Origins – Page 280

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Science Bashes I.D.

May 7, 2004

The Intelligent Design movement took another lashing by the journal Science,1 in the form of three book reviews by Steve Olson, a Washington DC area science writer. Olsen reviewed one pro-ID book, Darwin, Design and Public Education by John Angus Campbell and Stephen C. Meyer, and two anti-ID books, God, the Devil and Darwin by […]

Darwin and Evolution

Homology for Dummies

May 5, 2004

Current Biology likes to give its readers primers on various concepts. The topic in the May 4 issue is homology.1 Caleb Webber and Chris P. Ponting explain this important evolutionary term for the rest of us. The Q&A format also introduces homology’s siblings: analogy, orthology, paralogy, xenology, and synteny. Some readers may not realize that […]

Darwin and Evolution

Origin-of-Life Researcher Leslie Orgel Interviewed

May 5, 2004

The May 4 issue of Current Biology1 contains an interview with organic chemist Leslie Orgel of the Salk Institute, who in 1974 published the book The Origin of Life on Earth with Stanley Miller of spark-discharge fame (see 05/02/2003 and 10/31/2002 headlines). He considers his biggest mistake not thinking of the RNA World scenario first […]

Intelligent Design

SETI Researcher Analyzes Language Mathematically

April 26, 2004

Space.com had a story April 22 about Dr. Laurance Doyle, who studies non-human communication with information theory. The article is mostly about his study of whale and dolphin signaling, but mentions how information theory is related to the intelligence of the communicating entities: Doyle’s team uses statistical tools from a field known as “information theory” […]

Cell Biology

Minimal Cell Modeled in Computer

April 26, 2004

“The basic design rules relating the regulation of cellular function to genomic structure is of broad interest,” begin three Cornell microbiologists writing in PNAS,1 and so they have turned their attention to the smallest theoretical living cell: A �minimal cell� is a hypothetical cell possessing the minimum functions required for sustained growth and reproduction in […]

Politics and Ethics

Eugenics Documentary Opens at Holocaust Museum

April 22, 2004

Michael Ollove at the Baltimore Sun reports on a new exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Museum entitled Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race. The exhibit shows a 1937 Nazi propaganda film that invokes the law of natural selection as support for weeding out the unfit. Ollove writes, The narrator declares that “we humans have sinned […]

Darwin and Evolution

Can Evolution Create Homologous Structures by Different Paths?

April 22, 2004

Günter Thebien (Friedrich Schuller U, Jena, Germany) is baffled about how two plants arrived at similar structures by different evolutionary pathways. In the April 22 issue of Nature,1 he asks, Structures that occur in closely related organisms and that look the same are usually considered to be homologous – their similarity is taken to arise […]

Intelligent Design

Fake Darwinism Created by Intelligent Design

April 13, 2004

Scientists have created enzymes with enhanced ability to select between left- and right-handed molecules, using an “evolutionary” process, claims Manfred Reetz in a Perspective article in PNAS:1 A fundamentally new approach to asymmetric catalysis in organic chemistry is described based on the in vitro evolution of enantioselective enzymes. It comprises the appropriate combination of gene […]

Intelligent Design

Articles

April 3, 2004

The cover story of World Magazine for April 3 is a series of prophetic articles for the Year 2025, called “Darwin’s Meltdown: Intelligent Design scientists … ponder a future free from the dogma of evolution.” Looking back on how and why Darwinism declined into the “dustbin of discarded ideologies”, four intelligent design leaders, Phillip E. […]

Dumb Ideas

Swamp Gas Found on Mars

March 30, 2004

The European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter has confirmed earlier detections of methane in the Martian atmosphere, according to the BBC News. Because methane could only exist in the atmosphere for a few hundred years, there must be a source that replenishes it. Two sources have been proposed: active volcanos, or living organisms. The BBC […]

Cosmology

Privileged Planet Website Opens

March 16, 2004

A website featuring a new book by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards, The Privileged Planet, has opened. The subtitle of the book is How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery. The authors take issue with pessimistic views, such as those of Steven Weinberg and Carl Sagan, that our planet is “pointless” or […]

Dumb Ideas

Much Ado About Nothing

March 12, 2004

How much can you say about nothing? Some people can say quite a lot. One astrobiologist just wrote a large book about it: Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life by David Grinspoon (Harper Collins, 2003). Larry R. Nittler reviewed this new book in the March 12 issue of Science.1 Nittler describes […]

Education

Evolution Battle Heats Up in Ohio

March 10, 2004

CNN has reported that the Ohio school board voted 13-5 in favor of an optional set of lessons called “Critical Analysis of Evolution.” The usual opponents are lining up on both sides; some scientific organizations are claiming it is a “religious effort cloaked as science,” but others consider it a victory for students and for […]

Geology

Rethinking the Geological Layers

March 5, 2004

One of the most formative ideas in Darwin’s intellectual journey was the concept of gradualism, the principle of “small agencies and their cumulative effects.” This idea became a dominant motif in his philosophy of life. Describing how the assumption of gradualism permeated his last book (on earthworms) shortly before his death, Janet Browne, in her […]

Cell Biology

Cellular Cowboys: How the Cell Rounds Up Chromosomes Before Dividing

March 4, 2004

Cell division is like cowboys lassoing cattle and pulling ones that match into two identical corrals.

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