2006 – Page 12

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National Crisis: USA Ranks Nearly Last in Evolution Belief!

August 11, 2006

Eugenie Scott and colleagues at the National Center for Science Education presented findings of a survey on acceptance of evolution, and found that the USA trails far behind European countries – second from last only to Turkey. In 20 years, acceptance of evolution dropped from 45 to 40 percent, but firm rejection of evolution also […]

Fossils

Cambrian Embryo Fossils Show Exquisite Detail in New X-Ray Imaging

August 10, 2006

The news media are all showcasing the detailed color-rendered X-ray tomographs of Cambrian worm embryos from China. Scientists were able to determine that these embryos, alleged to be 500 million years old, are very similar to those of modern, living priapulid worms. Despite their assumed age, some of the embryos were remarkably well preserved, displaying […]

Amazing Facts

Birds Excel in Distance, Harmony

August 9, 2006

Bird feats are outstanding. Two notable cases were announced this week: Air Marathon: The longest animal migration in the animal kingdom is performed by the sooty shearwater, reported National Geographic News. They migrate 40,000 miles a year from New Zealand to the North Pacific, in complex figure-eight patterns that touch the coasts of South America, […]

Solar System

Its Tough to Get a Date, but Fun to Keep Trying

August 8, 2006

Geochronology is a perverse sort of game. Like the proverbial clock shop apprentice who went crazy trying to get all the grandfather clocks to tick together, the scientist trying to interpolate earth’s past climate patterns from geochronometers has so many uncooperative variables, he can never hope for anything better than partial conformity to accepted visions […]

Dumb Ideas

Can Evolution Run in Reverse?

August 7, 2006

Evolutionists in Utah are claiming to have run the evolutionary tape in reverse, says the BBC News: “US researchers have taken a mouse back in time some 500 million years by reversing the process of evolution.” How can this be? By engineering its genetic blueprint, they have rebuilt a gene that was present in primitive […]

Origin of Life

Ten Years Later: Mars Rock Was a Useful Lie

August 6, 2006

Almost nobody believes any more that the Martian meteorite ALH84001 contained evidence of life, but the iconic rock launched the science of astrobiology (see 04/17/2006). So said Matt Crenson for AP (see Space.com and Chron.com) on the tenth anniversary of the highly-publicized NASA announcement that purported to show bacteria-like fossils, magnetites and PAHs thought to […]

Early Man

Human Heads Are Shrinking

August 5, 2006

There’s no correlation between brain size and intelligence, and if anything, brains today have gotten smaller since the days of our Pleistocene ancestors. That’s the gist of a report on ABC News Australia based on research at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research: “The genes that are thought to have helped humans evolve big brains […]

Cell Biology

How Useful Is Evolutionary Theory to Biology?

August 4, 2006

A favorite quote by evolutionists is the line by Theodosius Dobzhansky, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” Why, then, do so many biological papers fail to mention evolution at all? Indeed, many employ design language, sometimes with a sense of awe. Here are more recent examples in which the E […]

Genetics

Team Returns Pseudogene to Junkpile to Counter ID Claim

August 3, 2006

An earlier claim that a pseudogene has a function (see 05/01/2003 story) has been debunked by a team of scientists reporting in PNAS.1 Their reanalysis of the claim made in 2003 “invalidates the data upon which the pseudogene trans-regulation model is based and therefore strongly supports the view that mammalian pseudogenes are evolutionary relics.” The […]

Solar System

More Reasons You Wouldn’t Want to Live on Mars

August 2, 2006

Electric charges in dust devils on Mars may generate toxic chemicals, says a report on Space.com (see also later story posted on National Geographic News). According to two recent reports in Astrobiology journal, “Small dust devils and planet-wide storms – combined with static electricity – may lead to the formation of hydrogen peroxide and other […]

Amazing Facts

Bacteria Rule the World Benevolently

August 2, 2006

We should love bacteria, not annihilate them. Bacteria are our friends, according to Dianne K. Newman of Caltech:1 As a microbiologist, I’m appalled when I go to buy soap or dishwashing detergent, because these days it’s hard to find anything that doesn’t say ‘antibacterial’ on it…. It’s a commonly held fallacy that all bacteria are […]

Darwin and Evolution

Kansas Evolution Battle Heats Up Again

August 1, 2006

Update 08/02/2006: According to a news report on Live Science, conservatives have lost their majority in the primary election for seats on the state school board. Details are reported by the Lawrence Journal-World. The winners are gloating that this is a great day for Kansas, said Science Now, but ended by noting that the issue […]

Politics and Ethics

Journals Consistently Tout Embryonic Stem Cells, Criticize Bush

July 31, 2006

This is not news. It just bears repeating that the Big Science journals continue to push embryonic stem cell research and criticize Republicans. The latest case in point was President Bush’s veto of the stem cell bill July 19, that led to a flurry of articles and editorials in the leading British and American science […]

Dinosaurs

Opal Plesiosaurs, Flashy Pterosaurs and Hot Titanosaurs Inspire Stories

July 30, 2006

Paleontologists continue to dig up bones of fascinating species of long-lost animals. When it comes to extinct species, the line between observation and interpretation becomes fuzzy, since there is no way to be absolutely sure how they behaved and what they were doing when they died. This does not prevent scientists from freely speculating on […]