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Amazing Facts

Leaves Don’t Fall; They’re Pushed
September 22, 2008
Rocks may fall (thus the need for warning signs on highways), but leaves are pushed off of trees by a genetic program.  The process, called abscission, has been mysterious for a long time.  A team from the University of Missouri has mapped out, for the first time, the abscission pathway in one plant.  Being this […]
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Birds

Flightlessness Evolved Four Times
September 10, 2008
An article on Science Daily claims that the famous flightless birds – African ostriches, Australian cassowaries and emus, New Zealand kiwis and South American rheas – are unrelated.  There was no flightless common ancestor.  They lost their ability to fly independently, scientists say, because of “parallel evolution.”     This would also mean that emus […]
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Darwin and Evolution

How Not to Prove Positive Selection
September 5, 2008
Erase all that evidence for positive natural selection in the genes you’ve read about. 
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Amazing Facts

Cellular Machines Work Like Cameras, Winches and Turboprops
September 3, 2008
The discovery that cells are filled with molecular motors is one of the major achievements of late 20th-century molecular biology.  Biochemists routinely use the word “motor” when describing cellular processes, because, in fact, machines made of protein actually do use energy to perform work.  Now we have a new hybrid science – biophysics – that […]
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Amazing Facts

How Chromosomes Pack Without Exploding
August 24, 2008
When preparing to divide, a cell has to copy all its DNA accurately and pack it into chromosomes.  A professor at U Chicago told Science Daily this is “like compacting your entire wardrobe into a shoebox.”  The cell has another difficulty in this compaction process, though: DNA, being negatively charged, resists packing.     Eukaryotes […]
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Genetics

Flatlife Has More Genes Than It Needs
August 23, 2008
The genome of a placozoan (“flat animal”) shows more complexity than one would expect for a simple life form.  According to evolutionists, it shows that even a barely-differentiated animal presumably ancestral to complex animals had the genetic toolkit of its more-advanced descendents.     Trichoplax adhaerens is a slimy-looking thing that sticks to aquarium walls.  […]
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Amazing Facts

Membrane Switches Keep Your Brain Humming
August 14, 2008
Tunnels with rotating gates and rocker switches – this sounds like mechanical engineering.  It’s the machinery that helps power your brain, reported scientists from UCLA and the Pasteur Institute.     Their paper in Science described the structure of just one of many kinds of membrane channels.1  Cell membranes are lined with elaborate one-way gates.  […]
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Genetics

Admissions of Ignorance in Evolutionary Theory
August 11, 2008
For a scientific idea some have proclaimed as a fact no longer in need of proof, and as well-established as gravity, Darwin’s theory of evolution still reveals surprising weaknesses when its defenders speak about the details.  Detecting these weaknesses requires tuning out the media hype, and tuning into scientific papers and pro-evolution journals where evolutionary […]
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Cell Biology

Adult Stem Cells Race Ahead; Embryonics Falter
August 7, 2008
Major advances are being made with induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), stem cells reconstituted from adult tissues, while interest in embryonic stem cells (ES) seems to be drying up.     Both Nature and Science reported advances in iPS technology last week.  Nature reported that the number of factors needed to reconstitute pluripotent stem cells […]
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Genetics

Tree of Life in the Genes? Not Yet
July 23, 2008
Now that we have hundreds of animal genomes in the bank (the GenBank), is Darwin’s tree of life becoming visible?  If the image is present, it is extremely weak, said Michael J. Sanderson of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at University of Arizona.  Writing for Science,1 he showed that only a small fraction […]
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Genetics

Mangrove as Metaphor
July 22, 2008
The mangrove – that shoreline tree with the salt-tolerant roots that grows into dense thickets – is the fulcrum of two unrelated news stories.  It never met a force it couldn’t handle.  It also provides metaphors for evolution and creation.     PhysOrg reported that the mangrove is a key to saving lives.  “The replanting […]
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Amazing Facts

Cellular Trucks Use Moving Highways
July 18, 2008
Imagine how cool it would be to get in your car and have the road do the driving.  The highway would stretch or shrink, moving this way or that, till you saw your destination and hopped off.  That appears to be what the cargo-bearing motors do in the cells in your body.  A new paper […]
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Early Man

The Cro-Magnon Were Europeans
July 16, 2008
There’s no genetic difference between Cro-Magnon Man and modern Europeans, a genetic study reported by Science Daily.  Researchers took extra care to avoid contamination of bones found in southern Italy, they said.  They claimed Cro-Magnon people were able to maintain genealogical continuity for 28,000 years, remaining distinct from Neanderthals, whom they said lived in Europe […]
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Biomimetics

Is Artificial DNA Intelligently Designed?
July 15, 2008
Japanese chemists have made a new kind of DNA, reported Science Daily.  It resembles natural DNA, but is composed of bases that are shorter, modified forms of the ones cells use.  “The finding could lead to improvements in gene therapy, futuristic nano-sized computers, and other high-tech advances,” the article says. An evolutionist should extend his […]
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Amazing Facts

It’s Networks All the Way Down
July 8, 2008
New ways of seeing biology are finding life is full of networks.  At both ends of the complexity scale – from humans to bacteria – complex interactions are the rule.  Two teams studying different phenomena had the same reaction – astonishment. Bottom-up complexity:  Who would have thought one of the simplest life forms has a […]
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