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News:
July 10, 2004
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Religion in the News
'Womb Walking' Ultrasound, Stats Prompt U.K. Abortion Rethink.
Staying
on Course
Southern Baptists reaffirm their conservative positions. By Adelle M. Banks,
RNS, in Indianapolis.
Vatican
budget in red, but church offerings up
The Holy See reported on Wednesday its third budget deficit in as many
years with restoration works at the Vatican taking their toll on 2003 accounts
despite a small increase in global church offerings (Reuters).
What
John Edwards Believes
John Kerry's Methodist running mate oversees his church's urban ministries,
but can he win evangelicals' votes? Compiled by Ted Olsen.
Bush
Wants Church Support, Opponents Cry Foul
Plus: Taliban kills Christian in Afghanistan, court rejects judge's ruling
in lesbian custody case, and more articles from online sources around the
world. Compiled by Rob Moll.
Q&A:
James Dobson
The chairman of Focus on the Family speaks about the need for the proposed
Federal Marriage Amendment. Interview by Stan Guthrie.
Discreet
and Dynamic
Why, with no apparent resources, Chinese churches thrive. By Philip Yancey.
C.S.
Lewis, the Sneaky Pagan
The author of A Field Guide to Narnia says Lewis wove pre-Christian
ideas into a story for a post-Christian culture. Interview by Rob Moll.
Saving
Strangers
The journey of one Somali Bantu family in the largest group resettlement
of African refugees in U.S. history. Photo essay by Denise McGill.
Fools'
Gold
Christians lured into buying 'rare' coins. By Rob Moll.
Books
& Culture Corner: Tending the Garden
Evangelicals and the environment. By John Wilson.
Book
club bullies
Fundamentalists want to intimidate into silence all those who don't
share their interpretation of a text (Giles Fraser, The Guardian, London).
God's
Number Is Up
Among a heap of books claiming that science proves God's existence emerges
one that computes a probability of 67 percent.
Science in the News
Archaeology/Anthropology
IS the Exodus a fusion of a Hyksos and Ramesside expulsion as preserved by Manetho.
Explorers
of Noah's Lost Ark
Citing new satellite images, team seeks to 'solidify the faith of many Christians.'
By Gordon Govier.
Ancient
African Skull Fills Gap, Fuels Debate
Remains of the hominids that lived in Africa between a million and half
a million years ago are frustratingly rare in the fossil record. Bones from
this time period have been recovered in Europe and Asia, but the paucity
of finds from Africa has prevented a full understanding of just what members
of the species Homo erectus looked like. A new discovery is helping to fill
the fossil gap.
64,800-Year-Old
Hair Yields DNA. June 23, 2004
Hair and fur could be our window to the past, according to scientists who
have just extracted and cloned DNA from a 64,800-year-old bison and hairs
purportedly from famed physicist Sir Isaac Newton.
Egyptian
Mummy Unwrapped in 3D By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News. July 5, 2004
Cutting-edge computer technology and state-of-the-art medical scanning techniques
have turned a 2,800-year-old mummy into a fully interactive 3-D experience,
London's British Museum has announced.
Astronomy
Mars Rain Carved Valleys. July 2, 2004 — Mars was not only awash with water, it also once had rainfall, according to a French study published on Friday. The evidence comes from infrared imaging, which probed under dust deposited over the millions of years and found dense networks of dry valleys, whose branching bear the hallmarks of having been carved out by rain.
Northern
Rim Of Hellas Basin. Paris (ESA) Jul 09, 2004
These images of the rim of the Hellas basin on Mars were obtained by the
High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA's Mars Express spacecraft.
Saturn's Rings
In Ultraviolet. Moffet Field CA (SPX) Jul 09, 2004
The best view ever of Saturn's rings in the ultraviolet indicates there
is more ice toward the outer part of the rings, hinting at ring origin and
evolution, say two University of Colorado at Boulder researchers involved
in the Cassini mission.
Titan's Strange
Surface Pasadena - Jul 05, 2004
Cassini spacecraft instruments have peered through the orange smog of Titan
and glimpsed the surface below. Images sent back to Earth reveal dark areas
and lighter, fuzzy areas. Data from the Visual Infrared Mapping Spectrometer
(VIMS) indicate that the dark areas are pure water ice. The bright fuzzy
regions have several different types of non-ice materials, and may include
organic materials such as hydrocarbons.
