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Education

Educator Suggests Inoculation Technique Against Creationism
November 1, 2005
Give them some ID, then swamp it with counter-arguments.  That’s the new method of “educational intervention” that Stephen Verhey of Central Washington University has found most effective in overcoming college student objections to evolution, reported EurekAlert.  Verhey tested 103 students with prior exposure to creationism.  He assigned the book Icons of Evolution by Jonathan Wells, […]
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Intelligent Design

Darwinists Refute ID “Irreducible Complexity” Argument
October 31, 2005
“New book explains how evolution really works, rebuts intelligent design.”  That’s the triumphant title of a new book announcement from Harvard Medical School, reported on EurekAlert.  According to the release, Marc W. Kirschner (Harvard Medical School) and John C. Gerhart (UC Berkeley) have addressed a “key problem in evolutionary theory that has puzzled scientists from […]
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Education

Is Darwin or ID the New Halloween Spook?
October 30, 2005
Scary, isn’t it?  A textbook committee in Montgomery, Alabama approved dozens of new textbooks, but found objectionable material in three of them: they contained material on evolution that was deemed controversial for children.  They decided that pictures of reptiles evolving from amphibians and humans evolving from apes was not appropriate for elementary children who were […]
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Biomimetics

Georgia Tech “Bioneers” Plagiarize Mother Nature to Advance Science
October 29, 2005
“Copying the ideas of others is usually frowned upon, but when it comes to the work of Mother Nature, scientists are finding they can use nature as a template.”  That’s how an interesting press release from Georgia Tech begins (reproduced on EurekAlert) about a new center on campus called the Center for Biologically Inspired Design […]
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Mammals

Charity?  Chimps Don’t Get It – Nor Give It
October 28, 2005
The science news media took note of an experiment showing that chimpanzees don’t care to share, even when it costs them nothing (see the BBC News and Science Now, “Tightwad Primates”).  Joan Silk and a team at UCLA created an apparatus where a chimp could pull one rope to get a treat for itself, or […]
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Botany

It’s Official: Mangroves Would Have Prevented Most Tsunami Damage
October 28, 2005
EurekAlert summarized a paper in Science1 that confirmed an earlier claim (02/10/2005) that intact mangrove forests along the Asian coastlines would have prevented the bulk of damage and death from last year’s mega-tsunami.  A large, diverse research team from seven nations estimated that more than 90% of the damage could have been prevented by the […]
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Cell Biology

Red Blood Cells Are Master Contortionists
October 28, 2005
Biophysicists have analyzed why red blood cells are able to squeeze through tight spaces on their journeys through our tissues, reports the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering.  Their membranes contain a network of 33,000 hexagons arranged in a complex geodesic dome formation.  Each hexagon vertex is joined with flexible lines to a central maypole-like proto-filament, […]
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Physical Science

Cellular Black Box Reveals Precision Guidance and Control
October 27, 2005
Amazing discoveries about the cell are being made each week.  It’s a shame more people don’t hear about them.  They are usually written up in obscure journals with incomprehensible jargon, but when explained in plain English, the findings are truly astounding.  Not long ago, the cell was a “black box,” a mechanism of unknown inner […]
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Birds

Emperor Penguins Get More Respect
October 27, 2005
A handsomely-dressed emperor penguin made the cover of Science News this week.  Gerald Kooyman of Scripps Institute is gratified over the success of the documentary March of the Penguins; “I’ve been telling people they’re remarkable for years,” he said.  In the article, Susan Milius brought out several additional amazing facts not mentioned in the film. […]
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Uncategorized

Darwinian Fitness/Selection Studies Lack Real-World Experimental Verification, Produce Contradictory
October 26, 2005
“Evolution: Do Bad Husbands Make Good Fathers?” is the provocative title of an article in Current Biology1 that conceals the real subject.  The first paragraph of the article by David J. Hosken and Tom Tregenza explains the title: Males sometimes harm their mates as they seek to maximise the number of offspring they sire.  But […]
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Early Man

Dispute Over Hobbit Man Intensifies with New Bones
October 25, 2005
The debate over the status of Homo florensiensis has not calmed down (see 09/28/2005), even with the discovery of more bones in the Ling Bua cave on the island of Flores as announced in Nature (437, 1012-1017 (13 October 2005) | doi: 10.1038/nature04022).  Michael J. Morwood and colleagues are still sticking with their identification of […]
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Origin of Life

Extraterrestrials Likely to Be Unicellular
October 25, 2005
An AP story printed at HeraldNet jokes that extraterrestrial life probably won’t look like “the negligee-clad Number 6 from [Battlestar] Galactica, the television series that features a genocidal war between humans and their robot creations.”  Instead, according to the authors of a new book about extraterrestrial life, you would need a microscope to see it.  […]
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Education

Intelligent Design War Rages
October 24, 2005
Because of the high-profile Intelligent Design trial in Dover, Pennsylvania, the news media and scientific societies are all discussing Darwin vs Design with fervor. Surprise, Surprise:  AP reports that the Dover school board did not expect the uproar when it drafted its policy allowing alternatives to Darwinism to be heard; see LiveScience.com.  MSNBC News also […]
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Birds

Archaeopteryx Meets Its Younger Grandpa, and Other Flights of Fancy
October 24, 2005
Science Now said that a “slightly embarrassing gap” in the fossil record has been filled by a find in Wyoming.  The oldest known bird, Archaeopteryx was older than its presumed ancestors, the Maniraptorans, its closest dinosaurian relatives.  A team near Thermopolis, Wyoming found a maniraptoran dating from about the same time as Archaeopteryx.  This new […]
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Dumb Ideas

Listen to Yourself Evolve
October 23, 2005
A pretty gene is like a melody, decided Mary Anne Clark at Texas Wesleyan University, so she gave life to music—literally.  She translated the structure of proteins into musical notes so that she could hear “protein songs,” reported National Geographic News.  By listening to the songs, scientists and students alike can hear the structure of […]
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