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If Mars Had Water, It Wasn’t for Long
October 18, 2004
The Mars Exploration Rovers found evidence for the minerals jarosite and gypsum.  Jarosite has been found on earth in connection with lava and acidic, sulfur-rich fluids, but usually only persists in an arid environment, says a press release from Virginia Tech based on a paper in Nature last week.1  Consequently, jarosite might be an indicator […]
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Dumb Ideas

Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week
October 18, 2004
This week’s entry has a little jargon in it, but if you remember what we’ve said about the tRNA synthetase family of proteins (see 05/26/2004, 07/21/2003 and 06/09/2003 headlines), you’ll get it.  Paul Schimmel and Karla Ewalt comment in Cell1 on new discoveries by Sampath et al.2 that two of these synthetases fuse together to […]
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Health

Ghost of Hitler Still Haunts Western Medicine
October 18, 2004
“During the 1930s, the German medical establishment was admired as a world leader in innovative public health and medical research.  The question we want to examine is: ‘How could science be co-opted in such a way that doctors as healers evolved into killers and medical research became torture?’”  The question was posed by Dr. Alan […]
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Politics and Ethics

Grand Canyon Creation Book Stays on Shelves
October 14, 2004
The ruckus over a creation-oriented geology book on Grand Canyon at the Visitor Center (see 01/18/2004 headline) is back in the news.  The Environmental Media Services reports that plans for a review have been shelved by the park: Despite telling members of Congress and the public that the legality and appropriateness of the National Park […]
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Fossils

How a Darwinist Explains “Living Fossils”
October 13, 2004
Darwinism is a flexible concept that must embrace a wide variety of observations, from apparently fast-evolving plants (see 10/12/2004 item on maize) to organisms that seem to remain unevolved for eons.2  Darwin himself saw this flexibility as a strength for his unifying concept of common descent; others criticized it as rationalization (i.e., a concept that […]
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Cell Biology

News Nuggets
October 12, 2004
Here’s a collection of news items that deserve quick notice: Mars Rumbles:  Mars still has minor earthquakes, says Space.com, That’s without plate tectonics, “But scientists don’t know exactly how Mars is constructed.”  The Mars Exploration Rovers, meanwhile, awaking from a winter’s nap, are still gathering science data long past their expected lifetime.  Evidence for past […]
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Health

Another Thing to Worry About: Synthetic Biology
October 11, 2004
Philip Ball is no alarmist, but as consultant editor of Nature,1 he had sobering words last week about things that could go wrong in the new field of synthetic biology, where scientists are tinkering with cells to create artificial life forms: The expanding toolbox of ways to re-engineer microbes – and even construct new ones […]
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Human Body

Your Brain Hums While Idling
October 11, 2004
Your brain is 100% occupied when watching and concentrating on things, and still processing at 80% in the dark when idle, say researchers at University of Rochester.  Opening your eyes only adds 20% more brain activity to the 80% while in neutral.  The amount of neural processing going on in idle mode surprised the researchers.  […]
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Politics and Ethics

Do ES Stem Cells Prevent Heart Disease?
October 8, 2004
The promise of stem cells, whether embryonic or adult, is in their power to differentiate into any type of somatic cell.  Although adult stem cells have racked up an impressive number of therapeutic successes,* embryonic (ES) stem cells have only been promised to do so – until now.  In Science Oct. 8,1 Cornell scientists coaxed […]
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Origin of Life

Volcanic Gas Helps Link Up the Building Blocks of Life
October 8, 2004
A gas emitted by volcanoes, carbonyl sulfide (COS), enables amino acid molecules to form peptide bonds.  That’s what long-time origin-of-life researcher Leslie Orgel and colleagues at Scripps Institute have found.  The reaction is especially productive in the presence of metal ions that act as catalysts, and even better in the presence of oxidizing agents.  Moreover, […]
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Astronomy

Great Telescopes Converge on Kepler’s Supernova
October 8, 2004
The last supernova in our galaxy seen from earth was described October 9, 1604, by Johannes Kepler, a few years before the invention of the telescope.  Now, on the 400th anniversary of that observation, three of NASA’s “Great Observatory” orbiting telescopes – the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the infrared Spitzer Space Telescope and the Hubble Space […]
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Amazing Facts

Preventing Bird Divorce: Mates Take Different Flights, Arrive Together
October 7, 2004
A shorebird named the black-tailed godwit presents a puzzle to biologists: “arrival synchrony” (leave it to scientists to give big names to simple concepts).  The males and females of this bird mate for life, but like some humans, live apart for months at a time.  This presents two puzzles: how do they stay apart without […]
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Physical Science

How Are Radioactive Dates Determined?
October 6, 2004
To most of us, the practice of radioactive dating seems like a highly-technical, incomprehensible skill that nevertheless (we are told) yields absolute ages of things.  We don’t know exactly how they arrive at the results, but are led to trust them because very smart people get their answers using hard science with extremely accurate equipment.  […]
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Cosmology

Modern Cosmology Is Clueless, Astronomy Columnist Says
October 6, 2004
A letter to the editor in the latest (November) issue of Astronomy tipped us off to something we missed in the July issue.  The subscriber wrote, Kudos to Bob Berman for bringing up the slipperiness of modern cosmology in ‘Theory chaotic’ (July 2004).  He must be one of the first to do so.  As he […]
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Birds

Little Tyrannosaur with “Proto-Feathers” Found
October 6, 2004
National Geographic News wasted no time; a day before a report of another Chinese dinosaur with feathery-like structures was published in Nature,1 they already had color artwork on their news page, trumpeting the title, “T. Rex Cousin Had Feathers.”  Yet Nature itself seemed ho-hum about the announcement.  It was neither the cover story, nor mentioned […]
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