Spacecraft
Fleet Tracks Blast Wave Through Solar System Huntsville AL (SPX) Jul
09, 2004
A fleet of spacecraft dispersed throughout the solar system gave the most
comprehensive picture to date of how blast waves from solar storms propagate
through the solar system and the radiation generated in their wake.
Glimpse At
Early Universe Reveals Surprisingly Mature Galaxies. Mauna Kea HI (SPX)
Jul 08, 2004
A rare glimpse back in time into the universe's early evolution has revealed
something startling: mature, fully formed galaxies where scientists expected
to discover little more than infants.
Tau Ceti System,
Asteroid Alley - An Inhospitable Neighbour United Kingdom (SPX) Jul
06, 2004
UK astronomers studying the Tau Ceti system have discovered that it contains
ten times as much material in the form of asteroids and comets as our own
solar system. Their discovery, suggests that even though Tau Ceti is the
nearest Sun-like star, any planets that may orbit it would not support life
as we know it due to the inevitable large number of devastating collisions.
Hubble
Studies Star Formation In Nearby Large Magellanic Cloud. Chicago IL
(SPX) Jul 02, 2004
Our neighbourhood galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) lies in the Constellation
of Dorado and is sprinkled with a number of regions harbouring recent and
ongoing star formation. One of these star-forming regions, N11B, is shown
in this Hubble image.
Astronomers
Reveal Extinct Extra-Terrestrial Fusion Reactor. Cambridge MA (SPX)
Jun 29, 2004
An international team of astronomers, studying the left-over remnants of
stars like our own Sun, have found a remarkable object where the nuclear
reactor that once powered it has only just shut down.
Astronomers
Use Novel Camera To Hunt For Extrasolar Planets. Tucson (SPX) Jun 23,
2004
Their camera has already made stunning images of Saturn's moon, Titan, and
discovered an object just 27 times the mass of Jupiter. They hope the camer
will be the first to directly photograph faint gas-giants similar to Jupiter
in solar systems beyond our own.
Biology
Scans uncover secrets
of the womb.
A new type of ultrasound scan has produced vivid pictures of a 12 week-old
foetus "walking" in the womb. The new images also show foetuses
apparently yawning and rubbing its eyes.
"Mighty
mouse" gene found in humans
A gene that doubles muscle in mice shows similar effects in a strapping
young boy, offering treatment hope for muscle wasting diseases.
Introduction to Bioinformatics.
by Robert Jones. 06/11/2004
Bioinformatics is the intersection of molecular biology and computer science.
For software developers, it's a fascinating and challenging area in which
to work.
Bioinformatics and Comparative
Genomics. by Robert Jones 06/29/2004
The complete DNA sequence of the Human Genome is a remarkable achievement
for molecular biology and represents the work of many people in a number
of large sequencing centers. Far from resting on their laurels, those centers
have gone on to sequence the genomes of the mouse, rat, pufferfish, zebrafish,
chicken, chimpanzee ... you name it they're sequencing it.
Creation/Evolution
GEE
ON "INTELLIGENT DESIGN"
Writing in the latest issue of Nature, Henry Gee contemplates "The
tyranny of design." The recent discovery of the lamprey's evolutionarily
distinct adaptive immune system, Gee suggests, corroborates a diagnosis
of "intelligent design" as driven by a misguided concentration
on model organisms and structures.
Evolution of innate
immunity
Lamprey study shows distinct mechanisms of lymphocyte receptor diversity
among vertebrates.
How yeasts evolve
Publication of four more genomes confirm disputed whole genome duplication
theory.
Epigenetics:
Genome, Meet Your Environment
As the evidence accumulates for epigenetics, researchers reacquire a taste
for Lamarckism.
Reflections
on Human Origins
by William A. Dembski.
Earth Science
Antarctica's
Lake Vostok Has Two Distinct Parts Washington (SPX) Jul 08, 2004
Deep in the Antarctic interior, buried under thousands of meters [more than
two miles] of ice, lies Lake Vostok, the world's largest subglacial lake.
