:30 p.m., Mountainlair ballrooms *
Greg Good, a WVU professor of history, and Evan Widders, coordinator of WVU’s multidisciplinary studies program, will present a biographical introduction to the life of Darwin and discuss his travels as a naturalist and his writings on the voyage of the Beagle.” This event is sponsored by the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences.

“Two Errors About the Evolution Controversy or What I Learned from My Trip to the Creation Museum,” Feb. 9, 2009 – 3 p.m., College of Law, Luger Courtroom
Jay D. Wexler, professor of law at Boston University, will speak about the legal issues surrounding the teaching of intelligent design in the public school system. This event is sponsored by the College of Law.

“Bibles, Bigots, and Biology: American Religion After Darwin,” Feb. 10, 2009 – 7 p.m., Mountainlair ballrooms
Douglas Strong, dean of the School of Theology at Seattle Pacific University, will present this year’s Manfred O. Meitzen Distinguished Lecture in Religious Studies. Prior to the 7:30 p.m. lecture, Jerry McGonigle, WVU professor of theater, will direct a re-enactment of a segment of the Tennessee “Scopes Monkey Trial.”

“Implications of Evolution as Seen by Charles Darwin and Modern Evolutionists,” Feb. 12, 2009 – 7:30 p.m., Mountainlair ballrooms
William Provine, Andrew H. and James S. Tisch Distinguished University Professor at Cornell University, is well-known for engaging in debates about the existence of God, free will and the viability of intelligent design as a theory to explain the mechanism of evolution. His lecture will address those topics.

“Systems Biology and Medicine,” Feb. 19, 2009 – 7:30 p.m., Ming Hsieh Hall, Room G21
World-renowned scientist Leroy Hood will present this year’s Nath Lecture on systems biology, which promises to transform the practice of medicine to be more predictive, personalized, preventive and participatory. Hood has played a role in founding more than 14 biotechnology companies and is the co-author of “The Code of Codes: Scientific and Social Issues in the Human Genome Project.” His talk is part of WVU’s Festival of Ideas.

“Local and Scandalous Darwin,” March 5, 7:30 p.m., Ming Hsieh Hall, Room 122
Leila Gómez, professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Colorado at Boulder, explores the ideological, political and social implications of the theory of evolution in South America and the intellectual debate it spurred between supporters and detractors in the formation of Latin American nations.

How Genetics Impact the Evolution of Human Relationships, March 11, 2009 – 7:30 p.m., Ming Hsieh Hall, Room G20
J. Phillipe Rushton, evolutionary psychologist at the University of Western Ontario, will present a lecture exploring how genetics impact the evolution of human relationships. This event is sponsored by the Department of Psychology in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences.

“The Impact of Human Activity on Evolution,” March 12, 2009 – 7:30 p.m., Mountainlair ballrooms
Kevin A. Jarrell, president and chief scientific officer of Modular Genetics in Cambridge, Mass., is a recognized expert in RNA splicing and gene assembly. His lecture will discuss how humans influence the evolutionary process – both intentionally and unintentionally. His talk is sponsored by the Department of Chemical Engineering and the College of Engineering and Mineral Resources.

“Singing His Praises: Darwin and His Theory in Song and Musical Production,” March 26, 2009 -7:30 p.m., South Agricultural Sciences Auditorium, Room 1021*
Betty Smocovitis, professor of zoology and history at the University of Florida, will explore a number of substantive issues in the history of evolution pertaining to controversies over Darwin and his theory in a lighthearted and engaging manner. Music will be played and discussed. Parking is available.

“A Look at Evolution from the Basis of Fossil Evidence in Africa,” April 6, 2009 – 7:30 p.m., Mountainlair ballrooms *
Meave Leakey is a paleoanthropologist and zoologist who was part of a research team that in 1999 unearthed the “flat-faced man of Kenya,” a 3.5 million-year-old skull representing an entirely new branch of the early human family tree. Leakey’s research also includes the evolution of monkeys, apes, carnivores and mammals. A masterful storyteller, she combines scientific observations with tales of her fieldwork in Africa. This event is sponsored by WVU’s Festival of Ideas.

“How Time Flies: The Molecular Architecture of Memory,” April 8, 2009 – 7:30 p.m., Mountainlair ballrooms *
Tom Carew, chair and professor of neurobiology and behavior at the University of California at Irvine, will present the Eberly Distinguished Lecture on the cellular and molecular mechanisms of memory.

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Why am I talking about nanotech on Darwin’s birthday? If you think about it, without evolution, we wouldn’t be able to manipulate our world so deftly and with such finesse. About 195,000 years ago homo sapiens first appeared in the fossil record. We started leaving Africa about 70,000 years ago, and migrated as far as the Americas 14,500 years ago.

