Mutation made Hawaii Crickets Mute - http://clapway.com/2015/12/21/mutation-made-hawaii-crickets-mute/

Scientists have claimed that mutation and evolution have saved the lives of many Hawaii crickets. Let’s be honest, Evolution is a very controversial subject. Many people believe it, and many people do not believe it. However, let us take a look at how some scientists say the lives of Hawaii crickets were saved because of it.

WHAT MUTATION IS

Basically, a mutation is a natural process that changes the sequence of DNA. They can affect several aspects in genes. They can alter the products of the gene and they can prevent the gene from functioning properly or at all. Sometimes, however, they actually do not affect the gene at all.

SCIENTISTS CLAIM HAWAII CRICKETS EVOLVED

This is where things get a little tricky. One study actually stated that from the late 1990’s until 2003, 20 crickets evolved to prevent them from making their chirping sound. Then, a biologist and science writer actually stated that mutation and evolution saved the lives of many Hawaii crickets. This is because the mutation of these crickets makes it harder for predators to find them and eat them. This does make mating a little more complicated, though.

EVOLUTION IS OPINION NOT FACT

For people who state that Evolution is a fact, I ignore them. This is where this article could stir up some emotions. I do not believe in Evolution and my sole belief is in my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This means that I completely disagree with everything that was said from these scientists. I was raised in the church and truly believe that we were not just evolved from a single cell organism. Instead, God created the world and all of her beauties. You do not believe me, then go read The Bible. I also do not believe in having an open mind about this either. There is no middle ground, you either believe it or you do not.

EVOLUTION IS A CONTROVERSIAL TOPIC

Mutation and Evolution are very controversial topics. I am sure that I just sparked up some emotion with this article. Besides maybe politics, I can not think of another topic as controversial as religion. Many arguments have been said on both sides of the table and the arguments will never stop. It is difficult to change one’s mind with this topic because many people are very closed minded about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gugY9C6aIlI

Mutation made Hawaii Crickets Mute

This mommy #robot OWNS #NaturalSelection. - http://clapway.com/2015/08/12/robot-mother-builds-children-and-mimics-natural-selection-425/

Cambridge University scientists have made a “mother” robot that creates cube robot children, evaluates them based on task performance, and improves the next generation accordingly.

ROBOT TESTING: IF YOU THOUGHT YOUR MOM WAS BAD…

Equipped with a Universal Robots UR5 robotic arm and gripper, the mother robot built and tested ten generations of “cube babies” in five experiments. Designing and creating each robot took about 10 minutes for the mother, who designed them based on five rules guiding their construction, motor command and shape.

ONLY BEING HERCULES IS GOOD ENOUGH?

Each cube robot was tasked to travel the longest possible distance from a starting point in a certain amount of time. Depending on their performance evaluations, some of the “children” underwent no changes in the successive generation and others had their “genomes” altered and mutated.

The researchers found that the mother was adept at improving each generation so that the later generations would not have the genomes deemed defective. The last robots the mother created performed the task twice as quickly as the first generation.

As its lead researcher pointed out, the study effectively imitated natural selection.

PROGRAMMABLE NATURAL SELECTION TO MAKE DARWIN PROUD

“Natural selection is basically reproduction, assessment, reproduction, assessment and so on,” Dr. Fumiya Iida, the project’s lead researcher, explained in a press release. “That’s essentially what this robot is doing – we can actually watch the improvement and diversification of the species.”

The project was completed at Cambridge in collaboration with researchers from ETH Zurich. It’s an example of evolutionary robotics, “a growing field which allows for the creation of autonomous robots without human intervention” according to Cambridge University.

The origin of intelligence is a mystery to many biologists, and a question that Iida and his team were interested in exploring. “One of the big questions in biology is how intelligence came about – we’re using robotics to explore this mystery,” said Iida, a lecturer at Cambridge’s Department of Engineering. “We think of robots as performing repetitive tasks, and they’re typically designed for mass production instead of mass customisation, but we want to see robots that are capable of innovation and creativity.”

You can read the full results of the study in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

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ON INTELLIGENCE… PLAY WITH A.I. WITH MUSIO:

Robot Mother Builds Children and Mimics Natural Selection