Scientists believe that the waters of Lake Vostok have not been disturbed
for hundreds of thousands of years, and there are tantalizing clues that
microbes may exist there that have been isolated for at least as long.
Fossils
Confirm Cold Spell Doomed Dinos. June 25, 2004
Plankton fossils dating from 65 million years ago help confirm the theory
that a long, dark winter doomed the dinosaurs, according to international
research.
Pterosaur
Part of Dino's Diet July 1, 2004
Fish-loving dinosaurs known as spinosaurs also had a taste for pterosaurs,
an unusual fossil found in Brazil has shown. The fossil comprises vertebrae
of the flying reptile with the tooth of a spinosaur imbedded in one of them.
Physics
Speed
of light may have changed recently.
The speed of light, one of the most sacrosanct of the universal physical
constants, may have been lower as recently as two billion years ago - and
not in some far corner of the universe, but right here on Earth. A varying
speed of light contradicts Einstein's theory of relativity, and would undermine
much of traditional physics. But some physicists believe it would elegantly
explain puzzling cosmological phenomena such as the nearly uniform temperature
of the universe. It might also support string theories that predict extra
spatial dimensions.
Dark Matter
And Dark Energy May Be Different Aspects Of Single Force. Nashville
TN (SPX) Jul 02, 2004
In the last few decades, scientists have discovered that there is a lot
more to the universe than meets the eye: the cosmos appears to be filled
with not just one, but two invisible constituents - dark matter and dark
energy - whose existence has been proposed based solely on their gravitational
effects on ordinary matter and energy.
Standard Model
Upended With Discovery Of Neutrino Oscillation, Mass Boston MA (SPX)
Jul 09, 2004
A team of nearly 100 physicists from around the world have achieved results
verifying that the elementary particle known as the neutrino exhibits a
distinctive pattern of oscillation.
Fundamental
physics constants stay put
A new study casts doubt on an earlier claim that the fine-structure constant
varied as the Universe evolved.
Psychology
C.
Everett Koop on "Medicine, Mind, and Meaning," by Eve A. Wood
C. Everett Koop, former U.S. Surgeon General and McInerny Professor of Surgery,
Dartmouth Medical School, writes the foreward to Medicine, Mind, and Meaning
(2004), a new book by noted psychiatrist, professor and speaker, Eve A.
Wood. The book is a step-by-step guide that combines traditional psychiatric
approaches and spiritual principles. Not typically given to publicly endorsing
work, Koop's exception in this case marks the importance and urgency he
attaches to this text. Koop writes, "I have seldom been so moved by
a book. This is the only healing model that makes sense."
Technology
GE Develops
High Performance Carbon Nanotube Diode. Niskayuna NY (SPX) Jul 08, 2004
GE Global Research, the centralized research organization of the General
Electric Company, announced the development of the world's best performing
diode built from a carbon nanotube, which will enable smaller and faster
electronic devices with increased functionality. The nano-diode is one of
the smallest functioning devices ever made.
Zoology
'Blob Monsters'
are Whale Remains. June 23, 2004
One of the myths of the sea has been skewered by gene researchers, who say
that huge "blobs" of weird tissue that have washed up on shorelines
and sparked tales of sea monsters are in fact the remains of whales. A 13-ton
lump of boneless tissue that came ashore at Los Muermos, Chile, in July
last year ignited speculation that it could be the body of a new species
of deep-sea giant octopus. Alas, tests of fragments of its DNA prove that
the tissue came from a sperm whale, say University of Southern Florida biologists.
The team also checked preserved samples from other blobs. They found that
the "Giant Octopus of St. Augustine" from 1896, the "Tasmanian
West Coast Monster" of 1960, as well as three blobs that were found
in Bermuda and Nantucket in the 1990s were all washed-up whale remains.
See also Microscopic,
Biochemical, and Molecular Characteristics of the Chilean Blob and a Comparison
With the Remains of Other Sea Monsters: Nothing but Whales and Beach
blob mystery solved at last.
New
Fish May Be World's Smallest Vertebrate. AFP / Discovery News. July
8, 2004
Australian scientists claimed Wednesday they had discovered the world's
smallest fish, which lives for just two months and does not grow fins, teeth
or scales.