A mere 10,000 years ago, we were mostly hunter-gatherers in nomadic groups. The first proto-states were developed only 6,000 years ago. Think of that! Look how far we’ve come in such a short time!

Think of how we lived just 100 years ago in 1910.

• By 1910 many suburban homes were wired up with power and new electronic gadgets.
• Vacuum cleaners and washing machines had just become commercially available, though still expensive for middle class folks
• The telephone was new, and millions of American homes were connected by manual switchboard
• People relied on the paper for their news, but radio technology was in its infancy
• The age of the airship was in full swing. Only 7 years previously, the Wright brothers had flown at Kitty Hawk
• Henry Ford introduced the Model T 2 years before and sold about 10,000 of them this year
• Advances in the use of gases meant the first electric refrigerators and air conditioning units.
• Neon lighting was debuted in Paris
• Inventions included: escalators, teabags, cellophane, instant coffee and disposable razor blades
• Women still had another 3 years of corsets

Things they didn’t have in 1910:

• stainless steel
• zippers
• the modern bra
• the modern band-aid
• the pop-up toaster
• sliced bread

But let’s get back to Liquid Glass. You spray it on. It’s transparent, non-toxic and can protect virtually any surface against almost any damage from hazards such as water, UV radiation, dirt, heat and bacterial infections. It’s flexible and breathable, which means it can be used on all kinds of products.

The liquid glass spray (technically termed “SiO2 ultra-thin layering”) consists of almost pure silicon dioxide (silica, the normal compound in glass) extracted from quartz sand. Water or ethanol is added, depending on the type of surface to be coated. There are no additives, and the nano-scale glass coating bonds to the surface because of the quantum forces involved. According to the manufacturers, liquid glass has a long-lasting antibacterial effect because microbes landing on the surface cannot divide or replicate easily.

Liquid glass was invented in Turkey and the patent is held by Nanopool, a family-owned German company. Research on the product was carried out at the Saarbrücken Institute for New Materials. Nanopool is already in negotiations in the UK with a number of companies and with the National Health Service, with a view to its widespread adoption.

The liquid glass spray produces a water-resistant coating only around 100 nanometers (15-30 molecules) thick. On this nanoscale the glass is highly flexible and breathable. The coating is environmentally harmless and non-toxic, and easy to clean using only water or a simple wipe with a damp cloth. It repels bacteria, water and dirt, and resists heat, UV light and even acids. UK project manager with Nanopool, Neil McClelland, said soon almost every product you purchase will be coated with liquid glass.

Food processing companies in Germany have already carried out trials of the spray, and found sterile surfaces that usually needed to be cleaned with strong bleach to keep them sterile needed only a hot water rinse if they were coated with liquid glass. The levels of sterility were higher for the glass-coated surfaces, and the surfaces remained sterile for months.

Other organizations, such as a train company and a hotel chain in the UK, and a hamburger chain in Germany, are also testing liquid glass for a wide range of uses. A year-long trial of the spray in a Lancashire hospital also produced “very promising” results for a range of applications including coatings for equipment, medical implants, catheters, sutures and bandages. The war graves association in the UK is investigating using the spray to treat stone monuments and grave stones, since trials have shown the coating protects against weathering and graffiti. Trials in Turkey are testing the product on monuments such as the Ataturk Mausoleum in Ankara.

The liquid glass coating is breathable, which means it can be used on plants and seeds. Trials in vineyards have found spraying vines increases their resistance to fungal diseases, while other tests have shown sprayed seeds germinate and grow faster than untreated seeds, and coated wood is not attacked by termites. Other vineyard applications include coating corks with liquid glass to prevent “corking” and contamination of wine. The spray cannot be seen by the naked eye, which means it could also be used to treat clothing and other materials to make them stain-resistant. McClelland said you can “pour a bottle of wine over an expensive silk shirt and it will come right off”.

In the home, spray-on glass would eliminate the need for scrubbing and make most cleaning products obsolete. Since it is available in both water-based and alcohol-based solutions, it can be used in the oven, in bathrooms, tiles, sinks, and almost every other surface in the home, and one spray is said to last a year.

Liquid glass spray is perhaps the most important nanotechnology product to emerge to date. It will be available in DIY stores in Britain soon, with prices starting at around £5 ($8 US). Other outlets, such as many supermarkets, may be unwilling to stock the products because they make enormous profits from cleaning products that need to be replaced regularly, and liquid glass would make virtually all of them obsolete.

