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Can a Cell Improve by Lowering Its Standards?
May 26, 2004
The title of a paper in PNAS is intriguing: “Artificially ambiguous genetic code confers growth yield advantage.” An international team claims to have created a beneficial mutation. They removed the editing ability of a protein involved in translating the genetic code, and got it to survive in a nutrient-starved environment. They suggest that the resulting […]
Hippos Sweat Their Own Sunscreen
May 25, 2004
You know that reddish fluid on hippo skin that turns brown? It’s not just funny colored sweat. Japanese scientists reported in Nature1 that it acts as a sunscreen and an antibiotic. See also the BBC News report on this finding. 1Saikawa et al., “Pigment chemistry: The red sweat of the hippopotamus,” Nature 429, 363 (27 […]
Humans and Chimps Compared
May 25, 2004
In case you had an identity crisis last time at the zoo, Current Biology can provide psychoanalysis. The May 25 issue posted two articles side by side: one, simply entitled “Humans,”1 and the other, “Chimps.”2 Various comparisons are contrasts are drawn, including a few surprising facts, such as this statement: “Based on relative amounts of […]
Red Planet News; Ring World Beckons
May 25, 2004
Let’s drop in on Mars for the latest findings. The two Mars Exploration Rovers are still doing splendidly; Spirit has its goal mapped out, a tour of the Columbia Hills where rock outcrops beckon geologists. It recently crossed the 1.5 mile mark and set a single-day distance record, covering more than a football field with […]
Stem Cell Cover-Up?
May 24, 2004
Stem cells, most have heard, hold promise for many life-saving cures. Michael Fumento in Insight Magazine claims that while adult stem cells have shown many positive results, the media and science establishments tend to hype the benefits of embryonic stem cells while glossing over the ethical and moral problems they present. Recently, Nature1 […]
Plant Evolution Modeled in Computer
May 24, 2004
Simulation games are popular on computers. Darwinian biologists seem to like them, too. What they cannot go back in time to observe, they sometimes try to recreate in silico, inside the silicon chips of a computer. Karl J. Niklas (Cornell) tried to simulate plant evolution, and wrote about it in Annual Review of Earth and […]
Cormorant Eyes Rapidly Refocus in Dives Into Murky Water
May 24, 2004
You’re hang gliding over a lake, and you spot a fish below. From your hovering position, you drop into a rapid, steep dive headfirst into the water. Whoops; your eyes just went out of focus, and you lost your fish in the murky depths. Too bad you’re not a cormorant. Cormorants (a kind […]
Early Humans Refused to Be Classified
May 24, 2004
We humans like to classify things, and when we classify ourselves, we sometimes get into trouble. We create groups of “us” and “them” that breed conflicts. A fight of sorts is going on between paleoanthropologists, reports Science News1 May 22, over what to make of some skulls found in a cave in Romania. The skulls […]
Do Fossils Show a Worldwide Record of Evolution?
May 21, 2004
The fossil record provides the acid test for evolutionary theory. Everyone who walks a real dog by a poodle knows that small-scale variation occurs among living species, but non-evolutionists get understandably annoyed when Darwinians extrapolate the observed variations to encompass all of life: as if to say, because finch beaks vary, therefore humans had bacteria […]
Evolution of Jaws: A Hox on Storytelling
May 19, 2004
Lampreys are jawless fish, unlike Jaws and his kin. M.J. Cohn found that Hox genes are expressed in a lamprey in the first pharangeal arch. Noting that fish with jaws do not express Hox genes in the first pharangeal arch [PA1], from which the jaws develop, Cohn hypothesized that jaw evolution proceeded with a retreat […]
Selfish Genes Turn Cooperative
May 19, 2004
Nature1 has reported evidence that transposons help to regulate gene expression. Transposons are genetic material that insert themselves into the DNA of a host, and were thought to represent “selfish genes” that only had their own propagation in mind, “without regard for the consequences.” Some new studies on the L1 retrotransposon, which makes up about […]
Giardia Spoils Evolutionists Soup
May 19, 2004
In current evolutionary thinking, Giardia (the backpacker’s bane, a water-borne intestinal parasite that causes cramps and diarrhea) is an oldie. Once long ago, early cells supposedly engulfed bacteria that became specialized into modern mitochondria. “Until a few months ago, Giardia was thought to represent a throwback to the time before this union,” reports Nature,1 because […]
Fossil Water Lily Matches Modern
May 19, 2004
Three Cornell botanists found fossil water lilies from the early Cretaceous that look nearly identical to modern ones, except that they are smaller. The exquisitely-detailed fossils were preserved in a New Jersey clay pit by a process of coalification. Water lilies (family Nymphaeaceae) are presumed by evolutionists to be among the earliest flowering plants (angiosperms). […]
Fruit Flies Fail to Exhibit Neo-Darwinism
May 18, 2004
The Neo-Darwinian Synthesis is the current reigning paradigm of Darwinian evolution. It teaches that random genetic mutations provide the raw material of variation, and that natural selection acting on these variations produces all the complexity of life. A corollary is that mutation is independent of selection; i.e., that mutations do not “conspire” with natural selection […]
Can Traits Evolve Before Need? The Case of California Chaparral Plants
May 18, 2004
A biologist went to California looking for evolution in plants. He didn’t find it, but believes the plants evolved anyway. That seems to be the upshot of a study by David D. Ackerly (Stanford U.) published in American Naturalist1 (see summary on EurekAlert). Ackerly wanted to test whether natural selection produced the small, […]
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David Coppedge, B.S. Education, B.S. Physics, founded Creation-Evolution Headlines in late 2000 as a way to share science news he was encountering at NASA. It has grown into a highly-trusted source of news and commentary critical of the pro-Darwin consensus, providing analysis of breaking news of interest to creationists and evolutionists, without the Darwin spin. He has authored over 7,000 entries at CEH since its inception.
