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SETI, Miracles, and Comfort
February 1, 2010
Would knowledge that the universe is filled with aliens bring you comfort? Or are you more comfortable thinking humans are alone in the universe? Seth Shostak, director of the SETI Institute, was interviewed briefly by Bill Hemmer on Fox News this morning, where only one answer to this idea was assumed. Shostak came […]
Who in the Universe Makes Music?
February 1, 2010
A cosmologist and some musicians want to “sonify the universe” by making music out of stellar events like supernova explosions. In an unusual article for a science media outlet, “Reaching for the Stars to Create Music of the Universe,” Science Daily reported that Nobel laureate George Smoot was inspired by the wishes of a Grateful […]
Scientists Divine Deep Time in Dead Fish
January 30, 2010
Scientific experiments can certainly take on a wide variety of methods, from recreating the atmosphere of Titan to testing a drug on a genetic disease. But if educators want to encourage students to become scientists, they had best keep silent about “some very unpleasant experiments” at the University of Leicester reported by the BBC News. […]
Incredible Creatures that Support Evolution?
January 29, 2010
Paleontologists and biologists continue to uncover animals past and present that exhibit amazing diversity. Some of them are so weird and unexpected, they are almost unbelievable. Usually, the news media are quick to tally up points for Darwin by explaining to lay people how they shed light on evolution. But in the “discovery” stage of […]
Woese Slays Darwin
January 28, 2010
The king is dead! Long live the king! Such were the oxymoronic cries of olden times when royal succession took place. Has Charles Darwin been dethroned? One would think so, after reading Mark Buchanan’s article, “Horizontal and vertical: the evolution of evolution” in New Scientist. Buchanan sets the stage: Just suppose that Darwin’s ideas were […]
Barefoot Is Better
January 27, 2010
Who do we wear shoes? It seems obvious; we expect that they help us avoid injuries and provide comfort. Maybe we should think of the injuries we are getting by wearing them. The image of the barefoot person is usually of someone poor, deprived, lower-class, hick, unclean, redneck or something else unattractive. Shoes […]
Convergence: Explanation or Rescue Device?
January 26, 2010
The news media are telling us that bats and dolphins both hit on the same genetic pathway to evolve echolocation – even though they are on vastly different evolutionary lineages and use echolocation differently (one in air, one in water). Since it is inconceivable that a putative shrew-like common ancestor of these very different animals […]
Chimps Produce Movie
January 25, 2010
The BBC is going to air a movie made by chimpanzees. (Note: This is not a Planet of the Apes remake.) A primatologist working on her PhD gave some chimps at the Edinburgh zoo a “Chimpcam,” a camcorder in a “chimp-proof” box, to see what they would come up with. “Despite the fact that the […]
Aliens Invade Science News
January 25, 2010
What are aliens doing in science news reports? There is no evidence they even exist. That has not hindered some scientists from speculating. BBC News reporters Pallab Ghosh headlined an entry “Astronomers hopeful of detecting extra-terrestrial life,” and adorned it with a Hollywood-style alien corpse. The article highlighted the optimism of Lord Rees, the president […]
Fermi Paradox Reasserts Itself
January 23, 2010
Paul Davies, no stranger to facing difficult questions and proposing imaginative solutions, is coming out with a new book in April about SETI. In it, he tackles the Fermi Paradox: if aliens are out there, why haven’t they dropped by yet? Amazon.com lists some of the ideas to be presented in The Eerie Silence: Renewing […]
Evolutionary Biogeography Requires Imagination
January 22, 2010
Biogeography – the study of the distribution of species – has been an important part of evolutionary theory, and has often been used as evidence for evolution. Some recent findings about plants and animals should give scientists caution about trying to divine too much evolutionary history from locations of present-day organisms and fossils. […]
Dogs for Darwin
January 21, 2010
Science Daily shamelessly announced, “‘Survival of the Cutest’ Proves Darwin Right.” Chris Klingenberg and Abby Drake, who published a study on mammal skull shapes in American Naturalist on dog breeds, said, “This study illustrates the power of Darwinian selection with so much variation produced in such a short period of time. The evidence […]
Molecular Machines Use Moving Parts
January 19, 2010
Research papers into the processes of molecular machines continue to reveal moving parts: “fingers” that open and close, ratchets that lock into place, and feet that move along tracks. Here are a few samples from the voluminous literature that continues to pour from biophysics labs. DNA Polymerase I: Scientific papers tend to be reserved in […]
Stem Cell News: Cancer Cures Coming?
January 18, 2010
Stem cell research has not been as prominent in the popular media lately, but researchers continue to make impressive strides – mostly with adult stem cells. Science Daily reported the first success treating leukemia with stem cells from umbilical cord blood. A researcher at the Hutchinson Center said, “The real ground-breaking aspect of this research […]
Respect Your Plant: Dont Say it Evolved
January 17, 2010
Consider two propositions: (1) Plants are highly complex, integrated systems that we don’t fully understand. (2) They evolved to become highly complex, integrated systems. That’s basically what two scientists claimed in the American Journal of Botany, according to Science Daily reported. But do these two propositions comport with one another? Mathematical models for the distribution […]
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