Amazon Go,
Creatures Depend on Sophisticated Sensors
Amazon recently unveiled their new high-tech
brick and mortar store allowing customers to swipe the "Amazon Go app to
enter the store, take the products you want, and go! No lines, no
checkout." Customers don't notice a thing. Unseen sensors throughout
the store-shopping environment detect product movements and link them to
customers. Amazon touts how they do it, telling us "we used computer
vision, deep learning algorithms, and sensor fusion." Sensors are also
vital to organisms. Just like the Amazon Go store, sensors are just one
essential element in systems that work together with programmed algorithm
systems. Sensors are often located at the interfaces of the organism's internal
and external environments. The precise multifunctional biocomplexity of these
proteins — all encoded in the same sequence — is direct and powerful evidence
of an omnipotent Creator's handiwork, not purposeless evolution based on
chance.
BY RANDY J.
GULIUZZA, P.E., M.D.
What
does the recently unveiled Amazon Go store have to do with several new studies
detailing how flies find water or how tiny roundworms can "taste
light?"
The
"world's most advanced shopping technology" that links the
cutting-edge Amazon Go store to its customers depends on the same vital element
linking roundworms and spiders to their environments: a sensor.
Amazon recently unveiled their new high-tech
brick and mortar store allowing customers to swipe the "Amazon Go app
to enter the store, take the products you want, and go! No lines, no
checkout."
Engineers
were able to "weave the most advanced" technology throughout
"the very fabric of a store" so any given product is added to a
customer's virtual cart when picked up and taken out of the cart if put back.
Customers
don't notice a thing. Unseen sensors throughout the store-shopping environment
detect product movements and link them to customers.
Amazon
touts how they do it, telling us "we used computer vision, deep learning
algorithms, and sensor fusion."
Their
"just walk out technology" employs sensors to detect an identifier
for everything a customer takes, and programming links its price to the Amazon
Go app owner's account.
Public
attention naturally focuses on the unhindered activities of customers, but
without the sensors, the store's operators would be blind to their product's
whereabouts… and Amazon would soon be out of business.
Sensors
are also vital to organisms.
The humidity detector in flies was first
discovered in 2016 and neurobiologist Marco Gallio, commented on the importance
of these detectors to the flies' survival, "They are careful to not
lose moisture, which could cause them to die, and they also use humidity
detectors to find water."
Human-engineered
sensors and those in organisms share several key elements.
A
sensor's purpose is to discover or identify the presence of specific events or
changes in its environment, and then provide a corresponding output signal into
a system as a response.
A
sensor has an element with characteristics relating to an environmental
condition, so when that condition changes, the sensor's characteristic also
changes.
Connected
to the characteristic-changing sensor are other elements which initiate a
signal or response.
Understanding the Role of Sensors Guides Research
Other
researchers observed that a tiny (1mm long) eyeless roundworm responded to
light.
These
biologists knew intuitively what engineers explain from a design perspective:
There must be some internal system in the organism which links the presence of
an external condition, in this case light, to a response.
Last
month they reported that their search for a photo detector succeeded.
The
sensor they found is "about 50 times more efficient at capturing
light" than the photosensitive molecule in the human eye.
Remarkably, it "comes from a family
of taste receptor proteins first discovered in insects."
In like manner, a cave biologist recently
related about an eyeless cave shrimp, Stygobromus
allegheniensis,that "could distinguish between light and
dark, with the creatures being drawn to the dark."
Though he "doesn't know what they use
instead of eyes," he knows that external conditions do not directly
cause organisms to respond.
His search for a sensor has yielded "early
results [which] suggest that the light-detecting structures may be on their
heads."
Just
like the Amazon Go store, sensors are just one essential element in systems
that work together with programmed algorithm systems.
Both
are needed to determine specific responses to specific conditions.
Sensors
are often located at the interfaces of the organism's internal and external
environments.
Sensors
are the first element to initiate their responses in development, cycles,
physiological processes, self-adjusting mechanisms, tracking systems, and so
forth.
One Sensor May Track Multiple Conditions
Sensors
in organisms have been found to use the same molecule for multiple sensing
purposes.
Science
recently published research on light-sensitive molecules known as phytochromes
that also functioned as thermosensors in a model research plant, Arabidopsis.
This
dual function enables temperature-sensing to seamlessly integrate with light
sensory functions necessary for the plant to make a wide variety of adjustments
in growth and development.
ICR geneticist Jeffrey Tomkins commented, "Evolutionary
scientists did not predict such elaborate sensory integration in a single
protein system. Such an amazing piece of engineering is way beyond human
capability and speaks clearly that life was engineered by an Omnipotent
Creator."
Scientists at Cornell University discovered
that "spiders can sense and respond to sounds coming from distances
more than three meters away even though they lack ears and
eardrums."
Spiders
are covered in hair, and at least some hairs are multifunctional.
The lead investigator into jumping spider
hearing found it to be exquisitely sensitive, saying, "instead of
eardrums that respond to pressure, spiders have these extraordinarily sensitive
hairs that respond to the actual movement of air particles around them,"
and added that "though they differ in size and number, these specialized
'hearing' hairs are found across virtually all spider species."
Like
an Amazon Go store, "the most advanced" technology is woven into
"the very fabric" of spiders.
Dr.
Tomkins previously reported on moonlighting
proteins which employ several mechanisms to achieve
multifunctionality.
His article relayed an important conclusion
that "the evolutionary pathways leading to the generation, retention,
and loss of moonlighting proteins remain largely unknown."
How proteins like those found in organism's
sensors attain such precise specificity and sensitivity — all at microscopic
levels — led Dr. Tomkins to deduce: "The precise multifunctional
biocomplexity of these proteins — all encoded in the same sequence — is direct
and powerful evidence of an omnipotent Creator's handiwork, not purposeless
evolution based on chance."
Dr. Guliuzza is ICR's National
Representative.
The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) wants people to
know that God’s Word can be trusted in everything it speaks about—from how and
why we were made, to how the universe was formed, to how we can know God and
receive all He has planned for us.After 50 years of ministry, ICR remains a
leader in scientific research within the context of biblical creation. Founded
by Dr. Henry Morris in 1970, ICR exists to conduct scientific research within
the realms of origins and Earth history, and then to educate the public both
formally and informally through professional training programs, through
conferences and seminars around the country, and through books, magazines, and
media presentations.
http://www.icr.org/article/amazon-go-creatures-depend-sophisticated/
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