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Amazing Facts

Crow Cam Lets Scientists See Intelligence at Work
October 7, 2007
Ever want to fly like a bird?  Now you can do the next best thing: get a tail-feather view of what it is like to fly from branch to branch.  University of Oxford scientists attached a small video camera to the underside of a New Caledonian Crow to watch it in the wild, reported PhysOrg.  […]
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Biomimetics

Nanofabrication Imitates Shells, Butterflies
October 7, 2007
A new plastic “strong as steel” has been manufactured according to the specs in seashells, reported PhysOrg.  “By mimicking a brick-and-mortar molecular structure found in seashells, University of Michigan researchers created a composite plastic that’s as strong as steel but lighter and transparent.”  (See these previous entries about how marine organisms manufacture their shells: 06/26/2003, […]
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Education

European and American Politicians Attack Creationism
October 6, 2007
Actions of political bodies on both sides of the Atlantic have revived questions about the roles of science, politics and religion in public discourse and policy.     The Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly voted 48 to 25 to accept a resolution denouncing creationism and intelligent design, according to European Observer and Reuters.  The non-binding […]
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Health

Appendix to the Vestigial Organs Story: Whoops, Function Found
October 6, 2007
The appendix is not just a useless organ left over from our evolutionary past, new research is showing.  According to an Associate Press article (see MSNBC News), this “seemingly useless organ may produce, protect good germs for your gut.”  Scientists at Duke University Medical School believe that the appendix can regenerate the normal bacterial flora […]
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Dumb Ideas

Darwin Saves Junk, Makes Treasure Out of It
October 5, 2007
The Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week award goes to a press release from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which began by personifying Evolution1 as a tinkerer in its own junkyard:   Evolution has mastered the art of turning trash to treasure – though, for scientists, witnessing the transformation can require a bit of patience.  […]
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Bible and Theology

Inca Priests Fattened Children for Slaughter
October 5, 2007
National Geographic News had a disturbing story from archaeological studies of Inca rituals in what is now Peru.  Studies of hair samples and other features in mummies indicate that the Inca warlords fattened up children for up to a year before slaughtering them.  A team that analyzed the mummies believes that captured children were then […]
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Fossils

Modern Crustacean Found in Early Cambrian
October 4, 2007
A “crown-group crustacean” that is “markedly similar to those of living cephalocarids, branchiopods and copepods” has been found exquisitely preserved in early Cambrian fossil beds from China, an international team reported in Nature.1  Though such organisms have been found in middle and later Cambrian rocks, this pushes the origin of eucrustacea (crustaceans of modern aspect) […]
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Fossils

Exceptional Preservation: Can It Last Hundreds of Millions of Years?
October 3, 2007
What can happen in 460 million years?  A lot, according to the standard geological timescale.  In this diagram of geological and biological evolution, accepted by nearly all geologists, all the continents came together 260 million years ago, broke up 200 million years ago, and broke into our familiar continents 100 million years ago (mya).  In […]
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Cosmology

One Special Universe: Take It or Leave It
October 2, 2007
If you think this universe is odd, to what would you compare it?  Adrian Cho asked this and other basic questions in a whimsical review of cosmology since WMAP in Science.1  Closer analysis of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), as revealed in detail by WMAP (03/06/2003, 05/02/2003, 09/20/2004, 03/20/2006), has uncovered features so surprising (e.g., […]
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Politics and Ethics

When Myth Turns Genocidal, Who’s to Blame?
October 2, 2007
Aryan mythology was the subject of a book review by Michael Witzel (Harvard linguist) in Science last week.1  He was reviewing Stefan Arvidsson’s book Aryan Idols about the mischief done in the quasi-scientific, quasi-historical investigation of the alleged noble race behind the primitive Indo-European language.     The atrocities of Nazi Germany can be traced […]
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Biomimetics

New Atomizer Mimics Bombardier Beetle
October 2, 2007
There’s a new technology coming to market, thanks to a little bug.  The bombardier beetle has long been used by creationists as a creature with a weapon against evolutionary theory.  Its tightly-integrated combustion apparatus would be useless or dangerous to the beetle unless all the parts worked together from the start.  This, creationists argue, is […]
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Amazing Facts

Bacteria and Plants Know Network Tech
October 1, 2007
An article on Science Daily says, “plants have their own chat systems that they can use to warn each other.”  Many herbal plants such as strawberry, clover, reed and ground elder naturally form networks.  Individual plants remain connected with each other for a certain period of time by means of runners.  These connections enable the […]
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Solar System

Comet Woes: News Reports Hide Backroom Exasperation
October 1, 2007
“Comets are made of the most primitive stuff in the solar system,” a press release from University of Michigan triumphantly claimed today.  “As hunks of rock and ice that never coalesced into more planets, they give researchers clues to the evolution of solar systems.”     Tell that to Toby Owen and two colleagues who […]
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Dumb Ideas

Evolutionists Say Parasites Made Humans Successful
September 30, 2007
“If cooperation has been the secret to our evolutionary success, we may have our parasites to thank for that.”  That’s a pretty big If, but that’s what two evolutionary biologists claimed this month Current Biology.1  The cooperative behaviors naturally selected in evolutionary host-parasite wars, by implication, are what gave human beings the ability to build […]
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Cosmology

Astronomy Columnist Tackles Naturalism vs. Intelligence
September 29, 2007
Bob Berman is an unusual columnist for a science magazine.  He’s independent-thinking, unafraid to tackle big questions and criticize powerful institutions, but all the while able to keep a sense of humor.  In his monthly column “Bob Berman’s Strange Universe” in the November issue of Astronomy (p. 10), he took a moment from munching on […]
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