511 results found.
... Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Spontaneous order, evolution, and life In our thinking, one of the most remarkable articles ever to appear in Science bears the above title. Most re markable of all is the use of the word "spontaneous" without philosophical comment. The stimuli for the research described are such observations as: (1 ) life exists; (2 ) life evolves; (3 ) the fossil record displays stasis, extinctions, and great gaps between phyla and lesser classifications; and (4 ) disordered molecules move smoothly and surely into the order manifest in the living cell. The question asked in the article is whether science has missed something in its description of the origin and development of life. Just what makes molecules coalesce into cells and humans? The answer given is: spontaneous self-organization ! In other words, there is no guiding external force. Molecules do this spontaneously. There are even computer models being developed, based on a branch of mathematics called "dynamical systems," that describe how this all happens - spontaneously, of course. (Waldrop, M. Mitchell; "Spontaneous Order, Evolution, and Life," Science, 247:1543, 1990.) Comment. When water molecules spontaneously cluster together to form a snowflake, with all its symmetry and order, science explains the process in terms of the properties of water molecules. The same must be true when molecules merge to form life forms. But why do atoms and molecules possess these properties that lead to bacteria, to humans, to ...
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... , as in the above item, is fun; but we need something to deflate balloons before they drift too high into the wild blue. The Skeptical Inquirer is the perfect "something." In the latest issue, ESP or psi takes it on the chin. J.E . Alcock reviews the last 8 years of parapsychological research. His conclusion: "The past eight years have been no kinder to those seeking compelling evidence about the reality of paranormal phenomena than were the previous eighty: The long-sought reliably demonstrable psychic phenomenon is just as elusive as it always has been." Alcock believes that parapsychology is on the ropes and must grasp at straws. One of these straws is the enthusiastic espousal of those quantum mechanical effects which seem to transcend time, space, and even human comprehension. Alcock contends that the admitted enigmas of quantum mechanics are being unfairly twisted by the parapsychologists. [Parapsychologists and their critics will argue interminably about the applicability of quantum mechanics to psi, ceasing only when someone with powerful, undeniable psi powers comes along -- the equivalent of a UFO landing on the White House lawn.] Meanwhile, Alcock identifies an important characteristic of psi, which is truly anomalous, for it is completely foreign to science as we understand it today. This is the generalizability of psi. ". .. psi effects turn up whether one uses cockroaches or college students, whether the effects are to be generated in the present or the future or the past, whether the subjects know that there is a random number generator to be affected, whether a sender ...
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... Science Frontiers The Book Strange reports * Bizarre biology * Anomalous archaeology From New Scientist, Nature, Scientific American, etc Archaeology Astronomy Biology Geology Geophysics Mathematics Psychology Physics Science Frontiers The Book Contents Science Frontiers is an indexed compilation of the first 86 issues of our Science Frontiers newsletter . Chapter 1. Archeology: Ancient Engineering Works * Small Artifacts * Epigraphy and Art * Bones and Footprints * Diffusion and Culture. Chapter 2. Astronomy: Planets and Moons * Solar System Debris * Stars * Galaxies and Quasars * Cosmology. Chapter 3. Biology: Humans .* Other Mammals * Birds * Reptiles and Amphibians * Fish * Arthropods * Invertebrates * Plants and Fungi * Microorganisms * Genetics * Origin of Life * Evolution. Chapter 4. Geology: Topography * Geological Anomalies * Stratigraphy * Inner Earth. Chapter 5. Geophysics: Luminous Phenomena* Weather Phenomena * Hydrological Phenomena * Earthquakes * Anomalous Sounds * Atmospheric Optics. Chapter 6. Psychology: Dissociation Phenomena * Hallucinations * Mind - Body Phenomena * Hidden Knowledge * Reincarnation * Information Processing * Psychokinesis. Chapter 7. Chemistry, Physics, Math, Esoterica: Chemistry * Physics * Mathematics. Comments from reviews: "This fun-to-read book may lead some to new scientific solutions through questioning the phenomena presented", Science Books and Films Publishing details: 356 pages, paperback, $18.95, 417 illus., subject index, 1994. 