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Media Continues to Denounce ID, Crown Darwin

May 14, 2010

The news media and journals continue to publish one-sided statements against intelligent design (ID) – even though scientific evidence continues to support design on many fronts (see 05/11/2010, 05/07/2010, 05/06/2010 from just this past week). Sometimes, in other venues, the kind of rhetoric employed would be characterized as hate speech. These statements are usually printed […]

Politics and Ethics

Should Scientists Take Sides as Political Activists?

May 13, 2010

“Scientists’ turn to win votes” announced a Nature editorial today. The science journal argued it’s no time to bemoan the loss of “science-savvy politicians,” but rather time to “make new friends” in the political arena. “Other scientific societies should rally their memberships to get the word out to new parliamentarians about the value of science.” […]

Amazing Facts

Worlds Strongest Animal Discovered

May 12, 2010

Scientists at the Technical University of Denmark announced the world’s strongest animal. The strength of this animal is 10 to 30 times that of any other species. Before revealing what it is, here are some additional hints: It is the most abundant multicellular animal on earth. It has the world’s strongest muscles, and outperforms man-made […]

Amazing Facts

Bacteria: Lets Harness Those Perfect Machines

May 11, 2010

Ten Italian scientists have a novel idea. They want to hitch up their wagons to bacteria and use them to power nanomachines. It’s too much work to build such “perfect machines” from scratch, they said. Why not just take advantage of what nature has already provided? Their paper in PNAS1 is downright dreamy […]

Fossils

More Pow in the Cambrian Explosion

May 11, 2010

Scientists have found more fossil evidence for sudden emergence of animal body plans in the Cambrian strata. Two papers in Geology discuss evidence on opposite sides of the world. One team found bryozoans in Mexico 8 million years older than the record-holders in China,1 and another scientist found diverse echinoderms in Spain dating from the […]

Birds

Archaeopteryx Fossil Retains Original Soft-Tissue Material

May 10, 2010

We are usually told that fossils involve the complete replacement of original living material by rock, except in rare cases (such as amber), because organic material is quickly destroyed. One of the most famous rock fossils is Archaeopteryx, the bird that has often been claimed to be a missing link from dinosaurs. An international team […]

Bible and Theology

Farewell, Once Mighty Jordan River

May 9, 2010

The Jordan River is dying. PhysOrg said it could be dried up by next year. Already, much of its flow is sewage. The source streams from Mt. Hermon are diverted into farming, leaving very little to flow out of the Sea of Galilee down to the Dead Sea. Christian pilgrims wishing to be baptized in […]

Early Man

Humans and Neanderthals Are One

May 8, 2010

If Neanderthals bred with modern humans, they are one and the same species. That must be the case according to the most widely-accepted definition of a species: those who can breed and produce fertile offspring. The news media are abuzz with Science magazine’s cover story this week, “The Neanderthal Genome.”1 Most anthropologists are now accepting […]

Human Body

Can Darwin Be Rescued from a New Eye Discovery?

May 7, 2010

Scientists find waveguides and noise receptors built into the retina.

Genetics

Breakthrough: Second Genetic Code Revealed

May 6, 2010

It’s sometimes difficult to assess the impact of a scientific paper when it is first published, but one that came out on the cover of Nature today has potential to equal the discovery of the genetic code. The leading science journal reported the discovery of a second genetic code – the “code within the code” […]

Uncategorized

Biomimetics: Design Science Is Flourishing

May 5, 2010

Some research centers appear to be on the verge of a golden age – the age of biomimetics (the imitation of biological design). Products that will change our lives are springing from designs inspired by studying how plants, animals and cells have solved real-world problems. Although some of the research mentions evolution, the real power […]

Cell Biology

Darwins Linux: Did Evolution Produce a Computer?

May 4, 2010

How is a cell like a computer? Some Yale scientists asked that question, and embarked on a project to compare the genome of a lowly bacterium to a computer’s operating system.1. Their work was published in PNAS.2 As with most analogies, some things were found to be similar, and some different – but in the […]

Biomimetics

Archer Fish Sees Clearly Up and Down

May 3, 2010

The archer fish, which lives in mangrove swamps and rivers, is able to spit insects off leaves above the water with remarkable accuracy (09/30/2002, 09/07/2004, 10/10/2006). Scientists have been fascinated by this ability because in order for the fish to calculate the trajectory of its missiles, it needs to take into account both chromatic aberration […]

Astronomy

Are There Limits to Scientific Speculation? A Royal Case

May 2, 2010

Question: When does science become like a priesthood? Answer: When its practitioners engage in speculation on big questions impossible to verify with empirical observations. Is this what the chief astronomer in Britain is doing? Sir Martin Rees certainly would not have thought of himself as a priest as he wrote an article for […]

Birds

Dino-Feather Story Gets Fluffier

May 1, 2010

Xing Xu is at it again, claiming that dinosaur feathers are found everywhere – in China, at least, where the bulk of “feathered dinosaur” claims keep turning up in farmyards. The latest claim is that “Feather structures in maturing dinosaurs changed as they grew.” This story is accompanied by artwork showing the critters looking as […]

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