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Amazing Facts

Your DNA Repairman Is Handy as an Octopus
March 27, 2011
Some 10 times a day in a given cell, your DNA breaks on both strands.  This is an emergency.  Unless repaired quickly, serious diseases, like cancer, can develop.  But no fear: the first responder is an octopus-shaped protein complex that rushes to the rescue, wraps around the damaged site, and brings in all the parts […]
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Amazing Facts

Plants Spring into Action
March 26, 2011
We shouldn’t take plants for granted.  They seem so slow and stationary, but actually they move and breath and carry on their lives in truly amazing ways.  Plants really show off their glory in the spring.  But how do they know, without eyes, what time it is?     In “The science of spring,” PhysOrg […]
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Cell Biology

We Are Filled with Viruses
March 26, 2011
Viruses have a bad connotation.  We immediately think of the ones that cause disease: “I’ve got a virus,” you say when feeling under the weather.  Actually, you have trillions of them all the time, even in the best of health.  A single gram of stool sample can have 10 billion of them!  What does that […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Evolution Goes Against Darwin
March 25, 2011
Evolutionists are coming up with new ideas far afield from Charles Darwin’s original ideas of spontaneous variation and natural selection.  The new ideas even differ from neo-Darwinism, and some of them are making other evolutionists angry. Mating of the quickest:  A new phrase, “mating between the quickest,” is supplanting survival of the fittest according to […]
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Uncategorized

Weird Science Tolerated by Science Reporters
March 25, 2011
What are the boundaries between science and pseudoscience?  Before answering, look at some of the stories that made headlines on science news sites recently. Legendary science:  Siberia plans to study the Yeti, reported PhysOrg.  Yeti has nothing to do with extra-terrestrial intelligence; it’s the popular name of a legendary abominable snowman locals report having seen […]
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Amazing Facts

Sensing the World Requires Intelligent Design
March 24, 2011
How do our bodies make sense of the external world?  Through our senses, of course; at least they are the entry points of data into the mind.  Behind those senses are remarkable mechanisms that we use but do not actively operate.  The design in their automatic operations is slowly being revealed with better observing techniques. […]
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Dinosaurs

More Soft Tissue Found in Old Fossils
March 23, 2011
A reptile skin fossilized in rock said to be 50 million years old has been found.  According to Science Daily, scientists at the University of Manchester reported the discovery of amide molecules in “fossilized soft tissue of a beautifully-preserved reptile.”  The original paper, accessible to the public, was published in the Proceedings of the Royal […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Better Life Origin Through Chemistry
March 22, 2011
Jeffrey Bada went digging through Stanley Miller’s old 1958 spark-discharge vials and found more amino acids.  When Miller added rotten-egg gas (hydrogen sulfide, H2S) to the mix, more amino acids were produced: “A total of 23 amino acids and 4 amines, including 7 organosulfur compounds, were detected in these samples,” his team reported in PNAS.1  […]
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Birds

Evolution Everyone Can Agree On
March 21, 2011
The controversy over Darwinian evolution concerns one core question: Can an unplanned, undirected process generate new functions and complex organs of irreducible complexity without design?  No one really doubts that organisms vary in horizontal or downward ways – either by modifications of existing genetic information, or by deleterious mutations that somehow allow animals to continue […]
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Uncategorized

Limits of Science Noted
March 19, 2011
Biology used to be simple to classify: plants and animals.  Up to the 1990s, that transmogrified into eukaryotes and prokaryotes.  Then the prokaryotes got split into archaea and bacteria.  But now, according to New Scientist there are debates about opening up a fourth kingdom of life – with the realization that 99% of cell species […]
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Solar System

It’s Raining Methane on Titan’s Dunes
March 18, 2011
Imagine a world where it rains liquid natural gas.  That world is Titan, the Mercury-sized moon of Saturn.  In Science this week,1 Cassini scientists reported large equatorial clouds over Titan’s vast dune fields, and a darkening of the surface after an apparent cloudburst.  Since only hydrocarbons can be liquid at the temperatures there, and methane […]
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Fossils

Mummified Trees in the Arctic: Are They Millions of Years Old?
March 17, 2011
Arctic wood in a “polar desert” has been discovered that is “so well preserved that the wood can still burn, and even the most delicate tree structures, such as leaves, are present” reported PhysOrg.  Joel Barker (Ohio State) remarked, “The dead trees look just like the dried-out dead wood lying outside now.” How old are […]
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Amazing Facts

Double Ratchet Found in ATP Synthase
March 16, 2011
ATP synthase, the rotary engine in all living things, has another trick in its design specs: a ratcheting mechanism that improves the efficiency of ATP synthesis.  ATP is the “energy currency” of cellular life, so the efficiency of production of ATP is of vital importance.  (For background and animation, see CMI article.)     Three […]
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Biomimetics

Follow the Insects
March 15, 2011
Science has good reason to study insects – not just because they are the most numerous and diverse animals on the planet.  They know some tricks we would do well to emulate.  Robot designers are taking the lead on following insects. Print a fly:  New printers are allowing inventors to print the paper-thin wings they […]
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Uncategorized

Surprises in Science Never End
March 14, 2011
In a perfect world of scientific knowledge, scientists would understand everything and be able to predict everything according to their best theories.  The number of surprises that continue to turn up, however, show that we remain far from that perfect world.  Paleoecology: Chilly dinosaurs:  “It has long been thought that the climate of the Mesozoic, […]
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