1500+ references, LC 93-92800 ISBN 0-915554-28-3 , 8.5 x 11. Order From:The Sourcebook Project P.O . Box ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 109: Jan-Feb 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Indeterminacy In Computers In SF#108, it was remarked that a chessplaying computer will sometimes make different moves when faced with identical boards. R.G . Everit responds that this is not really mysterious. The better chess-playing computers are actually designed to behave unpredictably when confronted by several moves of roughly equal promise. This feature makes it more interesting for human players. Everit also sets us straight in the matter of computer determinacy. "However, contrary to your basic assumption, most computers (even a home PC) can be forced to behave truly unpredictably. This cannot be done using the random-number generators supplied with the software, as these depend upon some mathematical formula and so are determined in advance, even if they appear to show no pattern. But if the machine has an internal clock readable by the programmer, he can determine the machine's choice depending upon the time required for some complex calculation, which will vary according to such factors as minute voltage variations and the aging of the machine's components. For example, the CDC 3600, on which I learned to program in 1975, had an accessible microsecond clock, and my program to calculate the first five perfect numbers* required about 15 minutes of run time; the last few digits of the exact number of microseconds required to run this program each time varied quite unpredictably. In other words, it was a random number, except ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 99: May-Jun 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Curious Brain Asymmetries Perfect pitchers vs. everyone else. An individual possessing perfect pitch can identify any musical note without comparing it to a reference note. It is said to be a uniquely human talent. (But how can we know?) Language, too, is thought to be be a gift accorded only to humans. Is there a biological connection between these "unique" capabilities? Since language is primarily a left-brain function, it is logical to see if the secret of perfect pitch resides in that half of the brain, too. This is just what a group of researchers headed by G. Schlaug did with the help of magnetic resonance imaging. They compared the planum temporale regions in the brains of 30 musicians (11 with perfect pitch, 19 without) and 30 non-musicians -- all matched for sex and age. The left planum temporale region was larger than the right for both musicians and non-musicians, but in the musicians the asymmetry was twice as great. Furthermore, the musicians blessed with perfect pitch were the most asymmetric of all in this respect. (Schlaug, Gottfried, et al; "In Vivo Evidence of Structural Brain Asymmetry in Musicians," Science, 267: 699, 1995. Nowak, Rachel; "Brain Center Linked to Perfect Pitch," Science, 267:616, 1995) Comment. Perfect pitch is nice to have, but why should it ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 102: Nov-Dec 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Perfect pitch and sundry syndromes Writing in response to a report in Science by G. Schlaug concerning the brain asymmetry observed in musicians with perfect or absolute pitch* (SF#99), O. Sacks expands the domain of the phenomenon to include other human talents. Sacks says that perfect pitch, though common in musicians, occurs only in about 1 of every 10,000 people. Among the autistic, however, the incidence rises to perhaps 1 in 20. He next moves on to "savants;" that is, individuals with exceptional mathematic, mechanical, musical, and artistic talents, but with serious deficiencies in other human attributes. Calculating prodigies and other "idiot savants" immediately come to mind here. Sachs claims that perfect pitch is is even more common among the savants. In fact, all muscial savants seem to have it. Perfect pitch is also common among those with Williams syndrome, which he defines as: "a -- syndrome which predisposes to hyperacusis and exceptional development of auditory, musical, and verbal skills, combined with striking visual and conceptual deficits." (Sacks, Oliver; "Musical Ability," Science, 268:621, 1995.) * A person with perfect pitch can identify a tone without needing a second tone for comparison. SF#99 = Science Frontiers #99. From Science Frontiers #102 Nov-Dec 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 108: Nov-Dec 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Those selfish genes may also be intelligent!R. Dawkins has proposed that we humans and other organisms are merely lumbering life-support systems for our genes. In this view, genomes are the masters, controlling our evolution and behavior to ensure their own survival and multiplication. In short, our genes are "selfish." J. Shapiro, at the University of Chicago, has gone a step further and ascribed still another human attribute to genomes. "Genomes function as true intelligent systems, which can be readjusted when conditions require. We still lack testable theories to explain how this can be done. ( Genetica , 84:4 , 1991)" Perhaps we see evidence of this "intelligence" of genes when bacteria and other microorganisms rapidly accommodate to environmental challenges, as in the application of new antibiotics. In this context, read below about the fast-evolving cichlid fishes of Lake Victoria. These