As mentioned in my previous post about copyright, and in view of
Terry and Steve Clark's helpful emails on that topic, I am
not going to post any more full articles, unless they are free of
copyright.
Here are some brief summaries in descending date order of web
articles for the period 16-28 November 1999.
My comments are in square brackets.
Steve
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http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991128/sc/space_mars_deepspace_2.html
Sunday November 28 5:43 PM ET World's Smallest Labs on Way to
Mars By Michael Miller PASADENA, Calif. (Reuters) - Imagine a
laboratory on Mars that can conduct experiments to find water, test soil,
measure density, pressure and temperature of the atmosphere and
determine centuries-old surface layering...the size of a grapefruit and driven
by a computer half the size of a business card and not much
thicker...powered by the equal of eight flashlight batteries to send radio
signals, conduct experiments, collect soil samples, heat them in a tiny oven
and then pass a laser beam through them to test for water....Deep Space 2
which will start operating on Mars on Friday (Dec. 3) when the Mars Polar
Lander drops gently to the surface of the Red Planet... [It doesn't say
whether this will test for evidence of life on Mars. Does anyone know?]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_535000/535945.stm BBC
... Thursday, 25 November, 1999, 05:09 GMT The relative importance of
chickens Chickens are useful for studying embryology. Scientists have
made the surprising discovery that the way our genes are organised has
more in common with chickens than it does with mice....When we seek to
understand the quirks of human genetics - such as the inheritance of disease
- our first call is often a mouse "model"...But David Burt and colleagues
from the Roslin Institute, UK, have shown that at one level... the large-
scale organisation of genes...the manner in which the genes are distributed
across the chromosomes ...looks closer in humans and chickens than it
does in humans and mice...Although both humans and mice shared a
common ancestor with chickens that lived around 300 million years ago, it
seems that the rodent genome has evolved much faster, particularly over
the past few tens of millions of years. In other words, mice genes have been
shuffled much faster." [Although I accept common ancestry, this type of
anomaly and `just-so' explanation helps me maintain a healthy scepticism
about claims that molecular phylogenies confirm fossil phylogenies].
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991124/sc/science_genome_2.html
Yahoo! Wednesday November 24 1:36 AM ET. Scientists Tally 1 Billion
Pairs in Human Genome. By Deborah Zabarenko. WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - Scientists said on Tuesday they have determined the exact order
of 1 billion of the basic chemical building blocks of life, putting them one-
third of the way in the massive push to sequence the whole human
genome....Every bit of genetic information is encoded in DNA, from hair
and eye color to predisposition to diseases....Scientists launched the human
genome project in 1990 as part of an effort to determine genetic factors
behind diseases...The project originally was planned to last 15 years but
technological advances have speeded work and now a completely
sequenced human genome is expected to be finished by 2003 or sooner. A
working draft of the human genome is expected to be complete in the first
half of next year. The aim of the project is to identify all of the more than
100,000 genes in human DNA, determine the exact order of the 3 billion
chemical base pairs, store this information in databases, develop tools to
analyze the data and deal with any ethical, legal and social issues that could
arise.... ["Every bit of genetic information is encoded in DNA" is either a
tautology, if the emphasis in on "genetic", or false, if the emphasis is on
"information". The cell cytoskeleton also contributes (analogue?)
information to the organism]
http://www.newscientist.co.uk/ns/19991120/editorial.html New Scientist,
20 November 1999...Endless forms Darwin would have cheered as we
struggle to reinvent the notion of species. THESE ARE PERILOUS and
tough times for tradition...another tradition that is also in trouble. Quietly,
out in the rainforests and grasslands and rivers, field biologists are making
observations that threaten the ultimate "us and them" distinction--the lines
we draw between species. Among biologists, uncertainties about how to
define and name species are nothing new, of course. And debate has raged
for years over what causes animals and plants to diverge. But more than
ever before, the pressure's on for a serious rethink....But another reading
could be that the term "species" is so flawed it has outlived its
usefulness...what's the alternative? Unfortunately, there are no easy fixes.
