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Some Exoplanets May Be Exostars
January 20, 2002
A brown dwarf was measured with more precision, and was found to be more massive than expected.  Robert Roy Britt in Space.com says this may call into question some of the discoveries of bodies orbiting other stars that were assumed to be planets.  I. Neill Reid,1 writing in Nature where the measurement was announced,2 explained […]
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Dumb Ideas

Monkey See, Monkey No Comprendo
January 20, 2002
In 19th century mythology, a million monkeys might type the works of Shakespeare by chance, given millions of years.  But monkeys would make lousy computer programmers, because they cannot understand the “if-then” construction.  Comparison studies on humans and monkeys showed that while the monkeys could be trained to recognize when one word is followed by […]
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Amazing Facts

How and Why Whiskers Whisk
January 20, 2002
Scientists at Weizmann Institute found some interesting things about whiskers, reports EurekAlert.  While working with rats, they noticed that the whiskers are always in motion, twitching and sensing objects around them.  They discovered that two kinds of neurons are involved in sending whisker signals to the brain.  The “whisking” neurons are active all the time, […]
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Amazing Facts

Live at the Improv: DNA Polymerase
January 20, 2002
When a DNA reader hits an unfamiliar line, it improvises, reports EurekAlert: Prof. Zvi Livneh and Ph.D. student Ayelet Maor-Shoshani of the Biological Chemistry Department cut a DNA strand — from the bacterium E. coli — and inserted material similar to that which composes crude oil in between both its ends.  As expected, the regular […]
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Cosmology

Is Dark Matter Going Out of Style?
January 20, 2002
Dark matter has been a staple in cosmological theories for decades.  One of the initial reasons was that galaxy rotation curves could not be explained without it.  Another was that galaxy clusters, to be held together over long ages, needed more “stuff” to bind them.  Finally, Big Bang cosmologists invoke copious amounts of dark matter […]
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Fossils

Fish Gill Evolves toward Tetrapod Ear?
January 20, 2002
“This is another nail in the coffin of the creationist view, in my opinion,” said the curator of Chicago’s Field Museum about a paper published in Nature,1 reported the Washington Post yesterday (see MSNBC News).  Brazeau and Ahlberg of Uppsala University in Sweden examined the skull of Panderichthys, a Devonian lobe-finned fish, and found what […]
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Politics and Ethics

Scientists Yank Obama’s Chain
January 20, 2002
51; As President Obama takes office today, having said he will restore science to its rightful place, he will have the scientific community anxious to get their agenda on his table.  Nature News said, “Scientific groups are actively pushing their argument that modernizing the nation’s scientific infrastructure could help create the skilled workforce needed to […]
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Politics and Ethics

The Evolution of Morality
January 20, 2002
Can morality evolve in Darwin’s universe?  Steven Pinker, evolutionary psychologist at Harvard, is just the man to ask.  He wrote an 8-page article for the New York Times about it, facing the issues with frankness and forthrightness.     To Pinker, as with other evolutionary psychologists, the “moral” behind morality is an evolutionary artifact of […]
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Uncategorized

Who Laid a Fossil Egg?
January 20, 2002
51; The news media are all excited that a pterosaur fossil has been found with an egg – a very rare association.  To the media, like the BBC News, this can only mean one thing: the pterosaur was a female, and now they can differentiate female and male pterosaur fossils.  They affectionately named the fossil, […]
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Astronomy

Reality or Hubris in Scientific Claims?
January 20, 2002
51; The amount of trust the public puts in scientific claims stems partly from their incomprehensibility.  The claims presented in scientific papers are often so dense and abstruse as to be unapproachable by all but specialists.  Undoubtedly many people trust scientists because of their specialized education, their knowledge of mathematics, their special equipment, and their […]
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