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Origin of Life

New Titan Ethane Theory Proposed
October 18, 2006
They wonder where the ethane went (see 09/14/2006 and its links).  The case of the missing ethane on Titan has only gotten more puzzling since the Huygens Probe landed last year and found almost none, when oceans a mile deep were anticipated.  In Nature last week,1 D. M. Hunten (U of Arizona) posited a new […]
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Fossils

Oxygen YoYos and Wings
October 18, 2006
Molecular oxygen: you can’t live with it, and you can’t live without it.  We breathe it in constantly or else we would turn blue and die within minutes.  Yet we take antioxidants because of the harm that oxygen radicals can wreak in our cells.  Like fire, it is a useful substance, but only when tightly […]
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Amazing Facts

Self-cleaning Surfaces Take the Lotus Position
October 17, 2006
Photovoltaic cells and microelectromechanical systems have a problem: they collect dirt.  What to do?  Look to the lotus, says a EurekAlert article about research at Georgia Institute of Technology.  Dr. C. P. Wong and team took inspiration from the self-cleaning surfaces of lotus leaves.  “Despite growing in muddy conditions, the leaves and flowers remain clean […]
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Cell Biology

Precambrian Cell Division Imaged
October 17, 2006
Embryos frozen in stone in the act of cell division were reported in Science.1  According to a press release from Virginia Tech, there are millions of fossilized embryos in the Doushantuo formation in south China, estimated to be 551 million years old, but “later stages of these animals are rare.”  The EurekAlert version of this […]
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Uncategorized

Does Darwin Play Dice?
October 16, 2006
Some recent scientific papers have spoken to the question of how big a role chance plays in Darwinism.  This issue was one of the key points of contention by early critics of Darwin’s theory.  Modern Darwinists argue whether evolution proceeds strictly by chance, or whether the environment constrains evolution to follow certain paths that lead […]
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Geology

Gold Can Form in a Geological Instant
October 15, 2006
You can’t say something is old just because it looks old, like gold.
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Dumb Ideas

Active SETI: If the Mountain Will Not Come to MyHomeET
October 14, 2006
SETI researchers must be getting bored sitting around waiting for a message.  To bide the time, some have come up with a game called “Active SETI” – sending our messages to the aliens.  It’s not that this game hasn’t been played before.  The Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft each carried messages from earthlings, and the Arecibo […]
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Health

Stem Cells: Hurry Up and Wait
October 13, 2006
When will embryonic stem cells produce cures for Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, paralysis and other maladies these wonder-cells were promised to bring?  Be prepared to wait.  If predictions of leading proponents are accurate, and if California is to be a world leader in stem cell research and clinical trials, even Christopher Reeve would have died […]
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Cell Biology

Science Potpourri
October 13, 2006
Interesting articles from recent issues of Science have piled up in the queue.  These might have made separate entries in CEH if time and space were unlimited. Deep Impact:  The team of the Deep Impact mission to a comet published spectral results in the July 13 issue.  “Emission signatures due to amorphous and crystalline silicates, […]
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Amazing Facts

Glory Be Behind Saturn
October 12, 2006
Don’t look at this picture till you’re ready.  Switch off the phone, turn off the radio, rub your eyes, and sit down.  Ready?  Click Here.     This is a view of Saturn we could never see from Earth.  It’s the backside of the planet, with the sun shining through the rings.  According to a […]
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Astronomy

Nature Potpourri
October 11, 2006
Articles of interest from Nature have been piling up in the CEH queues.  Perhaps a brief mention is better than nothing, before they fall into archive oblivion. Carbon 14:  In the Sept 14 issue, there was a give & take between critics of a carbon-14-dated study and the author.  The critics pointed out, “We appreciate […]
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Dumb Ideas

Early Hunters Evolved Into Marathoners
October 11, 2006
Why are humans so good at endurance running?  According to Dan Lieberman of Harvard, “our body shape evolved to allow our ancestors to run long distances, and reach animal carcasses before other scavengers.”  He figured that “chasing animals until they collapse from exhaustion yields more meat per hunt than hunting with spears or a bow […]
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Early Man

More Scientists Claim “Hobbit Man” Was Fully Human
October 11, 2006
It was not a primitive form of Homo erectus that shrunk to a small stature because of being isolated on an island: it was one of us.  That’s what more scientists are saying about Homo floresiensis, the small-skulled pygmy skeletons found in Liang Bua cave on the island of Flores in Indonesia (10/27/2004)  The new […]
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Amazing Facts

Archer Fish Shoot Efficiently
October 10, 2006
Archer fish, the sharpshooters of the underwater world, have another trick in their blowguns: energy efficiency.  Three German scientists were curious how they knew how hard to shoot at targets of differing mass.  Publishing in Current Biology,1 the team first determined that the prey’s ability to cling to its leaf or stem is proportional to […]
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Intelligent Design

Lee Strobel’s The Case for a Creator Debuts on Film
October 10, 2006
A film version of Lee Strobel’s book The Case for a Creator has been released by Illustra Media.  The book, third in a series of best-sellers by Lee Strobel (The Case for Christ, The Case for Faith) describes Strobel’s own journey from atheism to Christianity and how Darwinian had evolution played a big part in […]
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