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Astronomy

Late Stars Found Early On
April 6, 2005
A press release from the Spitzer Space Telescope team reports that the oldest, most distant galaxies ever seen already had well-developed stars.  It claims that the light has taken 13 billion years to reach us. “It seems that in a couple of cases these early galaxies are nearly as massive as galaxies we see around […]
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Uncategorized

Darwinians Looking for Forgiveness – in Apes
April 6, 2005
Forgiveness, a seemingly distinctive human trait, must have its roots in ape social behavior, believe some evolutionary biologists.  According to MSNBC News, the state of Iowa got a lot of money for researching this topic: Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, lead scientist, said the four-month project studying bonobos [pygmy chimps] will be funded by a $125,000 grant […]
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Cell Biology

Flagellum Described in High-Performance Lingo
April 4, 2005
The bacterial flagellum, a virtual icon of the intelligent design movement, has been studied by many researchers, notably Howard Berg of Harvard, an expert on chemotaxis (the attraction of bacteria to chemical stimuli).  Berg was interviewed in Current Biology1 and talked like a race car mechanic when discussing this molecular machine, though he is not […]
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Solar System

Panel Majority Agrees: Our Solar System Is Special
April 4, 2005
All five observational and theoretical planetary scientists on a panel last week agreed that our solar system is a special place, reports Space.Com.  At the 5th annual Isaac Asimov Memorial Panel Debate, held at the American Museum of Natural History, the topic was “whether our solar system is special, why it looks the way it […]
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Uncategorized

Gentle Darwin and the Evolution of Joy
April 3, 2005
You may not be able to really enjoy a good laugh any more, because the evolutionists are now claiming that joy and humor are just evolutionary artifacts of gene mutations in our animal past.  Jaak Panksepp (Bowling Green U) opens an article in Science Now by twisting the opening words of the Apostle John into […]
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Early Man

Do Neurologists Understand Brain Evolution?
April 3, 2005
Jane Bradbury wrote a feature piece for PLOS Biology recently,1 entitled, “Molecular Insights into Human Brain Evolution.”  Help us find the insights.  First, she marvels on how “humans sit on top of the pile when it comes to relative brain size.”  Then she marvels at how quickly the human brain apparently evolved compared to apes.  […]
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Origin of Life

You Can Help Find Life on Mars
April 2, 2005
Astronomy Picture of the Day pulled a fast one for April Fool’s Day, humorously suggesting viewers might help scientists find water on Mars.  (The Mars in the picture was the candy kind.) The joke was on them, because they got baloney all over their faces with this line: “Finding water on different regions on Mars […]
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Fossils

More Convergent Evolution Claimed for Dino-Era Mammal
April 1, 2005
A chipmunk-size mammal with Popeye-like forearms and beaver-like teeth resembling an armadillo?  That’s how the discoverers are describing the fossil they named Fruitafossor, a small mammal found near Fruita, Colorado and reported in Science.1  They think it dug burrows and ate termites.  Of special interest were the open-root teeth like those of the beaver.  Lead […]
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Solar System

How Well Do We Know Our Moon?
March 31, 2005
Leonard David wrote in Space.Com that Earth’s moon is “still a puzzle” – “luna incognita,” he calls it, hoping for a new corps of discovery to go back.  Surprisingly, the treasure trove of Apollo data has “been sitting around and never properly studied,”  especially since the development of more highly sophisticated analytical techniques.  Carl Pieters […]
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Cell Biology

Your Linemen at Work: DNA Search and Rescue Machine Imaged in Action
March 31, 2005
DNA is amazing enough, but its automatic error-correction utilities are enough to stagger the imagination.  There are dozens of repair mechanisms to shield our genetic code from damage; one of them was portrayed in Nature1 March 31 (see also analysis by Sheila David in the same issue2) in terms that should inspire awe.     […]
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Education

ID in the News
March 30, 2005
PBS aired a segment on the anti-Darwinism controversy in the schools Monday (see PBS transcript).  Ken Ham and Stephen Meyer presented arguments for criticizing Darwin, while Eugenie Scott and others defended exclusive evolutionary teaching.  The Discovery Institute blog Evolution News analyzed the 14:32 minute segment, complaining that 90 minutes of Meyer’s interview received only 30 […]
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Mammals

Migration Theory Overturned: “Mammals Went Crazy” – Or Did Darwinists?
March 29, 2005
The discovery of an elephant shrew fossil in Wyoming badlands said to be 54 million years old is causing a stir.  Elephant shrews were thought to be endemic to Africa, the alleged cradle of mammals.  This find hints not only that elephant shrews may have originated in North America instead, but also that “there may […]
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Uncategorized

“Impressive” – the Memory Capabilities of Honeybees
March 29, 2005
“Over the past decade, work on the honey bee has provided growing evidence that insects are not simple, reflexive creatures,” begins a paper in PNAS by international scientists.1  “The brains of honey bees are very small, but their ability to learn and memorize tasks is impressive.”  (Emphasis added in all quotes.)     With clever […]
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Uncategorized

Missing Link in Star Formation Found?
March 29, 2005
According to a press release from the European Space Agency, a missing link in stellar evolution has been found.  Observation: excited molecular hydrogen in two colliding galaxies.  Conclusion: a star is born: The scientists noticed that the overlapping region of the two colliding galaxies is very rich in molecular hydrogen, which is in an excited […]
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Genetics

Descendants Can Overcome Parental Mutations
March 28, 2005
Bad genes from both parents may not spell doom in all cases.  Scientists at Purdue University found that if two parents have bad mutations, the child can sometimes reconstruct the correct gene from the grandparents.  “Our genetic training tells us that’s just not possible,” said Bob Pruitt, co-researcher on the team that ran the experiment […]
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