| Site Map | Contacts | Links | Newsletter | |
News:
May 30, 2004
Note: Due to the archiving policies of the various news Websites some links on this page may no longer be valid. All links will take you away from the IBSS Site - use your browser's "back" button to return to this page.
Religion in the News
Bush Calls
for 'Culture Change'
In interview, President says new era of responsibility should replace 'feel-good.'
By Sheryl Henderson Blunt.
Sudan's
Biblical History
Sudan's ongoing civil war isn't the only reason Christians should be familiar
with the region. Interview by Rob Moll.
Calif.
lawmakers stage 'domestic revolt'
State lawmakers staged a "domestic revolt" Monday, some donning
kitchen aprons and scarlet "M's" to protest a pastor who characterized
female legislators with young children at home as sinners (Associated
Press).
Fascinated
with The Passion
Gibson film draws big Muslim crowds. By Deann Alford.
'Saved!' skewers teen movie
conventions
Mandy Moore stars in this tale of a Christian high school (MSNBC).
Log on for salvation
If people won't come to church, the church will have to come to them—or,
at least, to their computers (Newsweek).
Online
journal offers forum for Catholic views
Australia's Catholics awoke yesterday to a new online journal dedicated
to restoring liberal debate to the church. The journal plans to open up
to debate issues suppressed by the church's official leadership (The
Age, Melbourne, Australia).
Give
'em that new-time religion
Before celebrities flocked to Kabbalah, there was Scientology
(USA Today).
New theory suggests
people are attracted to religion for 16 reasons
People are not drawn to religion just because of a fear of death or
any other single reason, according to a new comprehensive, psychological
theory of religion (Press release, Ohio State University).
EHarmony.com patents matchmaking formula | Can the elusive art of matchmaking be reduced to equations and databases? (Associated Press).
The Dick
Staub Interview: Finding God in the Questions
ABC News Medical Editor, Dr. Timothy Johnson, decided to rethink his faith,
and found God by asking questions.
Science in the News
Archaeology/Anthropology
Evidence of Ancient
University Unearthed in Alexandria.
A team of Polish archaeologists has recently uncovered the first material
evidence of the ancient University of Alexandria in Egypt. Known as the
intellectual center of the ancient world, Alexandria was home to the famous
library that was founded in 295 B.C. and burned to the ground in the fourth
century A.D.
Ancient
tombs of royal standard discovered in Shaanxi.
A large-scale tomb group of the Western Zhou Dynasty (11th century B.C.-
771 B.C.) was discovered at the Zhougong Temple site in Qishan County in
northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Chinese archaeologists said Tuesday.
The James L. Kelso Bible Lands Museum, in the basement of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, is a "small archaeological treasure." Its collection of 16mm movies show Kelso and early archaeological luminaries on digs going back to the 1920s and the daily life of the local Arabs at that time.
Microbes
Found In Mayan Ruins May Deteriorate Stone From Inside Out. NEW ORLEANS
– May 27, 2004
Researchers from Havard University have discovered the presence of a previously
unidentified microbial community inside the porous stone of the Maya ruins
in Mexico that may be capable of causing rapid deterioration of these sites.
They present their findings at the 104th General Meeting of the American
Society for Microbiology.
Astronomy
Raw Ingredients
For Life Detected In Planetary Construction Zones. Washington (SPX)
May 27, 2004
NASA has announced new findings from the Spitzer Space Telescope, including
the discovery of significant amounts of icy organic materials sprinkled
throughout several "planetary construction zones," or dusty planet-forming
discs, which circle infant stars.
Milky Way
Churning Out New Stars At A Furious Pace. Madison WI (SPX) May 27, 2004
Some of the first data from a new orbiting infrared telescope are revealing
that the Milky Way - and by analogy galaxies in general - is making new
stars at a much more prolific pace than astronomers imagined.
