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Dinosaurs Placed in Big Tree

July 26, 2008

Dinosaurs didn’t take advantage of the big rise in diversity at the end of the Cretaceous, say British researchers. Their big “supertree” of dinosaur evolution shows that the dinosaurs were just evolving at a regular speed while flowering plants, social insects, birds and mammals were evolving like crazy. Science Daily and New Scientist […]

Uncategorized

Did Lyell Lie a Little?

July 25, 2008

Science is supposed to be a collective process involving presentation of arguments by many people making reference to observational data. Ideally, no one person’s world view should dominate what other scientists think. Yet in the history of geology, the figure of Charles Lyell has loomed large as a guiding influence. With rare exceptions, his principle […]

Education

What Can Science Really Know?

July 24, 2008

Two book reviews on philosophy of science appeared in the leading general-science journals Nature and Science last week. Both of them downplayed the oft-told triumphalist portrayal of science as a progressive path toward infallible knowledge – the picture most students get in school. In Nature,1 N. David Mermin (Cornell) gave a surprising reprimand […]

Genetics

Tree of Life in the Genes? Not Yet

July 23, 2008

Now that we have hundreds of animal genomes in the bank (the GenBank), is Darwin’s tree of life becoming visible? If the image is present, it is extremely weak, said Michael J. Sanderson of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at University of Arizona. Writing for Science,1 he showed that only a small fraction […]

Genetics

Mangrove as Metaphor

July 22, 2008

The mangrove – that shoreline tree with the salt-tolerant roots that grows into dense thickets – is the fulcrum of two unrelated news stories. It never met a force it couldn’t handle. It also provides metaphors for evolution and creation. PhysOrg reported that the mangrove is a key to saving lives. “The replanting […]

Solar System

Earth from Space Is a Special Place

July 21, 2008

The Deep Impact spacecraft, 31 million miles away, captured images of the moon circling the Earth, reported Space.com (for the sequence of images, click here). “Making a video of Earth from so far away helps the search for other life-bearing planets in the universe by giving insights into how a distant, Earth-like alien world would […]

Health

Adult Stem Cells May Cure Muscular Dystrophy

July 19, 2008

Muscular dystrophy leaves children and adults in a nearly helpless state. Parents watch in agony as their children suffer rapid and progressive weakness. Attempts to support research, like the annual Labor Day events Jerry Lewis has held for over 40 years, have betrayed their inability to find a cure by the very fact of their […]

Amazing Facts

Cellular Trucks Use Moving Highways

July 18, 2008

Imagine how cool it would be to get in your car and have the road do the driving. The highway would stretch or shrink, moving this way or that, till you saw your destination and hopped off. That appears to be what the cargo-bearing motors do in the cells in your body. A new paper […]

Cosmology

Early Magnetic Galaxies Surprise Astronomers

July 17, 2008

Astronomers reported in Nature that early galaxies have normal magnetic fields.1 That is surprising because magnetic fields were supposed to start small and strengthen over billions of years. The team tried to be careful to distinguish intervening magnetic signatures from those in quasars. Their measurements indicated that “organized fields of surprisingly high strengths […]

Early Man

The Cro-Magnon Were Europeans

July 16, 2008

There’s no genetic difference between Cro-Magnon Man and modern Europeans, a genetic study reported by Science Daily. Researchers took extra care to avoid contamination of bones found in southern Italy, they said. They claimed Cro-Magnon people were able to maintain genealogical continuity for 28,000 years, remaining distinct from Neanderthals, whom they said lived in Europe […]

Fossils

Another Evolutionary Statistic Is Wrong

July 15, 2008

Marine invertebrate diversity has not increased dramatically over time, contrary to conventional wisdom. That’s the conclusion of a team of 35 researchers who spent a decade analyzing seashell fossils from around the world. Science Daily reported the story July 7. A week later, on July 14, Science Daily reported a follow-up story, entitled, […]

Biomimetics

Is Artificial DNA Intelligently Designed?

July 15, 2008

Japanese chemists have made a new kind of DNA, reported Science Daily. It resembles natural DNA, but is composed of bases that are shorter, modified forms of the ones cells use. “The finding could lead to improvements in gene therapy, futuristic nano-sized computers, and other high-tech advances,” the article says. An evolutionist should extend his […]

Solar System

Watery Moon Upsets Conventional Wisdom

July 14, 2008

The moon looks pretty dry. It may have maria (oceans) but the figurative term would not attract customers for beachfront property: its seas are made of hardened lava. The moon’s “Ocean of storms” (Mare Procellarum) only gets rain in the form of solar wind and cosmic rays. Still, could there be water molecules in this […]

Amazing Facts

Love Your Planet

July 13, 2008

Modern astronomy and space travel have given humans the ability to view the earth from a distance and ponder its significance. Some astronomers expected the earth to be ordinary-looking. In many respects, however, astronomy is teaching us otherwise. Clara Moskowitz, staff writer for Space.com began an article by saying, “Earth is one special planet.” […]

Astronomy

What Mean These Stars?

July 12, 2008

There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in current astronomical models. Two articles recently underscored the fact that astronomers still have a lot to learn. Cluster generation conundrum: The members of globular star clusters were long thought to be old stars of the same age, like seniors at a care […]

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