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Amazing Facts

The Brain You Use, and How It Uses You
February 21, 2010
Neuroscientists continue to find out amazing things about the human brain.  In some ways we are responsible to use our brains, but in other ways the brain does things to us.  If nobody has figured out where the dividing line is for thousands of years, it’s unlikely we will today; but the following findings can […]
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Amazing Facts

Molecular Highway Motor Comes into Focus
February 19, 2010
A beautiful new image of kinesin, a molecular machine that carries cargo on cellular highways, has been produced in greater detail than ever by a team at Berkeley and Brandeis Universities.  Science Daily published a picture and description of how kinesin works.  “Life’s smallest motor – a protein that shuttles cargo within cells and helps […]
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Media

Media Uncritical of Science, Journalist Says
February 18, 2010
Reporters need to stop regurgitating the self-promotion of scientists and start criticizing them, a veteran science reporter wrote in Nature News.  Colin Macilwain had a lot to say about what’s wrong with science’s relationship with the mass media.  “Like sausages being made, or legislation being passed, the process that turns scientific developments into headlines and […]
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Early Man

Flabbergast: “Primitive” Human Ancestors Were Sailors
February 18, 2010
Could the headline be any more shocking if it read, “iPod found in King Tut’s tomb”?  Heather Pringle began a report in National Geographic News with, “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”  Stone tools alleged to be up to 130,000 years old have been found on the island of Crete.     Since Crete […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Who Should Be Listening to Scientists?
February 17, 2010
“Stop Listening to Scientists?” is an unusual title for a letter to Science.1  In a commentary last week prompted by the recent scandals regarding climate change, Kevin Robert Gurney (Purdue) made a shocking exclamation: don’t listen to scientists.  Here’s how he began. As a climate scientist and a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on […]
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Origin of Life

March Moon Madness Arrives Early
February 16, 2010
Some of the most interesting bodies in the solar system are the objects not big enough to be called planets.  Moons, asteroids and comets continue to yield their secrets and surprises.  Here’s a quick rundown on recent findings.     Why do some asteroids look so fresh?  It’s because they get a facelift, Space.com reported […]
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Amazing Facts

Life Is Smarter Than We Know
February 15, 2010
How can toads calculate?  How can cells without a brain or central nervous system figure out a balanced diet?  How can bugs navigate the wind for optimum flight time?  These are some of the questions that can arise from observations of the living world.  The more we learn about life, the more we find unexpected […]
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Genetics

Is Your Bod Flawed by God?
February 14, 2010
Are your body’s imperfections reasons for you to reject intelligent design and embrace evolution?  Professor John Avise (UC Irvine) thinks so.  His new book Inside the Human Genome was given good press by PhysOrg: “Distinguished Professor of ecology & evolutionary biology at UC Irvine, Avise also makes the case that overwhelming scientific evidence of genomic […]
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Darwin and Evolution

For His Birthday, Darwin Gets a Scrambled Arthropod Tree
February 12, 2010
If Darwin lost his tree last year (01/22/2009), it would seem any corrections or rearrangements would be academic.  Nevertheless, eight evolutionary biologists at Duke University tried rearranging one of the biggest branches on Darwin’s tree of common ancestry – the highly diverse group known as arthropods (animals with jointed appendages).  Arthropods comprise the largest number […]
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Darwin and Evolution

More Surprises for Darwin
February 11, 2010
It’s not uncommon for theories to have to deal with anomalies, but Darwinism sure seems to get more than its share.  Here are some recent examples. Fossils lie:  Fossils preserve unmistakable clues about past life, right?  Not so fast.  Nature reported that “Non-random decay of chordate characters causes bias in fossil interpretation.”1  The way early […]
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Amazing Facts

Life Masters Physics
February 10, 2010
Living things, especially cells, have mastered the forces of advanced physics in ingenious ways.  This ingenuity sometimes inspires physicists to try to copy it.  Here are some recent examples: Photosynthesis and quantum mechanics:  Nature reported that plants take advantage of quantum mechanics in photosynthesis.1  “The photosynthetic apparatus of cryptophyte algae is odd – its pigments […]
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Birds

Dinosaurs Evolved from Birds
February 9, 2010
Birds evolved from dinosaurs, we are often told.  That’s backwards, reply some scientists at Oregon State University.  According to PhysOrg, the recently-published bi-plane model study of Microraptor gui (01/29/2010) demonstrates that theropod dinosaurs did not sprout wings and fly; instead, they became flightless after their bird ancestors came down from the trees.     Their […]
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Fossils

Incredible Preservation of Beetle Wings Found
February 9, 2010
Beetle wings with their original shimmering luster have been found preserved in fossilized peat in Japan.  The strata in which they were found have been labeled middle Pleistocene and dated at 600,000 years old.  Yet these same wings, when dried in the sun, lose their luster within hours.     The authors of the paper […]
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Awards

The Evolution of Religion – or Vice Versa?
February 8, 2010
A Harvard professor has evolutionized religion again.  Marc Hauser, the one who trains his little boy to adore Darwin (07/03/2007) and wrote a book on how natural selection created morality (10/27/2006), is now saying that religion is a by-product of our evolution.  “These findings suggest that religion evolved from pre-existing cognitive functions,” he wrote in […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Small Hobbit Brain Means Little
February 7, 2010
Central in the debate whether Homo floresiensis (nicknamed hobbits) were human is the matter of their small brains.  Could diminutive human-like skeletons really be human with such small skulls? (cf. 03/04/2005).     Scientists at the University of Cambridge conducted a detailed analysis of brain size vs. body size for a number of primates.  They […]
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