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Physics

Octopus Arms Have Optimal Design
February 9, 2005
The tentacles of an octopus are soft and flexible, whereas bony creatures like us have joints that, while good for moving objects around, limit our freedom of movement.  Wouldn’t it be cool to have both?  An international team of neurobiologists, publishing in Nature,1 watched an octopus snare its food, using the flexibility of its tentacles, […]
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Politics and Ethics

Stem Cell Research Launches into the Ethical Unknown, Full Steam Ahead
February 8, 2005
No one knows where stem cell research will lead.  Some hope for miracle cures.  Some fear horrendous abuses and ethical nightmares.  But states and nations, apparently more concerned over priority and prestige, are fighting to the head of the pack after the California Proposition 71 gun fired last fall.     With $3 billion in […]
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Intelligent Design

ID. Article Makes N.Y. Times
February 7, 2005
Michael Behe got a full-length column in the New York Times (reproduced at Discovery.com) to present the case for intelligent design.  The EvolutionNews blog says it is the second most emailed article from that day’s edition, and asks, “Who says there’s no controversy?” Which side wants to air the debate?  Which side wants to shut […]
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Politics and Ethics

Scientist Preaches Integrity to Fellow Scientists
February 6, 2005
Patrick Bateson (U. of Cambridge), concerned over reports of malpractice by scientists, wrote an essay in Science1 Feb. 4 to remind his fellow researchers about “Desirable Scientific Conduct.”  One mustn’t allow his or her affiliations or biases to influence results.  Performing tainted research feeds the postmodern conception that science is a cultural construct, for one […]
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Cell Biology

Survival of the Fittest – or the Luckiest?
February 6, 2005
Evolutionists assume that bacteria spread because they evolve resistance to antibiotics and become more fit to survive.  That’s apparently not true, says a story in EurekAlert about a study from Imperial College, London: the spread of bacteria appears to be due to chance alone.     Here are two quotes from the article by team […]
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Cell Biology

Molecular Machine Parts Stockpiled in Readiness for Assembly
February 6, 2005
A team from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory has done a “4D” time-and-materials study of molecular machines, analyzing the process of assembly, reports EurekAlert.  They found that the cell stockpiles some parts and holds them in storage, but adds the crucial elements just in time. The researchers discovered that in yeast, key components needed to […]
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Origin of Life

Will “Top-Down” and “Bottom-Up” Meet in the Middle?
February 6, 2005
Some difficult problems can be approached from opposite ends.  Engineers needing to build a shaft through a mountain, for instance, might start digging from the bottom and the top, trying to find each other in the middle.  But what if the mountain has an unanticipated impregnable layer?  Or what if there is no mountain, but […]
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Politics and Ethics

“Darwinian Funding” Makes Losers Angry
February 4, 2005
Evolutionists love Darwinism – except when it threatens their funding.  Daniel Clery complained in Science1 this week that it means the demise of physics and chemistry in UK universities.  “Survival of the fittest” seems to be favoring the departments that provide lucrative careers.  The funding shortfall for traditional chemistry and physics is due partly, of […]
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Botany

Selecting Corn Oil Genes Produces More Corn Oil, but What Else?
February 4, 2005
Breeders have been trying to squeeze more corn oil out of corn for over a century, one of the longest-running scientific experiments ever.  They have made pretty dramatic gains in yield, from 5% to 20%, in 100 generations, says William G. Hill in Science.1  Now also, geneticists have the tools to look for which genes […]
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Uncategorized

Age Estimate for Oldest Glacier Revised Way Down
February 2, 2005
Deposits from Antarctic glacial ice thought to be 8.1 million years old have been re-dated at not more than 310,000 years old, and maybe as little as 43,000, reports a team writing in the Feb. issue of Geology.1  Ng (MIT), Hallet, Sletten and Stone (U. of Washington) analyzed cosmogenic helium-3 and calculated the rate of […]
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Uncategorized

Genes Evolving Downward
February 2, 2005
Those assuming the evolution of eukaryotic genomes has progressed upward in complexity may find the following abstract from PNAS1 startling: We use the pattern of intron conservation in 684 groups of orthologs from seven fully sequenced eukaryotic genomes to provide maximum likelihood estimates of the number of introns present in the same orthologs in various […]
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Birds

“Bird Brain” No Longer an Insult
February 1, 2005
“Birds can perform amazing tasks beyond the reach of cats and dogs,” begins an article in the BBC News.  So pay a little respect.  You can still call your boss a bird brain, but had better quickly explain why that is a compliment.  See also the longer article on MSNBC News.     In a […]
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Education

Teachers Getting Reluctant to Teach Evolution
February 1, 2005
Cornelia Dean in the New York Times worries that, to stay out of trouble, more and more biology teachers are avoiding the discussion of evolution. Dean quotes someone who claims “the practice of avoiding the topic was widespread, particularly in districts where many people adhere to fundamentalist faiths.”  But why would teachers fear discussing it […]
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Education

Editorials Lukewarm to ID, but Not as Hot to Darwin
January 31, 2005
A subtle shift seems to be taking place in media coverage of intelligent-design controversies in school boards across the country.  Darwinists used to be the unchallenged kings of the hill.  Alternatives, whether creationism or intelligent design, were disqualified before they reached the starting gate.  It also used to be “open season” on anti-Darwinists.  No vituperative […]
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Cell Biology

Your Motors Are Turbo-Charged
January 30, 2005
Think how fast 6000 rpm is.  It would redline on most cars.  Yet you have motors in your body that make that speed look like slow-mo.     The Japanese have taken great interest in the cellular machine ATP synthase since its rotary operation was discovered in 1996 (see 12/22/2003 entry).  Maybe it’s because they […]
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