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Origin of Life

Mars Makeover Underway
March 16, 2005
Amazing claims about Mars are coming in almost too fast to fathom, reports Space.Com, especially from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter.  These include evidence for recently active volcanos, frozen ice beds, methane and vestiges of glaciers and waterfalls.  Activity is “only yesterday” in the standard geological timescale.  One said, “it could start up […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Will Darwinian Law Protect the Unfit?
March 15, 2005
Eggheads at Vanderbilt import evolutionary ideas into legal policies that could negatively affect individual rights in devastating ways.
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Cell Biology

The Future of Biology: Reverse Engineering
March 14, 2005
Just as an engineer can model the feedback controls required in an autopilot system for an aircraft, the biologist can construct models of cellular networks to try to understand how they work.  “The hallmark of a good feedback control design is a resulting closed loop system that is stable and robust to modeling errors and […]
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Origin of Life

Martians Might Be Troglodytes
March 11, 2005
According to an article on Space.Com, Spirit and Opportunity aren’t going to find critters on the surface.  Since the surface is harsh because of radiation, a safer environment might be found in caves.  The discovery of soluble rock and methane is leading some to imagine that extensive caves might exist on Mars, and maybe that […]
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Cell Biology

Bacterial Engineering On Par With Higher Life
March 11, 2005
Bacteria aren’t the simple life-forms microbiologists used to envision, writes Zemer Gitai in Cell.1 Recent advances have demonstrated that bacterial cells have an exquisitely organized and dynamic subcellular architecture.  Like their eukaryotic counterparts, bacteria employ a full complement of cytoskeletal proteins, localize proteins and DNA to specific subcellular addresses at specific times, and use intercellular […]
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Intelligent Design

Darwinists Dig In Heels Against I.D.
March 7, 2005
“We aren’t going to convince them and they aren’t going to convince us,” said Vittorio Maestro of Natural History magazine, quoted at the end of a piece entitled, “US scientists battle over challenge to Darwinism” in ABC News Online.  The article gave quite a bit of space to quotes by Michael Behe and Jonathan Wells, […]
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Origin of Life

Aliens of the Deep Preaches Astrobiology and Chemical Evolution
March 1, 2005
Titanic director James Cameron has released a large-format, 3D film of undersea life around hydrothermal vents, entitled Aliens of the Deep and released by Walt Disney pictures.  National Geographic News interviewed Cameron.  When asked why he speculated in the movie that life could have originated around deep-sea vents, he said: Presumably the hydrothermal activity was […]
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Intelligent Design

Visual Aid: Chance or Design?
March 1, 2005
A TV commercial for the Honda Accord has been circulating around the net as a popular download (see Steel City’s Finest).  It shows the parts of a car, without human intervention, interacting in strange ways like a Rube Goldberg device, resulting in a finished car rolling off the ramp.  Garrison Keillor adds the punch line, […]
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Intelligent Design

ID. Article Makes N.Y. Times
February 7, 2005
Michael Behe got a full-length column in the New York Times (reproduced at Discovery.com) to present the case for intelligent design.  The EvolutionNews blog says it is the second most emailed article from that day’s edition, and asks, “Who says there’s no controversy?” Which side wants to air the debate?  Which side wants to shut […]
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Origin of Life

Will “Top-Down” and “Bottom-Up” Meet in the Middle?
February 6, 2005
Some difficult problems can be approached from opposite ends.  Engineers needing to build a shaft through a mountain, for instance, might start digging from the bottom and the top, trying to find each other in the middle.  But what if the mountain has an unanticipated impregnable layer?  Or what if there is no mountain, but […]
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Education

Editorials Lukewarm to ID, but Not as Hot to Darwin
January 31, 2005
A subtle shift seems to be taking place in media coverage of intelligent-design controversies in school boards across the country.  Darwinists used to be the unchallenged kings of the hill.  Alternatives, whether creationism or intelligent design, were disqualified before they reached the starting gate.  It also used to be “open season” on anti-Darwinists.  No vituperative […]
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Origin of Life

Astrobiology: 0 Steps Forward, 3 Steps Back
January 28, 2005
Astrobiology, the science in search of a subject, has major hurdles to overcome in its quest to explain everything from hydrogen to high technology.  Despite being one of the most active interdisciplinary research projects around the world (see 01/07/2005 entry), a leading researcher this week conceded that several promising leads of the past are now […]
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Education

Newspaper Editorials Lead Revolt Against King Charles
January 24, 2005
Some columnists and editorial writers are gaining boldness to attack the Darwin-only rule in science education.  Some examples: Senator Rick Santorum (R., Pennsylvania) in The Morning Call advocated a balanced approach to teaching evolution. Brian Fahling in The Union Leader took up the charge to defend Georgia’s “critical thinking” stickers (see 01/13/2005 entry). Neal McCluskey, […]
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Education

Dover, PA Administrators Will Read ID Statement
January 11, 2005
In a compromise aimed at relieving recalcitrant teachers, the Dover, Pennsylvania school board decided that administrators will read a four-paragraph statement about evolution and intelligent design (ID) to high school students for any teachers that want to “opt out” of the new policy (see 11/04/2004 headline).  The decision, according to the York Daily Record, was […]
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Origin of Life

Astrobiology: Follow the Money
January 7, 2005
To date, astrobiology remains, as George Gaylord Simpson once quipped, “an area of study without a known subject.” Yet it is one of the hottest research areas within NASA. A renowned origin-of-life researcher from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Dr. Jeffrey Bada, found out why when he read the new book The Living Universe: NASA and […]
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