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Mars Science Results Fleshed Out, but the Spirit Is Weak
August 6, 2004
The first detailed science results from the Mars Exploration Rover “Spirit” have been published in eleven papers in the Aug. 6 issue of Science.1  Highlights include: the Gusev Crater shows no sign of lake sedimentary deposits, but rather is composed of volcanic ash with some windblown dust.  Lacustrine (lakebed) deposits, if any, must be buried […]
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Science Journal Takes Political Sides
August 5, 2004
It might seem unusual or even improper for a science journal to encourage its readers to vote for a particular presidential candidate, especially for voters in a different country than its publishers’ domicile.  Nature Aug. 5 contained two such articles that could hardly be defended as non-partisan.  An editorial1 said in ostensibly neutral terms, “Researchers […]
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Birds

So Is Archaeopteryx a Transitional Form, Or Not?
August 5, 2004
An international team set out to determine if the skull features of Archaeopteryx, the famous fossil bird, indicated whether it was capable of flight.  The answer reported in Nature1 was affirmative: Here we show the reconstruction of the braincase from which we derived endocasts of the brain and inner ear.  These suggest that Archaeopteryx closely […]
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The Darwin Wars: New Book Reopens Old Scars
August 5, 2004
In the late 1970s, Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould reopened an episodic war between Darwinists over the question whether evolution is gradual or jerky with their theory of “punctuated equilibria.”  Even though both sides presented an evolution-as-fact face to the public, the bitterness of the attacks between the orthodox gradualists like Richard Dawkins and […]
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Book Review
August 4, 2004
In his daily Breakpoint commentary, Chuck Colson briefly reviews William Dembski’s new book Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing.  Colson was especially taken by the interchange between David Berlinski and the pro-Darwinists.  It led him to think, “Suffice it to say, after reading this chapter, and better yet this book, you’ll realize that Darwinism […]
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Uncategorized

Does Evolution Evolve?
August 4, 2004
If phrases like “the conservation of conservatism” or “the production of productivity” leave you scratching your head, you may wear off a few hairs thinking about a paper in PNAS1 on the “evolution of evolvability.”  Entitled, “Is evolvability a selectable trait?”, this paper by two scientists at Rice University considers whether the rate of change […]
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Physical Science

Editorial
August 3, 2004
Rodney Stark (Baylor University) has written an article very critical of Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley and the other early promoters of evolution, and their modern counterparts, in American Enterprise Online.  Stark claims that Darwin never proved his central thesis, the origin of species, and was well aware of the problems in his thesis even while […]
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Fossils

Worms Didn’t Evolve for 520 Million Years
August 3, 2004
J.Y. Chen and team in China have found another Cambrian fossil that exhibits zero evolution for nearly the entire history of life.  The abstract from the Royal Society Proceedings: Biological Sciences1 reports the discovery of three kinds of sipunculan worm near the base of the Cambrian, which all “have striking similarities to modern sipunculans.”  These […]
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Dumb Ideas

Fish Evolved by Sunbathing
August 3, 2004
A new slant on how the first land creatures evolved is found in New Scientist: sunbathing fish received more energy, and this made them better predators.  In all seriousness, James Randerson writes, Our distant fishy ancestors first hauled themselves on to land in order to warm up in the Sun.  So claims a team that […]
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Mammals

Hire a Gopher to Rototill Your Land
August 2, 2004
We may holler at them when they dig up our lawns and gardens, but pocket gophers are an important part of the ecosystem, say Jim Reichman and Eric Seabloom in a UC Santa Barbara press release.  They change the nutrient availability for plants, among many things: They act like little rototillers, loosening and aerating the […]
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Solar System

Our Solar System Is a Rare Gem
August 1, 2004
As if in time for the upcoming film release of The Privileged Planet (see 06/24/2004 headline), Philip Ball wrote a line for Nature Science Update that would have dismayed Carl Sagan and a host of SETI researchers: “Earth-like planets may be more rare than thought… In cosmic terms, our solar system could be special after […]
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Cell Biology

Gymnastic Enzyme Acts Like Logic Gate
July 31, 2004
An enzyme named vinculin undergoes “drastic” conformational changes, reports William A. Weis in the July 29 issue of Nature.1  Vinculin, with over a thousand amino acid links, is important at membrane junctions for transporting materials in and out of the cell.  It helps cellular “glue” exit the membrane so that neighboring cells can adhere to […]
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Uncategorized

Darwinists Still Writing the Origin of Species
July 30, 2004
A new book on the origin of species has come out.  In the July 30 issue of Science,1 Benjamin K. Blackman and Loren H. Rieseberg review Jerry Coyne and H. Allen Orr’s new book, Speciation (Sinauer, 2004, 557 pp.).  The reviewers first describe the subject matter: “The last two decades in particular have brought major […]
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Amazing Facts

Your Brain Learned Physics and Calculus Before You Did
July 29, 2004
Tilt your head to the right while moving to the left.  The neurons in your brain just solved Newton’s equations of motion, and performed complex vector calculus equations almost instantaneously.  That’s what four neurologists Washington University of Medicine (St. Louis, MO) essentially claimed in Nature July 29,1 describing how your brain interprets the information coming […]
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Astronomy

Solar Systems Defy Theories
July 29, 2004
Stuart Ross Taylor (Australian National University, Canberra) feels left behind.  The astronomers have their nice, neat H-R diagrams to explain stars, but no such diagram exists for planetary scientists.  Our hodgepodge collection of planets, moons and small bodies defies classification, to say nothing of the extrasolar planets that have been discovered so far, mostly in […]
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