Biology – Page 147

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Mutating Evolution Into Design

July 20, 2002

51; The word evolve gets used in funny ways. As Paul Nelson has noted, it often becomes a Designer substitute. Look how an article in New Scientist employed it: Could a 3D printer help to create in minutes what nature took millions of years to evolve – the perfect insect wing? Tiny robotic insects would […]

Amazing Facts

Harnessing Cellular Machines for Humans

July 20, 2002

The cell is loaded with molecular machines, so why reinvent the wheel? or the whole truck? Martin G. L. van den Heuvel and Cees Dekker wrote in Science that engineers ought to put the existing technology to work.1 The biological cell is equipped with a variety of molecular machines that perform complex mechanical tasks such […]

Dumb Ideas

Fishing for Darwinian Stories

June 20, 2002

51; Stickleback fish can learn from each other where the best food sources are. This proves you brain’s remarkable learning abilities have their roots in fish heads, according to science news sources this week. Science Daily said the findings by UK scientists “show that the cognitive mechanisms underlying cumulative cultural evolution may be more prevalent […]

Amazing Facts

Amazing Animals on Parade

June 20, 2002

You have to admire animals. They have tricks humans still need to learn, and possess technologies that engineers are striving to imitate. Spiders: Don’t let the black widow scare you; it’s only a picture on Science Daily. Scientists are amazed at how these animals produce one of the best dragline silks in spiderdom. It is […]

Darwin and Evolution

A Hairy Evolution Story

May 20, 2002

51; A mammal hair was found in amber. It is claimed to be 100 million years old, but it is identical to modern mammal hair. What is the meaning of this find? How should it be interpreted? It may say more about the modern evolutionist than about evolution itself. New Scientist told the […]

Darwin and Evolution

Peppered Moths Are Back

May 20, 2002

51; One might think that past embarrassments about the peppered moth as evidence for evolution would keep evolutionists reluctant to mention them. A team from the University of Liverpool either didn’t get the message, or shed all reluctance anyway. They published a new paper about Biston betularia in Science,1 calling the moth story “a textbook […]

Birds

How Evolutionary Science Is Done: From Deduction to Story

April 20, 2002

“Evolution is a fact!” Carl Sagan stated emphatically on TV in his 1980 Cosmos series (now in reruns on The Science Channel). Following this lead, many evolutionists repeat this four-word phrase, often augmenting it like, Evolution is a fact, like gravity (see association). This motto has some interesting properties in its effects on scientific research. […]

Amazing Facts

Crows Use Tools in Sequence

April 20, 2002

51; Watch a one-minute video clip on the BBC News. A New Caledonian crow in New Zealand figures out how to use three tools in sequence to get at food that is out of reach. This amazing display of animal intelligence surprised researchers at the University of Auckland who already knew about the legendary problem-solving […]

Mammals

Findings vs Surmisings in Evolutionary Biology

April 20, 2002

51; What part of the following story is a finding, and what is a supposition? Science Daily told about work by Julie Baker (Stanford) and a graduate student who set out to discover the evolutionary origin of the mammalian placenta. They evaluated differences between placentas and eggs of a number of different animals, and told […]

Dinosaurs

Ichthyosaurs Suddenly Appeared in Triassic Oceans

April 20, 2002

“Ichthyosaurs were a group of Mesozoic marine reptiles that evolved fish-shaped body outlines,” begins Ryosuke Motani (UC Davis) in the Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences,1 in a paper on “Evolution of Fish-Shaped Reptiles… in Their Physical Environments and Constraints.” But while much is said about their environments and constraints, little is said to […]

Amazing Facts

Flies Turn on a Dime

April 20, 2002

51; A fly can turn 180 degrees in one tenth the time it takes you to blink an eye. Beating their wings 250 times a second, they don’t even have to think about each wing beat, PhysOrg said about studies at Brown University using high-speed cameras and image tracking software. “[Attila] Bergou discovered that flies […]

Dumb Ideas

Evolution Rules

March 20, 2002

51; It would be convenient if all a scientist had to do to prove his theory was declare it to be a law of nature. Is that what scientists from UC Berkeley and Imperial College have done with evolution? “First ‘rule’ of evolution suggests that life is destined to become more complex,” announced a press […]

Amazing Facts

Bacterial Flagellum Can Tune Its Swim Speed with Network-Controlled Brakes

March 20, 2002

51; What’s new with flagella? These are the favorite toys of intelligent design supporters, because they are irreducibly complex molecular machines that evolutionists rarely attempt to explain by a Darwinian process. More fodder for their position comes from a paper in Cell1 that finds that bacteria can fine-tune their swimming velocity by means of a […]

Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs of the Month

February 20, 2002

The tools of paleontologists continue to turn up interesting things. Here are some of the latest dinosaur discoveries reported this month: Mighty mouth: An African theropod with massive, shark-like teeth was found in the African Sahara, reported National Geographic News and PhysOrg. It was named Eocarcharia dinops, or “fierce-eyed dawn shark.” Another similar individual, presumed […]

Biomimetics

Scientists Are Studying Your Garden for Ideas

February 20, 2002

51; Your garden plants are visited by a butterfly and various insects as you sip tea in a lawn chair. Did you have any idea that inventors are watching the same things with an eye to making money? Or that military officers are getting ideas from the garden to use against the enemy? Biomimetics – […]

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