Thanks, PhysOrg

A bit more info on it:

The flexible and breathable glass coating is approximately 100 nanometres thick (500 times thinner than a human hair), and so it is completely undetectable. It is food safe, environmentally friendly (winner of the Green Apple Award) and it can be applied to almost any surface within seconds . When coated, all surfaces become easy to clean and anti-microbially protected (Winner of the NHS Smart Solutions Award ). Houses, cars, ovens, wedding dress or any other protected surface become stain resistant and can be easily cleaned with water ; no cleaning chemicals are required. Amazingly a 30 second DIY application to a sink unit will last for a year or years, depending on how often it is used. But it does not stop there – the coatings are now also recognised as being suitable for agricultural and in-vivo application. Vines coated with SiO2 don’t suffer from mildew, and coated seeds grow more rapidly without the need for anti-fungal chemicals. This will result in farmers in enjoying massively increased yields.

…The really clever part is that there are no added nano-particles , resins or additives- the coatings form and bond due to quantum forces. Our research informs us that in all probability, we offer the most versatile coating in the world. This technology is now available for domestic use in Germany. Full scale retail availability in the UK will commence in early 2010.

Nanopool

• Evolution Information
• 100 Years Ago Information

Cross-posted by Neece from Heaving Dead Cats

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This Fourth of July, those who identify themselves as non-believers, or humanists, or atheists — or a whole host of other names which signify a nontheistic worldview — have much cause for celebration. After eight years in the Bush wilderness — and an even longer period of ostracism by the Washington political establishment — a rising demographic of like-minded Americans and a new president are guiding us back to our roots as a secular nation.

“We have generally been a pariah group in America,” says Woody Kaplan, Advisory Board Chair of the Secular Coalition for America. “Pretty much unrecognized by the political establishment. Yet there’s almost no religious group in America as large as us…. We were that third rail that politicians failed to touch.”

Indeed when the Obama Administration invited the Coalition to the White House for a meeting in May it marked a stark departure from recent history.

“Joe Lieberman famously talked about the constitution providing for freedom of religion but not freedom from religion — and questioned the possibility of non-believers to be ethical human beings,” Kaplan says. “Suffice it to say we were never invited as an identity group into the Bush White House. But interestingly enough… we were only invited into the Clinton White House under the rubric of core civil rights or civil liberties interests, and not as an identity group of nontheists.”

Things began to change shortly after then-Senator Obama announced his candidacy for president.

“He was on one of those talking head shows,” Kaplan says. “And he was talking about Dr. King’s arc of the moral universe bending towards justice. He followed that with ‘no matter what your belief system’ — and he made a list, a litany — ‘whether you’re Christian or Jewish or Muslim or have no religion at all.’”

Within a week the Coalition approached Obama. They let him know they had never been part of that “list” before — never had had a seat at the table — and they would appreciate it if he would continue to include them whenever appropriate.

As Herb Silverman, the Coalition’s President says, “Lip service is better than no service at all.”

“It’s helpful in bringing us out of the closet,” Kaplan says.

Obama agreed and remained true to his word. And then came the moment approximately 50 million Americans– who identify themselves with terms like agnostic, atheist, materialist, humanist, nontheist, skeptic, bright, freethinker, agnostic, naturalist, or non-believer — will never forget. In his inauguration speech, Obama said, “…Our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers.” Two weeks later he talked about “non-believers” and “humanists” at the National Prayer Breakfast.

Kaplan gives a sense of both the historical and personal significance of Obama’s words.

“The shock came at the inaugural speech — arguably the biggest speech a President ever makes — and he listed us there” he says. “And he’s continued to do that — he mentioned us twice at Notre Dame. And then he did it [this month] in Normandy. I can’t tell you what a pariah group feels about those statements. For the first time we have a seat at the table. We’re not thought of, evidently, as automatically unethical.”

After meetings with the Obama transition team in coalition with other groups interested in church-state issues, the Secular Coalition for America was invited to the White House for its own meeting with Associate Director of Public Engagement Paul Monteiro. Kaplan, Silverman, Legislative Director Sasha Bartolf, and Associate Director Ron Millar all attended.

“It was the first time a nontheistic group met privately with the White House,” Silverman says. “So in large part we just got to know each other… to have them learn more about our constituency, how many people we represent.”

The Coalition described the “full spectrum of nontheists it represents” within its nine member organizations. (Now ten, with the recent addition of American Atheists). Among those organizations are the Society for Humanistic Judaism, Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, and the American Humanist Association. The Obama Administration expressed particular interest in reaching out to the Secular Student Alliance. The Coalition also addressed some of the issues of greatest concern to nontheists, including coercive religious proselytizing in the military, faith-based initiatives, and employment discrimination.

