Iradani_Timeline_Science

TIMELINE OF SCIENCE (1980 – 2011)

1980 Peter E. Wheeler argued that, with the shift to “bipedalism” (2 feet), whole body cooling (retaining only head hair and developing sweat glands) released a physiological constraint on brain size in Homo

1981 James Lovelock built a computerized simulation, Daisyworld, in which the biological and physical worlds are tightly coupled such that the biota ensures optimal physical conditions for itself. Using only conventional evolutionary rules and by increasing solar radiation a few degrees, a pattern of equilibrium is punctuated by a rapid proliferation of species.

1982 Alexander Vilenkin, going Tryon one better, suggested a cosmological model in which "the Universe is spontaneously created from literally nothing: does not have a singularity at the big‐bang, and does not require any initial or boundary conditions" (Vilenkin 1982:26,27‐28). He goes on to show how this is mathematically equivalent to electron/positron pair creation/annihilation.

1983 A. Roche‐Lecours indicated that humans are probably born with two language areas, but the left area is innately able to soon dominate.

1984 Stephen Wolfram, pointing out that cellular automata are similar to non‐linear dynamics, contended that all cellular automata fell in one of four 'universality classes.' The first two classes are either static or orderly, the third is chaotic, and the fourth is complex, like Conway's Game of Life (Wolfram 1984).

1985 Christopher G. Langton deduced the critical lambda (l) value at the exact edge of chaos, and reasoned that Wolfram's cellular automata Class IV, complexity, the phase transition between solid and fluid, and Turing's 'un‐decidability theorem' are all analogous.

1986 Johannes Georg Bednorz and Karl Alexander Müller found a new class of layered materials which semi‐ conduct at much higher temperatures than any which had been found previously. In a pure state these materials insulate; with impurities they conduct.

1987 George Lakoff, in Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, made a case for embodiment as the basis for meaning and mind: "Truth is very much a bootstrapping operation, grounded in direct links to pre‐ conceptually and distinctly structured [personal, physical] experience and the concepts that accord with such experience" (Lakoff 1987:297); that is, image schemas are metaphorically mapped on to the corresponding abstract configuration, e.g., categories are understood in terms of container schemas, hierarchical structure is understood in terms of part‐whole and up‐down schemas, relational structure is understood in terms of link schemas, radial structure in terms of center‐ peripheral schemas, foreground‐background structure in terms of front‐back schemas, and linear quantity scales in terms of up‐down and linear order schemas. Mark Johnson, who, in the same year, published The Body in The Mind, made a similar case.

1988 Packard published "Adaption to the Edge of Chaos," and Kauffman, acknowledging that at the border, between order and chaos, lies complexity, i.e., life and its constraints, added selection to his computer model. Life without selection, describable in Kauffman's model, provides a 'null hypothesis,' or a

baseline, which can "be used to detect the perturbing effects of selection or other 'agents' of evolutionary change" (Burian and Richardson 1991:269).

1989 Holland built the ECHO artificial life simulation, a complex adaptive system, which provided "a distinction between phenotype and genotype, so that the fitness of a genotype depends on interactions of the phenotype with other agents and the local environment," complete exogamy, and analogs of "sophisticated ecological processes, such as biological arms races and speciation" (Holland 1995:48‐49).

1990 Steven Pinker and Paul Bloom maintained that languages, including all linguistic universals, are naturally selected biological adaptations by Homo sapiens to communicate information, not a side effect of other evolutionary forces, the position held by Chomsky (Chomsky 1972:97), Gould, and others. Pinker and Bloom based their claim on the facts that "language show signs of complex design for the communication of propositional structures, and the only explanation for the origin of organs with complex design [e.g., the eye] is the process of natural selection" (Pinker and Bloom 1990:726).

1991 John R. Lawrence, Douglas E. Campbell, and J. William Costerton, studying the structure of biofilms by laser scanning con‐focal microscopy, demonstrated that bacteria grow in tiny enclaves.

1992 Irun R. Cohen said that the "aim of the immune system is not to distinguish self and non‐self. It is to enhance fitness" (Cohen, 1992:442).

1993 Dean H. Hamer and colleagues produced evidence employing polymerase chain reaction that male homosexuality is preferentially transmitted through the maternal side and is genetically linked to chromosomal region Xq28, which is thought to contain several hundred genes.

1994 Harvard psychologist Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray publish “The Bell Curve”, a controversial book that re‐ignites the centuries old debate about biology, race and intelligence.

1995 Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz detected the first extra‐solar planet using the 'wobble technique:' Inferring the orbit and minimum mass of a planet by periodic Doppler shifts as a star is pulled by the force of a planet's gravity. The planet circles the star 51 Pegasi in the constellation Pegasus.

1996 Dolly, the world's first cloned sheep, is born; her birth is announced in 1997. Several European nations ban human cloning. Congress considers a bill to ban all human cloning but changes its mind after scientists argue that the bill would undermine biomedical research.

1997 Joseph Kirschvink presented evidence that the Earth's axis of rotation moved 90 degrees to what had formerly been the equator. This it did in a geologically brief amount of time at the beginning of the Cambrian era.

1998 Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont distinguished between "knowledge (understood, roughly, as justified true belief) and mere belief," and added that, if one does not "take into account empirical aspects, then scientific discourse indeed becomes nothing more than a 'myth' or 'narration'" (Sokal and Bricmont 1998:195,197).

1999 Angelo Vescovi showed that mouse brain stem cells could produce blood cells.

2000 Ventner led a team which sequenced Drosophila melanogaster's genome. 60 percent of known human disease genes have equivalents in this fruit fly, including p53, the so‐called tumor suppressor gene which when mutated permits rampant cell division. About 50 percent of fly proteins are similar to mammalian proteins.

2001 Celera and the Human Genome Project both complete 99% complete drafts of the human genome and publish their results in Science and Nature.

2002 The NAS publishes Integrity in Scientific Research, which recommends that universities develop programs for education in responsible conduct of research (RCR) as well as policies and procedures to deal with research ethics.

2003 The US invades Iraq with the stated purpose of eliminating its chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs. So far, the US has found evidence of weapons programs but no actual weapons.

2004 The EPA suspends the CHEERS study due to criticism from advocacy groups and members of Congress, who claimed that the study was intentionally exposing children to pesticides. The EPA revised its human subject’s rules in response to a Congressional mandate to strengthen protections for children and pregnant or nursing women.

2005 Seoul University research Woo Suk Hwang admits to fabricating data in two papers published in the journal Science. In the papers, Hwang claimed that he had used nuclear transfer techniques to develop patient specific human embryonic stem cells.

2009 The Obama Administration announces it will significantly expand NIH funding of human embryonic stem cell research which had been restricted under the Bush Administration.

2010 The National Science Foundation (NSF) announces RCR training requirements for funded investigators, students, and trainees. The NIH expands and strengthens is RCR training requirements.

2011 The Office of Human Research Protections announces proposed changes to the Common Rule to enhance human subject protections and reduce investigator burden. The Common Rule has not been changed significantly since 1981.