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Evolution of the Christmas Tree:  Firs Tie Oaks in Fitness Race
December 24, 2005
In the struggle for existence, the conifers should have lost, because when angiosperms appeared, they had fancier valve jobs.  That’s the feeling of a story introduced by Elizabeth Pennisi on Science Now.  “Those of us who celebrate Christmas tend to take fir and spruce trees for granted around the holiday season,” she quipped, “But without […]
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Education

Dover Fallout Is Radio Active
December 23, 2005
Reaction in the media from Judge Jones’ stinging decision against intelligent design (ID) in the Pennsylvania case Kitzmiller vs Dover Area School District has been rapid and varied.  Evolutionists are overjoyed at this Christmas present the judge delivered, a dirty bomb they hope will put ID out of business, but the other side claims the […]
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Uncategorized

Mars Water Evidence Evaporates
December 23, 2005
The strongest evidence for water from the Mars rovers has been called into question.  Scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder believe that the observations of sulfates and concretions are better explained by fumaroles in volcanic ash deposits (see also EurekAlert).  Their paper in Nature1 explains that the model means high temperatures: “Consequently, the […]
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Fossils

Cambrian Explosion Still Troubling to Evolutionists
December 22, 2005
Despite Darwinian efforts to muffle it or spread it into a diffuse rumble, the Cambrian explosion (the near-sudden emergence of most animal body plans in the fossil record) was loud and snappy.  A new phylogenetic study by Antonis Rokas (MIT), Dirk Krüger, and Sean B. Carroll (U of Wisconsin), published in Science this week,1 could […]
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Education

How to Overcome Student Objections to Evolution
December 21, 2005
Biology teachers face increasing difficulty from students coming into class with bad feelings about evolution (11/30/2005, 08/30/2005).  Many pro-evolution teachers will be attracted to methods that have a demonstrable track record of relieving tensions and facilitating the process of getting students to accept Darwin’s theory.  David Sloan Wilson (Binghamton U, NY) has just the thing.  […]
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Biology

Undersea Christmas Lights Explained
December 19, 2005
There is a marine animal like a jellyfish that puts on one of the most dazzling light shows in nature.  Some ctenophores, or comb jellies, can send multi-colored pulses of light that radiate down their sides in a rainbow of colors.  If you’ve ever seen one of these on a TV nature show, you were […]
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Cosmology

Choose You This Day: Multiverse or I.D.
December 18, 2005
If Leonard Susskind is right, cosmologists are escaping the conclusion of intelligent design (ID) by backing into a radically speculative idea: a near infinity of universes.  Susskind, a theoretical physicist from Stanford, just published a book, Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design (Little, Brown 2005), that explores current cosmological thinking about […]
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Origin of Life

Don’t PNA in our OOL
December 17, 2005
Theories for the origin of life (OOL) are in a crisis, unable to imagine how something as complex as a replicating cell could come into existence. Could PNA do it?
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Bible and Theology

Creation-Evolution Controversy in the News
December 16, 2005
Darwin, Genesis, Paul Mirecki, disclaimer stickers, Kansas and intelligent design continue to be searchable keywords in news reporting about science education. Mirecki’s got a fight on his hands:  The embattled U of Kansas prof who was going to ridicule intelligent design (ID) in a religion class till his inflammatory email surfaced (11/29/2005), and who later […]
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Dinosaurs

Were Dinosaurs Cold-Blooded?
December 16, 2005
A paper in Science1 shows that at least one dinosaur species came in large and small forms.  Martin Sander and Nicole Klein studied fibrolammelar bone on plateosaurs (a heavy two-legged dinosaur with an elephant-like body and long neck), and found that the growth rates were poorly correlated with body size.  Some plateosaurs were full-grown at […]
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Health

Stem Cell Achievement a Possible Fraud
December 16, 2005
South Korean stem cell researcher Woo Suk Hwang has reason for stress and fatigue, as news reports show him escorted by bodyguards on the way to the office.  His landmark paper in Science1 last July that announced the creation of stem cells matching the donor’s DNA (05/23/2005) has been called into question on two fronts.  […]
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Media

Darwin Descendent Enters Narnia
December 15, 2005
Did you know that one of the great-great-great-grandsons of Charles Darwin plays the part of bad-boy Edmund in the new Chronicles of Narnia movie?  After difficulty finding an appropriate person to play the part, Director Andrew Adamson saw a picture of Skandar Keynes and said, “I think it’s Edmund” and signed him up.  Keynes gave […]
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Solar System

Planet Out of Bounds
December 14, 2005
There’s a small planetary object where it shouldn’t be.  New Scientist reported the discovery of a Kuiper Belt object (KBO) with a high inclination of 47° and a nearly circular orbit.  Astronomers can’t figure out how it got there.  It’s too far out to have been flung by Neptune into such a strange orbit.  They […]
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Cell Biology

One-Celled Organism’s Spring Generates Enormous Forces
December 13, 2005
The pioneering Dutch microscopist Antony van Leeuwenhoek marveled at the miniature “animalcules” he witnessed darting through the water and spinning like a top.  One such marvelous protozoan was Vorticella.  The way it rapidly contracted and expanded on its little stalk must have reminded Leeuwenhoek of a spring.  It turns out, it is a spring – […]
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Mammals

Marine Unicorn Tusk is a Precision Sensor
December 13, 2005
Unicorns exist – in the north sea.  Not horses, these are marine mammals, called narwhals, a kind of whale that sports a unique spiraling tooth that gives them the appearance of a unicorn.  Scientists have puzzled for centuries over what these tusks are for.  Leading theories were that males used them for joisting to defend […]
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