Loneos Discovers
Asteroid With The Smallest Orbit. Flagstaff AZ (SPX) May 24, 2004
The ongoing search for near-Earth asteroids at Lowell Observatory has yielded
another interesting object. Designated 2004 JG6, this asteroid was found
in the course of LONEOS (the Lowell Observatory Near-Earth Object Search)
on the evening of May 10 by observer Brian Skiff.
Seven Years
To Saturn. Pasadena - May 24, 2004
As Cassini nears its rendezvous with Saturn, new detail in the banded clouds
of the planet's atmosphere are becoming visible.
From Under
Gran Sasso Mountain, Universe Seems Older. Rome (SPX) May 24, 2004
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.
Chandra
Observations Confirm Existence of Dark Energy
NASA recently announced results from the Chandra telescope that offer independent
confirmation that three quarters of the universe is made up of dark energy.
"Dark energy is perhaps the biggest mystery in physics," says
team leader Steve Allen of the University of Cambridge in England. "As
such, it is extremely important to make an independent test of its existence
and properties."
Titan's
Big Future In Plastics. Tucson AZ - May 25, 2004
While the Cassini spacecraft has been flying toward Saturn, chemists on
Earth have been making plastic pollution like that raining through the atmosphere
of Saturn's moon, Titan.
Dust rocks
martian river theory
Signs of water may really be slumping sand. Gullies on Mars that appear
to have been carved by flowing water could instead have been created by
landslides of dry powdery material, scientists have found.
Biology
Shortened
Chromosomes Linked To Early Stages Of Cancer Development
Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center say they have evidence
that abnormally short telomeres - the end-caps on chromosomes that normally
preserve genetic integrity -appear to play a role in the early development
of many types of cancer.
Loyola
Decides To Test New Blood Substitute In Trauma Patients At The Scene Of
Injury
Loyola University Health System plans to test PolyHeme, an investigational
oxygen-carrying blood substitute designed to increase survival of critically
injured and bleeding trauma patients at the scene of injury.
Creation/Evolution
Chimps are not
like humans
Whole-chromosome comparison reveals much greater genetic differences than
expected.
Michael Shermer
reflects on his debate with Kent Hovind.
“Who won the debate? Intellectually, I did, with Hovind once again
conceding defeat on the last question of the evening: “What is the
best evidence for the creation?” He answered: “The impossibility
of the contrary” (evolution). In that simple statement, Hovind confessed
the scientific sin of all creationists: Disproving evolution does not prove
the creationist contrary.”
Duplicate
genes increase gene expression diversity within and between species.
Nature: Genetics June 2004, Volume 36 No 6 pp577 - 579 Zhenglong Gu,
Scott A Rifkin, Kevin P White & Wen-Hsiung Li.
How microsporidia
evolve
Genes evolve rapidly but genomes don't, suggesting that space constraints
play a role.
Tiny Microbes
In Greenland Glacier May Define Limits For Life On Earth. New Orleans
LA (SPX) May 26, 2004
The discovery of millions of micro-microbes surviving in a 120,000-year-old
ice sample taken from 3,000 meters below the surface of the Greenland glacier
will be announced by Penn State University scientists on 26 May 2004 at
the General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in New Orleans,
Louisiana.
Mammalian genome
special.
This special issue of Nature is a snapshot of genome research and medical
applications, featuring the first sequenced chimpanzee chromosome and an
accompanying web focus, and several additions to our ongoing human genome
web focus, with chromosomes 9 and 10, as well as a new analysis of the quality
of the human genome sequence. All content is available free online.
Genetics help
hound health
DNA test maps evolution of dog breeds. 21 May 2004.
Expanding
The Genetic Code. San Diego CA (SPX) May 25, 2004
A team of investigators at The Scripps Research Institute and its Skaggs
Institute for Chemical Biology in La Jolla, California has modified a form
of the bacterium Escherichia coli to use a 22-amino acid genetic code.
