The Design of Giardia and the Genesis of Giardiasis

Giardia is a genus of protozoa discovered in 1681. Six morphologically distinct species are recognized. It mainly attaches in the upper GI tract of a wide variety of vertebrates (including zebrafish), often with beaver and muskrat as reservoirs/carriers but exhibiting minimal—if any—disease in some animals. Giardia is usually non-pathogenic in the human population, even in children if exposed early in life. Although Giardia can be pathogenic, some strains colonize the gut with no malady. This parasite is not invasive and only serious infections depress the small intestine. Giardia are pear-shaped, have an adhesive disc for attaching to enterocyte cells in the small intestine villus, and move with eight designed flagella. In the post-Fallen world, Giardia infection occasionally has resulted in digestive dysfunction. However, Giardia may function in non-parasitic, possibly mutualistic, ways. For example, it may have been designed to aid digestion having a role as a “primer.” The presence of Giardia muris causes a fundamental change in the microbiome in mice and Giardia may have other influences on the microbiome such as enhancing digestion in certain animals and possibly shifting ratios of bacteria from anaerobic to aerobic. Giardia may play a role in host metabolism and provide nutritional enhancement via its association with enteric bacteria, like E. coli. The function of Giardia may parallel with non-parasitic tasks found in Trypanosoma lewisi, and also termite systems that contain protozoa and bacteria for plant digestion. Giardiahas two “faces” even in today\u27s world: a harmless commensal in wildlife and a pathogenic parasite in humans

The Genesis of Malaria: The Origin of Mosquitoes and Their Protistan Cargo, Plasmodium falciparum

Malaria is caused by the parasite belonging to the genus Plasmodium; however, creation biologists maintain this organism was not always parasitic. Plasmodium is probably a degenerate form of algae. Mosquitoes, the vector of Plasmodium, were probably designed to be pollinators, not parasite vectors. In this article, we present both the evolutionary and creation explanation for the origin of malaria with a mention to its vector, the mosquito. The purpose of this article is to provide a reasonable explanation for the genesis of malaria. Microbiology and parasitology research based on the creation paradigm appears to provide some answers to these puzzling questions regarding the Plasmodium “kind” (Family Haemosporidae). Although we cannot be dogmatic (beyond the biblical text) regarding details of Plasmodium’s origin during Creation Week, we believe that a reasonable extrapolation from Scripture and biological data can be made about the nature of protozoans in a fully mature creation

The Design of the Mosquito and Its Dangers

Mosquitoes (Family Culicidae) have been the scourge of mankind since the Fall. Although seemingly designed to inflict suffering and pain via rapid reproduction and formidable mouthparts, evidence mounts that this creature was not always the deadly vector it is today. Mosquitoes are currently and have always been pollinators. The majority of their lives they feed on plants, nectar, pollen, and microbes even in today\u27s world. The Zika virus is but the latest of a significant list of pathogens spread by “the world’s most dangerous animal.” In the past, Christians have been involved in key discoveries linking mosquitoes to diseases

The Origin of Bubonic Plague

Although some forms of the bacterium Yersinia are harmless, other forms have devastated human populations, causing a plague of biblical proportions (Psalm 91:3-7, Psalm 91:9-10,). Bubonic plague, also known as the ‘Black Death’ that killed one fourth of Europe’s population in the 1300s, appeared as a great pestilence several times in the Old Testament, including in Psalm 91 and in 2 Samuel 24:14-25. Perhaps the clearest example of such a plague is recorded in 1 Samuel 6:4-19, where there is a specific reference to the tumors on people (bubos = the tumors of lymph glands) and to rats (the animal vector that carried the plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis.) The biblical time frame for the plagues described in 1 Samuel was about 3,000 years ago.1 Interestingly, experts on plague ‘evolution’ estimate the emergence of Y. pestis at about 1,500-20,000 years ago (within an evolutionary timeframe, of course).

On the Hausdorff dimension of certain sets

Imperial Users onl

Robert Koch, Creation, and the Specificity of Germs

Microbiology is dominated by evolution today. Just look at any text, journal article, or the topics presented at professional scientific meetings. Darwin is dominant. Microbiology is dominated by evolution today. Just look at any text, journal article, or the topics presented at professional scientific meetings. Darwin is dominant. Many argue that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” (Dobzhansky 1973). But it was not always this way. In fact, a review of the major founders of microbiology has shown that they were creationists.1 We would argue that a better idea thanevolution and one of much more practical importance is the germ theory of disease, originally put forth primarily by non-Darwinian biologists (Gillen and Oliver 2009). In our previous article (Gillen and Oliver 2009), we documented these and many other creation and Christian contributions to germ theory. But only recently has it become known that another important microbiology founder, Robert Koch (Fig. 1) and his co-workers were Linnaean creationists in their classification.2 This is due, in part, to additional works of Robert Koch that were translated from German to English. The year 2010 marks the 100thanniversary of his death (died: May 27, 1910). Although Koch and other German microbiologists were fairly secular in their thinking, their acceptance of Darwinian evolution was minimal

Policy Coherence for Development: Five Challenges

‘Policy Coherence for Development’ (PCD) seeks to ensure that non-aid public policies are consistent with a government’s international development goals. In the light of a number of years of PCD reviews and institutional reforms at both EU and member state level, this paper reflects on the dynamics of the PCD policy environment and discusses five challenges for the PCD policy agenda. These include the opposing interests of domestic and development constituencies, conflicts between development objectives themselves, disagreements between experts on what ‘good’ development policy is, difficulties in identifying the true development interest of developing countries, and the growing heterogeneity between and within developing countries. While the challenges discussed in this paper have general relevance, we draw on EU and Irish policies to illustrate the arguments. We conclude with a series of recommendations on how these challenges might be addressed and how to make the PCD agenda more effective.Policy Coherence for Development, European Trade and Agriculture Policy, Development Policy, Millennium Development Goals

The Middle of an Alphabetic List

What\u27s the middle of the alphabet? It\u27s HA to a cryptic crossword aficionado, and M or N by strict counting, but what if you look in the middle of a reference book? The answer depends a lot on which book you choose. Here are fifty examples

On Searching for Vowelless Words

In the November 1977 issue of Word Ways, Philip Cohen suggested that a collection of all-consonant words would be useful in various logological investigations. In the August 1980 issue, Jeff Grant and Ross Eckler answered with a list of all-consonant words from the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (Second and Third editions) and the Oxford English Dictionary. This article presents the results of a further search I conducted for such words

Ghostbusters

In Our Move in the November 1971 Word Ways, Darryl Francis demonstrated that the only safe opening move for the first player in the game of Ghost (players alternately add letters, and the one that first completes a word of four or more letters is the loser) is the letter L. He allowed only uncapitalized words from Webster\u27s Third Edition to be used; specifically, he excluded all words labeled cap, usu cap, often cap, or sometimes cap. In the article, he invited Word Ways readers to determine the corresponding strategies for other dictionaries