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Mountain-Building Time Cut by Two Thirds

July 13, 2005

How long does it take to build mountains? The conventional wisdom is that mountain building (orogeny) is a slow, gradual process that takes many millions of years. A story on Live Science doesn’t deny some millions, but reduces the estimated age of a range in Norway from 40 million to 13 million, and claims the […]

Origin of Life

Astrobiologists Search for Lefty Life in Chile

July 13, 2005

The title isn’t meant to imply Chile is dead or devoid of left-handers. Instead, it announces that astrobiologists are practicing life detection strategies in the high deserts of that South American country, according to Astrobiology Magazine. Chile’s Atacama desert is one of the driest places on earth, with almost no signs of life. NASA scientists […]

Uncategorized

How Identical Are Identical Twins?

July 12, 2005

Identical twins look identical, and the assumption is that their genes are, too. Not necessarily, found a team of European scientists publishing in PNAS.1 Their studies of genes from identical twins found that even when indistinguishable at birth, divergence over time in the expression of genes became evidence due to epigenetic (above-gene) factors: MZ [monozygotic] […]

Education

AAAS President Rails Against ID

July 11, 2005

Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and executive publisher of Science, wrote an editorial asking “Why are scientists so upset about the growing movement to bring ‘intelligent design’ (ID) into science classrooms and public education venues such as science museums, zoos, and theme parks?” He took the occasion of […]

Politics and Ethics

Scientists Own Up to the Need for Ethics

July 11, 2005

The image of a scientist free to follow his quest wherever it goes is changing. In an age of international terrorism, governments are becoming more wary of the potential downsides of scientific investigations, and scientific organizations are beginning to fall in line, reluctantly but understandingly. “Biologists may soon have little option but to sign up […]

Education

Battle for Creation Makes Cover of New Scientist Magazine

July 10, 2005

Another indication of the notice the scientific community is giving to creation and intelligent design can be seen on the cover of New Scientist, in a report entitled, “Creationism special: A battle for science’s soul.” With battle-laden lingo, Debora McKenzie surveys creationism and intelligent-design skirmishes not only among American school boards, but in Holland, Turkey, […]

Intelligent Design

Sponge Bobs Upward in Respect

July 8, 2005

The simplest group of multicellular animals, the sponges, is not so simple. “Researchers have long regarded sponges as the most primitive form of animal life,” wrote Helen Pilcher in Nature;1 “At first glance, sponges seem simple. They have no gut, no brain, no obvious front or back, left or right. Adults pump water through a […]

Uncategorized

Rock Formation Built in Millions of Years, Lost in Seconds?

July 5, 2005

To the surprise of tourists, one of Australia’s seacoast rock formations called the “Twelve Apostles” collapsed into a pile of rubble before their eyes, reported CNN, ABC and other news sources. The fall of the 150-foot high sedimentary formation was caught in before-and-after snapshots by a teenager. Even though standard geology claims the rocks began […]

Solar System

Deep Impact Strikes Comet in Tempel

July 4, 2005

Cheers and hugs erupted at JPL again last night when the Deep Impact spacecraft successfully sent its washing-machine size copper probe plunging into Comet Tempel 1. A somewhat unexpected plume of powdery material was ejected, so opaque it was difficult to image the crater. Speaking of craters, the camera aboard the probe revealed a surface […]

Fossils

Horse Evolution Tale Gets Hairier

June 30, 2005

If you thought the story of horse evolution was well understood as a poster child of Darwinism at work, consider what Weinstock et al. say in a preprint in PLoS Biology:1 The rich fossil record of horses has made them a classic example of evolutionary processes. However, while the overall picture of equid evolution is […]

Uncategorized

Did Old Metamorphic Rocks Form in Just 10 Years?

June 30, 2005

A discovery in Norway may collapse a geological process by five or six orders of magnitude. A paper by Camacho et al. announced in Nature,1 yielded this comment by Simon Kelley (Open University, UK) in the same issue,2 “Conventional wisdom says that changes to crustal rocks pushed down deep when continents collide develop over millions […]

Uncategorized

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 […]

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