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News:
May 16, 2004
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Religion in the News
Rounding
Up the Few Christian Voices on the Iraq Prison Scandal
Sojourners says Rumsfeld should go, World says he should stay,
and Christian Peacemaker Teams says there's a bigger story untold. Compiled
by Ted Olsen.
Jim Dobson's
New Political Organization
Plus: Christian organizations blame porn for abuse at Abu Ghraib. Compiled
by Ted Olsen.
Bishop
Bans Pro-choice Voters from Communion
Votes may be considered sin if cast for politicians who support abortions.
By Kevin Eckstrom, Religion News Service.
Indian
Churches Hail the Defeat of Hindu-Nationalist Government
"Vote consciously" campaign urged Christian voters to elect secular
political parties. By Anto Akkara ENI, with CT staff.
Double-entry
Accountability
Two financial watchdogs are better than one. A Christianity Today editorial.
Christianity
Today, Sister Magazines Win 32 EPA Awards
Profile of Tony Campolo earns first in Personality Article from the Evangelical
Press Association. By Rob Moll.
The Dick
Staub Interview: The Ascetic American Dream
The author of The Good Life: Genuine Christianity for the Middle Class
talks about the wealth and the poverty of the American middle class.
The Gospel,
Literally
A break-through film makes the Word visible. Reviewed by Ben Witherington
III.
Christianity
Today Book Awards 2004
We honor 22 titles that bring understanding to people, events, and ideas
that shape evangelical life, thought, and mission.
Man of
Contradictions
Martin Luther was a "God-obsessed seeker of certainty and assurance."
Reviewed by Cindy Crosby.
Science in the News
Archaeology/Anthropology
Key Mayan
City Discovered. May 6, 2004
An Italian archeologist said Tuesday he had uncovered ancient objects that
show an unexplored site in Guatemala's Peten region to be one of the most
significant preclassic Mayan cities ever found. "I think Cival was
one of the largest cities of the Preclassic Maya, maybe housing 10,000 people
at its peak," the archeologist from Nashville's Vanderbilt University
said at a news conference.
An exhibit of Native American petroglyphs has opened quietly in the Columbia River Gorge, featuring 43 boulders that had been overshadowed by the Dalles Dam. See Petroglyphs.
Troy's Fallen! Movie Review of Troy.
Astronomy
How Mars got its
rust
The intense heat inside the early Earth was enough to convert a lot of iron
oxide into molten metallic iron, which seeped down into the planet to form
a huge liquid core. Mars never achieved the temperatures needed for this
process simply because it is smaller, they say. This left more iron oxide
in the upper layers of the planet, which led to its distinctive russet hue
and relatively puny iron core.
Mars’
Deep Faults And Disrupted Crater At Acheron Fossae. Paris (ESA) May
11, 2004
These images were taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board
ESA's Mars Express of the Acheron Fossae region, an area of intensive tectonic
(continental 'plate') activity in the past.
The
Universe, Seen Under The Gran Sasso Mountain, Seems To Be Older Than Expected
Some nuclear fusion reactions inside stars occur more slowly than we thought
and, as a consequence, stars themselves, as well as galaxies and the entire
universe are a bit older than expected.
Shuttle Or
Not, Hubble Will Be Saved. Washington (UPI) May 10, 2004
Indications are growing that the aging Hubble Space Telescope will not be
allowed to die -- even if the U.S. space shuttle fleet will not be used
to save it. More and more, it appears that NASA -- or even an international
consortium of some kind -- will deploy a robotic space mission sometime
in the next few years to service or repair the telescope.
Two Architectures
Chosen for Terrestrial Planet Finder. Pasadena - May 10, 2004
Included in the nation's new vision for space is a plan for NASA to "conduct
advanced telescope searches for Earth-like planets and habitable environments
around other stars." To meet this challenge, NASA has chosen to fly
two separate missions with distinct and complementary architectures to achieve
the goal of the Terrestrial Planet Finder.
