Origins – Page 240

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What Good Is Natural Selection without Progress?

March 8, 2010

Three papers recently claim to have seen natural selection. None of them, however, identified a functional advantage that would have tied changes to novel benefits that could improve a species. Yeast: “New Type of Genetic Variation Could Strengthen Natural Selection,” trumpeted a headline in Science Daily. It was about a study of two varieties of […]

Cell Biology

Life Crams Stuff on the Long Road

March 7, 2010

This quote from UC Berkeley wins Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week: In the long evolutionary road from bacteria to humans, a major milestone occurred some 1.5 billion years ago when microbes started building closets for all their stuff, storing DNA inside a nucleus, for example, or cramming all the energy machinery inside mitochondria. Any […]

Darwin and Evolution

Dinosaur Evolution Is Relative

March 5, 2010

The science news media are all reporting that the “oldest known dinosaur relative” has been found. The artist reconstructions of Asilisaurus kongwe, found in middle Triassic layers in Tanzania, make the creature look quite dinosaurian; at least it was dog-sized and walked on thick legs under its body like its famous brethren did. Its early […]

Bible and Theology

Atheism in a Test Tube

March 4, 2010

Conflicting views on atheism by scientists show that deducing the intellectual status of atheism is not an exact science. Are such questions even approachable by the scientific method? What conclusions could be drawn? National Geographic reported Kanazawa’s theory that liberals and atheists are smarter (02/27/2010) without much criticism. Reporter Maggie Koerth-Baker only said […]

Amazing Facts

Flight Design: Flies and Birds Get it Wright

March 3, 2010

Parse the following sentence for logical consistency: “Just as the Wright brothers implemented controls to achieve stable airplane flight, flying insects have evolved behavioral strategies that ensure recovery from flight disturbances.” That is the first sentence from a paper in PNAS yesterday about the stabilizers in fly wings.1 Ristroph et al just compared design principles […]

Darwin and Evolution

Ida Not a Human Ancestor

March 3, 2010

If Ida known then what I know now: the media-frenzied presentation of Ida (Darwinius masillae) as a distant relative of human beings last year has been debunked. “Many lines of evidence indicate that Darwinius has nothing at all to do with human evolution,” said Chris Kirk (U of Texas) in an article on Science Daily. […]

Origin of Life

Origin of Life: Claiming Something for Almost Nothing

March 2, 2010

Getting life to emerge from nonliving chemicals is either a cinch or the most impossible thing in the universe, depending on whom you ask. Let’s look at a couple of recent papers that suggest the origin of life was no big deal. A press release from the University of Colorado advertised a paper […]

Darwin and Evolution

How to Call Your Opponent Stupid Using Evolution

February 27, 2010

It may be that Professor Kanazawa was intending to be compassionate by couching his assessment in the language of evolutionary theory, but he essentially made a categorical judgment that conservatives and Christians are stupid, and atheists and the sexually promiscuous are smart. How could he say such a thing? He could dodge the charge of […]

Biomimetics

Life Leads the Way to Invention

February 26, 2010

Here’s a factoid for the party: a cell is 10,000 times more energy-efficient than a transistor. PhysOrg tells us that “ In one second, a cell performs about 10 million energy-consuming chemical reactions, which altogether require about one picowatt (one millionth millionth of a watt) of power.” This and other amazing facts lead to an […]

Amazing Facts

Making Evolution Simple

February 25, 2010

Getting the vast diversity of highly complex creatures seems an impossible task for evolutionary theory, but some recent stories claim it’s not so hard. Beak of the finch: Darwin’s finches keep pecking their way into the media. A new study claims that the wide diversity of beak shapes that have evolved can be explained by […]

Darwin and Evolution

Hopeful Monsters and Other Tales: Evolutionists Challenge Darwin

February 24, 2010

Two recent articles show that Darwin is not invincible. On one side he is being attacked by hopeful monsters. On the other, he is being attacked by an atheist truth-seeker. Neither of these attacks are coming from creationists. Return of the hopeful monster: Tanguy Chouard raised eyebrows in Nature News with a headline that sounds […]

Bible and Theology

Evolutionary Inferences: Are They Incontrovertible?

February 23, 2010

No matter what is found in plants or animals, it finds its way into an evolutionary explanation eventually. Are these explanations driven by the data, or forced into a belief system? Are other explanations possible? Some recent reports might inform these questions. Your inner plant: Get in touch with your inner plant with a report […]

Cosmology

Multiverse Explanations Are Fashionable, If Not Justifiable

February 22, 2010

How can scientists get away with speculating about unobservable universes, when science is supposed to concern itself with observation? “In the end, there is no way to know for sure what other universes are out there, or what life they may hold,” an article in PhysOrg ended, “But that will likely not stop physicists from […]

Amazing Facts

Molecular Highway Motor Comes into Focus

February 19, 2010

A beautiful new image of kinesin, a molecular machine that carries cargo on cellular highways, has been produced in greater detail than ever by a team at Berkeley and Brandeis Universities. Science Daily published a picture and description of how kinesin works. “Life’s smallest motor – a protein that shuttles cargo within cells and helps […]

Darwin and Evolution

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 […]

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