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Amazing Facts

Virus: Like DNA in a Hard Plastic Shell
May 7, 2004
A European team of biophysicists studied the mechanical properties of a virus and found the shell, made of protein, to act like hard plastic.  Writing in PNAS,1 they described the coat of a bacteriophage they studied: The protective proteinaceous shells (capsids) of viruses are striking examples of biological materials engineering.  These highly regular, self-assembled, nanometer-sized […]
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Astronomy

Hot Jupiter!  Exoplanets Found Very Close to Stars
May 7, 2004
Two examples of Jupiter-size planets have been found by the European Southern Observatory.  They are so close to their parent stars, they orbit in less than two earth-days each.  Mercury would be 17 times farther out than one of them.  They belong to a new class of exoplanets scientists are terming “hot Jupiters.” A few […]
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Birds

Fossil Hummingbird, Arthropod Look Modern
May 7, 2004
Science announced that a rare hummingbird fossil has been found in Germany and, though assumed to be 30 million years old, is indistinguishable from living New-World hummingbirds.  This upsets the standard theory that hummingbirds evolved in the New World only.  Writing in the May 7 issue,1 discoverer Gerald Mayr said, I report on tiny skeletons […]
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Intelligent Design

Science Bashes I.D.
May 7, 2004
The Intelligent Design movement took another lashing by the journal Science,1 in the form of three book reviews by Steve Olson, a Washington DC area science writer.  Olsen reviewed one pro-ID book, Darwin, Design and Public Education by John Angus Campbell and Stephen C. Meyer, and two anti-ID books, God, the Devil and Darwin by […]
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Dinosaurs

Feathered Dinosaur Exhibit Raises Doubts
May 6, 2004
Can you trust those fossils on display in your local museum, the ones showing “Feathered Dinosaurs and the Origin of Flight”?  No less than the respected journal Nature1 is concerned they may have been gathered and sold illegally, and are no more trustworthy than the 1999 Archaeoraptor hoax that embarrassed National Geographic magazine.     […]
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Amazing Facts

Fish See With Electric Eyes
May 5, 2004
Biologists knew that some electric fish shock their prey and others with weak electricity can navigate with it, but they didn’t know till recently just how much information these fish can detect with their unique sense.  French and British scientists ran some experimental tests on weakly electric fish, the African elephantnose fish Gnathonemus petersii, which […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Homology for Dummies
May 5, 2004
Current Biology likes to give its readers primers on various concepts. The topic in the May 4 issue is homology.1 Caleb Webber and Chris P. Ponting explain this important evolutionary term for the rest of us. The Q&A format also introduces homology’s siblings: analogy, orthology, paralogy, xenology, and synteny. Some readers may not realize that […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Origin-of-Life Researcher Leslie Orgel Interviewed
May 5, 2004
The May 4 issue of Current Biology1 contains an interview with organic chemist Leslie Orgel of the Salk Institute, who in 1974 published the book The Origin of Life on Earth with Stanley Miller of spark-discharge fame (see 05/02/2003 and 10/31/2002 headlines).  He considers his biggest mistake not thinking of the RNA World scenario first […]
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Solar System

Io, Io, It’s Off to Work We Go
May 4, 2004
The innermost large moon of Jupiter, Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. About the size of our moon but no more than a speck of light in small telescopes, Io caused a sensation when Galileo first glimpsed it and the other three major satellites of Jupiter in 1610. Back then, […]
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Bible and Theology

How Climate Influenced the Dead Sea and History
May 3, 2004
The Bible and science converge at one of the most remarkable lakes on Earth.
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Uncategorized

Tufa Mounds Formed “Instantaneously,” Geologically Speaking
May 1, 2004
Tufa towers have been found forming in Big Soda Lake, Nevada, at the rate of 30mm/year.  Now more than 3 meters tall, that means they could have reached their current height in only 100 years.  Rosen et al., who reported this in the May issue of Geology,1 warn that “care should be taken when trying […]
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Astronomy

Lutherans Helped Copernicus
April 30, 2004
Every once in awhile, we are confronted to reconsider things we “know” are true, only to find out the truth is closer to the opposite. The usual spin on Nicolaus Copernicus is that he was a brave scientist who threatened the church with his discovery that the earth orbits the sun, not the sun the […]
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Dumb Ideas

Neanderthals Matured Faster
April 29, 2004
The news media are all echoing a story out of Nature April 291 that Neanderthals matured by age 15, as indicated by their teeth.  A News and Views article in the same issue by Jay Kelley2 begins, It is nearly 150 years since the existence of Neanderthals was first recognized, but debate about their relationship […]
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Education

Italy Waffles on School Darwinism
April 29, 2004
It’s not just an American thing; the politicians and scientists in Italy, also, are polarizing around Darwin.  The education ministry just dropped a requirement to teach evolution in elementary and middle schools as part of a major overhaul of education guidelines.  A news brief in the April 28 issue of Science1 claims that pressure “may” […]
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Uncategorized

Darwin Not Given Enough Credit for Animal Engineering
April 28, 2004
Daniel E. Lieberman (Harvard) was impressed with Steven Vogel’s new book, Comparative Biomechanics: Life’s Physical World (Princeton, 2003), which he reviewed in Nature.1  He considers it a much-needed general textbook on biomechanics, the study of ways living things solve physical problems.  For instance, animals and plants need to generate forces to either move or stay […]
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