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Weird Jellyfish Eyes: Are They Missing Links?
May 13, 2005
“Missing Link?” asks the cover of Nature May 12, next to what looks like an alien head with a giant eye staring out.  The article by Nilsson et al.1 suggests that the box jellyfish has optical sensors that could represent primitive eyes that evolved before the more advanced eyes of vertebrates.  Most of us don’t […]
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Solar System

How Privileged Is Our Planet?
May 13, 2005
Several recent news stories touch on the uniqueness of Earth. Eccentric neighbors:  A story in Science Daily draws attention to the highly eccentric orbits of most extrasolar planets found so far.  The press release from Northwestern University begins, “Except for the fact that we call it home, for centuries astronomers didn’t have any particular reason […]
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Terrestrial Zoology

Honeybee Dance Wins Ovation
May 13, 2005
In the 1960s, Karl von Frisch announced the surprising discovery that scout honeybees announce detailed information to their hivemates about food sources with a “waggle dance”.  This information, conveyed via the dance’s vigor and angle, tells recruit bees what angle to fly relative to the sun, how far to go, and how good the food […]
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Human Body

Your Eyes Do Layered Image Processing
May 12, 2005
Computer users familiar with Photoshop and other image processing programs know that an image can be divided into “layers” for making color corrections, evening out contrast and enhancing details.  Your eyes do that, too, says Alan Gilchrist in Current Biology.1  He shows a stunning optical illusion to make the point: transparent chess pieces against differing […]
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Botany

David Attenborough Finds Living Fossil Tree Romantic, Not Devastating
May 12, 2005
England’s famous Kew Royal Botanical Gardens is getting a Wollemi Pine, and David Attenborough, naturalist and evolution popularist, is proud of it.  This “living fossil” was thought extinct for 200 million years, but was found alive and well a few years ago in Australia (see 12/15/2000 entry).     Grinning like a kid at Christmas, […]
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Origin of Life

Self-Replicating Robot: Is It Alive?
May 11, 2005
The news media are all excited about a cube-shaped robot that, when stacked in threes, can make a copy of itself.  The device, invented by Hod Lipson of Cornell, was illustrated in Nature.1  For a video demonstration, see MSNBC News.  The BBC News quotes Lipson claiming that this achievement “shows the ability to reproduce is […]
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Uncategorized

Flower Sets Catapult Speed Record
May 11, 2005
An American team of two biologists and a physicist found that a common mountain flowering plant holds the plant acceleration record.  Reporting in Nature,1 they calculated that the bunchberry dogwood flower propels its pollen at speeds approaching 14 mph when the catapult-like petals explode open, accelerating at 24,000 meters per second squared within 0.3 second.  […]
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Terrestrial Zoology

The Monarch Butterflies in the Flight Simulator, II
May 9, 2005
How much software can fit in a butterfly brain?  Scientists are again amazed at the navigating ability of Monarch butterflies.  In the 07/09/2002 entry, we reported about how Canadian researchers used a clever flight simulator to test Monarch butterfly navigation with reference to sun angle.  Now, using an enhanced version of the earlier “butterfly flight […]
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Education

Darwinians May Be Their Own Worst Enemy, Says Darwinist
May 6, 2005
Evolutionists have only themselves to blame for the rise of anti-Darwinian sentiment, says Michael Ruse in a new book, The Evolution-Creation Struggle (Harvard, 2005).  Peter Dizikes reviewed this premise in The Boston Globe.  By portraying evolution in overtly atheist terms with religious fervor, certain individuals like Richard Dawkins are creating a backlash, says Ruse.  “This […]
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Terrestrial Zoology

How Did Salamanders Migrate from North America to Korea?
May 6, 2005
Salamanders are not particularly thought of as world travelers.  A new species of lungless salamander of the family Plethodontidae has been found in Korea.  Almost all previous members were found only in North America.  To EurekAlert, reporting on a paper published in Nature,1 this is comparable to “discovering pandas in California or kangaroos in Argentina.”  […]
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Education

World Press Eyes Kansas Evolution Battle
May 5, 2005
The “Un-Scopes” trial of the decade is underway in Kansas, and the world press is watching.  Unlike the 1925 Scopes trial, this time evolution is the leader and intelligent design is the contender: actually, not even that – the leaders of the ID movement are not asking for ID to be taught, but only for […]
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Dinosaurs

Toothy Dinosaur Goes Vegan
May 4, 2005
The news media all pounced on a dinosaur fossil discovery reported in Nature this week.1  Dinosaur finds are ever popular, and reporters especially like it when an artist’s rendition is available.  Some outlets reporting the discovery of Falcarius utahensis, a previously unknown species “in the process of converting to vegetarianism from a rather more bloodthirsty […]
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Botany

Weeds Hold Promise for Miracle Drugs
May 3, 2005
We’d like weeds if we knew them better, says John Roach for National Geographic News, especially if we realized they may contain wonder drugs.  “It’s often said that plants hidden in the tangle of the Amazonian rain forest may harbor an undiscovered cancer cure,” he writes; “John Richard Stepp thinks the same can be said […]
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Fossils

Missing Link Fish Story
May 3, 2005
Once upon a time, 450 million years ago, scavenger fish without teeth or bones roamed the shallow icy waters of Africa which was undergoing an Ice Age.  Slowly, over millions of years, they gained teeth and other structures characteristic of more advanced fish.  Then, a few thousand years ago, a lake in the (now continental […]
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Cell Biology

World’s Smallest Rotary Motors Coming Into Focus
April 30, 2005
Science April 29 had three articles on the ATP synthase rotary motors that inhabit all living cells.1,2,3  Using creative techniques of extreme microscopy and crystallography, research teams are beginning to get more focused images of the carousel-like rotating engines of both F-type and V-type motors.  (V-type enzymes pump ions into the cell to regulate acidity; […]
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