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Biology

Whale Fossils: Challenge or Support for Evolution?
November 14, 2011
When most fossils consist of small shelly creatures, finding a whale is indeed big news. Two whale fossil discoveries on opposite sides of the world are spectacular and puzzling. Do they support the theory that whales evolved from land mammals?
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Amazing Facts

Animal Plan: It Works Well
November 10, 2011
There were Greek and Roman naturalists who were intrigued by what they saw in the living world, but their observational tools were limited to their five senses. Modern science has expanded our senses far beyond the capabilities known just a century ago. We are privileged to live in an age of discovery that is revealing even more wonders beneath the surface of living things, wonders worth knowing about. Here are just a few.
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Biology

Your Copper Pipes
November 8, 2011
Each of us is part metal. Our bodies contain iron, copper, zinc, magnesium, manganese, vanadium, molybdenum, selenium, and even nickel like the coins in our pockets or purses. Unlike the other common elements of life (carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, calcium, nitrogen, phosphorus), our metals are not synthesized and recycled, but must be imported and handled with care. Copper is a good example of a biological metal that performs multiple useful functions – that is, unless something goes wrong with the machinery handling it.
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Amazing Facts

Engineers Tip Hat to Nature
November 6, 2011
It’s conventional in blogging to give an HT (hat tip) to a friend who makes you aware of a cool item. Engineers are giving hat tips to plants and animals as they seek for amazing new products that do wonderful things, just like the ones in nature.
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Amazing Facts

Preventing Aging Through Darwin-Free Science
November 3, 2011
Will new discoveries in biochemistry lead to longer lives? There are hopeful signs that aging can be delayed, if not prevented. Whether or not that happens in our lifetimes (causing new worries for Social Security), scientists are learning amazing things about how cells work that should give us more reason for Thanksgiving.
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Health

Vitamin C Loss Is Not Evolution’s Gain
November 2, 2011
Evolution predicts gain of function; genetic entropy predicts loss of function. A gene that helps synthesize Vitamin C provides a test between the two views.
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Amazing Facts

Animal Magnetism and Other Wonders
October 30, 2011
What is it that so attracts us to animals? Is it animal magnetism? Some animals do have magnetic senses that can guide them across oceans. The more we learn about animals, the more we should admire their high-tech equipment. Here are some recent examples of amazing animals, some of them suitable for Halloween decorations.
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Biology

Caveman’s Best Friend, Evolution’s Newest Upset
October 29, 2011
The evolutionary story of the dog-human relationship has had to be drastically revised in light of recent findings. The old story was that wolves tamed themselves into doggish behavior some 15,000 years ago in Asia by frequenting human garbage dumps. Evidence from caves, fossil prints, and the dog genome, though, has required a near complete overhaul of how our animal companions and their relationships to humans evolved, calling into question whether evolution was involved at all.
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Biology

Wave the Stripes on the Zebra
October 21, 2011
One of Kipling’s Just-So Stories is “How the Leopard Got His Spots.” In the fanciful tale for children, the sandy-colored leopard and the Ethiopian make an arrangement to share features so that they can camouflage themselves in the forest. Spots and stripes are widespread in the living world, but how do they come about? Surely science can come up with a better explanation than Kipling’s. Just so, a recent scientific paper suggests that understanding the process is still a long way off.
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Amazing Facts

Your Motor/Generators Are 100% Efficient
October 14, 2011
ATP synthase astounds again. The molecular machine that generates almost all the ATP (molecular “energy pellets”) for all life was examined by Japanese scientists for its thermodynamic efficiency. By applying and measuring load on the top part that synthesizes ATP, they were able to determine that one cannot do better at getting work out of a motor – a motor that is also a generator.
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Amazing Facts

Biomimetics to the Rescue of Science
October 10, 2011
The booming field of biomimetics (imitating nature’s designs) is fascinating not only for the amazing products it promises, but for the fresh new opportunities it provides for science and engineering. From viruses to mammals, everything in the living world is now being seen in a new light: agents of innovation that humans can learn from. Here are just a few examples in recent news, arranged in order from large to small inspirational creatures.
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Amazing Facts

Mighty Mitochondria Conduct Energy Exquisitely
October 7, 2011
None of us could live without mitochondria. These are the power centers ubiquitous in eukaryotic cells. They contain molecular machines in factories whose jobs are to generate and conduct electrical currents. The currents run turbines that packetize the energy in molecules of ATP, which are then used by most processes in the cell. New discoveries continue to fascinate scientists with how mitochondria work. Some scientists use their energy to find ways Darwinian evolution could build the machinery of life.
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Cell Biology

Lucky LUCA Was Already Complex
October 5, 2011
Simple to complex: that’s been the essence of evolutionary theory ever since Charles Darwin imagined some organic molecules coming together in a warm little pond eons ago. Whatever simple life form emerged from his pond started his evolutionary process that led to the human brain. But what if the “last universal common ancestor” was already highly complex? What if bacteria and archaea are “devolved” remnants of a more complex ancestor? That’s exactly what a new study is claiming.
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Amazing Facts

Enjoy Your Body Gifts
September 29, 2011
When you eat right and exercise to do your body good, you may have little idea how much your body is giving back all the time. From recent scientific discoveries, here’s a look at a few mechanisms under our skin that not only keep us alive, but provide us with a shopping mall of good things.
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Amazing Facts

Amazing Adaptations
September 26, 2011
All biologists agree – creationists and evolutionists alike – that organisms show remarkable adaptations to their environment. They differ only in their explanations for how they got that way. Here are some remarkable examples of adaptation that will challenge any theory of origins.
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