Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community
Category

Ecology

At Phys.org: Sleeping giant could end deep ocean life

Researchers: "A previously overlooked factor—the position of continents—helps fill Earth's oceans with life-supporting oxygen. Continental movement could ultimately have the opposite effect, killing most deep ocean creatures." Read More ›

Found: The ‘holy grail of catalysis’—turning methane into methanol under ambient conditions using light

An international team of researchers has developed a fast and economical method of converting methane, or natural gas, into liquid methanol at ambient temperature and pressure. Read More ›

Forrest Mims has a new paper in the works at Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

He was named one of 50 best brains in science by Discover Magazine in 2008, despite the torrent of bigotry over his non-Darwinian approach to nature. Read More ›

Epigenetics: Pollution effects persist for many generations in water fleas

Well, that’s revealing, isn’t it? The evolutionary biologist admits that epigenetics is controversial, not because it can’t be demonstrated (it can) but because it provides competition for “traditional Darwinian inheritance.” Read More ›

This California story shows what a mess the whole concept of speciation is in

Many issues are worth raising, including whether "species" is a clear enough concept to warrant being a measure, as opposed to, say, role in an ecology. When is it wise to intervene to preserve something? Goals driven by passions are often misguided and wasteful. Read More ›

Honeybees, astonishingly, are not going extinct

Science writer Hank Campbell vs. the apocalypse industry: Instead of dying out, there are now 10 honeybees for every human on the planet - more than 25 years ago. And that is just in one species. There are over 25,000 species of bees, we just don't try to count them all because the others are not part of a billion dollar industry, like sending honeybees around in trucks to pollinate almond farms. Read More ›

How nature avoids collapse

Iterating the materialist approach to nature, DeFries seems to assume that order can just happen for free: “Homeostasis to stay within safe bounds is fundamental for an unpredictable, complex system to persist.” Sure it is. But it doesn’t happen without underlying design, beginning with the mathematics of our universe. Read More ›

Is the planet really running out of frogs?

That seems to depend on who you read: Last year in the journal Science, a research review concluded that the chytrid fungus caused the decline of at least 501 amphibian species, of which 90 have gone extinct. That paper suggested that species losses due to the chytrid fungus are “orders of magnitude greater than for other high-profile wildlife pathogens.” But a recent reanalysis led by University of California, Berkeley, researchers found that the paper’s main conclusions lack evidence and are unreproducible. In a Comment published online March 19th in Science, the group conducting the reanalysis — including lead authors Max Lambert and Molly Womack, who are postdocs in the lab of professor Erica Rosenblum in the Department of Environmental Science, Read More ›

Beetle larvae (“superworms”) can survive on waste plastic

Recent evolution? Maybe. Doesn’t sound as though much evolution is needed, actually. Later in the article, it is suggested that the required enzymes may have existed for some time (that is, the plastic is what’s new). Read More ›

Blood feeding evolved independently about 100 times despite being a very complex trait

But still we hear, “There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.” Darwin, "Life and Letters," i, p. 278 ? Hadn’t the Darwinists better change their story a bit? Read More ›

Are there universal laws of ecology?

Sounds promising. If physics depends on mathematics and chemistry depends on physics and biology depends on chemistry, why could not be laws be derived that help us understand ecology? But then Malthus betrays the authors, as he misled Darwin. Read More ›