fish must have macho genes! From Science Frontiers #108, NOV-DEC 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 112: Jul-Aug 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Archea: Tough And Different Today's textbooks recognize only two main divisions of life: the prokaryotes (cells without nuclei) and eukaryotes (cells with nuclei). Humans and most of the life forms we are familiar with belong to the latter group. (Curiously, human red blood cells lack nuclei!) However, a third basic type of life has been found prospering in some extreme environments. These are the Archea, typified by the methane-producing microbes discovered clustered around hot deepsea vents, where temperatures may exceed 400 C. It is not their rugged constitutions that place these miniscule forms of life in a new category; it is their genomes. They are radically different from those found in prokaryotes and eukaryotes. The genome of one species of Archea collected from a hot vent 3 kilometers deep in the Pacific has been sequenced. Biologists were taken aback. Methanococcus jannaschii , as it has been dubbed, possesses 1738 genes, of which 56% are entirely new to science. Many of these genes do not look anything like those found in the prokaryotes and eukaryotes. In a word, they seem "alien." (Morell, Virginia; "Life's Last Domain," Science, 273:1043, 1996.) How alien? Well, they are so tough that they could have arrived from Mars on a meteorite. Millions of years of residence in a meteorite edging its way toward a rendezvous ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 13: Winter 1981 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Astronomy More Anomalous Redshifts Tidal Wave of Gammas Sweeps Solar System A Funny Thing Happened Along the Mean Free Path Remarkably Early Dates for Agriculture Biology New Definition for Humans Needed Fish Change Gender When Necessary The Propagation of Acquired Characteristics Terrestrial Life Older Than Expected The Human Compass The Alien Presence Geophysics Violent Undersea Weather Psychology Half A Brain Sometimes Better Than A Whole One Proof of Reincarnation? A Mentally Created Reality ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 67: Jan-Feb 1990 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology New world culture old Fantastic claim by explorer Archeological riddle The ancient-humans-in-europe controversy Astronomy Direct observations of hyperion's chaotic motion A NEW QUASAR DISTANCE RECORD: A NEW EMBARRASSMENT Explaining lunar flashes with life-savers Astronomers up against the "great wall" Biology Dna on cell surfaces Really-deep rivers Geology We live atop a chemical retort Australasian tektites coughed up by a moon of jupiter? Microorganisms complicate the k-t boundary Continuity at the conrad discontinuity Geophysics Eyewitness account of cropcircle formation Possible ball lightning in ankara Psychology Solar activity and bursts of human creativity Geomagnetic activity related to mental activity Psychotherapy may delay cancer deaths Physics A WATCHED ATOM IS AN INHIBITED ATOM General A HUNGARIAN UFO ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 31: Jan-Feb 1984 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Hearing Via Acoustic Holograms Humans and the higher primates can locate the source of a sound without turning their ears or heads. Other animals are not so fortunate. Current theories of hearing, according to Hugo Zuccarelli, cannot explain this human capability, which we all take for granted. He has come up with a new theory that pictures our ears as truly remarkable organs. First, our ear itself is a sound emitter. It emits a reference sound that combines with incoming sound to form an interference pattern inside the ear. The nature of this pattern is sensitive to the direction of the incoming sound. Our ear's cochlea detects and analyzes this pattern as if it were an acoustic hologram. The brain then interprets this data and infers the direction of the sound. (Zuccarelli, Hugo; "Ears Hear by Making Sounds," New Scientist, 100:438, 1983.) Comment. We have been able to appreciate this slick biological trick only after we "discovered" holograms. We should wonder if we are missing anything else! Two letters quickly appeared casting doubt on not only Zuccarelli's Theory but his personal scientific capabilities. (Baxter, A.J ., and Kemp, David T.; "Zuccarelli's Theory," New Scientist, 100:606, 1983.) From Science Frontiers #31, JAN-FEB 1984 . 