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Darwinists Get Sexy

July 13, 2010

The origin of sex titillates many evolutionary biologists. On the one hand, animals and plants have such interesting ways of getting together. But on the other hand, sex seems too costly to have originated by natural selection. Some recent articles provide new evolutionary speculations on the origin of sex – but simultaneously undermine previous speculations. […]

Cell Biology

Bacteria Too Complex To Be Primitive Eukaryote Ancestors

July 12, 2010

In the search for the most primitive life forms on earth, bacteria would certainly make the list. They are tiny, one-celled, and have small genomes. Why, then, did Patrick Forterre and Simonetta Gribaldo of the Pasteur Institute say in PNAS,1 “we should definitely stop thinking of bacteria in terms of simple ‘lower’ organisms”? For the […]

Amazing Facts

More to a Fly than Meets the Eye

July 12, 2010

Flies and spiders, members of the arthropod phylum, may seem small and “less evolved” than the larger members of the animal kingdom. One shouldn’t let size alone be the measure of ability. Fly supercomputer: Did you ever think of the brain of a fly as a high-speed computer? That’s what PhysOrg called it: “the minute […]

Darwin and Evolution

Darwin Caught Out of Bounds

July 11, 2010

What business does Darwin have in quantum mechanics or engineering? Wasn’t his a theory on the origin of species – that is, plants, animals and living things? Some scientists seem intent on extrapolating his views to all of reality, including areas commonly thought to be in the domain of intelligent design. Let’s get physical: An […]

Solar System

Are Saturn’s Rings Evolving?

July 10, 2010

Can ring particles grow into moons? And is that how planets grew from rings around stars?

Amazing Facts

Proteins Fold Who Knows How

July 9, 2010

One of the biggest mysteries remaining in cell biology is how proteins fold. Proteins start out as chains of amino acids (polypeptides) as they exit the ribosome. Most of them spontaneously fold into their “native” three-dimensional structures, where they will go to work as enzymes, structural materials or other key players in cell life. About […]

Darwin and Evolution

Fantasy Island: Evolutionary Weirdness Does Not Favor Islands

July 8, 2010

We need “Reality Island,” an evolutionary biologist claims. Dr. Shai Meiri of Tel Aviv University accuses fellow evolutionists of engaging in “magical thinking” about island habitats: believing that islands are where large animals grow small, small animals grow large, and weird species proliferate. It’s an illusion, he said in an article on Science Daily. […]

Bible and Theology

Is Psychology Adding Scientific Knowledge?

July 8, 2010

Psychologists have a knack for proving the obvious. It leads to a question, though: do we really need their help? Broken relationships are bad: A press release on PhysOrg about a study at the University of Queensland reported that “Separation has an enormous impact on both men and women.” Rudeness at work is bad: According […]

Biomimetics

Productive Science Imitates Nature

July 7, 2010

Examples continue to accumulate that some of the most interesting and fruitful science projects involve copying design principles found in nature. This “biomimetics” approach not only pleases the consumers who can look forward to greener, cheaper, better products, but leads to deeper understandings of nature’s workings. Gecko adhesives: PhysOrg published a story on the ongoing […]

Amazing Facts

Your Inner Locomotive Revealed

July 6, 2010

Visualize an old locomotive train roaring down the tracks. One of the characteristic images that surely comes to mind is the oscillating motion of the coupling rods on the wheels. The long rods that connected the wheels provided a way to convert heat energy from the steam into mechanical energy (example video on YouTube). It […]

Darwin and Evolution

Do New Fossils Soften the Cambrian Explosion?

July 5, 2010

Look at the picture of fossils in an article on PhysOrg. The discoverers claim these fossils from Gabon are 2.1 billion years old, and provide evidence that multicellular organisms began evolving long before the Cambrian explosion. “Until now, it has been assumed that organized multicellular life appeared around 0.6 billion years ago and that before […]

Bible and Theology

Artifact Found from Biblical Time of Judges

July 4, 2010

A chariot linchpin has been found in Israel that appears to date from the time of the book of Judges. The linchpin (a cover over the axle) contains a carved image of a woman, and is being dated at around 1200 BC. The discoverer believes the location is the site of ancient Harosheth Haggoyim, the […]

Darwin and Evolution

Tibetans Evolved Altitude Tolerance in 3,000 Years

July 3, 2010

Tibetans and other peoples who live at high altitudes possess a remarkable tolerance to the thin atmosphere. Now, scientists at UC Berkeley have identified some 30 genes related to oxygen regulation that differ in Tibetans from Han Chinese. Since those tribes are thought to have diverged 3,000 years ago, natural selection for these changes must […]

Birds

Humans Got Birdbrains by Convergent Evolution

July 2, 2010

Scientists are learning that birds have brains remarkably similar to those of mammals. This is contrary to a century of belief, PhysOrg said. How did such similarities evolve for groups of animals so widely separated? To explain it, evolutionists pulled out one of their common explanations: convergent evolution. “For more than a century,” […]

Physics

Breaking Up an Ice Age Is Hard to Do

July 1, 2010

“Ice Age 3” the movie is out, and the subject of ice ages deserves some attention. Atmospheric scientists and geologists seem very confident sometimes about things they know about only indirectly, like ice ages. At other times, though, the rhetoric turns diffident (opposite of confident). Take this opening paragraph from PhysOrg: Scientists still puzzle over […]

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