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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 […]

Dumb Ideas

Indebted to Darwin

February 7, 2008

Britain’s Food Standards Agency is concerned about diminishing fish stocks and is asking citizens to consume less, reported The Telegraph. This can only mean one thing, thinks Ulf Dieckmann (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria): it’s come time to pay the piper. Who is the piper, you ask? Answer: Charles Darwin. Dr Dieckmann […]

Genetics

Of All the Nerve: Functional Intron Discovered

February 6, 2008

An intron vital to the production of nerve cells has been discovered, reported Science Daily. It acts as a “gatekeeper” to guide the messenger RNA for local control of gene expression in dendrites, the spindly arms of neurons. The discovery was made by a research team at University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. […]

Physics

Are Long-Term Climate Models Trustworthy?

February 5, 2008

Everything from global warming policy to evolutionary history depends on long-term climate models. Textbooks make it seem like earth keeps reliable recordings that allow scientists to simply read off the record of years, decades, centuries, millennia and millions of years objectively. It’s not that simple, wrote Maureen E. Raymo and Peter Huybers in Nature last […]

Intelligent Design

SETI Signals Could Be Loaded with Information

February 4, 2008

Unusual properties of electromagnetic waves allow for a higher carrying capacity of information than thought. SETI researcher Seth Shostak reported on Space.com that Swedish researchers have found a possible “subspace channel” in the orbital angular momentum of narrowband radio waves that might allow the encoding of information. This information would be impervious to the jumbling […]

Health

Beat the Crowds: Go Outdoors

February 4, 2008

Fewer people are feeling close to nature, said a report on PhysOrg. According to a study done by Oliver Pergams (U of Illinois) and Patricia Zaradic (Environmental Leadership Program, Pennsylvania), a decline in visitation at national parks corresponds to an increase in sedentary activities like playing video games, surfing the Internet and watching movies. They […]

Politics and Ethics

Did Murder Evolve?

February 3, 2008

Is it appropriate for scientists to speculate on the evolution of murder? Nature had no problem with it. They allowed Dan Jones, a freelance writer in Brighton, UK, to publish a lengthy article on how murder and warfare evolved. No other explanations for these scourges were mentioned except to dismiss them. Nature has apparently incorporated […]

Cell Biology

Did Darwinism Build the Nuclear Pore Complex?

February 2, 2008

After nine years of work, three universities including a team at Rockefeller University completed a beautiful new model of the nuclear pore complex. The story is told by Science Daily. The article attributed the origin of this exquisite gatekeeper of the nucleus to evolution: “their findings provide a glimpse into how the nucleus […]

Uncategorized

Deep Sea Hydrocarbons Dont Require Life

February 1, 2008

Remember the “Lost City” deep sea vents that were discovered by surprise in 2000 (12/13/2000)? It appears that they are producing large quantities of hydrocarbons (methane, alkanes, ethene, acetylene, propene, propyne) without the help of living organisms (cf. 08/13/2002). A team of scientists deduced that abiogenic reactions like the Fischer-Tropsch process and others may be […]

Amazing Facts

Nose Code Rockets Smell Discrimination

February 1, 2008

You have a code in your nose. Scientists working on fruit fly olfactory systems have found that a mapping mechanism between components maximizes the fly’s ability to discriminate smells. The coding system provides a non-linear response that appears finely tuned to maximize the information content of odor inputs. The components of this system […]

Intelligent Design

Explorer 1 Chief Discovers Design

January 31, 2008

On this day 50 years ago, America entered the space race. On January 31, 1958, America gave its answer to Sputnik: a civilian satellite named Explorer 1. Within a few hours of the time of day these words are being written, von Braun’s Jupiter-C rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida, successfully launched a JPL satellite into […]

Biomimetics

A Step Closer to Gecko Adhesive

January 30, 2008

Scientists are getting closer to imitating the amazing wall-climbing ability of geckos. Science Daily reports that a team from UC Berkeley manufactured tape with hard polymer fibers just 600 nanometers across that mimic the spatulae on gecko feet. This latest attempt at imitating the gecko works only on smooth, clean surfaces, but requires […]