1984-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 81: May-Jun 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Folie a deux involving a dog!The term "folie a deux" is used to describe an induced psychosis; it is usually reserved for human-human interfaces. Folie a deux generally occurs when two or more people are very close emotionally. But some people living alone do develop close emotional bonds with their pets, and apparently, vice versa: "Ms. A, an 83-year-old widow who had lived alone for 15 years, complained that the occupant of an upstairs flat was excessively noisy and that he moved furniture around late at night to disturb her. Over a period of 6 months, she developed delusionary persecutory ideas about this man. He wanted to frighten her from her home and had started to transmit 'violet rays' through the ceiling to harm her and her 10-yearold female mongrel dog. Ms. A attributed a sprained back and chest pains to the effect of the rays and had become concerned that her dog had started scratching at night when the ray activity was at its greatest. For protection, she had placed her mattress under the kitchen table and slept there at night. She constructed what she called an 'air raid shelter' for her dog from a small table and a pile of suitcases and insisted that the dog sleep in it. When I visited Ms. A at her home, it was apparent that the dog's behavior had become so conditioned by that ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 41: Sep-Oct 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects California Skeletons Not So Old After All About a decade ago, considerable controversy erupted when some obviously old human skeletons were dated at 37,000, 44,000, and even 70,000 BP by a new dating technique called Aspartic Acid Racemization (AAR). Conventional radioactive dating had put all of these skeletons at well under 10,000 BP, well within bounds of the Bering Strait migration hypothesis. The early AAR dates were thus at odds with current archeological thinking and, in addition, very encouraging to those who believed that humans occupied North America long before 10,000 BP. J.L . Bada, a proponent of AAR dating, now states that the controversial AAR dates were based on calibration skeletons which had been erroneously dated by radioactive methods. It seems that AAR dating requires an accurately dated reference skeleton. With the reference skeleton dates now known to be incorrect, Bada had to recalibrate his AAR dating scheme. The reference skeletons were therefore redated using a more accurate radioactive technique. All of the incredibly ancient skeletons have now been redated by AAR methods using the revised reference skeletons. The 37,000 BP date now becomes a reasonable 5,100 2000 BP figure. The AAR dating crisis seems to be over. All anomalies have been expunged. (Bada, Jeffrey L.; "Aspartic Acid Racemization Ages of California Paleoindian Skeletons," American Antiquity, 50:645, 1985.) From ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 87: May-Jun 1993 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology The 50,000-year-old americans of pedra furada The zuni enigma The american discovery of europe! Astronomy The earth: a doubly charmed planet Cosmic soot and organic asteroids Biology Fossil feathers fly Is caddy a mammal? The uniqueness of human adolescence Animals attack human technological infrastructure Late survival of mammoths Geology Whence the earth's pulse? Giant impact-wave deposit along u.s . east coast Geophysics The vent glow and "blind" shrimp Amazons in the sky The bottle-green icebergs of antarctica Psychology Alien abuctions: were they, are they real? Calculating prodigies, gnats, and smart weapons ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 47: Sep-Oct 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Chromosome Gap "Compared with the chromosomes of humans and other great apes, the pygmy chimpanzee's chromosomes are .. .the most specialized -- they have changed more over time than have the others. 'Surprisingly,' Stanyon and his colleagues conclude, 'the human karotype (chromosome complement) is the most conservative...It has more unchanged chromosomes." (Anonymous; "Chromosomes Show Apes 'More Evolved' Than Man," New Scientist, p. 24, July 17, 1986.) From Science Frontiers #47, SEP-OCT 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 81: May-Jun 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The tyranny of the [normal] senses R.O . Becker, author of Cross Currents , has contributed a thought-provoking article on the mechanisms by which humans perceive the cosmos. From the many stimulating ideas he presented, we select his rationale for believing that an electromagnetic basis may exist for the reception and processing of psi signals. A key concept in Becker's scheme is his belief in the presence, in humans and other organisms, of a dual system for receiving and processing information arriving from the environment. The system we are all aware of and which scientists study in depth is the nerve impulse system, which transmits digital signals; i.e ., 0s and 1s. This system connects to all our everyday senses and controls our motor functions. The second system Becker designates as "primitive." It transmits information in analog (continuously varying) form via electrical currents and magnetic fields, rather than as impulses along neurons. This second system is not recognized by mainstream science. Becker advances the notions that: (1 ) Psi-type phenomena are actually handled by the "primitive" analog system; (2 ) The flood of information normally arriving from our sensory organs via the "modern" digital system masks the psi-type signals; and (3 ) These assertions are consistent with the elusive nature of psi phenomena in both everyday experience