Below are more web article summaries with links for the period 14-16
December 1999, in descending date order.
Some of the links may require free registration and some of the long links
may need rejoining because of word-wrapping in transmission.
Apologies if some have already been posted by others.
My comments are in square brackets.
Steve
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000113078204876&rtmo=02KeKKKq&atmo=FFFFFFtX&pg=/et/99/12/16/ecflife16.html
Electronic Telegraph. [16 December, 1999] ...Dr Craig Venter ...has
whittled down the smallest known genetic code - of a simple bacterium - to
a bare minimum set of essential genes. A proposal to put this recipe into a
synthetic organism is "pending ethical review"...but ... a "large
technological gap" remains before scientists can create life in the lab.
...public debate must keep pace with the science...it does raise questions as
to how we frame our definition of life ... If a genetic definition of life took
hold, it could have implications for the abortion debate...any...collection of
cells that contain a human genetic complement.- such as dandruff - should
have rights... (106/1079) [It appears this synthetic bacterium is still a long
way off, but the ethical debate is heating up. A good thing about this is it
will test naturalistic ethical systems. Betrand Russell thought that a logical
extension of Darwinism would be "votes for oysters". But even he would
not have foreseen rights for dandruff!]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000113078204876&rtmo=02KeKKKq&atmo=FFFFFFtX&pg=/et/99/12/16/ecftime16.html
Electronic Telegraph. [16 December, 1999]. The atomic time lord. Was
Einstein right about time running slower for travellers? ..."It's very weird,
we don't exactly know what time is, but everyone knows how to measure
it," he says. ...To test if Einstein was right about time running slower for
travellers, Dr Johnson will send an atomic clock from the National Physical
Laboratory...to Shanghai, and back. The effect is called time dilation...
Relativity theory suggests that even if we fly a long way at a few hundred
miles an hour we should see a slight shift in time - but so small that we
would need a very accurate clock to tell the difference...from the
perspective of the audience, the journey will be longer by 60 nanoseconds
... single atom clocks may become so accurate that they could even change
our understanding of the universe...time may even cease to exist as we
know it...the very fabric of space and time, thought by Einstein to be
smooth, is actually a seething foamy mess. ...time is stretched and
squashed... as bubbles form, then pop. ... (182/1820) [An interesting
counter to the denial that ID is science because it has not identified the
Designer, is that science does not know what time is, even though it can
measure it.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991216/sc/science_greenland_1.html
Yahoo! ... December 16 ...(Reuters) - Water droplets trapped in bedrock in
... Greenland ... the oldest geological formation ... on earth, may stem from
oceans that existed 3.8 billion years ago ... analyses ... could shed light on
the origin of life... (37/354) [If there ever was an oceanic primordial soup,
this should detect traces of it.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991216/sc/science_chromosome_2.html
Yahoo! ... December 16 ... Scientists Map DNA Sequence of Plant
Chromosomes ... (Reuters) - ...scientists announced...the completion of
two chromosomes of a tiny weed ... The achievement ... provides new
information that will lead to the production of more nutritious and resilient
plants. ... Venter [et. al.] ... sequenced chromosome 2 of the weed
Arabidopsis thaliana (thale cress)... The researchers chose Arabidopsis
because it is very small with only five chromosomes... It also contains many
of the same genes as other crop plants... The two chromosomes contain
7,781 protein-coding genes which make up about 30 percent of the
estimated 26,000 genes in the entire genome... [an] estimated 130 million
base pairs... (104/1062) [Maybe they will discover what all gardeners could
have told them-that weeds have minds of their own! I look forward to a
genetically engineered lawn that looks great, but never needs watering,
fertilising or mowing. :-)]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991216/sc/space_life_1.html Yahoo!
... December 16 ... (Reuters) - Scientists looking for possible alien life are
focusing on Jupiter's moon Europa, where huge cracks in the surface
indicate that a massive liquid ocean may be sloshing under an icy crust.
"...it's a great environment to live in," Richard Greenberg ... said ... tides...
interacting with the icy surface crust ... could generate friction and heat
enough to sustain life. ..."cycloid" cracks...flanked by ... orangey-brown
residue. ...it was far too early to suggest that the residue might be some
sort of organic material ... (83/853) [Still the assumption that life is just a
chemical reaction! But if that were the case, why would it not have arisen
multiple times on Earth, and indeed be arising today? And why can't
scientists duplicate the conditions in a lab and create life?]
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/121499sci-spacegalaxies.html
New York Times. December 14, 1999. Survey Reveals Massive Galaxies
... Using a technique akin to overlaying thousands of faint X-ray images to
create one sharp picture, astronomers have discovered that typical galaxies
may be twice as large and contain twice as much mass as suggested by
previous measurements. The new observations, which have emerged from a
five-year census of the heavens called the Sloan Digital Sky Survey,
indicate that an average galaxy extends invisibly for well over a million
light-years into space and weighs the equivalent of at least five trillion Suns
... The finding raises the possibility that the Milky Way and its nearest
galactic neighbor -- Andromeda...actually brush against each other in the
remote darkness of space. The observations probed not the bright disk but
the mysterious cloud of nonluminous or "dark" matter, called a halo, that
surrounds the disk. Although...scientists have been unable to determine its
precise nature, they know of its existence because of the gravitational pull
it exerts on ordinary matter ..."...the halos of galaxies are
enormous...perhaps extending 10 to 20 times the size of the visible regions
of the galaxies."... at least 90 percent of the matter in the universe is
dark..." (200/2058) [After all the exotic proposals to account for the dark
matter, from MACHOS to WIMPS, it may be comforting to some if it
turns out to something dull and boring as just more of the same after all!]
http://www.cnn.com/1999/US/12/14/teen.sex.survey.ap/index.html CNN ...
