Blog – Page 468

VIEW HEADLINES ONLY

Is Evo-Devo the Source of Endless Forms Most Beautiful?

June 29, 2005

Even staunch Darwinist Jerry A. Coyne (U of Chicago) thought this evolutionary book went overboard: Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo-Devo by Sean B. Carroll (Norton, 2005), which he reviewed in Nature last week.1 (The title comes from a phrase at the end of Darwin’s Origin of Species.) It’s a first-rate introduction […]

Cell Biology

Small Wonder: Tubulin Visualized Up Close

June 28, 2005

Science Daily printed a neat story about microtubules, complete with a 3D visualization of how the protein components are arranged. They are not just ropes or chains, but complex cylinders of precise parts. Scientists are starting to get an idea of why they continually grow and shrink within the cell. The process allows them to […]

Human Body

Nose Knows More than Math Pros Suppose

June 27, 2005

The aroma of coffee, of a steak, of cherries – these smells are all composed of dozens if not hundreds of separate molecules, yet our brains immediately recognize them each as a coherent whole. How does the nose and the brain process all this information? This is the subject of an article in the Caltech […]

Cell Biology

Reverse-Engineering Biological Networks Challenges Caltech Scientists

June 25, 2005

Evolutionists love to quote Dobzhansky saying, “Nothing in biology makes sense apart from evolution.” An article in the current issue of Caltech’s magazine Engineering and Science,1 however, might change that proverb to, “Nothing in biology makes sense apart from information theory and systems engineering.” The article makes no mention of evolution, but rather looks at […]

Birds

Wind Tunnel Experiments Reveal Dynamics of Hummingbird Flight

June 24, 2005

Scientists have found out that hummingbirds and insects don’t hover in the same way. Insects support 50% of their weight on both up and down strokes, but hummingbirds support 75% on the downstroke and 25% on the upstroke. This was published in Nature this week,1 and summarized on Science Daily. The latter article […]

Intelligent Design

SETI Researchers Affirm Planetary Privilege Criteria

June 24, 2005

In the weekly SETI Thursday column on Space.com, Douglas Vakoch corroborated two claims made about the habitability of planets in the film The Privileged Planet (shown at the Smithsonian last night – see 06/09/2005 story): namely, (1) smaller stars have smaller habitable zones or “Goldilocks” zones where life can exist, and (2) planets within the […]

Dinosaurs

Croc Teeth Bite Fatal Wound into Dino Phylogeny

June 23, 2005

This line sounds serious: “We have pretty much erased the record of Triassic ornithischian dinosaurs from North America, Europe and worldwide, except for South America.” This is what William Parker said about his find of a complete Revueltosaurus fossil in Arizona that upsets the leading story of the rise of the ornithischian dinosaurs (one of […]

Mammals

Lions Guard Kidnap Victim in Ethiopia

June 22, 2005

Some news stories make you wonder about divine providence. Netscape News reported a story of lions that rescued a kidnapped Ethiopian girl who was being beaten by seven men trying to force her to marry one of them. In Ethiopia, men will often beat and rape a woman who resists a forced marriage; up to […]

Education

Battlefront Dispatches

June 22, 2005

Activities in the Darwin-vs-Design controversy continue generating national news: War of the museums: The Sternberg Museum in Kansas is trying to reinforce arguments for evolution, according to Voice of America news. Proud of his T. rex display, curator Greg Liggett claims that “if the school curriculum changes to include theories such as Intelligent Design, critical […]

Uncategorized

Macroevolution Claims Investigated

June 21, 2005

Two scientific papers recently used the word “macroevolution” in their titles. Did they actually point to cases of natural increase in information or function? Diatoms: A paper in PNAS by Finkel et al.1 was called, “Climatically driven macroevolutionary patterns in the size of marine diatoms over the Cenozoic.” All it discussed was the sizes of […]

Human Body

Supermen Living in Nepal

June 17, 2005

There is a race of people at the base of Mt. Everest capable of feats that defy scientific explanation: the Sherpas. They can carry up to twice their body weight under three hostile conditions that would wear out most of us in a minute: (1) high altitude, (2) long distance, and (3) steep inclines. Somehow, […]

Early Man

Obsessed With Sex: How Much Can Be Known About the Sexuality of Hominids?

June 17, 2005

Bruce Bower in Science News (June 11, 167:24, p. 379) reported on the controversy about the sex life of Lucy and her mate(s). Owen Lovejoy and Philip L. Reno (Kent State U, Ohio) have “unabashedly” put forth a hypothesis that Mr. and Mrs. Australopithecus afarensis (let’s call him Desi) had long-term relationships and stable families […]

Dinosaurs

Did Fossils Inspire Thunderbird Legends?

June 17, 2005

Adrienne Major thinks that the Lakota got their legend of the Thunderbird from looking at fossil pterosaurs in the badlands. Her speculation is explored in National Geographic News. Major thinks other world legends have their origin in fossils that ancient people observed. This hypothesis is no less speculative than the one by creationists that Indians […]

Origin of Life

Miller Time Party Drags On

June 16, 2005

Astrobiologists threw a party when a team of researchers decided there was more hydrogen in the early earth’s atmosphere than thought (see “In the beginning, hydrogen: was it Miller Time?, 04/22/2005). While this was good news for those wishing for better conditions on the early earth for chemical evolution, a few are staying sober enough […]

Uncategorized

Are Teens Like Roaches?

June 16, 2005

A press release from University of Manchester concluded that being a teenage mother might be a good thing. The conclusion was based on observations of the mating behavior of cockroaches. Dr. Patricia Moore, one of the researchers, wins Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week: “Although it’s hard to compare the experiences of the female cockroach […]

Posts by Date

[archives type="yearly"]