and the parapsychological laboratories. Becker's ideas also ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 138: NOV-DEC 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Remarkable Animal Talents And Capabilities Looking backward with genital photoreceptors. Photoreceptors are sensitive to light but do not produce images. They are found in many groups of animals. Even humans possess photoreceptors besides their eyes; specifically, in the pineal gland and, perhaps, the knees. (SF#116, SF#117) The pineal gland (our "third eye") may have registered photons at some stage in our evolution, but it is now useless or adapted to other purposes. The arthropods, however, still find photoreceptors useful. Crayfish have them on their abdomens, where they initiate an escape response when illuminated. Additionally, the blind shrimp that collect around the glowing deep-sea vents have photoreceptors perched on their backs, presumably to guide them to their prey located around the luminous vents. Recently, the Japanese yellow swallowtail butterflies were discovered to sport photoreceptors on their genitalia. These I are used during mating to confirm the position of the female's ovipositor.(Arikawa, Kentaro; "Hindsight of Butterflies," BioScience, 51:219, 2001.) Barn-Owl auditory neurons multiple signals. Barn Owls can locate rustling mice in the dark with high precision. They discern their prey by sound rather than light. To achieve the high accuracy needed to home in on small rodents in the black of night, their ears are slightly offset so that they can draw a bead by using microsecond time ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 52: Jul-Aug 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Do large meteors/comets come in cycles?Only a few years ago, geologists refused to recognize any terrestrial meteor craters larger than Arizona's Meteor Crater, which is merely a mile or so in diameter. Now, we have a long list of craters or astroblemes (star wounds), some of which measure hundreds of miles across. In fact, there are enough large dated crters so that some scientists have taken up a time-honored human pastime: Looking for cycles or periodicities in the data. (Humans can find cyclicities in almost any collection of data!) To be more specific, some have claimed that large meteor craters come in clusters dated 28-31 million years apart. These catastrophic events have been correlated with biological extinctions, magnetic field reversals, and basalt flooding. The astronomical causes of this supposed periodicity range from the solar-system's crossing of the galactic plane, to the perturbations of an unseen solar companion, to regular perturbations of the Oort cloud of comets that is thought to hover at the fringe of the solar system. In short, a large, interlocking edifice of geological and astronomical speculation has been erected upon a foundation of terrestrial crater ages. But how well do we really know the ages of these craters? How complete is the cratering record? The answer to the first question is: "Not well at all." Further, we can be certain that many ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 81: May-Jun 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Rhythms In Rhythm "We are currently living in the last quarter-century of the fifth 500-year cycle, which began with the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century. All the harmonies we hear today were developed in this last cycle." So begins the final section of a recent reprinting of W.D . Allen's sweeping 1951 overview of the human fascination with music. But what's this about a 500-year cycle in music? It turns out that not only is there a 500-year pulse in musical creativity, but nested within the long swings are 100-year subcycles! Allen's article, as it appeared originally in the Journal of Human Ecology (1 :1 , 1951), ran 41 pages. We can hit only a few high notes here. And, since we are concerned mainly with anomalies, we shall concentrate on this unexpected periodicity in musical creativity. Allen describes how musical theorists have proposed both supernatural and evolutionary explanations for this periodicity, which commenced some 2,500 years ago with the Ancient Greeks. He is not convinced by either class of explanations. Instead, Allen has been beguiled by the long-period tones of environmental cycles: "Now we have knowledge of a constantly operating cyclic factor in our cosmos, scientifically based on a mass of inductive evidence that goes beyond recorded history into the tree-ring records from centuries B.C . For ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 54: Nov-Dec 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Uncertainty Of Knowledge "Human beings of all societies in all periods of history believe that their ideas on the nature of the real world are the most secure, and that their ideas on religion, ethics and justice are the most enlightened. Like us, they think that final knowledge is at last within reach. Like us, they pity the people in earlier ages for not knowing the true facts. Unfailingly, human beings pity their ancestors for being so ignorant and forget that their descendants will pity them for the same reason." E. Harrison, who penned the above, sees knowledge as perpetually uncertain and always changing. Scientists will always be surprised, he says, and scientific laws are never final. He concludes: "I feel liberated by this philosophy. I find comfort in the thought that the creative mind fashions the world in which we live. For it means that the mind and reality are more profound than we normally suppose." (Harrison, Edward; "The Uncertainty of Knowledge," New Scientist, p. 78, September 24, 1987.) From Science Frontiers #54, NOV-DEC 1987 . 