XMM-Newton
Detects X-Ray 'Solar Cycle' In Distant Star. Paris (ESA) May 10, 2004
For years, astronomers have wondered whether stars similar to the Sun go
through periodic cycles of enhanced X-ray activity, like those often causing
troubles to telephone and power lines here on Earth.
Biology
Nanobodies
Herald A New Era In Cancer Therapy. Brussels (SPX) May 13, 2004
The vast majority of the current medicines for treating tumors - the so-called
chemotherapeutics - are seldom specific. Indeed, because a chemotherapy
treatment is not only toxic to cancer cells but to the body's normal cells
as well, patients often experience severe side effects.
Gene
therapy fights HIV in human tests
A new form of gene therapy slashes replication of the HIV virus in cells
from people infected with drug-resistant strains.
Molecule
cuts off fat's food supply
A magic bullet that destroys the blood vessels that feed fat tissue enables
mice to lose a third of their body weight.
Creation/Evolution
'Junk' DNA reveals
vital role
Inscrutable genetic sequences seem indispensable. The segments, dubbed 'ultraconserved
elements', lie in the large parts of the genome that do not code for any
protein. Their presence adds to growing evidence that the importance of
these areas, often dismissed as junk DNA, could be much more fundamental
than anyone suspected.
Synthetic
Life
A small but rapidly growing number of scientists have set out in recent
years to buttress the foundation of genetic engineering with what they call
synthetic biology. They are designing and building living systems that behave
in predictable ways, that use interchangeable parts, and in some cases that
operate with an expanded genetic code, which allows them to do things that
no natural organism can.
Intelligent Design:
For the past several years I have been recommending the Icons of
Evolution documentary, for the first step in understanding the problems
with the reigning paradigm of Darwinism, followed by the equally impressive
documentary Unlocking the Mystery of Life, for an introduction to
the concepts of design and the scientists who are behind the movement. Once
the multimedia introduction has been completed, I recommend they move on
to the half dozen books by Dr.
Phillip Johnson and then tackle his video
debate at Stanford with Dr. William Provine of Cornell. But now I have
a new favorite to go along with the first two documentaries above, and it
comes from France. Voyage Inside the Cell is a 15-minute animated
journey through the cell that leaves the viewer stunned with the amazing
complexity and information content of the living cell.
New Book Release: By Design or By Chance? To view the table of contents or order By Design or By Chance, go to http://www.arn.org/arnproducts/books/b088.htm.
Niall Shanks's God, the Devil,
and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design
Theory and Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross's Creationism's Trojan Horse:
The Wedge of Intelligent Design both received favorable reviews in Science
(2004 May 7; 304: 825-6).
Mitochondrial
DNA Mixes It Up
Evidence of DNA swapping may break the molecular clock. (Membership required)
Heritage
on the Vine
Jumping DNA turned ancestral grapes from black to white, then to red. (Membership
required)
ASA Conference:
The 2004 annual conference Neuroscience and the Image of God
is fast approaching and I would like to share some exciting developments
with you. Our featured plenary speakers will be psychologists Malcolm Jeeves,
Warren Brown, Heather Looy and neurophysiologist David Cechetto.
Earth Science
Solar
wind to shield Earth during pole flip
A stream of solar wind will come to the planet's rescue during the next
reversal of its magnetic poles, reveals a new study.
Oldest
Hummingbird Found in Germany. May 7, 2004
Fossils of the world's oldest known modern hummingbird were unearthed in
Germany, the first discovery of ancient skeletons of the tiny nectar-sucking
bird outside the American continent, the journal Science said Thursday.
Early
Arthropod Caught Shedding Skin. May 6, 2004
For the first time ever, paleontologists have caught one of the earliest
animals in the act of doing something totally expected — shedding its
skin. The molting animal was captured in a 505-million-year-old fossil of
a bug-like arthropod sea creature call Marrella splendens, found in the
Burgess Shale of the Canadian Rockies.
Penn
Researchers Describe Newly Found Dinosaur Of The Montana Coastline.
