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Health

Bless Your Heart: Exercise for Senior Vitality
September 14, 2004
A study from UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas confirms what we all should know but need to be reminded of frequently: that prolonged, sustained exercise can build up the heart at any age, and provide insurance against heart failure.  The summary on EurekAlert warns, “a sedentary lifestyle, in addition to aging, puts older people […]
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Amazing Facts

Take Out the Garbage?  No– Feed the Worms
September 14, 2004
Every kitchen needs one, says National Geographic News: a popular new device that turns garbage into fertilizer.  What is it?  A new high-tech electronic machine?  No, something more ancient: a worm bin.  Modern homes are finding old benefits in vermiculture, the art of composting garbage into plant food via worms and bacteria.  A small bin […]
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Terrestrial Zoology

Salamander Genes Give Darwinists a Wake-Up Call
September 13, 2004
A press release from UC Berkeley says that the evolutionary family tree of salamanders, once thought secure, has been turned topsy-turvy by a study of the genes.  The opening paragraph is reminiscent of an irritating alarm clock going off in a comfy bedroom: Biologists take for granted that the limbs and branches of the tree […]
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Education

Recounting the Risks of Critiquing Darwinism
September 12, 2004
Lynn Vincent has an article in World Magazine This Week recounting the tribulations suffered by Roger DeHart when he tried to include material critical of Darwinism in his high school biology classroom in Burlington, Washington.  (His story is featured in the film Icons of Evolution.)  It tells how the NCSE pressured two schools to forbid […]
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Cell Biology

Is the Evolution of Bacterial Resistance a Just-So Story?
September 12, 2004
Evolutionists frequently point to the emergence of bacterial resistance to antibiotics as an example of Darwinian evolution occurring right under our noses.  Bruce R. Levin of Emory University, writing in the Sept. 10 issue of Science,1 is not so sure about that.  He points out that cells might just have a built-in mechanism to shut […]
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Solar System

Solar Particles Survive Genesis Crash
September 10, 2004
Scientists are relieved that they have been able to recover enough pieces from the crashed Genesis spacecraft to pursue the science objectives.  JPL Director Charles Elachi said they have snatched victory from the jaws of defeat and are bouncing back from a hard landing.  The highest-priority science goals may still be attainable, at least partially, […]
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Amazing Facts

Submarine Engineers Admire Penguins
September 10, 2004
An ocean engineer from MIT, Franz Hover, says “we never miss marveling at them,” speaking of penguins.  In the cover story of Science News,1 the submarine designer elaborates: Under the power and guidance of its versatile flippers, a penguin can move through the water faster than 10 miles per hour, turn almost instantaneously, and leap […]
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Uncategorized

Darwin’s Tree of Life Uprooted; Ring of Life Planted in its Place
September 9, 2004
Perhaps no icon of evolution has been more pervasive than Darwin’s “tree of life” (see 06/13/2003 headline).  A drawing of a branching tree was the only illustration in Darwin’s Origin of Species.  145 years later, scientists are saying the metaphor of a tree is wrong; it should be a ring, at least in the family […]
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Dinosaurs

Inferring Dinosaur Family Life from Bones
September 8, 2004
Observation: a jumble of dinosaur bones in China.  Conclusion: some dinosaurs showed tender loving care to their young.  This is the gist of a paper in Nature this week (Sept. 9),1 reported also on Nature Science Update.     Discerning behavior from bones is an art, but these bones of 34 psittacosaurs from Liaoning, China […]
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Fossils

Classifying Eukaryotes Easier than Evolving Them
September 8, 2004
If you like stories with surprise endings, check out an otherwise boring paper by two Canadian evolutionary biologists, Alistair G. B. Simpson and Andrew A. Roger, in the Sept. 7 issue of Current Biology.1  Their subject is the real “kingdoms” of eukaryotes (that’s all creatures with nuclei, including plants, animals, and a host of single-celled […]
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Birds

Cooing Doves Set Muscle Speed Record
September 8, 2004
The dove: a symbol of peace, innocence, love, and gentleness, right? Its cooing call is a soothing song to nature lovers. Yet hidden in the throat of the dove is one of the fastest-acting muscles in the animal kingdom, report Elemans et al. in the Sept. 9 issue of Nature.1 The cooing song contains a […]
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Intelligent Design

Nature Says ID Paper Scored a Publishing Success
September 8, 2004
A news story in the Sept. 9 issue of Nature1 says, “A new front has opened up in the battle between scientists and advocates of intelligent design, a theory that rejects evolution and is regarded by its critics as another term for creationism.”  Reporter Jim Giles says the paper by Stephen Meyer of the Discovery […]
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Uncategorized

North Pole Enjoyed Balmy Climate
September 8, 2004
In ages past, the North Pole region enjoyed a Mediterranean climate, according to Nature Science Update and the BBC News.  EurekAlert reminds us that ice cores demonstrate that Greenland, too, had one or more periods of warm weather suitable for lush plant growth (see 08/16/2004 headline).  Climate swings were abrupt enough to occur within a […]
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Amazing Facts

Archer Fish Learns the Laws of Optics
September 7, 2004
Imagine you’re a kid in a swimming pool, underwater with a squirt gun.  Lurking under the surface, you detect the wavy, distorted image of your big brother standing on the deck.  You sneak up, fire from below– and miss, because you didn’t know how to correct for refraction and distance through the air-water interface.  There’s […]
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Human Body

Natural Selection Demonstrated in European Heart-Disease Gene?
September 7, 2004
Stephen Wooding (U. of Utah) is elated.  He sees an “exciting trend” in genetic research that might, finally, demonstrate positive natural selection acting on a gene with a clear phenotypic effect (measurable outward benefit).  Writing in the Sept. 7 Current Biology,1 he mentions a few recent papers suggesting this connection, but focuses particularly on one […]
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