1987-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... have a solid foundation; that is, it is "impure." Some portions of reality seem to confound mathematics; for example, Einstein found Riemannian geometry and tensor analysis imperfect for formulating the Theory of Relativity. Despite this disappointment, Einstein maintained his belief that God does not play dice with the universe. Some more recent scientists suggest that God not only plays dice but throws them where they cannot be seen! Despite the acknowledged deficiencies, it is clearly more than a stroke of luck that mathematics describes so much of reality so accurately. And here is the spooky part of the whole business. In formulating their web of logic, mathematicians make many more or less "artistic" decisions that are colored by reality and their expectations of reality. To illustrate, "symmetry" is a human passion that reality may disdain. In other words, because mathematicians are prejudiced by their experience in the real world and are an integral part of that world, it is not surprising that their artistic renditions mirror reality to some extent. (Little, John; "The Uncertain Craft of Mathematics," New Scientist, 88:626, 1980.) Comment. It might also be that mathematics predicts unknown realities because of the human mind's subconscious knowledge or appreciation of them -- a sort of innate appreciation of that portion of the universe still unknown to the conscious mind. From Science Frontiers #14, Winter 1981 . 1981-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 104: Mar-Apr 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Search-and-destroy sperm Even book reviews can yield delightful anomalies. Take, for example, the January Scientific American review of Human Sperm Competition, by R.R . Baker and M.A . Bellis. Baker and Bellis have advanced the Kamikaze-Sperm Hypothesis. (SF#78) Central to this idea is the observation that the sperm of many animals, including humans, are polymorphic. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes, some of which are patently unsuited for penetrating an egg. Baker and Bellis draw upon their own studies and classifications of sperm types as well as research by R.A . Beatty and D. Ralt. They assert that sperm come in at least four varieties: "Fertilizers," the egg-penetration specialists, "Blockers," the ones that construct copulatory plugs to prevent further insemination, "Search-and destroy sperm" that hunt down as kill "enemy" sperm from other sources, "Family-planning sperm" that kill all sperm. One can liken this array of sperm types to polymorphic ant colonies with their castes of workers, soldiers, and queen. Baker and Bellis go further and suggest that the numbers of each sperm type are under the control (certainly not conscious control) of the males. For example, where promiscuity is observed, as is common in chimpanzee troops, the numbers of seek-and-destroy sperm are very ...
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... ) Very briefly, we have roughly 1000 observations by several thousand people, beginning in October 1989 and still continuing. Most witnesses report a dark, triangular object with three bright lights plus a flashing red one in the middle. Size estimates vary from the size of a football field to that of conventional aircraft. The object sometimes hovers for minutes at a time. It also can move very slowly and then suddenly accelerate to high speeds. Some observers report a faint humming sound; others say that it is noiseless. The American Stealth fighter (Fll7) is roughly triangular, and there has been much speculation that people have been seeing this craft on night missions. The characteristics reported for the flying triangle, however, are hardly those of a jet aircraft. But one must always remember that human observers are imperfect. The July 5, 1990, issue of Paris Match presented a remarkable account of an encounter between two Belgian F16s and one of the flying triangles. We use here those portions of a translation provided by R.J . Durant to the Internation al UFO Reporter (15:23, July/August 1990). "On the night of March 30th, one of the callers reporting a UFO was a Captain of the national police at Pinson, and [Belgian Air Force] Headquarters decided to make a serious effort to verify the reports. In addition to the visual sightings, two radar installations also saw the UFO. One radar is at Glons, south-east of Brussels, which is part of the NATO defense group, and one at Semmerzake, west ...
