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Distant Galaxy Surprises Astronomers

February 19, 2008

Using the Hubble Space Telescope viewing a distant galaxy cluster as a gravitational lens, astronomers detected a new record-holder: a galaxy bright with stars almost as old as the big bang. The story on Science Daily called this a galaxy, with redshift 7.6, a “strong contender for the galaxy distance record.” According to […]

Health

For Healthy Society, Father Knows Best

February 18, 2008

Science Proves Common Sense Dept. Swedish scientists have found that “Children Who Have An Active Father Figure Have Fewer Psychological And Behavioral Problems,” according to a report on Science Daily. In addition, “Children who lived with both a mother and father figure also had less behavioural problems than those who just lived with their mother.” […]

Origin of Life

Mars Life Hung Out to Dry in Salt

February 18, 2008

Scientists have just about hanged the possibility for life on Mars. At first, the acid measured by the Spirit and Opportunity rovers made the environment look inhospitable. “Now, we also appreciate the high salinity of the water when it left behind the minerals Opportunity found,” said Mark Knoll on a JPL press release. “This tightens […]

Politics and Ethics

Nazi-Era Scientists Were Willing Colluders

February 17, 2008

A seven-year study of the conduct of the German research funding agency, the DFG, was completed last month. Historians focused specifically on the Nazi years, 1933-1945. The report was mentioned by both Nature1 and Science.2 The upshot is that many German scientists went along with Hitler’s regime without resistance. Ulrich Herbert, a historian […]

Mammals

Oldest Bat Fossil: Was It Evolving?

February 16, 2008

A bat fossil surpassing the previous record holder for the oldest by 2 million years made the cover of Nature this week.1 The news media immediately began saying that it provided insight into evolution. The BBC News announced “Bat fossil solves evolution poser.” National Geographic called it the icing on the cake, and said that […]

Dumb Ideas

Life Is Earths Waste Dump

February 15, 2008

Exclusive Most evolutionists and philosophers recognize the origin of life as one of the most difficult questions to broach from a materialist standpoint. Dr. Michael Russell, however, made it sound very easy to a large audience gathered in JPL’s auditorium on February 4. In a talk titled confidently, “How Life Began on our Water World […]

Solar System

Titan Is Old-Age Problem, Despite News Media Coverage

February 15, 2008

A paper in Geophysical Research Letters1 about Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, reads like a good-news, bad-news joke. The good news is that Titan appears to have more hydrocarbons than Earth. The bad news is that it is not enough to save the assumption that Titan is 4.5 billion years old. Several science news […]

Fossils

Facile Fixes for Fossil Foibles

February 14, 2008

Can biologists see Darwin in the fossils? Only if they look hard. Andrew P. Hendry (McGill University) wrote in Nature that Darwin has been there all along; we just weren’t looking right.1 Hendry argues that our methods of statistically analyzing the fossil record are guaranteed not to see Darwin. To explain the patterns […]

Human Body

Fast Protein Fine-Tunes the Ear

February 13, 2008

A protein helps the human ear respond to volume differences over 12 orders of magnitude.

Amazing Facts

Migrating Birds Measure Longitude

February 13, 2008

Migrating birds are able to get back on course, even when released 1000 km east of their normal migration path. This shows that long-distance migrating birds are capable of true bicoordinate navigation: the ability to make course corrections both in latitude and longitude. The results of experiments, published in Current Biology,1 left the researchers baffled: […]

Genetics

Animals from Junk by Chance

February 12, 2008

How to build an animal: throw junk DNA at it. That seems to be the latest idea on where higher animals came from. A press release from University of Bristol posted on Science Daily and EurekAlert announced, “‘Junk DNA’ Can Explain Origin And Complexity Of Vertebrates, Study Suggests.” The basic idea, coming from […]

Uncategorized

Defending Darwin Day

February 11, 2008

Tomorrow is the 199th birthday of Charles Darwin. The rising anticipation of a big 200th celebration next year prompts a question: why is this man worthy of such hullabaloo more than other scientists? Why the efforts to make Darwin Day an annual event of international scope? Kevin Padian undertook to justify all this attention in […]

Solar System

Something is Cooking Under Enceladus

February 9, 2008

Planetary scientists have been puzzling over Enceladus, a small moon of Saturn, since geysers were discovered erupting from its south pole three years ago. Some models suggested that eruptions could occur without liquid water, but others were not sure. Opinion now seems to be shifting back to the necessity of a wet interior, […]

Amazing Facts

Did Birds Evolve Aeronautical Engineering?

February 8, 2008

Two news stories on birds may not seem to flock together. One is about their supreme aeronautical engineering. The other ponders when they evolved. A story on EurekAlert and Science Daily describes how engineers are eyeing birds, bats and insects for design ideas. The appeal is clear from the following comparisons: A Blackbird […]