“We also pointed out that we are much more unified than we used to be, and so we hope our needs will be taken into account,” Silverman says. “And that we watch legislation, we watch what politicians say. And we think that it could be beneficial to the Administration for them to take our point of view into account, just like they do for other interest groups. I think they did get the message in the White House…. We’re hoping now to become players in all three branches of government.”

As the Coalition continues to carry out its mission of increasing the visibility of — and respect for — nontheistic viewpoints, and protecting the secular character of our government, it seems to be moving forward with great confidence. This comes as no surprise, given the fact that there are now more nontheists in America than Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Mormons and Jews combined, and the organization itself has made huge strides.

Kaplan describes the Coalition’s transformation from its founding in 2002 with a sole employee and “half a year’s money in the bank”, to having a full-time lobby shop. That shop includes newly hired Executive Director Sean Faircloth.

Faircloth brings with him ten years of legislative service in Maine, including as the House Majority Whip. He also taught legal courses within the University of Maine system. In addition to advocating for the separation of church and state, he was active on children’s issues, and founded and managed the Maine Discovery Museum, the largest children’s museum in New England outside of Boston.

Faircloth says that the Coalition is “very pleased” with the recognition it has received from President Obama. But he adds, “I think we still have some important issues to address.”

Perhaps foremost among those issues is the Obama Administration’s continuation of President Bush’s faith-based initiative. In a campaign speech in Zanesville, Ohio, then-candidate Obama declared, “First, if you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them – or against the people you hire – on the basis of their religion.”

But Bush’s policy remains in place while the program is under review, so under current law religious organizations can receive funding to provide social services, discriminate in hiring for those programs, and proselytize. The Coalition is advocating to end this clear violation of the separation of church and state.

“The President deserves great kudos for making his Zanesville statement. We would like him to [now] implement it,” Faircloth says.

The Coalition is also pleased that the Obama Administration has ended the global gag rule, allowed stem cell funding, and largely ended funding for abstinence-only education programs. (There are some loopholes the Coalition is still working to address.) On the other hand, the nomination of Republican Congressman John McHugh as Secretary of the Army is a real concern. McHugh has one of the worst records of anyone in Congress on church-state issues. In fact, he voted against an amendment that would have required the Secretary of Defense to present Congress with a plan to prevent coercive and abusive proselytizing at the Air Force Academy.

Faircloth says the importance of the Coalition’s advocacy extends beyond the specific issues themselves.

“I want to be involved in those lobbying issues,” Faircloth says. “But also in terms of allowing people the comfort level and the opportunity to say, ‘Yeah, that’s what I happen to believe. I happen to agree with Mark Twain. I happen to agree with Clarence Darrow.’ And allow those people to feel comfortable joining an organization, whether it’s a humanistic association, chapter, whatever the case may be — saying, ‘I care about these values because I view them as moral values, and they connect to these policies….’”

Faircloth also sees the rise in the nontheistic demographic as an opportunity to reconnect with our nation’s heritage.

“I see historical trends coming together that bring us back to our nation’s heritage,” he says. “Think if a presidential candidate were to say as Jefferson did, ‘Religions are all alike, founded on fables and mythology’…. Madison said, ‘In no instance have churches been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for everyone noble enterprise.’ Abraham Lincoln said, ‘The bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession.’ These tremendously valuable leaders, I question whether were they to be a candidate for public office today… would they be [elected]? And that would be a great loss to the nation…. I think something has gone haywire when it seems that they were more free to speak their individual perspective — in some cases 200 years ago — than elected officials might feel today. We want to address that issue.”

Indeed when the Coalition ran a contest to find the highest ranking official who identifies as a nontheist (or one of the terms within the nontheist nomenclature), 60 members of the House and Senate were nominated. The Coalition spoke to each of them, and 22 admitted it but refused to go public. Only Congressman Pete Stark was willing to be identified.

Kaplan notes that the sample was skewed and that the number of nontheists in Congress is significantly larger. The legislators who were nominated were more likely to articulate their belief system than others, and some of the 60 nominees didn’t admit to their belief system for fear it would be leaked.

“But we see at the very least there are 22 people who think that honestly admitting their worldview would cause them not to get reelected,” Kaplan says. “That’s an awful commentary on a pluralistic, liberal America.”

Nevertheless, with its constituency growing — and growing more visible, assertive, and respected — the Coalition is optimistic about the future.

“All that terminology has meaning, but to me what is of greater meaning is our shared set of values,” Faircloth says. “We think that [our constituency] is a quiet, thoughtful, moral group that is significantly growing in our society and it’s time to let that blossom…. The Founding Fathers specifically addressed the issues that the Secular Coalition for America raises, and they specifically took our side on these issues. So, we’re very proud of the civil rights movement we’re involved with and we feel its heritage goes back to the founding of this nation.”

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