To move towards looser definitions of species is to risk more ambiguity
and confusion, while to alter species names so they reflect the form of
evolution's tree of life, rather than just the end of its branches, is easier said
than done. ..part of the answer might well be to ... adopt a pluralist
approach in which we accept that no one definition of species will work all
the time.... [Maybe Agassiz was right after all? Species really *are* "the
created incarnations of ideas in God's mind"!]
http://www.msnbc.com/news/336589.asp#BODY MSNBC.COM...New
evidence of ancient flood. Modern science meets biblical legend deep in the
Black Sea. By Guy Gugliotta WASHINGTON POST. WASHINGTON,
Nov. 18 - Scientists have discovered an ancient coastline 550 feet below
the surface of the Black Sea, providing dramatic new evidence of a sudden,
catastrophic flood around 7,500 years ago-the possible source of the Old
Testament story of Noah...`There are other flood stories, but if you want to
say the Black Sea flood is Noah's flood, who's to say no?' - HERSHEL
SHANKS editor, Biblical Archaeology Review. A TEAM of deep-sea
explorers this summer captured the first sonar images of a gentle berm and
a sandbar submerged undisturbed for thousands of years on the sea floor.
Now, using radiocarbon dating techniques, analysts have shown that the
remains of freshwater mollusks subsequently dredged from the ancient
beach date back 7,500 years and saltwater species begin showing up 6,900
years ago. Explorer Robert D. Ballard, who led the team that collected the
shells, said the findings indicate a flood occurred sometime during the 600-
year gap. "What we wanted to do is prove to ourselves that it was the
biblical flood,"... The findings offer independent verification of a theory
advanced by Columbia University geologists William Ryan and Walter
Pitman that the Black Sea was created when melting glaciers raised the sea
level until the sea breached a natural dam at what is now the Bosporus, the
strait that separates the Mediterranean Sea from the Black Sea. An
apocalyptic deluge followed, inundating the freshwater lake below the dam,
submerging thousands of square miles of dry land, flipping the ecosystem
from fresh water to salt practically overnight, and probably killing
thousands of people and billions of land and sea creatures, according to
Ryan and Pitman. The two scientists described the catastrophe in their
book "Noah's Flood,"...No one had ever actually seen the old shoreline,
however, until Ballard's team captured sonar images of it in August...
See also http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A139671999Nov17.html
[While interesting, this does not fit the Biblical story sources of rain and
underground springs (Gn 7:11). Also the other link says "Every day the
lake level rose six inches. And every day the water marched another mile
inland". A flood that slow wouldn't catch a geriatric on a walking-frame!]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991116/sc/life_egyptology_1.html
Yahoo! Tuesday November 16 9:54 PM ET. US Experts Find Early
Egyptian Alphabetic Writings NEW HAVEN, Conn. (Reuters) A pair of
American Egyptologists have discovered ancient inscriptions in limestone
that could be the earliest known examples of alphabetic writing...The
inscriptions, found on the surface of a mountain in the western desert of
Egypt, have been dated to between 2000 and 1900 B.C., Darnell said. That
would place the inscriptions hundreds of years before any previously
recognized examples of alphabetic writing...A pictographic, or
hieroglyphic, writing system already had been in use in Egypt for more than
a millennium....The significance of the findings is that alphabetic writing
seems to have developed "earlier than had been thought (and that it)
developed directly out of the interaction of Semitic-speaking people and
Egyptian scribes working in Egypt," he said. The previous oldest evidence
of an alphabet, dated around 1600 B.C., was found near or in Semitic-
speaking territory, in the Sinai Peninsula and farther north in the Syria-
Palestine region occupied by the ancient Canaanites, Darnell said...This
means, then, that Egypt is really the home of alphabetic writing. It doesn't
just originate under Egyptian influence (in the Syria-Palestine region), it
really appears to originate in Egypt." [Whether the Hebrews brought
alphabetic writing with them to Egypt (ca. 1800 BC) or Moses learned
alphabetic writing in Pharoah's court (ca. 1400 BC), this fits the Biblical
picture of Moses writing the Pentateuch, which liberal criticism under the
influence of evolutionary presupposition formerly denied. In the case of
Genesis 1-11, a lot of problems would be explained if these were
pictographic tablets, ancient even in Moses' time, and converted by him
into alphabetic writing using the thought-forms of his day, as all translators
do.]
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Stephen E. (Steve) Jones ,--_|\ Email: sejones@iinet.net.au
3 Hawker Avenue / Oz \ Web: http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
Warwick 6024 -> *_,--\_/ Phone: +61 8 9448 7439
Perth, Western Australia v "Test everything." (1 Thess. 5:21)
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