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Electricity Forms Your Heart

July 31, 2010

Did you know your heart is an electrical appliance? That’s right. Currents of electrical ions are vital to its function as a contractile organ. Now, researchers at the University of California have found another thing electricity does for your heart: it guides the developing heart into the proper shape. This is a key study showing […]

Darwin and Evolution

Evolution of Segmentation Leads to Playing God

July 28, 2010

Most animals come in segments – body plans that are divided into more-or-less similar parts. Arthropods, worms and vertebrates are examples (including humans, with their vertebral segments and rough division into head, thorax and abdomen). Where did the idea of segmentation come from? Some French evolutionists think it just appeared by chance and changed the […]

Darwin and Evolution

Recapitulation Theory Gets Recap

July 26, 2010

The long-discounted “recapitulation theory” of Ernst Haeckel, the idea that the development of an embryo replays its evolutionary history, pops up every once in awhile in evolutionary explanations. Evolutionary biologists (most notably the late Stephen Jay Gould) have long since disparaged the idea that evolutionary history would be preserved in embryos. In addition, photos of […]

Amazing Facts

Tiny Life in Extraordinary Motion

July 22, 2010

Don’t despise small things. Miniature plants and animals can pack some amazing punch and technology, as shown in two recent findings. Plant explosion: Peat moss. That’s the filler in our indoor plant soil and Live Science reported that its pots shoot its spores out at 89 miles per hour, producing accelerations of 36,000 G’s. Some […]

Cell Biology

Darwinists Get Sexy

July 13, 2010

The origin of sex titillates many evolutionary biologists. On the one hand, animals and plants have such interesting ways of getting together. But on the other hand, sex seems too costly to have originated by natural selection. Some recent articles provide new evolutionary speculations on the origin of sex – but simultaneously undermine previous speculations. […]

Amazing Facts

More to a Fly than Meets the Eye

July 12, 2010

Flies and spiders, members of the arthropod phylum, may seem small and “less evolved” than the larger members of the animal kingdom. One shouldn’t let size alone be the measure of ability. Fly supercomputer: Did you ever think of the brain of a fly as a high-speed computer? That’s what PhysOrg called it: “the minute […]

Cell Biology

Bacteria Too Complex To Be Primitive Eukaryote Ancestors

July 12, 2010

In the search for the most primitive life forms on earth, bacteria would certainly make the list. They are tiny, one-celled, and have small genomes. Why, then, did Patrick Forterre and Simonetta Gribaldo of the Pasteur Institute say in PNAS,1 “we should definitely stop thinking of bacteria in terms of simple ‘lower’ organisms”? For the […]

Amazing Facts

Proteins Fold Who Knows How

July 9, 2010

One of the biggest mysteries remaining in cell biology is how proteins fold. Proteins start out as chains of amino acids (polypeptides) as they exit the ribosome. Most of them spontaneously fold into their “native” three-dimensional structures, where they will go to work as enzymes, structural materials or other key players in cell life. About […]

Amazing Facts

Your Inner Locomotive Revealed

July 6, 2010

Visualize an old locomotive train roaring down the tracks. One of the characteristic images that surely comes to mind is the oscillating motion of the coupling rods on the wheels. The long rods that connected the wheels provided a way to convert heat energy from the steam into mechanical energy (example video on YouTube). It […]

Birds

Humans Got Birdbrains by Convergent Evolution

July 2, 2010

Scientists are learning that birds have brains remarkably similar to those of mammals. This is contrary to a century of belief, PhysOrg said. How did such similarities evolve for groups of animals so widely separated? To explain it, evolutionists pulled out one of their common explanations: convergent evolution. “For more than a century,” […]

Amazing Facts

Farm Algae for Energy

June 29, 2010

June 29, 2010 — Why manufacture fuels when microbes can do it faster, better and cheaper? Researchers at the University of Cambridge are wiring electrodes to algae to produce “green energy” – solar-powered fuel that is carbon-neutral, “cheaper to produce, self-repairing, self-replicating, biodegradable and much more sustainable – real green energy.” The team […]

Astronomy

Using Aliens to Titillate the Public

June 28, 2010

Geologists cannot even figure out our own planet (next headline), but some of them claim to know a lot about other planets – their geological history, and even their prospects for life. Is it fair to tease the public with the L-word life when so much remains to be understood on the ground under our […]

Darwin and Evolution

Fish Feet: Can Evolution Add by Subtraction?

June 26, 2010

How did fish grow feet? One would think that feet require adding a lot of new parts: bones, muscles, nerves, blood vessels, and additional supporting tissues. Each of those would require genetic instructions and changes to embryonic development. One evolutionist, however, feels that switching genes off paved the way to the invasion of land. The […]

Amazing Facts

The RNA Code: Pseudogenes Functional, Help Prevent Cancer

June 24, 2010

A surprising function has been discovered for a “pseudogene” – an apparently mutated copy of a regular gene that till recently was thought to be genetic junk. This pseudogene, reported in Nature today,1 not only has a function unrelated to the production of proteins, but a function that could save your life. It is part […]

Darwin and Evolution

Can the Earth Thwart Darwinism?

June 23, 2010

Microbes were all set to evolve into complex life, but the ocean held them back. That seems to be the thinking of Dr. Simon Poulton of Newcastle University. “Toxic seas may have been responsible for delaying the evolution of life on Earth by 1 billion years,” PhysOrg reported. That seems to imply that it would […]

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