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Intelligent Design

10 More Questions
January 27, 2004
As a follow-up to Jonathan Wells’ popular (or notorious, depending on your point of view) 10 Questions to Ask Your Biology Teacher About Evolution, William Dembski has come up with 10 Questions to Ask Your Biology Teacher About Design.     Dembski has also recently published a new book, The Design Revolution, “Answering the Toughest […]
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Dumb Ideas

The New Phrenology Ostracizes Neanderthals
January 27, 2004
Scientists contrasted different points on Neanderthal skulls to modern human skulls, and concluded Neanderthals were a separate species.  The New York Times report by John Noble Wilford says that not all scientists are convinced, however, by the analysis published by Katerina Harvati et al. in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1 Jan. 26 […]
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Origin of Life

Early Oxygen Causes Evolutionary Gasps
January 24, 2004
The rise of oxygen in the primitive Earth’s atmosphere has been pushed back 100 million more years, according to Sid Perkins writing for the Jan. 24 issue of Science News.  This is based on studies of sediments in South Africa.  Though estimated at just a millionth of today’s concentrations, the finding comes as a surprise.  […]
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Fossils

La Brea Tar Pits Trap Scientists
January 24, 2004
Visitors to the La Brea Tar Pits are not told the whole truth about the fossils.
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Astronomy

Should Cosmologists Get Worried Yet?
January 23, 2004
The unexpected finding of mature galaxies in the early universe (see 01/02/2004) has Robert Irion worried, but he seems surprised the theorists are not.  Reporting on last week’s meeting of the American Astronomical Society in the Jan. 23 issue of Science,1 he titles his article, “Early Galaxies Baffle Observers, But Theorists Shrug.”  He begins: “It’s […]
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Education

Minnesota Debates Darwin Teaching
January 22, 2004
Minnesota is next in line in the Darwin wars.  This science framework writing committee has taken the unusual step of submitting two drafts to the legislature, a majority report with the usual Darwin-only rule, and a minority with two improvements, according to Seth Cooper of the Discovery Institute: The first benchmark improvement proposed by the […]
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Health

Sex and Gender Cannot Be Separated
January 22, 2004
A study of male children born with a rare birth defect called cloacal exstrophy demonstrates that sexual identity is biologically determined, not a result of upbringing.  The report in Science Now shows that most of the boys identified themselves as male early on, even though unaware of their condition and “raised as girls” under doctor’s […]
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Uncategorized

Mars’ Gusev Crater May Be Dry
January 22, 2004
Preliminary indications from the spectrometer on Spirit, the rover exploring Gusev Crater on Mars, may dash hopes for those looking for evidence of past water there.  According to the NASA-JPL press release, the signature of olivine has been found.  Olivine degrades in water, even at near-freezing temperatures, and it weathers easily.  It is not known […]
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Human Body

Why You Need Sleep
January 21, 2004
A study in the Jan. 22 issue of Nature1 claims that sleep gives you inspiration.  Sleep is not just a waste of a third of your day; it helps consolidate memories, and provides pivotal insights.  “Insight denotes a mental restructuring that leads to a sudden gain of explicit knowledge allowing qualitatively changed behaviour,” the five […]
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Dumb Ideas

Does Microevolution Add Up?
January 15, 2004
Do numerous small changes add up to big ones, like Darwin thought?  In the Jan. 15 issue of Nature,1 New Zealand kiwi David Penny (Allan Wilson Center for Molecular Ecology and Evolution, Massey University) is hopeful that the new chimp genome will prove it so: The fundamental issue here is Darwin’s bold claim that “numerous, […]
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Fossils

Fossil Worm: Does It Help Solve Cambrian Explosion Puzzle?
January 14, 2004
A soft embryo of a Cambrian worm, exquisitely preserved, makes Graham Budd (U. of Uppsala, Sweden) ask some hard questions about it and other recently-discovered embryo fossils in the Jan. 15 issue of Nature:1 These fossils raise several questions, to say the least.  First, how could they possibly be preserved?  Second, why are they concentrated […]
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Uncategorized

Centromere Shows More Gems in “Junk DNA”
January 12, 2004
A biochemist at University of Wisconsin-Madison and a colleague sequenced a hard-to-sequence part of the rice genome, the centromere, and found four genes in it.  Previously, it was thought to be a vast wasteland of repetitive, non-coding DNA.  The scientist, Jiming Jiang, thinks his work provides a “window to evolution” of the centromere, according to […]
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Dumb Ideas

Your Bacteria Ancestors
January 12, 2004
Dr. Peter Antonelli thinks he has mathematically proven that all multicellular organisms, including plants and animals and human beings, came from two ancient bacteria that met and formed a stable, consistent relationship.  His boast is explained on a University of Alberta press release.  He thinks most biologists don’t comprehend his mathematical models yet, but EurekAlert […]
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Uncategorized

How Enzymes Work – But Don’t Ask Where They Came From: Just Believe
January 12, 2004
Enzymes are protein machines in the cell that speed up reactions that normally would proceed very slowly or not at all.  Four biochemists publishing in the Jan. 9 issue of Science1 describe the exquisite power of these biological catalysts: “Enzyme catalysis, which can produce rate accelerations as large as a factor of 1019, involves molecular […]
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Dumb Ideas

Did Borax Evolve Into 20-Mule Teams?
January 9, 2004
You’re dating yourself if you remember the old TV western Death Valley Days, and its commercials about 20-Mule Team Borax.  (Mule teams actually did pull loads of borax from Death Valley to Mojave, quite a feat in those days, but that’s another story.)  In modern times, though, borax has made science news as a possible […]
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