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Amazing Facts

This Is Your Brain on Bytes
February 11, 2011
It’s mind-boggling time.  Some recent articles have tried to quantify the information capacity of the eye, the brain, and the world.  Ready?  Think hard. Eye boggle:  Your eyes contain about 120 million rods and 6 million cones each.  If each receptor represents a pixel, that is 2 x 126 million pixels, or 252 megapixels.  And […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Evolution Running Backwards
February 10, 2011
For Darwin’s doctrine of universal common ancestry to be demonstrably true, there must have been a common ancestor of insects and humans.  That base of the family tree has just been discredited, leaving a gap in this important junction of Darwin’s tree of life.     For decades, evolutionists have taught that acoelomorphs, a kind […]
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Amazing Facts

How Bacteria Use Their Flagella
February 9, 2011
Do an imaginary mind-meld with a bacterium for a moment.  Visualize yourself encased in a membrane, surrounded by fluid.  You have no eyes, ears, or hands.  You need to find where food is, and avoid danger, so you have organelles that can take in molecules that provide information about what is going on outside, where […]
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Biomimetics

Extreme Biomimetics
February 7, 2011
Imitating spider silk or gecko feet is one thing, but some researchers are going to extremes to try to do what living organisms do. DNA railcar:  Researchers at University of Oxford have constructed a “programable [sic] molecular transport system” that travels like a railcar on DNA molecules, reported PhysOrg.  And that’s not all: they would […]
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Amazing Facts

Molecules as Traffic Cops
January 19, 2011
One of the cutting-edge developments in cell biology and genetics is the realization that there are networks of molecules that are regulated by other molecules.  Some molecules stimulate growth while others repress it.  The dynamic interplay between signals, hormones, repressors and other processes somehow leads to “homeostasis” – a dynamic balance that is responsive to […]
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Cell Biology

Astrobiologists Can’t Figure Out What They Are Looking For
January 16, 2011
To look for life in space, it’s obvious one must first understand what life is.  Science Daily promised “New Answers to an Age-Old Question in Astrobiology” i.e., but delivered only suggestions, four contradictory opinions, and more questions.     According to the article, most of the latest issue of the journal Astrobiology1 is devoted to […]
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Cell Biology

Long Life in Death Valley Claimed
January 13, 2011
“34,000-Year-Old Organisms Found Buried Alive!” blares a headline at Live Science.  Reporter Andrea Mustain admitted “It’s a tale that has all the trappings of a cult 1960s sci-if movie,” but assures us this one is scientific.     Brian Schubert (U of Hawaii) dug up salt crystals in the floor of Death Valley and found […]
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Cosmology

Scientists Debunk Scientists
January 12, 2011
What do you know?  We look to science to tell us about reality, but how confident can we be when they keep changing the tune? Undermining cosmology:  Science Daily tells us today that “Cosmology Standard Candle Not So Standard After All.”  Results from the Spitzer Space Telescope show that Cepheid variables shrink as they age, […]
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Cell Biology

Astrobiologists Explain Cambrian Explosion Using Invisible Data
January 7, 2011
According to PhysOrg and Astrobio.net, the skeletons to the Cambrian Explosion1 are hidden in the Precambrian closet, out of sight, even though the closet is open for inspection.  We mustn’t be fooled into thinking there was a Creation event, because evolution was doing its work in secret, like magic: The first instance of biomineralization – […]
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Cell Biology

Evolution by Gene Duplication Falsified
January 3, 2011
A common hypothesis in evolutionary circles is evolution by gene duplication.  It posits that duplicated genes are free to evolve new functions without affecting the primary gene.  This idea has been dealt a serious blow by a paper published in Complexity on Dec. 22.1     Joseph Esfandiar Hannon Bozorgmehr first dealt a falsifying blow […]
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Cell Biology

Embryonic Stem Cell Advocates Push Against Evidence and Ethics
January 2, 2011
An old preacher said, “It’s never right to do wrong to get a chance to do right.”  That sums up in simple terms the ethical problems of using embryonic stem cells to cure human diseases, apparent in this quote from PhysOrg: The potent but hotly debated cells can transform into nearly any cell in the […]
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Amazing Facts

Cell Division Involves “Vast Array of Molecules and Processes”
January 1, 2011
Scientists continue to probe the roles of individual proteins in the symphony of molecules involved in cell division.  An article on Science Daily discussed work at Rockefeller University to understand one such protein named PRC1 that acts as a kind of molecular foreman for spindle orientation.  The opening paragraph is the notable part: Just before […]
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Amazing Facts

Plants Outsmart Darwin
December 30, 2010
There are wonders in plants that continue to be uncovered with the tools of science.  Two recent papers in PNAS lend support to the feeling that plants are smarter than assumed. Trash collection:  Humans usually only employ one trash collection service, but plants have two.  Four Chinese investigators found redundant pathways in plant cells for […]
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Amazing Facts

Brain Synapse Machinery Is Finely Tuned
December 23, 2010
The New York Times published a brief article on brain facts that is astonishing, when you think about all that goes on in thinking.  Nicholas Wade reported on a new inventory of the proteins involved in the synapses, the key junctions between neurons.  The research team, led by Seth Grant of the Sanger Institute near […]
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Amazing Facts

Plant Wonders Are in the Details
December 16, 2010
When you step on a weed growing out of a crack in the sidewalk, do you have any idea what kind of amazing machinery you stepped on?  Maybe a closer look will help. Communications and switching systems:  When a seed sprouts, it needs to first grow upward in the dark while trying to protect itself.  […]
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