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Origin of Life

Volcanic Gas Helps Link Up the Building Blocks of Life
October 8, 2004
A gas emitted by volcanoes, carbonyl sulfide (COS), enables amino acid molecules to form peptide bonds.  That’s what long-time origin-of-life researcher Leslie Orgel and colleagues at Scripps Institute have found.  The reaction is especially productive in the presence of metal ions that act as catalysts, and even better in the presence of oxidizing agents.  Moreover, […]
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Cosmology

PBS Airs Another Evolution Series: Origins
September 29, 2004
PBS NOVA aired its latest installment on evolution, a 4-hour miniseries entitled Origins, on September 28 and 29.  The website hype describes it as follows: Has the universe always existed?  How did it become a place that could harbor life?  What was the birth of our planet like?  Are we alone, or are there alien […]
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Intelligent Design

Update: Intelligent Design Paper
September 24, 2004
The controversy over Stephen Meyer’s intelligent design paper (see 09/16/2004 headline) continues.  Science printed a brief but dismissive news item claiming its publication was a mistake, but journal editor Rick Sternberg has answered the charges on his personal website.  Meyer has responded to criticisms leveled by Richard Monastersky in the Chronicle of Education.  The Discovery […]
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Cell Biology

Cell Exhibits Robust Engineering Design
September 22, 2004
Cells are so good at robustness against perturbations and uncertainty, engineers could well learn from their design principles.
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Amazing Facts

Introducing: The Spinach Cell Phone
September 21, 2004
The next spinach sandwich you hear about may not be an item at the health food bar but an electronic device powered by the sun.  According to an MIT press release, chloroplasts from spinach leaves have been successfully sandwiched into a solid-state electronic photocell that could be used before long to power cell phones and […]
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Amazing Facts

Termites: If You Can’t Lick ’Em, Mimic ’Em
September 21, 2004
Termites, despite their bad rap, have something to teach human homebuilders.  Their mounds are self-sufficient, air-conditioned, environmentally friendly and cheap to run, according to a story in EurekAlert.  “The mounds incorporate a complicated network of tunnels and air conduits designed to channel air flow for the control of internal air quality, temperature and moisture levels.” […]
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Intelligent Design

Discovery of Transfer RNA Recounted
September 16, 2004
In the Sept. 16 issue of Nature,1 Mahlon Hoagland recounts how he did the key experiment in 1957 that proved DNA used “soluble RNA” intermediates, later named transfer RNA (tRNA), on the way to protein synthesis in the ribosome, only to find that Francis Crick had predicted the existence of such intermediates. By this time […]
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Amazing Facts

Peering Into Paley’s Black Box: The Gears of the Biological Clock
September 15, 2004
William Paley’s famous “watchmaker argument” for the existence of a Designer, though intuitively logical to many, has been criticized by naturalists on the grounds that one cannot compare mechanical devices to biological ones.  Biological “contrivances” might operate on totally different principles than mechanical ones made by humans we know.     Michael Behe’s 1996 book […]
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Intelligent Design

Nature Says ID Paper Scored a Publishing Success
September 8, 2004
A news story in the Sept. 9 issue of Nature1 says, “A new front has opened up in the battle between scientists and advocates of intelligent design, a theory that rejects evolution and is regarded by its critics as another term for creationism.”  Reporter Jim Giles says the paper by Stephen Meyer of the Discovery […]
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Origin of Life

Pop Goes the Fatbubble Theory for the Origin of Life
September 3, 2004
This weird theory pops faster than the bubbles it describes as our ancestors.
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Darwin and Evolution

Darwin’s Finches: Researchers Tweak the Beak
September 3, 2004
Every once in awhile, a new angle on Darwin’s finches (an icon of evolution) appears in print. Peter and Rosemary Grant, who have devoted their life to studying everything possible about these related species of birds that inhabit the Galápagos Islands – only to find that evolutionary changes are reversible (see 04/26/2002 headline) – have […]
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Intelligent Design

Are We Lost on a Speck of Cosmic Dust?
September 1, 2004
A new Copernican revolution seems to be in the works, not another “demotion” of man from the center of the universe, but a promotion back to the ancient idea of plan or purpose for our existence.  The demotions reached their nadir with Carl Sagan’s Cosmos and other books that declared we are nothing special, that […]
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Intelligent Design

School Science “Tyranny” Tries to Scare Off Lecture Critical of Darwinism
August 18, 2004
Is a high school campus an open marketplace of ideas and a guarantor of free speech?  Look at this story in Agape Press about the troubles a high school student endured trying to get Michael Behe to speak at an after-school lecture this past February.  Though an optional event not during normal operating hours, and […]
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Intelligent Design

SETI Ponders the Silence
August 13, 2004
Since no clear signals from space aliens have yet arrived in 40 years of looking, SETI thinkers are asking why.  They’re coming up with a variety of explanations.  Here are three possibilities from recent articles. Too Soon to Tell.  Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute, writing in the September cover story of Astronomy Magazine, isn’t […]
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Cell Biology

ATP Synthase: Another Unexpected Case of Fine Tuning
August 10, 2004
ATP synthase, the miniature rotary motor that powers our cells, has been a subject of great interest since the elucidation of its rotary function won three scientists a Nobel prize in 1997.  As an example of a precision-crafted, true electric rotary motor in living systems (another being the larger bacterial flagellum), it also provides a […]
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