Potamopyrgus antipodarum Sex

[Issachar]

I don't know if God is actually telling this nation .. "Here, you want some more rope?" or if it's just me imagining that, but when it comes to the Untied States of America deciding how more to grow it's debt burden, I sure feel like saying that.

So now we that work, get to pay out at least $880,000 for yet another, among thousands, of worthless endeavors.

(CNSNews.com) – The National Science Foundation awarded a grant for $876,752 to the University of Iowa to study whether there is any benefit to sex among New Zealand mud snails and whether that explains why any organism has sex.

The study, first funded in 2011 and continuing until 2015, will study the New Zealand snails to see if it is better that they reproduce sexually or asexually – the snail can do both – hoping to gain insight on why so many organisms practice sexual reproduction.

“Sexual reproduction is more costly than asexual reproduction, yet nearly all organisms reproduce sexually at least some of the time. Why is sexual reproduction so common despite its costs,” the study’s abstract asks.

“This project will use a different organism, Potamopyrgus antipodarum, a New Zealand snail, which has both sexual and independently-derived asexual lineages that make it ideally suited to address fundamental evolutionary questions of how genes and genomes evolve in the absence of sexual reproduction.”

In other words, the study seeks to see if there are genetic advantages to sexual reproduction that justify its evolutionary costs, advantages such as avoiding genetic mutations or gene loss.

Hint #1: There is no evolution.
Hint #2: God made them the way they are.

more (same source) ..

In a University of Iowa press release announcing the grant, this is described as the “cost of males” – explaining that female organisms shouldn’t need to produce sons instead of daughters because producing daughters simply involves asexual duplication – which can then duplicate themselves – while male offspring cannot produce other male offspring unaided.

“[T]he commonness of sex is surprising because asexual females should be able to produce twice as many daughters as sexual females that make both male and female offspring,” the release says.

If anyone understands what is at the core of feminist/pagan "doctrine", they'll recognize that this "study" smacks of it. My guess (could totally be wrong ... or not) is that the "study" has something to do with that "doctrine." i.e. males not needed (or wanted).

Issachar, writing way too large of a check to the IRS in a couple weeks ..

[Issachar]

Re: Potamopyrgus antipodarum Sex

Or .. we could spend even more on "studying" bar fights.

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism paid $918,856 in tax dollars to fund a five-year study of “Alcohol and Bar Violence” that determined, among other things, that bar fights tend to occur in venues that are relatively dark, dirty, noisy, hot, and crowded and that are frequented by a clientele of younger, less agreeable, less conscientious, more impulsive heavy drinkers.

The study also discovered that a woman who gets in a bar fight has consumed on average four times as many drinks as her usual intake.

source

Issachar, thinking it might be better to cut police, fire departments, etc. than important stuff like the above, when/if there is ever a budget "cut"