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The Elephant Explosion

June 30, 2009

The title is not intended to suggest pieces of pachyderm flying all over the place, but rather one paleontologist’s theory about the rapid pace of elephant evolution 60 million years ago. He bases his ideas on a small fossil he found in Morocco. According to him, the primitive ancestor of all elephants (order Proboscidea) lived […]

Amazing Facts

Warning: Do NOT Mutate This Protein Complex

June 30, 2009

In each cell of your body there is a complex of 8 or more proteins bound together called the BBSome. This protein complex, discovered in 2007, should not be disturbed. Here’s what happens when it mutates: “A homozygous mutation in any BBSome subunit (except BBIP10) will make you blind, obese and deaf, will obliterate your […]

Amazing Facts

How Cells Proofread DNA Is Still Mysterious

June 29, 2009

An amazing fact about DNA transcription is that the machinery not only copies DNA onto RNA, but checks it for errors. A story in Science Daily says that researchers would expect 100 times more errors statistically than the actual results of transcription in the cell. One of the mechanisms revealed in more detail […]

Amazing Facts

Computer Programmers Borrow Eye Technology

June 28, 2009

Computer processing of video images may become twice as accurate with 10 times the speed of earlier models, thanks to what scientists are imitating in the human eye. “The linear solution to one of the most vexing challenges to advancing computer vision has direct applications in the fields of action and object recognition, surveillance, wide-base […]

Darwin and Evolution

Bio-Darwinist Beats Up On Psycho-Darwinists

June 26, 2009

Evolution of rape? No way. Sharon Begley won’t let the evolutionary psychologists get away with their tales about how rapists, molesters, and cheaters can’t help themselves because evolution made them that way. The Science Magazine blog Origins seems to be cheering her on. Science writer Sharon Begley, who in 2007 returned to her old job […]

Media

Science Reporters Need to Bark More

June 25, 2009

“Cheerleader or watchdog?” That’s the title of this week’s editorial in Nature1 opening a feature on science journalism. Science reporters are an aid to scientists, the editors said, but not just when they convey their findings to the public or help shape public understanding on matters of policy. They are also an aid when they […]

Media

Salting News with the L Word Life

June 25, 2009

Small amounts of sodium were detected in ice particles erupting from Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Deduction: this might lower the melting point of underground ice, forming subsurface pockets of liquid water – perhaps an ocean. Conclusion: Life! It doesn’t matter that Enceladus has no other factors conducive to life than water, or that salt is generally […]

Uncategorized

Raising a Titanic Geological Plateau

June 24, 2009

The Colorado Plateau is a huge region covering parts of four states. It’s over a mile higher than its surroundings, but its layers are remarkably flat. How did this region, littered with marine fossils, rise into the sky? Three American scientists writing in Nature last week believe they have a mechanism:1 it heated from underneath […]

Cosmology

We Know Less Than We Think

June 23, 2009

Strange reports come from science news outlets on occasion that call into question facts we thought we understood. These raise a question: do we really know what we think we know? Cutting dinosaurs down to size: Dinosaurs may have been half as heavy as thought, said Science Daily. Some paleontologists are claiming that widely-used methods […]

Darwin and Evolution

Leading Darwinists Pool Their Speculations

June 22, 2009

The Darwin Bicentennial continued this week with a series of articles in PNAS by leading Darwinists. The Sackler Colloquium, called “In the Light of Evolution III,” explored the history and impact of Darwin’s theory of evolution, and prospects for the future. The lead paper said, “Our intent in this Sackler Colloquium has not been to […]

Health

For Health, Seek a Purpose-Driven Life

June 21, 2009

Elderly people who have a sense of purpose live longer, reported Science Daily. Scientists at Rush University Medical Center monitored 1,238 community-living seniors for five years in order to test the hypothesis that purpose in life affects mortality. “Purpose in life,” explained research leader Patricia Boyle, “reflects the tendency to derive meaning from […]

Amazing Facts

Cells Use Cloud Computing

June 19, 2009

“Cloud computing” is the up-and-coming trend in information technology. It allows processes to run in parallel on multiple networked processors with more robustness, because other processors can pick up the slack if a major server fails. Scientists are finding that cells have been using this technology all along. Science Daily reported on work […]

Birds

Dino Fossils Generate Overblown Claims

June 18, 2009

04/10/2006), inventing feathers out of thin air. This time, it was justified on the basis of a new paper in Nature that claims to remove an obstacle in the dinosaur-bird evolution story.1 Doubters had pointed to differences in the three forward-pointing toes. With dinosaurs, it was toes 1, 2 and 3 that were retained; while […]

Dumb Ideas

What Makes You Human?

June 17, 2009

If you are a war-mongering beast who likes to burn things, you’re displaying your evolutionary past. That’s what a couple of news reports are claiming. New Scientist has a review of two books: Fire: The spark that ignited human evolution by Frances D. Burton, and Catching Fire: How cooking made us human by Richard Wrangham. […]

Amazing Facts

Plants Use the Perfect Propeller

June 16, 2009

What kid hasn’t played with maple seeds to watch them spin in the air like helicopters? Scientists watch them, too. A team from the Netherlands and California found out how they stay in the air for so long without engines to drive them. One would think in an era of advanced aeronautical engineering the physics […]

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