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How Powerful Is Natural Selection?  “Biologists May Be Deluding Themselves”
February 16, 2005
Andrew P. Hendry (McGill University, Montreal) is no creationist; Darwinian evolution is a given in his News and Views piece in Nature1 this week.  But he cautioned his fellow evolutionary biologists not to make overconfident claims about the power of Darwin’s most famous concept, natural selection: Adaptation by natural selection is the centrepiece of biology.  […]
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Dinosaurs

Jurassic Park Revision #76: Bonehead Dinosaurs Not Head-Butters
February 16, 2005
Pachycephalosaurs, or bone-heads, were dome-headed dinosaurs with skulls nine inches thick.  Interpretation: they rammed each other like rams, or head-butted jeeps filled with hapless human tourists in the movies.  Wrong, reports National Geographic in the March 2005 issue: research by Jack Horner and Mark Goodwin has shown that the thick skulls, surprisingly, could not have […]
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Early Man

Age of Modern Humans Revised, “Depending on Whom You Believe”
February 16, 2005
The official age of the oldest anatomically modern humans is now 195,000 years, some 65,000 years older than previously thought.  This announcement was made in Nature1 by Ian McDougall, Francis H. Brown and John F. Fleagle, based on revised radiometric dates calculated from sediments surrounding two human skeletons in Ethiopia.  These specimens, named Omo I […]
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Uncategorized

National Geographic Besieged by Letters Over Darwin Article
February 15, 2005
“Was Darwin Wrong?” the cover teased in November.  Inside, printed in huge bold type, the answer was ruthless and final: “NO.  The evidence for evolution is overwhelming” – end of discussion (see 10/24/2004 entry).  Not everybody liked this treatment.  Over 600 letters poured in, and in the March issue, NG printed six samples “chosen to […]
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Uncategorized

Honeybees Fly with Mental Maps
February 15, 2005
You can tell a honeybee to get lost, but it can’t.  You can even take it off its flight path, but it will find its way back.  Scientists writing in PNAS1 this week described experiments by a European team that wanted to test their navigating abilities.  They marked bees at feeding stations, then took them […]
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Uncategorized

Lichens: Two Designs Are Better than One
February 15, 2005
A lichen is a symbiotic organism comprised of an alga and a fungus.  PNAS1 reported a study that showed that “antioxidant and photoprotective mechanisms in the lichen Cladonia vulcani are more effective by orders of magnitude than those of its isolated partners” (emphasis added in all quotes).  Kranner et al. found: Without the fungal contact, […]
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Fossils

Fossil Record Reliable, Study Says
February 14, 2005
A University of Chicago press release declares that the fossil record is reliable.  Susan M. Kidwell studied the record of bivalves as a function of their fragility and deduced that preservability of shells was only a minor factor in their observed abundance.  “In fact, if anything, variations having shells that seemed least likely to be […]
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Education

SETI Outreach Director: “Teach Evolution”
February 11, 2005
Evolution is the foundation of biology, geology, and astronomy, claims Edna Devore, Director of Education and Public Education for the SETI Institute.  Writing in Space.Com, she finds it hard to believe evolution is controversial (see 12/14/2004 and 11/30/2004 entries).  Why, just look out the airplane window; it’s obvious.  “Evolution is fundamental to modern biology, geology […]
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Uncategorized

Is Science Acting Insane? AAAS President Bemoans Constraints of Societal Ethics, Advocates Dipl
February 11, 2005
“…insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.”   Alan I. Leshner, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, reminds readers of Science1 of this proverb in order to help them face the fact that ignoring the public’s values, or protesting against them, will not allow […]
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Fossils

Can Evolution Repeat Itself?
February 10, 2005
A press release from University of Chicago reported today that “115-million-year-old fossil of a tiny egg-laying mammal thought to be related to the platypus provides compelling evidence of multiple origins of acute hearing in humans and other mammals” (emphasis added in all quotes).  The fossil apparently shows inner-ear bones in the monotreme lineage that supposedly […]
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Uncategorized

Loss of Mangrove Forests Exacerbated Tsunami Damage
February 10, 2005
Many seashores have a natural defense against the onslaught of a tsunami: the mangrove forest.  Dense thickets of these trees that tolerate salt water and line the coasts of many subtropical islands and continents can absorb much of the energy of killer waves.  It is entirely plausible that the enormity of the human death toll […]
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Physics

Watch for Falling Ants
February 9, 2005
Did you know some ants are gliders?  When Stephen Yanoviak (U. of Texas) was studying insects in the rain forest canopy in Peru, he was struck by the fact that ants kept landing on his arm.  This launched his team’s investigation into gliding ants.  They took video cameras into the jungle and documented their unique […]
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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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