2011 – Page 15

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More Youth on Titan

April 9, 2011

Hopes that Saturn’s giant moon Titan might have volcanoes just dropped. A new paper in Icarus1 concludes Titan gets its geology from the outside, not the inside. If confirmed, it implies all the surface features were created by wind, impacts and weather – not by active geology. The hopeful cryovolcano announced last year (Sotra Facula, […]

Darwin and Evolution

Researchers Violate Separation of Science and State

April 8, 2011

What are the limits of science? Many of us envision men and women in white lab coats holding test tubes, studying readouts on instruments, or hacking rocks with picks. A look at headlines from science news sites, though, shows some scientists inserting their opinions in areas traditionally led by scholars in the humanities – and […]

Cell Biology

Adult Stem Cell Advances Continue

April 7, 2011

The momentum for stem cell therapy is still on the side of adult stem cells (ASC), not embryonic stem cell (ESC) research. Here are some recent findings: Blood vessel repair: A press release from King’s College London says, “Scientists from King’s College London have uncovered the first genetic evidence that shows cells found on the […]

Birds

Does Observing Flight Explain Its Evolution?

April 6, 2011

In various research labs, evolutionists are studying the origin of flight. Recent articles, though, only show them observing animals or fossils that already fly or flew. Does this provide any insight into how flight might have originated by a purposeless material process? Birds: With a quote from Charles Darwin decorating the heading, PhysOrg announced a […]

Awards

Poison Comets Brought Life to Earth

April 5, 2011

You don’t drink formaldehyde; you stick dead things in it. Why on earth would some evolutionists claim that “Poison could have set the stage for the origins of life?” That’s exactly a headline on Science Daily and PhysOrg, with Live Science chiming in that the poisonous chemical has been “linked” to the origin of life […]

Amazing Facts

Seeing Is Believing, or v.v.

April 4, 2011

What you see is not what is out there in the world – not exactly, at least. Scientists have shown that your brain is tweaking the light coming in from your eyes and making predictions about what you expect to see. The “blind spot” experiment is well known to students. That’s where it […]

Philosophy of Science

Assuming Reality: Can Crater Dating Be Tested?

April 3, 2011

Two astronomers in Paris have come up with a new crater chronology for the moon and offered it as a way to date other objects in the inner solar system. Their paper in Icarus,1 however, assumes so many unobservable things, the reader may wonder if it talks about the true history of the moon or […]

Dumb Ideas

Imagining Worlds: Is It Science?

April 2, 2011

An entry on Space.com is almost pure speculation with no observation. Does it belong on a science news site? Reporter Clara Moskowitz gave Viorel Badescu [Polytechnic University of Bucharest, Romania] free rein to imagine life on free-floating planets (FFPs) – bodies wandering free in space after being abandoned, like wayward children, from their […]

Amazing Facts

Plants Generate Their Own Sunscreen

April 1, 2011

Ultraviolet radiation hits plants as well as humans, but plants can’t reach for a tube of sunscreen. Too much exposure can damage them; what do they do? They have a sensor that turns on production of their own brand of sunscreen and spreads it on their skin automatically. UV-B rays are the most […]

Botany

Plants Have Social Networks

March 31, 2011

Plants may be mostly stationary, but they have meaningful conversations through the grapevine.

Darwin and Evolution

Psychologist Analyzes ID Belief with Emotionally Loaded Poll

March 31, 2011

Without any critique, Science Daily and PhysOrg reproduced a bizarre press release from University of British Columbia that alleges, “Death anxiety prompts people to believe in intelligent design, reject evolution.” A contrived psychological survey, replete with imagining one’s own death and then reading quotes from Michael Behe and Richard Dawkins, scared 1,674 respondents […]

Fossils

Science Discovers the Unexpected and the Obvious

March 30, 2011

Young’s Law jokes, “All great discoveries are made by mistake.” Here are some recent examples. Arch-istan: Think the world’s natural features are all well known? “Researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society have stumbled upon a geological colossus in a remote corner of Afghanistan: a natural stone arch spanning more than 200 feet across its base,” […]

Darwin and Evolution

Scientists: Who Can You Believe?

March 29, 2011

Scientists form a kind of knowledge priesthood in our modern world, but when long-taught principles get overturned, it raises questions on what scientists really know. Windy geology: Wind is a more powerful force for eroding mountains than previously thought. University of Arizona quoted Paul Kapp, an associate professor of geosciences at U of A saying, […]

Biomimetics

Plagiarizing Nature

March 28, 2011

Copying someone else’s invention is a crime, but researchers in biomimetics are doing it with impunity and getting away with it. Leaf power: “Why come up with new ways to generate clean energy, when we can copy what plants have been doing for millennia?” That’s what led Daniel Nocera and colleagues at MIT to develop […]

Amazing Facts

Neurons Know What to Do

March 27, 2011

Neurons are among the most vital cells in the body: after all, your brain is largely composed of neurons. Neurons are transmission lines of information that keep a body in touch with itself and the world. None of the other body organs would work without neurons. The increasingly powerful tools of microscopy are allowing neuroscientists […]

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