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Astronomy

Astrobiology Justifying Itself
March 16, 2008
Is astrobiology a legitimate science?  Seth Shostak, director of the SETI Institute, tried to answer that question in the weekly SETI Thursday column on Space.com.  He estimates there are “approximately a thousand scientists who would be proud to print ‘astrobiologist’ on their business cards.”  Astrobiology still gets a cool reception in some quarters.  Shostak likened […]
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Biomimetics

Animal Feats Inspire Imitation
March 14, 2008
Imagine carrying 850 times your own weight.  Step aside, Hercules, and meet the Hercules beetle: the strongest creature in the world.  Science Daily said that researchers in Belgium are not just impressed with its show of strength.  They are finding inspiration for “intelligent materials.”     The Hercules beetle has a shell that is able […]
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Education

Polls Produce Politically-Incorrect Results
March 2, 2008
Polls are like a box of chocolates; you never know what you are going to get.  In a survey conducted by the Channel One Network, a broadcast service for public schools, students were asked if they thought schools should teach only intelligent design, teach only evolution, or teach both.  A majority (52%) responded for teaching […]
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Origin of Life

Mars Life Hung Out to Dry in Salt
February 18, 2008
Scientists have just about hanged the possibility for life on Mars.  At first, the acid measured by the Spirit and Opportunity rovers made the environment look inhospitable.  “Now, we also appreciate the high salinity of the water when it left behind the minerals Opportunity found,” said Mark Knoll on a JPL press release.  “This tightens […]
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Mammals

Oldest Bat Fossil: Was It Evolving?
February 16, 2008
A bat fossil surpassing the previous record holder for the oldest by 2 million years made the cover of Nature this week.1  The news media immediately began saying that it provided insight into evolution. The BBC News announced “Bat fossil solves evolution poser.” National Geographic called it the icing on the cake, and said that […]
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Dumb Ideas

Life Is Earth’s Waste Dump
February 15, 2008
Exclusive  Most evolutionists and philosophers recognize the origin of life as one of the most difficult questions to broach from a materialist standpoint.  Dr. Michael Russell, however, made it sound very easy to a large audience gathered in JPL’s auditorium on February 4.  In a talk titled confidently, “How Life Began on our Water World […]
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Intelligent Design

SETI Signals Could Be Loaded with Information
February 4, 2008
Unusual properties of electromagnetic waves allow for a higher carrying capacity of information than thought.  SETI researcher Seth Shostak reported on Space.com that Swedish researchers have found a possible “subspace channel” in the orbital angular momentum of narrowband radio waves that might allow the encoding of information.  This information would be impervious to the jumbling […]
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Amazing Facts

Nose Code Rockets Smell Discrimination
February 1, 2008
You have a code in your nose.  Scientists working on fruit fly olfactory systems have found that a mapping mechanism between components maximizes the fly’s ability to discriminate smells.  The coding system provides a non-linear response that appears finely tuned to maximize the information content of odor inputs.     The components of this system […]
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Intelligent Design

Explorer 1 Chief Discovers Design
January 31, 2008
On this day 50 years ago, America entered the space race.  On January 31, 1958, America gave its answer to Sputnik: a civilian satellite named Explorer 1.  Within a few hours of the time of day these words are being written, von Braun’s Jupiter-C rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida, successfully launched a JPL satellite into […]
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Genetics

Hidden Messages Found in DNA
January 29, 2008
DNA contains the language of life, but what would happen if someone found hidden messages in the genetic code?  Such a thing actually happened, reported the New York Times.  When Craig Venter’s lab produced an artificial organism, they inserted hidden “watermarks” into the genome: his name, the names of co-workers, and the name of the […]
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Origin of Life

Leslie Orgel’s Last Testament: Pigs Don’t Fly, and Life Doesn’t Just Happen
January 26, 2008
Leslie Orgel's last written article before his death shows no patience for hypothetical scenarios for the origin of life.
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Dumb Ideas

Nuke Sand, Get Life
January 23, 2008
Glowing sand was your cradle, claimed The Telegraph.  “The sifting and collection of radioactive material by powerful tides could have generated the complex molecules that led to the evolution of carbon-based life forms –including plants, animals and humans.”     The article acknowledged that “radiation may seem an unlikely candidate to kick-start life because it […]
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Biology

Walking Fish Gets Good Mileage
January 16, 2008
In 2006 (04/06/2006), 05/03/2006), Neil Shubin of the University of Chicago announced his missing link: Tiktaalik, a fish with wrist bones that he claimed were transitional between fish and four-footed creatures, or tetrapods. Since then he has taken his fish on the road and is getting good mileage for evolution.
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Cell Biology

Bacteria to the Future
January 14, 2008
Bacteria used to be considered so boring, they were passed over by scientists eager to look where the action was: eukaryotic cells.  That was then.  Now, Nature reported,1 the little rods and spheres and spirals have lots of tricks up their sleeves worth investigating.  “Long dismissed as featureless, disorganized sacks, bacteria are now revealing a […]
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Intelligent Design

NAS Booklet Gets Its Counterpunch
January 11, 2008
Recommended Reading:  Dr. Cornelius Hunter, Author of Darwin’s God, Darwin’s Proof and Science’s Blind Spot is reviewing the newly-revised NAS booklet Science, Evolution and Creationism at Access Research Network. It’s so well written, we are speechless.  Dr. Hunter has saved us a lot of work, because the NAS booklet was crying out for rebuttal.  This […]
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