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Dinosaurs

Record Dino Trove in Mongolia
September 15, 2006
67 dinosaurs in a week: that’s what diggers from Montana State University found in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia.  The team effort was led by veteran dinosaurologist Jack Horner.  Most skeletons were Psittacosaurs, thought to be predecessors of the horned ceratopsids, like Triceratops.  Seeking to understand the developmental biology of dinosaurs, the team was less […]
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Physics

Ethane Cloud at Titan: Too Little, Too Late?
September 14, 2006
Those following the Titan exploration by Cassini-Huygens have wondered where the ethane went.  Oceans of ethane hundreds of meters deep, if not kilometers deep, were predicted but not found, as reported previously (see 04/25/2003 and 10/16/2003 pre-Huygens reports, 01/15/2005 and 01/21/2005 Huygens early results, and 12/05/2005 review; see also New Scientist analysis of the “total […]
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Amazing Facts

Another Rotary Machine Found in Bacteria
September 13, 2006
A molecular “garbage disposer” in the cell membrane bearing some resemblance to the rotating motor ATP synthase has been described in Nature.1  This machine, called AcrB, expels toxins from the cytoplasm through the cell membrane to the outside.  Like ATP synthase, it has three active sites at one end where the binding occurs, and it […]
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Amazing Facts

Plant Protection: A Modern Medieval Castle Story
September 13, 2006
Vigilant guards stand at the gates.  In times of peace, they let down the drawbridge, and the townspeople carry on their trade.  Farmers bring in their crops for the marketplace, and local craftsmen and pedlars keep the local economy bustling.  Yet the sentries maintain a watchful eye, aware that numerous interlopers are about.  Aliens constantly […]
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Genetics

Do Mammals Depend on Virus Help?
September 12, 2006
Researchers found that sheep depend on a retrovirus to become pregnant.  Retroviruses (those that can insert themselves into a genome of a host cell) include the dreaded HIV and generally have a bad reputation.  Remnant retroviruses are prevalent in many animal species and have been considered a class of “junk DNA,” having mutated away their […]
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Politics and Ethics

Patients in Vegetative State May Be Aware
September 11, 2006
Remember the arguments put forth for why Terry Schiavo should be allowed to die?  They revolved around the awareness of those said to be in a persistent vegetative state.  Now, researchers reported in Science1 that a patient diagnosed in a vegetative state was aware of what was going on: We used functional magnetic resonance imaging […]
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Bible and Theology

Historian Reveals Isaac Newton as Biblical Economist
September 11, 2006
The image of Isaac Newton as pure mathematician and physicist ignores a big part of his persona, said Georgia Tech Professor Kenneth Knoespel in a press release reported by EurekAlert.  Living in an era when alchemy was still considered a serious subject for natural philosophers, Newton viewed alchemical research as part of his Biblical vision […]
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Politics and Ethics

Nature Backpedals Over Stem-Cell Hype
September 10, 2006
After Nature printed an upbeat press release last month that stem cells could be extracted without killing an embryo (see 08/25/2006), critics found that the experiment did indeed kill the embryos.  Also, it turns out none of the stem cell lines survived, and that more than one cell had been extracted from the embryos, contrary […]
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Genetics

Is the Fruit from Darwin’s Tree Edible?
September 8, 2006
Darwin’s “Tree of Life” fruit stand found an upbeat salesman in John Roach at National Geographic this week.  In his update on the “Assembling the Tree of Life” (AToL) project, he reported cheerfully that “New cures, supercrops, and secrets of evolution may emerge from the fast-growing branches of the ‘Tree of Life,’ scientists say.”   […]
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Uncategorized

Nothing in Evolution Makes Sense Except in the Light of Speculation
September 7, 2006
Welcome to an imaginary world of Red Queens, Green Beards and warring armies: the world of evolutionary theory.  Though its adherents work in prestigious universities and laboratories in the real world, they seem preoccupied with speculative visions of imaginative fitness landscapes – even when defending evolutionary theory as the best explanation for natural phenomena, and […]
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Astronomy

Whistling in the Dark Matter Debate
September 7, 2006
Who’s right?  Douglas Clowe’s team at U of Arizona claimed two weeks ago that they found dark matter in the Bullet Cluster – they even had a picture of it.  The Chandra X-Ray Center called it “direct proof” of dark matter.  Two days later, EurekAlert posted a story about a new proposal to bring back […]
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Amazing Facts

Flagellar Swimmers Attain Mechanical Nirvana
September 6, 2006
Those little germs that scientists love, E. coli – you know, the ones with the flagella that intelligent-design folk get all excited about – well, they move through the water pretty efficiently with those high-tech outboard motors of theirs.  Some Pennsylvania physicists reporting in PNAS1 measured the “swimming efficiency of bacterium Escherichia coli” and concluded, […]
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Dumb Ideas

Quote
September 6, 2006
The authors of the paper in the previous entry (09/06/2006) found that bacteria swim with near perfect propulsive efficiency.  They only mentioned evolution one time, but it’s short and to the pointless.  It wins Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week: “Such measurements can shed light on how this remarkable ability to swim evolves among different […]
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Biomimetics

Yoke Up Those Bacteria
September 6, 2006
My, how history repeats itself – often in unexpected ways.  In ancient times, our ancestors got the heavy work done by hitching oxen, horses or slaves (like Samson, see pictures 1 and 2) to a harness and making them turn a grinding wheel.  The same principle is now on the cutting edge of modern applied […]
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Cosmology

Big Bang Fails Prediction: Is the Theory in Trouble?
September 5, 2006
Astronomers looking at WMAP data (03/20/2006, 05/02/2003) of the cosmic background radiation failed to find shadows predicted by the big bang, reported Science Daily.  So what?  Here’s what Dr. Richard Lieu (U of Alabama) said this means: “Either it (the microwave background) isn’t coming from behind the clusters, which means the Big Bang is blown […]
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