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Amazing Facts

Fish Antifreeze Provided by “Pseudogene”
May 13, 2004
Freezing water forms crystals that can rip and tear at cells.  Yet there are fish in arctic waters that can survive even below the freezing point of sea water.  They accomplish this by means of special “antifreeze proteins” that interfere with the damaging effects of water crystals.     Scientists knew about AFP (anti-freeze protein) […]
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Amazing Facts

Whale Flippers Inspire Aeronautical Engineers
May 11, 2004
Have you seen the bumpy flippers on humpback whales, you know, the species whose males serenade their mates?  Don’t laugh.  Scientists have found that the ungainly flippers actually have superior lift, less drag, and are less susceptible to stalling.  Engineers are imitating the whale flippers for advanced aircraft and helicopter rotors, reports EurekAlert from studies […]
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Amazing Facts

Virus: Like DNA in a Hard Plastic Shell
May 7, 2004
A European team of biophysicists studied the mechanical properties of a virus and found the shell, made of protein, to act like hard plastic.  Writing in PNAS,1 they described the coat of a bacteriophage they studied: The protective proteinaceous shells (capsids) of viruses are striking examples of biological materials engineering.  These highly regular, self-assembled, nanometer-sized […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Homology for Dummies
May 5, 2004
Current Biology likes to give its readers primers on various concepts. The topic in the May 4 issue is homology.1 Caleb Webber and Chris P. Ponting explain this important evolutionary term for the rest of us. The Q&A format also introduces homology’s siblings: analogy, orthology, paralogy, xenology, and synteny. Some readers may not realize that […]
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Amazing Facts

Fish See With Electric Eyes
May 5, 2004
Biologists knew that some electric fish shock their prey and others with weak electricity can navigate with it, but they didn’t know till recently just how much information these fish can detect with their unique sense.  French and British scientists ran some experimental tests on weakly electric fish, the African elephantnose fish Gnathonemus petersii, which […]
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Solar System

Io, Io, It’s Off to Work We Go
May 4, 2004
The innermost large moon of Jupiter, Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. About the size of our moon but no more than a speck of light in small telescopes, Io caused a sensation when Galileo first glimpsed it and the other three major satellites of Jupiter in 1610. Back then, […]
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Bible and Theology

How Climate Influenced the Dead Sea and History
May 3, 2004
The Bible and science converge at one of the most remarkable lakes on Earth.
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Dumb Ideas

Neanderthals Matured Faster
April 29, 2004
The news media are all echoing a story out of Nature April 291 that Neanderthals matured by age 15, as indicated by their teeth.  A News and Views article in the same issue by Jay Kelley2 begins, It is nearly 150 years since the existence of Neanderthals was first recognized, but debate about their relationship […]
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Amazing Facts

How Tall Can a Tree Grow?
April 22, 2004
130 meters (426 ft) seems to be the upper limit on the height of a tree, say researchers from Humboldt State, Northern Arizona University and Pepperdine University, in the April 22 issue of Nature.1  To find this out, they had to establish working stations at the tops of northern California redwoods, the tallest trees on […]
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Dinosaurs

Dinosaur Extinction Theory #481b
April 22, 2004
Let’s try another one.  Temperature imbalances after the asteroid impact 65 million years ago caused cooler global temperatures.  This caused more eggs to hatch male, since in reptiles, egg temperatures can influence the sex of the hatchlings.  So a shortage of females gradually led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.     Why, then, didn’t […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Can Evolution Create Homologous Structures by Different Paths?
April 22, 2004
Günter Thebien (Friedrich Schuller U, Jena, Germany) is baffled about how two plants arrived at similar structures by different evolutionary pathways. In the April 22 issue of Nature,1 he asks, Structures that occur in closely related organisms and that look the same are usually considered to be homologous – their similarity is taken to arise […]
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Amazing Facts

How Birds Calibrate Their Navigating Maps
April 17, 2004
Three researchers tracked birds in the wild and concluded that “night-flying thrushes set their course using a magnetic compass, which they calibrate to the setting sun before takeoff each evening.”  The team of three captured thrushes in Illinois and attached small radio transmitters to them, then followed their flight for up to 1100 kilometers.  By […]
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Dumb Ideas

Fish Gene Gives Darwinists Hope
April 15, 2004
It doesn’t take much to excite an evolutionary biologist.  A little bit of microevolution that might be a stepping stone to macroevolution is all it takes.  This story almost reads like a Good News – Bad News joke.  The good news is that one gene that regulates the spines on one kind of fish has […]
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Dumb Ideas

Federal Judge Rules Evolution Must Be Taught As Fact, Not Theory
April 9, 2004
It sounds like open-mindedness is illegal in Georgia, on the face of it.  Federal judge Clarence Cooper is allowing a lawsuit against the Cobb County school district to go to trial.  Their crime has been to insert warning labels in biology textbooks that state, simply, This textbook contains material on evolution.  Evolution is a theory, […]
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Dumb Ideas

Science Reporters Stretch the Truth on Limb Evolution Claim
April 5, 2004
Item: some fragments of bone were found from a road cut in Pennsylvania.  Conclusion: Darwinian evolution from slime to humans has been demonstrated again.  Sound far fetched?  Not if you are a science reporter for a typical news organization; this is common practice.     The bone this time is a humerus of a presumed […]
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