Humanity – Page 114

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Adult Stem Cell Advances Continue

April 7, 2011

The momentum for stem cell therapy is still on the side of adult stem cells (ASC), not embryonic stem cell (ESC) research. Here are some recent findings: Blood vessel repair: A press release from King’s College London says, “Scientists from King’s College London have uncovered the first genetic evidence that shows cells found on the […]

Amazing Facts

Seeing Is Believing, or v.v.

April 4, 2011

What you see is not what is out there in the world – not exactly, at least. Scientists have shown that your brain is tweaking the light coming in from your eyes and making predictions about what you expect to see. The “blind spot” experiment is well known to students. That’s where it […]

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,” […]

Biomimetics

Plagiarizing Nature

March 28, 2011

Copying someone else’s invention is a crime, but researchers in biomimetics are doing it with impunity and getting away with it. Leaf power: “Why come up with new ways to generate clean energy, when we can copy what plants have been doing for millennia?” That’s what led Daniel Nocera and colleagues at MIT to develop […]

Amazing Facts

Neurons Know What to Do

March 27, 2011

Neurons are among the most vital cells in the body: after all, your brain is largely composed of neurons. Neurons are transmission lines of information that keep a body in touch with itself and the world. None of the other body organs would work without neurons. The increasingly powerful tools of microscopy are allowing neuroscientists […]

Cell Biology

We Are Filled with Viruses

March 26, 2011

Viruses have a bad connotation. We immediately think of the ones that cause disease: “I’ve got a virus,” you say when feeling under the weather. Actually, you have trillions of them all the time, even in the best of health. A single gram of stool sample can have 10 billion of them! What does that […]

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. […]

Mind and Brain

If Pigs Have Wings, SETI Could Be Robots

March 11, 2011

The SETI program is still waiting to catch a sentient signal from deep space, but in the absence of data, people are free to speculate. Michael Dyer, a computer science professor at UCLA, is certain that the first aliens to visit Earth will be robots. He even attached a probability to it, according to Adam […]

Amazing Facts

You Have Electronic Skin

March 7, 2011

Your skin has resistance with memory. That makes it like a memristor, researchers at the University of Oslo are saying. A memristor is a device that remembers the last current it experienced, and varies its resistance accordingly. New Scientist explained what they found: They found that when a negative electrical potential is applied […]

Mind and Brain

Is the Mind a Computer?

March 5, 2011

After a computer named Watson beat two contestants on Jeopardy last month, people are asking if the human mind is becoming obsolete. What are the similarities and differences between gray matter and deep blue? PhysOrg asked, “Machines beat us at our own game: What can we do?” For one thing, they should have […]

Amazing Facts

Go to the Cell, Thou Sluggard

March 2, 2011

Solomon ordered the lazy man, Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise (Proverbs 6:6). Today, he would probably tell lazy materialists needing wisdom to consider the cell. Several recent scientific papers and news stories illustrate why materialism faces a stiff challenge from design features found in the fundamental units of […]

Media

Philosophy Roundup

February 27, 2011

Philosophy of science is a broad discipline incorporating many sub-disciplines such as intellectual history, sociology, ethics, rhetoric, logic, demarcation of science from pseudoscience, classification, discovery, verification, explanation and more. A dozen recent news stories discussed some of these topics. Medical ethics: PhysOrg reproduced an AP story about medical research on humans in the US in […]

Darwin and Evolution

Racial Evolution Education Proposed

February 24, 2011

Skin color provides a “handy tool for teaching evolution,” says a anthropologist at Penn State. PhysOrg reported that professor Nina Jablonski believes “The mechanism of evolution can be completely understood from skin color.” She proposes using the easily-observed trait in humans to teach evolution to students. “People are really socially aware of skin color, intensely […]

Bible and Theology

Human Genome Project Supports Adam, Not Darwin

February 21, 2011

Science magazine last week had a special series of articles on the 10-year anniversary of the Human Genome project. Most of the articles expanded on how different the findings were from predictions. The publication of the genome did not identify our evolution; it did not lead to miracle cures. What it did most of all […]

Cell Biology

Tipping Point for Embryonic Stem Cells?

February 13, 2011

At any time, courts could rule on whether funding of embryonic stem cell research can continue or must be halted. Whichever way a decision is rendered, whether by Judge Lamberth on the legality of the NIH guidelines, or by the Court of Appeals for DC, the issue will probably wind up before the Supreme Court. […]

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