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Darwin and Evolution

Science Sites Stretch Truth About “Transitional Form”
April 13, 2011
A tiny piece of cartilage-turned-bone has science news sites jumping for joy about an evolutionary transitional form.  But is it one?  A closer look shows a much more complex picture than the simple evolutionary victory being told in the media.     “Long-sought fossil mammal with transitional middle ear found,” trumpeted PhysOrg; in close harmony, […]
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Fossils

Science Discovers the Unexpected and the Obvious
March 30, 2011
Young’s Law jokes, “All great discoveries are made by mistake.”  Here are some recent examples. Arch-istan:  Think the world’s natural features are all well known?  “Researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society have stumbled upon a geological colossus in a remote corner of Afghanistan: a natural stone arch spanning more than 200 feet across its base,” […]
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Amazing Facts

Sensing the World Requires Intelligent Design
March 24, 2011
How do our bodies make sense of the external world?  Through our senses, of course; at least they are the entry points of data into the mind.  Behind those senses are remarkable mechanisms that we use but do not actively operate.  The design in their automatic operations is slowly being revealed with better observing techniques. […]
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Biomimetics

Bone Structure Matches Animal Size
March 10, 2011
The bigger the animal, the more weight it has to carry.  How can large animals maintain strong bones without making them heavier?  It turns out all animals have struts in their bones called trabeculae, but the larger the animal, the fewer, stronger, and farther apart are the struts.  This new finding is leading to ideas […]
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Amazing Facts

Amazing Animals
February 28, 2011
Three recent articles about amazing animals and fossils deserve entries of their own, but due to lack of time, will be corralled here lest, like strays, they wander off. Turtle navigation:  Wired Science has a beautiful photo of a marine turtle in an article about how they achieve a difficult navigational skill: determining longitude from […]
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Birds

Chernobyl Mutation Experiment Fails to Support Darwinism
February 12, 2011
Under mutational load, you don’t get a choice of “Evolve or Perish”; just the latter.
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Amazing Facts

Amazing Mammals
January 25, 2011
As the Superbowl approaches, millions of spectators will enjoy the feats of our own sports heroes.  But what if animals put on games with their capabilities?  Human athletes would find it hard to compete. Swimming:  A polar bear performed a phenomenal feat of endurance swimming, reported the BBC News.  According to a zoologist who observed […]
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Biomimetics

Beavers: Natural Engineers Do It Better
January 4, 2011
A curious case of biomimetics was reported by Science Daily: engineers imitating beavers.  River restoration is a big project in many states that would like to return their rivers to the way the colonists first found them.  “When engineers restore rivers,” the article began, “one Kansas State University professor hopes they’ll keep a smaller engineer […]
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Early Man

News on the Mind
December 6, 2010
Here are a dozen recent stories dealing with brains, the mind, perception, motivation and other aspects of psychology and neuroscience. Nature and nurture:  PhysOrg claims that scientists at SMU have resolved the nature vs nurture debate with a hybrid approach.  Whether it satisfies critics remains to be seen.  Perhaps they are still thinking inside the […]
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Mammals

Science Done by Humans Is Mushy
December 3, 2010
Discoveries in science must be mediated by flawed agents: human beings.  Though the most hardened scientific realists maintain strong beliefs in external reality, the perceived reality is mediated by senses, then interpreted by minds that are not omniscient.  Those are some of the reasons that science keeps changing, as illustrated by some recent examples: Endangered […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Mammals Partied When Dinosaurs Left
November 29, 2010
A research team headed by a biology professor at the University of New Mexico are claiming that mammals had a field day when the dinosaurs went extinct.  They got bigger and more diverse, filling in the ecological wasteland left by the missing giant reptiles.  Their analysis was published in Science.1     In addition, they […]
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Amazing Facts

Boggle Your Brain
November 19, 2010
A new animation of a trip through a brain shows mind-boggling complexity in more detail than ever before.  The animation, posted by freelance journalist Elizabeth A. Moore on CNET News, represents years of work by Stanford University School of Medicine.  Using green fluorescent protein in a mouse brain to light up synapses, and photographing the […]
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Amazing Facts

Windows into the Mind
November 3, 2010
What would it be like to see things for the first time?  You can watch the reaction on Live Science #1 and Live Science #2.  Blind patients were implanted with a microchip that allowed them, for the first time, to roughly sense the visual input of objects in front of them.  Amazing as it was, […]
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Bible and Theology

Mind Matters
October 22, 2010
The conundrum of how reasoning could have emerged by an undirected evolutionary process persists.  Atheists and materialists are convinced that natural selection is up to the task, while theists strongly disagree and use human rationality as evidence for creation by an intelligent source (usually God).  Perhaps a few recent findings can illuminate on the options. […]
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Amazing Facts

Migrating Whales Fertilize the Sea
October 15, 2010
Two recent discoveries about whales show them to be not only benign but beneficial.  PhysOrg reported on work at the University of Vermont that indicates whale waste carries nitrogen nutrients to the depths of the ocean, fertilizing the food chain and increasing the production of ocean fisheries.     In another article on PhysOrg, a […]
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