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Chewing on Evolutionary Stories
July 3, 2011
Fish chew by sending their food on an assembly line to the back of the mouth. Mammals chew by positioning food for the teeth. Can evolution explain this difference? Science Daily was sure of it. “Evolution has made its marks -- large and small -- in innumerable patterns of life,” The article said. “New research from Brown University shows chewing has evolved too.” When one looks for the evidence that chewing has evolved, though, one only finds blanks with the assumption that evolution must have done it.
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Awards

The Evolution of… Come Again?
July 1, 2011
Science news articles speak freely of the evolution of this or that, but the fine print often shows a disconnect with the evolution explanation.  Can one speak of the evolution of something that has not changed for millions or years?  The details in the following stories raise questions whether anything significant has evolved in the […]
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Biology

Cells Have Dimmer Switches
June 30, 2011
A metaphor has been emerging among biophysicists: cells have rheostats or dimmer switches.  The metaphor implies that some cellular regulatory processes are not just on or off; they have continuous ranges of values that can be finely tuned for the need of the organism.  It's been years since our first report that gene expression is […]
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Amazing Facts

Complex Arthropod Eyes Found in Early Cambrian
June 29, 2011
Complex eyes with modern optics from an unknown arthropod, more complex than trilobite eyes, have been discovered in early Cambrian strata from southern Australia. The exquisitely-preserved imprints of the eyes in shale were reported by Lee et al. in Nature. The abstract started by quoting Darwin and affirming evolution, but then revealed evidence that complex eyes go further back in the fossil record than previously thought possible.
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Amazing Facts

Follow the Leader: Nature
June 21, 2011
Ever since biomimetics (the imitation of nature) gradually emerged around 2002 and really took off in 2005, it has not slowed down. Over 90 previous entries in these pages have reported teams all over the world seeking out natural designs for ideas. The reports have accelerated in recent years to the point where there is only space for short summaries that give a taste of the wide variety of engineering work taking inspiration from plants, animals, and even cells. You yourself might inspire some inventor. Here are a few more highlights from recent adventures in biomimetics.
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Biology

Precambrian Rabbit or Evolutionary Transition?
May 25, 2011
Some evolutionists have defended their theory by proposing a falsification test: the discovery of a Precambrian rabbit. No such fossil has ever been found, partly because any stratum containing a rabbit fossil would never have been labeled Precambrian in the first place. But evolutionists would be surprised at finding complex non-marine multicellular eukaryotes in Precambrian strata, and this has just been announced in the journal Nature.
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Amazing Facts

Small Animals Astound, Inspire
May 17, 2011
Elephants and great whales impress us with their bulk, but there are smaller critters that are no less impressive.  Here are a few fantastic animals that come in very small packages. Bears in space:  Here’s an animal so bizarre, so well-armed, so scary looking, if you knew they were in your back yard you would […]
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Biomimetics

Venom for Health
May 7, 2011
Remember when botulinum toxin, one of the most potent poisons known to man, entered medical science for good?  Now fashion models brag about how “botox” improved their good looks, and sufferers of excess sweating or migraines find relief with the neurotoxin.  The search for good in bad substances has not stopped; other venomous organisms, once […]
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Amazing Facts

The Eyes Have It: Pro Software
May 5, 2011
You have a biological version of Photoshop in your eyes.  That’s what Richard Robinson, a freelance science writer from Massachusetts, said in PLoS Biology.1  The eye is not a camera, and the retina is not a piece of film.  Indeed, the retina might be better likened to a computer running Photoshop, given the extent of […]
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Fossils

Original Soft Tissue Found in Mosasaur Fossil
May 2, 2011
Original collagen has been found in a mosasaur fossil.  Mosasaurs are marine reptiles that lived in the age of dinosaurs.  This one, found in chalk layers in Belgium, is alleged to be 70 million years old.     The press release on PhysOrg said, “the discovery demonstrates that the preservation of primary soft tissues and […]
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Cell Biology

More Complexity in Simplicity Found
April 28, 2011
Primitive things aren’t.  That seems to be a common thread in some recent stories that found more complexity in simple living things. Box jellyfish eyes:  Jellyfish are among the simplest of animals, so why do box jellyfish have two dozen eyes but no brain?  Some of these eyes have now been found to detect features […]
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Amazing Facts

Animal Tricks Inspire
April 26, 2011
Here we are in the millennium of science, and we are still trying to figure out how animals do such nifty things.  Some of their nifty tricks we didn’t even know about till researchers took a look.  With high-tech monitoring tools, we might even learn the tricks for our own good. Owl fowl:  The flapping […]
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Cell Biology

Complexity Appears “Earlier than Thought”
April 14, 2011
Widely-separate branches of science seem to converge on a common puzzle: complexity goes farther back than scientists expected – evolutionary scientists, that is. Cosmology:  More evidence has come that galaxies formed very early.  A mature galaxy detected through gravitational lensing was announced by the Hubble Telescope team, with an estimated redshift of 6.027.  In the […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Is This What Darwin Had in Mind?
April 10, 2011
Evolution is a word loosely used in science these days.  Reporters and scientists talk about “the evolution of” this or that sometimes carelessly, without regard to how the explanation fits old Darwinism or neo-Darwinism.  Has the word evolution become a kind of catch-all hypothesis, for which rigor is no longer necessary? Survival of the discreetist:  […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Assessing Evolutionary Explanations
March 11, 2011
No matter the biological discovery, evolutionists are ready with their explanations.  The explanations, however, are often riddled with puzzles, surprises, and seemingly arbitrary appeals to chance.  Do such explanations really provide more understanding than those of creationists, who explain that living things were designed for a purpose? Shrimp deal:  “Many deep-sea species have close relatives […]
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