Human Genome “Infinitely More Complex” Than Expected
April 5, 2010
Ten years after the Human Genome Project was completed, now we know: biology is “orders of magnitude” more complicated than scientists expected.
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Fruit Flies: From Darwin to Design
March 13, 2010
The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is an icon of evolution. Since the 1930s these poor little bugs have been mutated endlessly and watched for signs of Darwinian change. So far, though, only useless mutants, unable to survive in the wild, have been produced. Recently, scientists seem more enamored with their design. Two recent articles had […]
Man Will Never Fly (to the Stars)
March 13, 2010
It’s risky to say “never” in science. The Man Will Never Fly Society had a short life. However, an article on Space.com makes it seem a safe bet that, Star Trek notwithstanding, warp-speed flights to the stars are out of the question for humans. “Warp speed will kill you,” the article announced; why? Because interstellar […]
Whos In Control: Your Brain or You?
March 12, 2010
Do you have a self that controls your brain, or is thought a secretion of the brain, as Darwin claimed? Do you use your brain, or does your brain operate you? Who is in charge? These are deep philosophical questions with a long history, that some people prefer to avoid, as in the common joke: […]
This Tree of Life Is Real
March 9, 2010
Imagine a tree that can provide both nutritious food and clean water. Moringa oleifera is such a tree. It grows in Africa and Asia and is being looked at as a life-giving plant that can reduce bacterial contamination of water by 90 to 99.99% by filtering water with its seeds. Science Daily has […]
Depressed? Believe in a Caring God
February 28, 2010
“Belief in a Caring God Improves Response to Medical Treatment for Depression, Study Finds.” That’s what Science Daily said. The statement assumes, of course, that psychiatry knows what depression is. Another story on Science Daily worried that “Psychiatry’s Main Method to Prevent Mistaken Diagnoses of Depression Doesn’t Work.” It makes sense that diagnosis […]
The Brain You Use, and How It Uses You
February 21, 2010
Neuroscientists continue to find out amazing things about the human brain. In some ways we are responsible to use our brains, but in other ways the brain does things to us. If nobody has figured out where the dividing line is for thousands of years, it’s unlikely we will today; but the following findings can […]
Who Should Be Listening to Scientists?
February 17, 2010
“Stop Listening to Scientists?” is an unusual title for a letter to Science.1 In a commentary last week prompted by the recent scandals regarding climate change, Kevin Robert Gurney (Purdue) made a shocking exclamation: don’t listen to scientists. Here’s how he began. As a climate scientist and a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on […]
Is Your Bod Flawed by God?
February 14, 2010
Are your body’s imperfections reasons for you to reject intelligent design and embrace evolution? Professor John Avise (UC Irvine) thinks so. His new book Inside the Human Genome was given good press by PhysOrg: “Distinguished Professor of ecology & evolutionary biology at UC Irvine, Avise also makes the case that overwhelming scientific evidence of genomic […]
Barefoot Is Better
January 27, 2010
Who do we wear shoes? It seems obvious; we expect that they help us avoid injuries and provide comfort. Maybe we should think of the injuries we are getting by wearing them. The image of the barefoot person is usually of someone poor, deprived, lower-class, hick, unclean, redneck or something else unattractive. Shoes […]
Stem Cell News: Cancer Cures Coming?
January 18, 2010
Stem cell research has not been as prominent in the popular media lately, but researchers continue to make impressive strides – mostly with adult stem cells. Science Daily reported the first success treating leukemia with stem cells from umbilical cord blood. A researcher at the Hutchinson Center said, “The real ground-breaking aspect of this research […]
To Advance Technology, Make Like Nature
January 12, 2010
Scientists and engineers continue to find the most elegant solutions to practical problems by looking at plants and animals. Here are a few of the recent examples. Wet computing: Cells and brains do a superior job of complex processing, so why are our current computers singing how dry I am? Not for much longer. Science […]
It Takes More than Eyes to See
January 6, 2010
We think of eyes as objects that see, but vision requires a whole system of parts. One of the most important is the brain. Without your thalamus, vision would be a hopeless jumble of jerky signals, reported scientists from the National Eye Institute. Writing in PNAS,1 Ostendorf, Liebermann and Ploner found that the […]
In Brains, Size Is Not All that Matters
December 22, 2009
Two recent science articles indicate that scientists should be careful before inferring intelligence from brain size (picture). PhysOrg reported on work to uncover the genetic basis of microcephaly – reduced brain size in humans. “The cerebral cortex in particular has undergone a dramatic increase in surface area during the course of primate evolution,” the article […]
Debunker Busters
December 17, 2009
Often in science reports, new findings debunk previously held beliefs. But then, a thoughtful reader might ask, didn’t the previously held belief debunk a belief prior to that? Sometimes it gets difficult to believe the current belief has any credibility, when the debunkers turn on each other. A dilemma about dilemmas: Psychologists and philosophers have […]