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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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Mammals

Moose Muzzle: A Nose for News
April 28, 2004
Curious about the enigmatic nose structure of the moose, two researchers picked up moose roadkill and decided to study those large, comical Bullwinkle faces, reports Nature.1  Lincoln Tim writes, The moose, Alces alces, is a member of the deer family, but its nasal apparatus is unlike that of any of its relatives.  The apparatus overhangs […]
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Bible and Theology

Noah’s Ark Search Planned
April 26, 2004
MSNBC and Fox News report that a search is being planned July 15 to inspect an object that, seen from a satellite, bears some resemblance to remains of Noah’s ark high up the slopes of Mt. Ararat.  The expedition, led by Daniel McGivern, wants to get a closer look and take photographs.  National Geographic took […]
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Intelligent Design

SETI Researcher Analyzes Language Mathematically
April 26, 2004
Space.com had a story April 22 about Dr. Laurance Doyle, who studies non-human communication with information theory.  The article is mostly about his study of whale and dolphin signaling, but mentions how information theory is related to the intelligence of the communicating entities: Doyle’s team uses statistical tools from a field known as “information theory” […]
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Early Man

Another Human Distinctive: Lying
April 26, 2004
Here’s another evolutionary conundrum: animals usually don’t tell lies.  Why is lying such a well-documented human trait, but rare in the animal kingdom?  Animals signal their own and their enemies in many complex ways.  It would seem that lying would have evolved as a useful strategy many times in the animal kingdom, yet apparently it […]
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Cell Biology

Minimal Cell Modeled in Computer
April 26, 2004
“The basic design rules relating the regulation of cellular function to genomic structure is of broad interest,” begin three Cornell microbiologists writing in PNAS,1 and so they have turned their attention to the smallest theoretical living cell: A �minimal cell� is a hypothetical cell possessing the minimum functions required for sustained growth and reproduction in […]
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Politics and Ethics

Eugenics Documentary Opens at Holocaust Museum
April 22, 2004
Michael Ollove at the Baltimore Sun reports on a new exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Museum entitled Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race.  The exhibit shows a 1937 Nazi propaganda film that invokes the law of natural selection as support for weeding out the unfit.  Ollove writes, The narrator declares that “we humans have sinned […]
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Dinosaurs

Dinosaur Extinction Theory #481b
April 22, 2004
Let’s try another one.  Temperature imbalances after the asteroid impact 65 million years ago caused cooler global temperatures.  This caused more eggs to hatch male, since in reptiles, egg temperatures can influence the sex of the hatchlings.  So a shortage of females gradually led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.     Why, then, didn’t […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Can Evolution Create Homologous Structures by Different Paths?
April 22, 2004
Günter Thebien (Friedrich Schuller U, Jena, Germany) is baffled about how two plants arrived at similar structures by different evolutionary pathways. In the April 22 issue of Nature,1 he asks, Structures that occur in closely related organisms and that look the same are usually considered to be homologous – their similarity is taken to arise […]
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Amazing Facts

How Tall Can a Tree Grow?
April 22, 2004
130 meters (426 ft) seems to be the upper limit on the height of a tree, say researchers from Humboldt State, Northern Arizona University and Pepperdine University, in the April 22 issue of Nature.1  To find this out, they had to establish working stations at the tops of northern California redwoods, the tallest trees on […]
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Politics and Ethics

Does Ethics Emerge From Genes Alone?
April 21, 2004
Gene Robinson wants to get us “beyond nature and nurture” in discussions of behavior.  Robinson, of the Department of Entomology and Neuroscience at the University of Illinois in Urbana, wrote an essay in the April 16 issue of Science1 that suggests it is not “either-or” but “both-and” – both genetics and the environment affect the […]
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Amazing Facts

How Birds Calibrate Their Navigating Maps
April 17, 2004
Three researchers tracked birds in the wild and concluded that “night-flying thrushes set their course using a magnetic compass, which they calibrate to the setting sun before takeoff each evening.”  The team of three captured thrushes in Illinois and attached small radio transmitters to them, then followed their flight for up to 1100 kilometers.  By […]
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Solar System

The Spin on a New Planet
April 16, 2004
Planetary scientists are “completely baffled” by a new “mysterious” planetoid named Sedna, discovered March 15.  About 70% the diameter of Pluto, it has no moon like Pluto does, but rotates very slowly – somewhere between 20 and 50 days – which would normally imply the presence of a satellite.  Most small bodies rotate in a […]
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