Inconstant
Multiverse, by R.B. Mann
The question of why there is something rather than nothing has occupied
philosophers and theologians from the very beginning. However, Robert
Mann suggests that recent findings in cosmology have raised a different,
but perhaps even more intriguing question: Why is there something
rather than everything? This question is posed by cosmological exploration
due to two properties of our universe. The first is the apparent prejudice
for life in the universe, that the natural constants of physical laws admit
the development of life for only a very narrow range of a logically infinite
set of values…and yet there is life! The second is evidence of
causal action over vast distances in the universe, without any apparent
causal contact. General accounts of both the “anthropic principle”
and the “inflationary universe” tend to rely on the concept of
the “multiverse,” the idea that anything that can exist does exist
in some “universe,” some particular subset of the set of all possible
universes, i.e., of the multiverse. Mann argues that this implication
of the multiverse theory poses significant problems for both science and
theology. He proposes instead the concept of a “altiverse,”
which he defines as “a set of possible alternatives that logically
exist but are not physically realized.”
Earth Science
Dinosaurs
Died Within Hours After Asteroid Hit Earth. Boulder CO (SPX) May 26,
2004
According to new research led by a University of Colorado at Boulder geophysicist,
a giant asteroid that hit the coast of Mexico 65 million years ago probably
incinerated all the large dinosaurs that were alive at the time in only
a few hours, and only those organisms already sheltered in burrows or in
water were left alive.
Ancient continents
sent flying
Shifting core may have accelerated land movements. Seven hundred million
years ago our planet experienced sudden contortions that sent whole continents
flying across the equator in just a few million years. This idea has been
controversial, but is now on a much firmer footing after a new analysis
of magnetic signatures in ancient rocks. 21 May 2004.
Thick Siderite
Marine Beds Suggest High CO2 Levels In Early Atmosphere.
University Park PA - May 27, 2004
Carbon dioxide and oxygen, not methane, were prevalent in the Earth's atmosphere
more than 1.8 billion years ago as shown by the absence of siderite in ancient
soils but the abundance of the mineral in ocean sediments from that time,
according to a Penn State geochemist.
Ancient Pebbles
Contain Evidence Of A Hotter World. Stanford CA (SPX) May 26, 2004
Analysis of 3.2-billion-year-old pebbles has yielded perhaps the oldest
geological evidence of Earth's ancient atmosphere and climate. The findings,
published in the April 15 issue of the journal Nature, indicate that carbon
dioxide levels in the early atmosphere were substantially above those that
exist today and above those predicted by other models of the early Earth.
Mountain
Scars Proof Of Conflict Between Tectonic Plates And Climate. Blacksburg
(SPX) May 26, 2004
Across the world, rivers wash mountains into the sea. In the beautiful and
rugged mountains of southeast Alaska, glaciers grind mountains down as fast
as the earth's colliding tectonic plates shove them up.
Scientists Look
At Moon To Shed Light On Earth's Climate. Greenbelt MD (SPX) May 27,
2004
According to a new NASA-funded study, insights into Earth's climate may
come from an unlikely place: the moon. Scientists looked at the ghostly
glow of light reflected from Earth onto the moon's dark side. During the
1980s and 1990s, Earth bounced less sunlight out to space. The trend reversed
during the past three years, as the Earth appears to reflect more light
toward space.
Physics
Into
the dark state
For centuries we have struggled to exploit the properties of light. Though
we have succeeded to some degree, it has always been slippery and elusive,
a fast-moving sprite. But not any more. Thanks to something called the dark
state, where the boundary between light and matter becomes blurred, we can
now slow and even stop photons of light. And this means we can use them
to carry and process information with unprecedented ease: thanks to the
mysterious dark state, we can at last put light on a leash.
Technology
Nanotech Improving
Energy Options. New York (UPI) May 27, 2004
Nanotechnology could help revolutionize the energy industry, producing advances
such as solar power cells made of plastics to environmentally friendly batteries
that detoxify themselves, experts told United Press International.