Fast Protein Fine-Tunes the Ear
February 13, 2008
A protein helps the human ear respond to volume differences over 12 orders of magnitude.
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Animals from Junk by Chance
February 12, 2008
How to build an animal: throw junk DNA at it. That seems to be the latest idea on where higher animals came from. A press release from University of Bristol posted on Science Daily and EurekAlert announced, “‘Junk DNA’ Can Explain Origin And Complexity Of Vertebrates, Study Suggests.” The basic idea, coming from […]
Defending Darwin Day
February 11, 2008
Tomorrow is the 199th birthday of Charles Darwin. The rising anticipation of a big 200th celebration next year prompts a question: why is this man worthy of such hullabaloo more than other scientists? Why the efforts to make Darwin Day an annual event of international scope? Kevin Padian undertook to justify all this attention in […]
Something is Cooking Under Enceladus
February 9, 2008
Planetary scientists have been puzzling over Enceladus, a small moon of Saturn, since geysers were discovered erupting from its south pole three years ago. Some models suggested that eruptions could occur without liquid water, but others were not sure. Opinion now seems to be shifting back to the necessity of a wet interior, […]
Did Birds Evolve Aeronautical Engineering?
February 8, 2008
Two news stories on birds may not seem to flock together. One is about their supreme aeronautical engineering. The other ponders when they evolved. A story on EurekAlert and Science Daily describes how engineers are eyeing birds, bats and insects for design ideas. The appeal is clear from the following comparisons: A Blackbird […]
Indebted to Darwin
February 7, 2008
Britain’s Food Standards Agency is concerned about diminishing fish stocks and is asking citizens to consume less, reported The Telegraph. This can only mean one thing, thinks Ulf Dieckmann (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria): it’s come time to pay the piper. Who is the piper, you ask? Answer: Charles Darwin. Dr Dieckmann […]
Of All the Nerve: Functional Intron Discovered
February 6, 2008
An intron vital to the production of nerve cells has been discovered, reported Science Daily. It acts as a “gatekeeper” to guide the messenger RNA for local control of gene expression in dendrites, the spindly arms of neurons. The discovery was made by a research team at University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. […]
Are Long-Term Climate Models Trustworthy?
February 5, 2008
Everything from global warming policy to evolutionary history depends on long-term climate models. Textbooks make it seem like earth keeps reliable recordings that allow scientists to simply read off the record of years, decades, centuries, millennia and millions of years objectively. It’s not that simple, wrote Maureen E. Raymo and Peter Huybers in Nature last […]
SETI Signals Could Be Loaded with Information
February 4, 2008
Unusual properties of electromagnetic waves allow for a higher carrying capacity of information than thought. SETI researcher Seth Shostak reported on Space.com that Swedish researchers have found a possible “subspace channel” in the orbital angular momentum of narrowband radio waves that might allow the encoding of information. This information would be impervious to the jumbling […]
Beat the Crowds: Go Outdoors
February 4, 2008
Fewer people are feeling close to nature, said a report on PhysOrg. According to a study done by Oliver Pergams (U of Illinois) and Patricia Zaradic (Environmental Leadership Program, Pennsylvania), a decline in visitation at national parks corresponds to an increase in sedentary activities like playing video games, surfing the Internet and watching movies. They […]
Did Murder Evolve?
February 3, 2008
Is it appropriate for scientists to speculate on the evolution of murder? Nature had no problem with it. They allowed Dan Jones, a freelance writer in Brighton, UK, to publish a lengthy article on how murder and warfare evolved. No other explanations for these scourges were mentioned except to dismiss them. Nature has apparently incorporated […]
Did Darwinism Build the Nuclear Pore Complex?
February 2, 2008
After nine years of work, three universities including a team at Rockefeller University completed a beautiful new model of the nuclear pore complex. The story is told by Science Daily. The article attributed the origin of this exquisite gatekeeper of the nucleus to evolution: “their findings provide a glimpse into how the nucleus […]
Nose Code Rockets Smell Discrimination
February 1, 2008
You have a code in your nose. Scientists working on fruit fly olfactory systems have found that a mapping mechanism between components maximizes the fly’s ability to discriminate smells. The coding system provides a non-linear response that appears finely tuned to maximize the information content of odor inputs. The components of this system […]
Deep Sea Hydrocarbons Dont Require Life
February 1, 2008
Remember the “Lost City” deep sea vents that were discovered by surprise in 2000 (12/13/2000)? It appears that they are producing large quantities of hydrocarbons (methane, alkanes, ethene, acetylene, propene, propyne) without the help of living organisms (cf. 08/13/2002). A team of scientists deduced that abiogenic reactions like the Fischer-Tropsch process and others may be […]
Explorer 1 Chief Discovers Design
January 31, 2008
On this day 50 years ago, America entered the space race. On January 31, 1958, America gave its answer to Sputnik: a civilian satellite named Explorer 1. Within a few hours of the time of day these words are being written, von Braun’s Jupiter-C rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida, successfully launched a JPL satellite into […]