December 14, 1999 ... (AP) -- In one school out of three, American
teenagers are not just encouraged to abstain from sex, they are taught that
abstinence is the only appropriate option, according to two surveys...
Abstinence long has been promoted by conservative and religious groups
who argue that talking about birth control sends teenagers a mixed
message... Tuesday's reports are the first to document how widespread
abstinence-only programs are in American schools, which are a central
source of sexuality education ... There is some evidence that abstinence-
plus programs can help prevent teen pregnancy. ... Most Americans seem
to support programs that promote abstinence and give information about
contraception. ... (113/1179) [Another example of a grassroots return to
more traditional values? Maybe a signal that society is rejecting the
devastating materialist propaganda that has for too long been masquerading
as science?]
http://www.cnn.com/1999/TECH/space/12/14/sci.solarwind.ap/index.html
CNN ... Rare solar wind silence opens window into sun ... December 14,
1999 ... (AP) -- The constant stream of particles from the sun known as the
solar wind all but stopped blowing earlier this year, offering a rare
opportunity to study the interaction between Earth and its nearest star. The
unexpected event from late May 10 to early May 12 did not pose any
threat...but it did create some unusual effects as the planet's magnetic field
ballooned to more than 100 times its regular size without the confining
pressure from the solar wind... .. (97/975) Also at:
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/121499sci-solar-wind.html
New York Times. December 14, 1999. When the Solar Wind Fell, Science
Reaped a Windfall...Scientists consider that wind, which originates just
above the roiling surface of the sun, to be as ancient and unyielding as the
solar system itself. But one day last spring, the wind all but vanished...the
culprit could be the sun's rise to its 11-year maximum of activity early in
the new millennium...After the sun's recent period of quiescence, said Dr.
Steinberg, "I'm suspicious that over the next couple of years we're going to
have to face the fact that it's very complicated up there." (99/1028) [It is
hard to imagine what could cause the solar wind to virtually cease but this
apparently has happened before. It seems strange if this news is only now
being made public, seven months afterwards. It will be interesting to find
out what was the cause.]
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/121499sciarchaeology-women.html
New York Times. December 14, 1999. Furs for Evening, but Cloth Was
the Stone Age Stand-by ... Ah, the poor Stone Age woman of our kitschy
imagination. When she isn't getting bonked over the head with a club and
dragged across the cave floor by her matted hair, she's hunched over a fire,
poking at a roasting mammoth thigh ...But whatever her form, her garb is
the same: some sort of animal pelt, cut nasty, brutish and short. Now,
according to three anthropologists...In a new analysis of the renowned
"Venus" figurines, the hand-size statuettes of female bodies carved from
27,000 to 20,000 years ago, the researchers have found evidence that the
women of the so-called upper Paleolithic era were far more accomplished,
economically powerful and sartorially gifted than previously believed.
...subtle but intricate details on a number of the figurines offer the most
compelling evidence yet that Paleolithic women had already mastered a
revolutionary skill long thought to have arisen much later in human history:
the ability to weave plant fibers into cloth, rope, nets and baskets...Because
they have emotionally charged thingies like breasts and buttocks, the Venus
figurines ... Scholars have been looking at these things for years, but
unfortunately, their minds have been elsewhere," ... Dr. Adovasio estimates
that weaving and cord-making probably goes back to the year 40,000 B.C.
"at a minimum," and possibly much further. (228/2343) [If this holds up it
will be a comment on the subjectivity of anthropology that it could miss
something so obvious for so long, under the influence of evolutionary
ideas. Also may be significant for Biblical interpretation, because it will be
more evidence of sophisticated human culture well before extant recorded
history.]
http://cnn.com/1999/HEALTH/12/14/sickle.cell.ap/ CNN ... December 14,
1999 ... (AP) -- A 13-year-old boy who underwent an experimental blood
cell transfusion was declared cured of sickle cell anemia ... Doctors had
replaced the bone marrow ... with stem cells from the umbilical cord of an
unrelated infant in the hopes that the new cells would produce healthy
marrow, which ... produces blood cells ... "The cord blood cells are now
fully operational ... We see no signs of sickle cells" .." (73/727) [Interesting
how someone can have the defective haemoglobin gene in the rest of his
body but if his bone marrow cells are replaced with cells with normal DNA
the problem is cured. One wonders how many other genetic disorders can
be cured this way with stem cells? However, presumably he would still pass
the defective genes on to his children?]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991214/sc/science_cats_2.html
Yahoo! ... December 14 ... (Reuters) - A housecat has given birth to a rare
cousin, the African wildcat, in a... surrogate birth experiment... [It was] ...
hoped to use the method to help save the wildcat, which is endangered. ...
Wildcats... look very much like their domestic cousins ... (49/498) [This
might be a significant step in saving endangered species. It might also be
significant from the taxonomical and developmental perspective?]
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"While naturalism has often been equated with materialism, it is much
broader in scope. Materialism is indeed naturalistic, but the converse is not
necessarily true. Strictly speaking, naturalism has no ontological
preference; i.e., no bias toward any particular set of categories of reality:
dualism and monism, atheism and theism, idealism and materialism are all
per se compatible with it. So long as all of reality is natural, no other
limitations are imposed. Naturalists have in fact expressed a wide variety of
views, even to the point of developing a theistic naturalism."
("naturalism", Britannica.com, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1999.
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/6/0,5716,56426+1,00.html).
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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