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Amazing Facts

Nose Code Rockets Smell Discrimination
February 1, 2008
You have a code in your nose.  Scientists working on fruit fly olfactory systems have found that a mapping mechanism between components maximizes the fly’s ability to discriminate smells.  The coding system provides a non-linear response that appears finely tuned to maximize the information content of odor inputs.     The components of this system […]
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Biomimetics

A Step Closer to Gecko Adhesive
January 30, 2008
Scientists are getting closer to imitating the amazing wall-climbing ability of geckos.  Science Daily reports that a team from UC Berkeley manufactured tape with hard polymer fibers just 600 nanometers across that mimic the spatulae on gecko feet.     This latest attempt at imitating the gecko works only on smooth, clean surfaces, but requires […]
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Fossils

Horseshoe Crabs Unchanged Since Ordovician
January 28, 2008
A fossil horseshoe crab has been discovered in Canada that pushes back their origins at least 100 million years in the evolutionary timetable.  The previous record placed these marine arthropods in the Carboniferous (350 million years BP in the geologic column); others were known from the Jurassic.  “Both the Carboniferous and the Jurassic fossil discoveries […]
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Amazing Facts

A Pitcher of Health, and Reasons to Love Slime
January 28, 2008
Pitcher plants contain chemicals that just might help medicine and agriculture, reported PhysOrg.  A Japanese team found a myriad of interesting proteins in this “evolutionary marvel,” a plant that eats insect meat.     Now for some slimy good news.  PhysOrg said, “You know algae.  It’s the gunk that collects on the sides of a […]
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Birds

Do Chicks Tell Dinosaur Tales?
January 25, 2008
For years, evolutionary biologists have battled over the origin of flight.  Did dinosaurs run along the ground and take off, or did they jump from trees?  The first idea is called the cursorial hypothesis; the latter, the arboreal hypothesis.  In 2003, Ken Dial [U Montana] had an idea: maybe watching partridge chicks could inform the […]
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Amazing Facts

Butterfly Wings Flash Shiny Optical Tricks
January 22, 2008
You can get brilliant colors without pigment if you build patterns near the wavelengths of light.  Butterflies have the trick down to a science.  Their wings shimmer and shine with brilliant colors produced by nanostructures that scientists want to imitate.     Science Daily told how butterflies and moths, even the white-winged varieties, use nanostructures […]
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Dinosaurs

Backtracking on Darwinian Claims
January 21, 2008
Evolutionary theory evolves.  Since Darwinists no longer consider evolution progressive, it follows that evolutionary theory is also not necessarily progressing.  The following stories show evolutionary biologists backtracking on earlier claims. The pig is falling.  “Darwinian evolutionary theory proposes that the phenotype of a creature is an adaptation to the particular demands of the ecological situation […]
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Dumb Ideas

Mouse Grows Long Finger, Takes Off Like a Bat
January 18, 2008
When does humor in a scientific journal cross the line of scientific objectivity?  You be the judge.  Science magazine, in its “Random Samples” news featurette, said this in the Jan. 18 issue: Over the past 100 million years or so, bats have evolved many features that distinguish them from their mammalian cousins.  One is long, […]
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Biology

Walking Fish Gets Good Mileage
January 16, 2008
In 2006 (04/06/2006), 05/03/2006), Neil Shubin of the University of Chicago announced his missing link: Tiktaalik, a fish with wrist bones that he claimed were transitional between fish and four-footed creatures, or tetrapods. Since then he has taken his fish on the road and is getting good mileage for evolution.
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Intelligent Design

Monarch Butterflies as a Test of Evolution
January 11, 2008
The Discovery Institute and the National Academy of Sciences have recently published books with butterflies prominently displayed on the cover.  The two books give opposite viewpoints on whether life was designed or a product of evolution.  Maybe a look at a real-world butterfly research project can shed light on the debate.     A paper […]
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Birds

Dinosaur Fossil Shows Exquisite Skin Detail
January 9, 2008
More imaginary feathers on a dinosaur have been discovered.  A BBC News article shows a cartoon of a dinosaur with feathers on its arms.  This is strange, because the paper it refers to makes no claim about feathers – only that certain structures had been interpreted as feathers by some.     The original paper […]
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Mammals

Do Monkeys Practice the Oldest Occupation?
January 4, 2008
If monkeys do it, should it be outlawed?  A story on Fox News claims that male monkeys pay for sex.  The females make them pay up first: “The males use grooming as a form of currency to buy sex from the female,” a study by evolutionary biologists in Singapore concluded. And the point is?  Animals […]
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Dinosaurs

Yet Another Dinosaur Extinction Theory: Bugs
January 3, 2008
A press release from Oregon State claims that insects may have finished off the dinosaurs.  Two main reasons were given for this hypothesis: (1) the extinction coincides with the rise of flowering plants and their pollinators, and (2) the impact theory has serious problems. “There are serious problems with the sudden impact theories of dinosaur […]
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Birds

Birdsong Olympic Training
December 29, 2007
The singing of a bird is a complex skill that takes rigorous training like that of a top athlete or musician.  Young male birds learn by imitation from their fathers, then hone their skill over months, till their song becomes crystallized in adulthood.  A paper in Nature by two scientists at UC San Francisco reported […]
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Cosmology

What Materialist Science Still Can’t Figure Out
December 21, 2007
Darwin called the origin of flowering plants an “abominable mystery,” but it is not the only one.  The scientific materialism that strives to explain all reality by “natural” causes without resource to a designing intelligence has a long way to go.  Occasionally, major gaps in cosmic evolution and biological evolution become evident in scientific papers […]
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