PHILADELPHIA
Through the cycads and gingkoes of the floodplains, not far from the Sundance
Sea, strode the 50-foot-long Suuwassea, a plant-eating dinosaur with a whip-like
tail and an anomalous second hole in its skull destined to puzzle paleontologists
in 150 million years. According to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania,
Suuwassea emilieae (pronounced SOO-oo-WAH-see-uh eh-MEE-LEE-aye) is a smaller
relative of Diplodocus and Apatosaurus and is the first named sauropod dinosaur
from the Jurassic of southern Montana.
Bugs go spelunking
Microbes carve huge caverns out of solid rock. Some of the world's largest
and most spectacular caves were created by the tiniest builders imaginable,
according to a team of US geologists. It is the microbes that are responsible
for converting the carbonate rock into gypsum. Little by little, the bacterial
waste has turned tiny fissures into caves big enough to walk through.
Evidence Of
Meteor Impact Found Off Australian Coast. Arlington VA (SPX) May 14,
2004
An impact crater believed to be associated with the "Great Dying,"
the largest extinction event in the history of life on Earth, appears to
be buried off the coast of Australia. NASA and the National Science Foundation
funded the major research project headed by Luann Becker, a scientist at
the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Satellites
See Shadows Of Ancient Glaciers
People in the central and eastern United States and Canada are used to the
idea that the land they live on -- its variety of hills, lakes and rivers
-- are left over from the great mile-thick ice sheets that covered the area
18,000 years ago. They may, however, be surprised to learn that today, long
after the glaciers melted, an international research team led by Northwestern
University geologists using the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites
can "see" the land moving -- up to half an inch per year in some
places -- as the earth rebounds in response to the ice that once pushed
the land down.
Satellite
data confirms climate change
Global warming anomaly may succumb to microwave study.
Study
Results May Resolve Long-Standing Global Warming Debate
Theoretically, if global warming is indeed happening, the troposphere should
be heating up at least as fast as the earth's surface is. Yet temperature
data obtained with devices called microwave sounding units over the past
25 years have consistently suggested little if any tropospheric warming.
Some climate scientists have therefore argued that global warming models
are flawed. New research indicates that the error lies not in the models,
but rather in the temperature readings themselves.
Volcano near DR Congo-Rwanda border erupting since Saturday.
Physics
OUR UNIVERSE HAS A TOPOLOGY SCALE OF AT LEAST 24 Gpc, or about 75 billion light years, according to a new analysis of data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). What does this mean? Well, because of conceivable hall-of-mirrors effects of spacetime, the universe might be finite in size but give us mortals the illusion that it is infinite. For example, the cosmos might be tiled with some repeating shape, around which light rays might wrap themselves over and over.
Physicists 'Entangle'
Light, Pave Way To Atomic-Scale Measurements. Toronto (SPX) May 13,
2004
U of T physicists have developed a way to entangle photons which could ultimately
lead to an extremely precise new measurement system. Their study appears
in the May 13 issue of the journal Nature.
Yale
Scientist Says Clues To String Theory May Be Visible In Big Bang Aftermath.
Scientists say that the fundamental forces of the Universe – gravity
(defined by general relativity), electromagnetism, “weak” radioactive
forces and “strong” nuclear forces (all defined by quantum theory)
– were united in the high-energy flash of the Big Bang, when all matter
and energy was confined within a sub-atomic scale. Although the Big Bang
occurred nearly 14 billion years ago, its afterglow, the CMB, still blankets
the entire universe and contains a fossilized record of the first moments
of time. The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) studies the CMB
and detects subtle temperature differences, within this largely uniform
radiation, glowing at only 2.73 degrees Celsius above absolute zero. The
uniformity is evidence of “inflation,” a period when the expansion
of the Universe accelerated rapidly, around 10-33 seconds after the Big
Bang. During inflation, the Universe grew from an atomic scale to a cosmic
scale, increasing its size a hundred trillion trillion times over. The energy
field that drove inflation, like all quantum fields, contained fluctuations.
These fluctuations, locked into the cosmic microwave background like waves
on a frozen pond, may contain evidence for string theory.