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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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Darwin and Evolution

Scientist Sees Evolutionary Sense in Coordinated Complexity
April 30, 2010
An article on PhysOrg tells “A vertebrate story,” and a story it is: the more complex a phenomenon becomes, the more it makes evolutionary sense.     Portuguese scientists were studying the interaction of Hox genes with the development of the ribs in vertebrates.  You can imagine the control that these genes must have when […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Southpaw Explanations Out of Left Field
April 30, 2010
All proteins are left handed.  Some humans are left handed.  Can evolution explain that?  Evolutionists are never known to be at a loss for words when asked to explain anything, provided they are allowed liberal use of the word perhaps.     A new projection theme for the first left-handed amino acids that comprise proteins […]
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Birds

Clock Gene Same in Humans and Birds
April 29, 2010
Science Daily, this “not only sheds light on how our internal annual body clocks function but also shows a key link between birds and mammals that has been conserved over 300 million years.”     Mammals, including humans, have a hormone released by the pituitary gland that controls melatonin levels – known to affect the […]
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Bible and Theology

Noah’s Ark on Mars
April 28, 2010
We apologize for this improbable headline to draw attention to two stories making the rounds: new claims about Noah’s Ark on Mt. Ararat, and new claims about life on Mars.  Headlines on these topics show up periodically in the news.  What do the subjects have in common?  How do they differ?  Do the most recent […]
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Darwin and Evolution

New Theory on Evolution of Bat Flight
April 27, 2010
How did bats evolve the ability to fly?  Evolution helped them out by providing them with higher energy.  After all, “Flight is among the most energy-consuming activities” in the animal kingdom, said a team of Chinese and Canadian scientists reporting in PNAS,1 so it’s obvious that evolution must have provided the genes to get the […]
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Cosmology

Cosmologist Suffers Paranoid Delusions: Media Promotes His Views
April 26, 2010
“They’re coming to get us, and I’m sure of it, because I know everything.”  What would you think of someone who talked like that?  What if he were one of the most famous cosmologists alive today?  The man is Stephen Hawking – that wheelchair-bound math wizard who talks with a speech synthesizer and once fell […]
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Amazing Facts

To Sleep, To Dream: To Dream, Perchance, to Learn
April 25, 2010
When you have learned a complex task, take a nap and dream about it.  A new study shows that dreaming helps consolidate the memory in your mind and helps you perform the task better next time around.     Science Daily reported on research by scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.  They tested 99 […]
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Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs Lived in Vast Ecological Zones
April 24, 2010
Don’t think of dinosaur species living in small ecological zones.  Their habitats covered vast areas, according to a new study: “Researchers at McGill University are unlocking the mysteries of the little-known habits of dinosaurs in discovering that the entire western interior of North America was likely once populated by a single community of dinosaurs,” reported […]
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Amazing Facts

Update on Interplant Internet
April 23, 2010
One of the early “amazing” stories reported in these pages concerned the startling observation that plants use a kind of “email” system in their own interplant “internet” (see 07/13/2001).  What has been learned in the nine years since that story appeared?  Quite a lot, and another fascinating article about plant communication appeared this week in […]
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Biomimetics

Blood Clotting Fibers May Lead to Better Networks
April 22, 2010
We all know that blood clotting has kept us alive many times.  We would never have survived childhood scrapes and cuts had it not been for a cascade of responses in blood that builds a network of fibers quickly upon which a scab of tissue stops the flow of blood and begins repairs.  That first […]
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Darwin and Evolution

What Can Fossil Leaf Measurements Tell About Evolution?
April 21, 2010
Flowering plants burst on the scene in the fossil record 140 million years ago in the geologic timescale, creating an “abominable mystery” for Charles Darwin.  What can be learned by measuring the stems and leaves of fossil specimens?     Dana Royer and colleagues from Wesleyan University in Connecticut embarked on a project to measure […]
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Amazing Facts

Maxwell’s Demon Helps Run Your Muscles
April 19, 2010
James Clerk Maxwell once speculated that the second law of thermodynamics could be violated if an agent or “demon” could sort the hot and cold molecules at a barrier, thus overcoming the tendency toward thermal equilibrium.  Something like this has been found at work in the molecular machines in our muscles.  The actin-myosin motor is […]
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Amazing Facts

Genetic Subcode Discovered
April 18, 2010
Computer programmers know all about subroutines.  One master program can easily call other programs, which can return results back to the master program.  That’s very 1960s.  Today’s modular software responds dynamically from disparate sources and responds to feedback from embedded triggers.  They can call routines written in other codes or languages.  We’re beginning to find […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Psychologists Portray I.D. as a Form of Evolution
April 17, 2010
No need to draw a line between design and evolution, say two psychologists at the University of Iowa.  Intelligent design is really a lot like evolution.  They think we need to “better appreciate the actual forces that unite the processes of change across both evolutionary and developmental timescales.”     This strange theory was announced […]
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