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Carl Zimmer has written a two-part post on eye evolution. Part 1 travels backward in time discussing how the eye may have evolved. Part 2 discusses organisms that have lost their eyes. This post mentions Brigham Young University by name in connection with the loss of vision in fleas. He links to the abstract of a paper by Michael Whiting.
Some of you will remember Whiting as the BYU professor that published a paper in Nature a couple of years ago dealing with the loss and re-gaining of wings in insects. (I don't remember which ones off hand--walking sticks maybe?)
I don't keep close tabs on research coming out of BYU, but it seemed to me like a number of the Bio-Ag faculty weren't doing much in the way of publishing good research. Maybe that is changing. At any rate, there are a few bright spots and I'm glad to see it.
(Elders quorum discussion topic: Should tithing money be facilitating research on evolution?)
3 comments:
BYU's actually had a lot of good research in quite a few disciplines. Just in the biology department there have been an amazing number of excellent evolutionists the last 15 years or so. I forget his name, but back in the early 90's there was one of the top names in evolution teaching at BYU. There was even a Nova documentary on him related to those flying foxes or whatever they are called in Samoa. He taught a few segments on evolution for my issues in science and religion class at BYU.
But there are also quite a few other good areas. I've not kept up, so a lot of these are dated. But I seem to recall there being a few folks in the math department who were excellent in group theory / matrix theory and were doing some really interesting research. In the physics department there were a few excellent theorists on black holes and of course one of the co-authors of the main freshman physics text was at BYU. The research of crystal optic and X-rays was from BYU. A bunch of them went and formed Moxtek up in Orem which is one of the main manufacturers for a lot of precise equipment like mirrors, filters and the like. There was one of the main journals on the subject published from there.
I've heard that the engineering department is quite respected as well.
One problem though that BYU has in getting and more importantly keeping good researchers is that it is focused on undergrad education. It doesn't have much of a grad department and reportedly tells professors not to spend too much time on research. I've heard that in determining tenure research isn't valued that much either. I think that a mistake, but I can somewhat understand. I do think BYU ought to embrace graduate studies though.
Also there is Daniel Simmons in the chemistry dept, who discovered the COX-2 enzyme. (Celebrex, Vioxx, etc.)
Paul Cox was who I was thinking of.
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