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Marine Biology

Fish and Reptiles Converge on Magnetic Navigation
December 11, 2008
Two very different kinds of animal both have outstanding ability to navigate by earth’s magnetic field: salmon and sea turtles.  A new hypothesis by scientists at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, published in PNAS,1 suggests that the young are “imprinted” with their local magnetic field signature at birth. From a navigational perspective, some […]
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Cell Biology

Applying the Scientific Method to Prehistory
December 10, 2008
What could be more scientific than the scientific method?  A scientist observes an unexplained phenomenon.  He or she gathers data, analyzes it, proposes a hypothesis to explain it, and tests it.  The results are published in a peer-reviewed journal.  Mission accomplished, right?  Here are two papers on very different phenomena – one dealing with the […]
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Cell Biology

Nature Plagiarizes Behe’s Mousetrap
December 9, 2008
The prevention of genomic instability – and cancer – can be attributed to a “complex mousetrap” mechanism, said Robert M. Brosh, Jr (Laboratory of Molecular Gerontology, NIH) in Nature.1  This not-so-subtle reference to Michael Behe’s irreducibly complex system described in Darwin’s Black Box even has a mousetrap illustration with the following caption: The BLM protein […]
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Biomimetics

Fly Swiftly
December 8, 2008
Swifts are amazing little birds in more ways than speed. They are inspiring advanced technology.
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Uncategorized

Are Religious People Weird?
December 7, 2008
Some scientists treat religious people as a class.  They put them in a test tube, so to speak, to see how they react to a stimulus, then write up the results in scientific papers.  The implication seems to be that these fellow humans of theirs are some kind of odd lot. Reactionary:  The BBC News […]
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Amazing Facts

Thanks to Clam Design, Stronger Materials Are Coming
December 6, 2008
Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs have produced a lightweight composite material 300 times stronger than its constituents.  How?  By taking inspiration from clams.     The team, writing in Science,1 described nacre, the shiny mother-of-pearl found inside clam shells.  Because of the way it sandwiches crystalline aragonite with layers of protein (07/26/2004), nacre resists […]
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Cosmology

Cosmologists Taste the Forbidden Fruit
December 5, 2008
Everyone agrees: our universe appears fine-tuned for human existence.  You have two choices: it was designed by God, or there is a multiverse (other universes we cannot detect).  Amanda Gefter is unhappy with that choice.  In New Scientist, she asked, why can’t we have more options?     Calling the God-vs-multiverse choice a false dichotomy, […]
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Fossils

Tiktaalik Not a Missing Link
December 4, 2008
Has all the colorful artwork of the fish-a-pod been for naught?  Three European biologists claim that Neil Shubin’s famous Tiktaalik fossil, supposedly of a fish evolving into a four-footed land dweller (see 05/03/2006, 11/13/2008) which has garnered iconic status in the media (01/16/2008), is not a missing link after all.     The situation is […]
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Bible and Theology

New Film: God of Wonders
December 3, 2008
A new nature documentary with a gospel message, God of Wonders, has been released by Eternal Productions (see trailer at GodofWondersVideo.org).  The 85-minute film, described as “Exploring the Wonders of Creation, Conscience, and the Glory of God,” features beautiful nature photography narrated by various creation scientists and theologians, leading to a presentation of the gospel.  […]
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Origin of Life

Another Attempt to Explain Life’s Handedness
December 3, 2008
Life uses only single-handed (homochiral) molecules for proteins and DNA.  How that came about when mixtures of life’s building blocks contain equal amounts of both hands is a puzzle that confounds origin-of-life research.  Science Daily reported on new studies at the Argonne National Laboratory that show that molecules in space on a magnetic substrate exposed […]
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Amazing Facts

That Spring in Your Step Is Semi-Automatic
December 2, 2008
Cross-country runners know the challenge of running on uneven terrain.  What they may not know is that they are executing one of the most difficult operations for robot designers: how to make an upright, walking machine make rapid decisions on irregular surfaces without falling.     Monica Daley of the Royal Veterinary College wrote about […]
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Physics

Ganymede Age Threatened by Magnetism
December 2, 2008
The biggest moon in the solar system is Ganymede, the third large moon out from Jupiter.  Larger than Mercury, Ganymede has a heterogeneous surface of dark and light areas (picture), grooved terrain, abrupt changes of landforms, and bright splashes where impacts have scarred its icy surface (gallery).  What goes on inside, though, is more surprising: […]
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Bible and Theology

When God Goes, Anything Goes
December 1, 2008
G. K. Chesterton once said, “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing — they believe in anything.”  That seems to be backed up by two recent stories.     Live Science reported on a poll by a British newspaper that found more people believe in aliens and ghosts than believe in […]
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Amazing Facts

Go to the Ant, Thou Farmer
November 30, 2008
We humans boast too much.  Agribusiness?  Ants have it down to a science.  “One of the most important developments in human civilisation was the practice of sustainable agriculture,” stated Science Daily.  “But we were not the first – ants have been doing it for over 50 million years.  Just as farming helped humans become a […]
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Fossils

An Evolutionary Fly in the Turtle Soup
November 29, 2008
A new fossil turtle was found.  Is it a missing link?  That depends on whether you believe the popular press or the scientists.     National Geographic News and Science Daily both led off with the missing link angle, complete with an artist reconstruction of the fossil turtle found in China named Odontochelys.  “Since the […]
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