Jeff Zweerink, senior research scholar at Reasons to Believe, discusses the movement efficiency of Kinesin-1 in the context of a perceived design inefficiency in the reconnaissance aircraft SR-71.
Intelligent Design
At Nautilus: Were It Not for Cosmic Good Fortune, We Wouldn’t Be Here
Sean Raymond, Beibei Liu & Seth Jacobson offer a solar system model affirming that the “dynamical instability” of our early solar system had to go just right, or we probably wouldn’t be here.
At Mind Matters News: The remarkable medicines wild animals find in nature
While intelligent animals like dolphins may sense cause and effect, we don’t know how butterflies and fruit flies pick out the plants that can help.
Astronomy.com: The struggle to find the origins of time
Astronomy: Time is an elusive concept: We all experience it, and yet, the challenge of defining it has tested philosophers and scientists for millennia.
At Evolution News: Günter Bechly repudiates “Professor Dave’s” attacks against ID
Bechly: In the end, Farina’s potshots against intelligent design and Discovery Institute completely miss their targets. “Professor Dave” needs to do more than recycle past discredited claims if he wants to be taken seriously by anyone genuinely interested in pursuing the truth.
At Astronomy Now: MeerKAT paints a mesmerising portrait of the Milky Way
The stunning imagery shows previously known and newly-discovered features, including supernova remnants, huge magnetised radio filaments and the blazing inferno surrounding the 4-million-solar-mass black hole at the core of the galaxy.
At Science Daily: Dragonflies use vision, subtle wing control to straighten up and fly right
Researchers have untangled the intricate physics and neural controls that enable dragonflies to right themselves while they’re falling.
At Evolution News: Man, with His Special Place in Nature, Was Designed to Use Fire
With the evidence of our unique fitness for fire-making, the picture is complete. Nature is uniquely fit for man, designed with us in mind. The anthropocentric claim of Judeo-Christian tradition is vindicated.
At Mind Matters News: Eric Holloway’s Weasel Libs — a variant of Mad Libs, in honor of Richard Dawkins
Eric Holloway looks at Richard Dawkins’ famous Darwinian evolution-only Weasel program in light of epigenetic information.
Ghostly ‘mirror world’ might be cause of cosmic controversy
University of New Mexico: New research suggests an unseen ‘mirror world’ of particles that interacts with our world only via gravity that might be the key to solving a major puzzle in cosmology today – the Hubble constant problem.
Article by David Snoke: Spontaneous Appearance of Life and the Second Law of Thermodynamics
Dr. Snoke’s recent article, published in Biocosmos, dives into the important topic of the link between the 2nd law of thermodynamics, information theory, and living systems. He explores the notion of physical law, similar to the 2nd law, that applies to information, and concludes that “there is a fundamental entropy problem with the origin of life.”
Eric Hedin is the new News co-ordinator at Uncommon Descent
Starting tomorrow, Denyse O’Leary is retiring from the News desk at Uncommon Descent. Physicist Eric Hedin replaces her.
Gene-edited hamsters did not behave as expected
Hamsters from hell. Quote of the decade: “We don’t understand this system as well as we thought we did.” One suspects that some of these people are going to learn respect for the design of life the hard way. Hope it’s not too hard on the rest of us.
At Mind Matters News: Study: Eight-week mindfulness courses do not change the brain
O’Leary: Eight-week courses don’t provide enough time. Tibetan monks can control metabolism and even brain waves through meditation but they devote their lives to it. It would be more surprising if that fact had no effect on their brains than if it does.
At Evolution News: Natural Machinery Operates Without Intervention; But How?
David Coppedge: “The old mechanical philosophy is hopelessly inadequate for these realities. The reason? We know from our experience that unguided natural law does not produce machinery, factories, and quality control. Something else is required: information.” He recommended Bill Dembski’s book, Being as Communion.