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Amazing Facts

Whiskers Inspire Technology
October 4, 2006
The latest gadget on robots or Mars rovers could be whiskers.  These tactile sensors provide ways to see in 3D, says a report on National Geographic News.  Information about latitude, longitude and elevation can be gleaned from whiskers.  Rodents continually rotate their whiskers to gather information, but seals and sea lions let the ocean currents […]
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Education

Farewell to the “Face on Mars” – A Teachable Moment
September 21, 2006
ESA’s Mars Express orbiter has just sent back pictures of the Cydonia region on Mars.  Objects seen in early Viking images of this region resembled a face, a skull and pyramids that gave rise to a cult following on late-night talk shows.  NASA always discounted these resemblances as coincidental, and when JPL released higher-resolution photos […]
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Amazing Facts

Flagellar Swimmers Attain Mechanical Nirvana
September 6, 2006
Those little germs that scientists love, E. coli – you know, the ones with the flagella that intelligent-design folk get all excited about – well, they move through the water pretty efficiently with those high-tech outboard motors of theirs.  Some Pennsylvania physicists reporting in PNAS1 measured the “swimming efficiency of bacterium Escherichia coli” and concluded, […]
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Biomimetics

Yoke Up Those Bacteria
September 6, 2006
My, how history repeats itself – often in unexpected ways.  In ancient times, our ancestors got the heavy work done by hitching oxen, horses or slaves (like Samson, see pictures 1 and 2) to a harness and making them turn a grinding wheel.  The same principle is now on the cutting edge of modern applied […]
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Amazing Facts

Another Flagellum Excites Scientists
September 1, 2006
“The bacterial flagellar motor excites considerable interest because of the ordered expression of its genes, its regulated self-assembly, the complex interactions of its many proteins, and its startling mechanical abilities,” begins a paper in Nature by three Caltech scientists.1  They performed electron cryotomography imaging on the flagella of Triponema primita, a different critter with a […]
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Intelligent Design

Quote: Cell Factory
August 28, 2006
From CalTech Engineering & Science (LXIX:2, August 2006), “Cellular CAT Scans” by Douglas L. Smith, an article about electron cryotomography imaging of cellular components.  Smith does not mention evolution.  His opening paragraph is reminiscent of Darwin’s Black Box: A cell isn’t merely a bag of enzymes sloshing around in a thick soup of cytoplasm.  According […]
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Education

Darwinists Whack I.D. with Reckless Abandon
August 21, 2006
For professionals assumed to be logical, factual, and devoted to reason, scientists and journalists can get pretty emotional, depending on the subject.  One such subject that really rankles some of them is intelligent design.  Here are some recent salvos from the war of the words: Hotz shots:  From the LA Times, Robert Lee Hotz wrote, […]
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Intelligent Design

Review:  Lehigh Prof Critiques ID Colleague in Science Wars
August 21, 2006
Dr. Steven Goldman (Lehigh University) has produced a series of lectures for The Teaching Company entitled Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They Know It.  CEH highly recommends this series for its wealth of historical background applied to an intriguing question: what is the nature of truth claims in science?  To what extent do […]
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Bible and Theology

National Crisis: USA Ranks Nearly Last in Evolution Belief!
August 11, 2006
Eugenie Scott and colleagues at the National Center for Science Education presented findings of a survey on acceptance of evolution, and found that the USA trails far behind European countries – second from last only to Turkey.  In 20 years, acceptance of evolution dropped from 45 to 40 percent, but firm rejection of evolution also […]
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Cosmology

Cosmologists Dragged Kicking and Screaming to the Anthropic Principle
August 11, 2006
Those who view science as a dispassionate, logical pursuit of the truth should savor the emotions in two articles by Tom Siegfried about cosmology in Science this week.1,2  He reported on the passionate rivalry between theoretical physicists who embrace superstring theory as the eventual “theory of everything” and those who oppose it because of its […]
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Cell Biology

How Useful Is Evolutionary Theory to Biology?
August 4, 2006
A favorite quote by evolutionists is the line by Theodosius Dobzhansky, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”  Why, then, do so many biological papers fail to mention evolution at all?  Indeed, many employ design language, sometimes with a sense of awe.  Here are more recent examples in which the E […]
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Genetics

Team Returns Pseudogene to Junkpile to Counter ID Claim
August 3, 2006
An earlier claim that a pseudogene has a function (see 05/01/2003 story) has been debunked by a team of scientists reporting in PNAS.1  Their reanalysis of the claim made in 2003 “invalidates the data upon which the pseudogene trans-regulation model is based and therefore strongly supports the view that mammalian pseudogenes are evolutionary relics.”  The […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Kansas Evolution Battle Heats Up Again
August 1, 2006
Update 08/02/2006: According to a news report on Live Science, conservatives have lost their majority in the primary election for seats on the state school board.  Details are reported by the Lawrence Journal-World.  The winners are gloating that this is a great day for Kansas, said Science Now, but ended by noting that the issue […]
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Amazing Facts

A Second Code Controls the DNA Code
July 26, 2006
More has been discovered about the histone or nucleosome code (see 02/17/2004), a second genetic code independent of the DNA genetic sequence that directs the formation of proteins.  The New York Times (see also Science Daily) reported on work by scientists at Northwestern University who found that the wrapping of DNA around nucleosomes (made of […]
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Education

Education & Political News
July 22, 2006
What’s been happening in school boards about evolution and intelligent design?  Here are some recent stories about politicians, reporters and ordinary citizens: Kansas Grass Roots:  Candidates vying for school board seats in Liberal, Kansas squared off over the evolution issue: see Hutchinson News. Ohio Rematch:  Despite an earlier loss, Darwin critics in Ohio are hoping […]
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