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Amazing Facts

Thanks to Clam Design, Stronger Materials Are Coming
December 6, 2008
Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs have produced a lightweight composite material 300 times stronger than its constituents.  How?  By taking inspiration from clams.     The team, writing in Science,1 described nacre, the shiny mother-of-pearl found inside clam shells.  Because of the way it sandwiches crystalline aragonite with layers of protein (07/26/2004), nacre resists […]
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Amazing Facts

That Spring in Your Step Is Semi-Automatic
December 2, 2008
Cross-country runners know the challenge of running on uneven terrain.  What they may not know is that they are executing one of the most difficult operations for robot designers: how to make an upright, walking machine make rapid decisions on irregular surfaces without falling.     Monica Daley of the Royal Veterinary College wrote about […]
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Amazing Facts

Go to the Ant, Thou Farmer
November 30, 2008
We humans boast too much.  Agribusiness?  Ants have it down to a science.  “One of the most important developments in human civilisation was the practice of sustainable agriculture,” stated Science Daily.  “But we were not the first – ants have been doing it for over 50 million years.  Just as farming helped humans become a […]
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Dumb Ideas

How Floppy Feet Produced Marathoners
November 26, 2008
A picture of a muscle-bound furry gibbon adorns a story on Science Daily that claims, “Floppy-footed Gibbons Help Us Understand How Early Humans May Have Walked.”  The story describes how two European researchers photographed the footwork of wild gibbons to find connections to human evolution.  It turned out that gibbon footfalls are very different from […]
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Dumb Ideas

Selfishness and Responsibility Are Just a Game
November 22, 2008
It’s become increasingly common for evolutionists to explain human behavior in terms of games.  Another entry in this genre was published by Science Daily, which began, “‘Game theory’ is used to predict the behaviour of individuals when making choices that depend on the choices of others.  First developed as a tool for understanding economic behaviour, […]
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Amazing Facts

Proteins Can Tie Knots
November 18, 2008
Your job today is to invent a chain that can tie itself in a knot.  The chain can contain little magnets and electrical parts, but when you let go of the ends, a knot will spontaneously form.  This means that one end must form a loop and the other end must thread the loop.  Give […]
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Amazing Facts

Cell Chaperone Is an Optimized Two-Stroke Machine
November 15, 2008
Proteins need a protected space to fold, and the cell provides it: the GroEL-GroES chaperone (see 05/05/2003, 06/07/2006, and 02/13/2007).  More details keep coming in about this “protein dressing room” as scientists continue to probe its secrets.  Two new papers in PNAS by a team at University of Maryland and College Park reveal that this […]
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Dumb Ideas

Poison Planet Was Life’s Training Ground
November 14, 2008
Navy Seals go through “Hell Week” in their training to become warriors.  The radical hardships they endure help prepare them for missions that will call on their deepest resources of courage and determination.  These men of the elite special forces also become experts in dealing with explosives.  Can molecules do the same, with a little […]
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Birds

Lizard Hair and Other Fables
November 12, 2008
In some science reports, it’s hard to tell where the data stops and the speculation begins.  In any case, evolutionary theory usually arrives in time to take credit for whatever happened in the unobservable past (cf. 08/24/2007). Bad hair joke:  Live Science wants you to blame your bad hair days on lizards.  Why?  Because according […]
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Amazing Facts

Scientists Marvel at Enzyme Efficiency
November 11, 2008
Many chemical reactions occur from simple collisions.  One atom may have spare electrons, another may need them.  Attracted by each other’s valences, the atoms collide and bonds form.  Not so with biological enzymes: these molecular machines owe their efficiency to their three-dimensional shapes.  Made up of hundreds of amino acids, enzymes have “active sites” where […]
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Dumb Ideas

Evolution in Person
November 10, 2008
For a blind watchmaker, Evolution is quite the seer.  Science articles often personify Evolution into a wizard and worker of miracles.  This is odd, considering that evolution is supposed to be an aimless, purposeless process of chance and necessity with no goals in mind. Evolution, the Learner:  Evolution learns from past environments, we are told […]
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Dumb Ideas

Proving the Obvious
November 8, 2008
The well-known IgNobel Prizes are awarded each year for silly, useless research projects (see Improbable Research).  There seem to be a lot of contenders that may never win the prize, but get reported anyway.  One can only wonder why the reporters aren’t putting these on the funny pages: Well duh:  Science Daily reported that serial […]
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Dumb Ideas

Serving Up Life on the Rocks with a Twist
November 6, 2008
We’ve heard theories life arose in a primeval soup, around hot deep-sea vents, around volcanoes and other hot spots; why would anyone consider the origin of life in ice?  A scientist in Spain has suggested life may have started in ice.  The title to the Science Daily write-up finds this to be the ultimate divination: […]
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Dumb Ideas

Darwin’s Prognosticators
November 4, 2008
Scientists at Rockefeller University think they can one-up Darwin.  According to Science Daily, they think they can predict evolution’s next best move.  Evolution is supposed to be aimless, so it is not clear how they think they can predict chance or decide what is best.  The dubious nature of their quest, however, is only exceeded […]
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Amazing Facts

Solar System Surprises
November 2, 2008
In the last few days and weeks, more amazing discoveries were made about bodies in the solar system. Mercury:  Results from the second flyby of Mercury on Oct. 6 by MESSENGER were announced Oct 29.  This pass covered more “hidden” territory that had never been seen before, bringing the coverage to 95%.  According to Space.com […]
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