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Dumb Ideas

Name-Calling at the Human Evolution Meeting
September 23, 2004
As predicted earlier this month (see 09/03/2004 commentary), Lucy’s lovers were not going to take her demotion lying down.  Proponents of Orrorin claim their 6 million year old rival walked upright millions of years before the 2-4 million year old australopithecines, and even had a gait more human-like than Lucy.  To Ann Gibbons, reporting in […]
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Dumb Ideas

Can Naturalism Design Anything?
September 22, 2004
Philip Ball in the Sept. 23 issue of Nature1 gave a title to a news feature that might catch a reader off guard and think he is allowing the Intelligent Design Movement to have a voice in a scientific debate: “Enzymes: By chance, or by design?”  Upon further reading, however, it is clear the debate […]
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Cell Biology

Cell Exhibits Robust Engineering Design
September 22, 2004
Cells are so good at robustness against perturbations and uncertainty, engineers could well learn from their design principles.
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Dumb Ideas

Scientists Try to Read Neandertal Minds
September 21, 2004
If dead men tell no tales, living ones certainly do.  Most of us have trouble reading one another’s minds when staring face to face, but some paleoanthropologists, with nothing but skeletons and a few stone tools and burial sites to look at, have no hesitation in reading the Neandertal mind.  Bruce Bower writes in Science […]
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Amazing Facts

Introducing: The Spinach Cell Phone
September 21, 2004
The next spinach sandwich you hear about may not be an item at the health food bar but an electronic device powered by the sun.  According to an MIT press release, chloroplasts from spinach leaves have been successfully sandwiched into a solid-state electronic photocell that could be used before long to power cell phones and […]
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Amazing Facts

Termites: If You Can’t Lick ’Em, Mimic ’Em
September 21, 2004
Termites, despite their bad rap, have something to teach human homebuilders.  Their mounds are self-sufficient, air-conditioned, environmentally friendly and cheap to run, according to a story in EurekAlert.  “The mounds incorporate a complicated network of tunnels and air conduits designed to channel air flow for the control of internal air quality, temperature and moisture levels.” […]
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Amazing Facts

Secrets of the Spliceosome Revealed
September 17, 2004
A husband and wife team from Hebrew University has revealed the structure of the spliceosome, one of the most complex molecular machines in the cell (see 09/12/2002 headline), in more detail than ever before, says EurekAlert.  The spliceosome is responsible for cutting out the introns in messenger RNA after it has transcribed DNA, and also […]
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Amazing Facts

Plants Use Quantum Mechanics to Harvest Light
September 16, 2004
In a News and Views item in Nature Sept. 16,1 Graham R. Fleming (UC Berkeley) and Gregory R. Scholes (U Toronto) explain how the light-harvesting centers of plant photosynthetic organs take advantage of quantum mechanics to focus energy on their reaction centers.  Their illustration shows a chromophore diagram from a photosynthetic bacterium.  Understanding energy transfer […]
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Amazing Facts

Peering Into Paley’s Black Box: The Gears of the Biological Clock
September 15, 2004
William Paley’s famous “watchmaker argument” for the existence of a Designer, though intuitively logical to many, has been criticized by naturalists on the grounds that one cannot compare mechanical devices to biological ones.  Biological “contrivances” might operate on totally different principles than mechanical ones made by humans we know.     Michael Behe’s 1996 book […]
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Amazing Facts

Take Out the Garbage?  No– Feed the Worms
September 14, 2004
Every kitchen needs one, says National Geographic News: a popular new device that turns garbage into fertilizer.  What is it?  A new high-tech electronic machine?  No, something more ancient: a worm bin.  Modern homes are finding old benefits in vermiculture, the art of composting garbage into plant food via worms and bacteria.  A small bin […]
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Amazing Facts

Submarine Engineers Admire Penguins
September 10, 2004
An ocean engineer from MIT, Franz Hover, says “we never miss marveling at them,” speaking of penguins.  In the cover story of Science News,1 the submarine designer elaborates: Under the power and guidance of its versatile flippers, a penguin can move through the water faster than 10 miles per hour, turn almost instantaneously, and leap […]
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Birds

Cooing Doves Set Muscle Speed Record
September 8, 2004
The dove: a symbol of peace, innocence, love, and gentleness, right? Its cooing call is a soothing song to nature lovers. Yet hidden in the throat of the dove is one of the fastest-acting muscles in the animal kingdom, report Elemans et al. in the Sept. 9 issue of Nature.1 The cooing song contains a […]
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Amazing Facts

Archer Fish Learns the Laws of Optics
September 7, 2004
Imagine you’re a kid in a swimming pool, underwater with a squirt gun.  Lurking under the surface, you detect the wavy, distorted image of your big brother standing on the deck.  You sneak up, fire from below– and miss, because you didn’t know how to correct for refraction and distance through the air-water interface.  There’s […]
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Origin of Life

Pop Goes the Fatbubble Theory for the Origin of Life
September 3, 2004
This weird theory pops faster than the bubbles it describes as our ancestors.
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Amazing Facts

Researchers Record the Hum of Cellular Motors at Work
August 25, 2004
Researchers from UCLA placed a probe on a yeast cell and found that it vibrated at 1.6 kHz.  Further tests showed the vibration responded to temperature and to metabolic agents.  They think they have discovered the hum of cellular motors at work, reports Science News.1  “By the UCLA team’s calculations,“ writes Alexandra Goho, “molecular-motor proteins […]
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