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... revives and expands the theory of morphogenic fields. Basically, this theory states that existing organized structures, such as crystals and organisms, establish fields that shape the future organization of matter into similar crystals and organisms in a probabalistic way. In other words, once a specific crystal (or life form) is synthesized, it sets up a morphogenic field that will make it easier to synthesize further the same, or nearly the same, crystal (or life form). To support his ideas, Sheldrake claims that it is common knowledge that a brand-new crystal form is difficult to synthesize at first but that further syntheses become easier and easier. The prevailing "scientific" explanation of this amazing fact is that fragments (seeds) of the initial synthesis are carried from lab to lab by humans and even the air! Morphogenic fields, however, explain such phenomena very nicely without postulating tiny crystal seeds in scientists' beards. Sheldrake then goes on to review McDougall's experiments in the 1920s in which trained rats from water mazes apparently passed their new knowledge on to their progeny. McDougall thought that he had proved the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Other biologists repeating his heretical experiments found that their first-generation rats solved the same water mazes much faster than had McDougall's rats. In addi tion, the progeny of untrained rats used as controls showed improved abilities in maze-solving with each generation, just as if their parents had been trained. Current theory has not explained these curious results, but they are consistent with Sheldrake's Theory of Formative Causation. ( ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 117: May-June 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Unread Biotic Message We have been selling ReMine's book The Biotic Message in which he asserts that life itself is a message of transcendental nature. Every bacterium and human is a cosmic statement. Shifting from the macroscopic to the microscopic (phenotype to genotype), we recall that all macroscopic "statements" are really expressions of DNA -- the genetic code. But when we examine DNA, we find that only about 3% of the DNA in human cells codes for protein manufacture. The remaining 97% is termed "nonsense" or "junk" DNA. But there may actually be sense in nonsense DNA. Statistical analysis of nonsense-DNA "words" (3 -8 bases long) reveals considerable redundancy. Long stretches of nonsense DNA are definitely not random. In fact, the structure of nonsense DNA resembles that of language. The coding or "sense" DNA, on the other hand, lacks this language structure. The implication is that coding and nonsense DNAs carry different kinds of messages. The former consists simply of blueprints; the latter is couched in a language that we have not yet learned to read. (Flan, Faye; "Hints of a Language in Junk DNA," Science, 266:1320, 1994.) Comment. On the microscopic level, we can read only 3% of the biotic message! From Science Frontiers #117, MAY-JUN 1998 . 1998 ...
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... , A.C . Roosevelt has already proven that surpringly advanced cultures did inhabit the Amazon Basin for thousands of years. ( SF#71 ) We are now learning that some of these Amazon peoples were extraordinary earthmovers. Having little stone to work with, they matched the achievements of the Inca in the mountains just to the west with many miles of earthen causeways. Canals just as long were dedicated to fish-farming. Huge mounds rising above the flood plains supported villages. Even the mounds hold mysteries. One of them, named Ibibate, has been described by anthropologist W. Balee as being: .. .as close to a Mayan pyramid as you'll see in South America.... Beneath the forest cover is a 60-foot [18-meter] human-made artifact. Ibibate is only one of many such mounds in the Bolivian Amazon. Called "lomas", they are obviously quite distinct from any Mayan pyramid we know of. Rather, the lomas are enormous islands of pottery sherds mixed with black soil. Hundreds of these mounds prove that a large population once occupied this region of Bolivia called the Llanos de Mojos (Plains of Mojos). Anthropologist C.L . Erickson and a team from the University of Pennsylvania have discovered that the Llanos de Mojos once supported a Precolumbian complex of societies linked together by networks of communication, trade, and alliances. Erickson asserts that these cultures erected: .. .thousands of linear kilometers of artificial earthen causeways and canals,... large urban settlements, and intensive farming systems. ...
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... flatworms assume in swimming away from light. Many such lunar rhythms apparently have no adaptive value whatsoever. So, why do they exist? Even more disconcerting is the fact that lunar rhythms persist in the lab where the moon is not visible. Are internal clocks responsible here? If so, how do they work and how are they set? These questions are hard to answer if the rhythms have no value to the organism's success. (Palmer, John D., and Goodenough, Judith E.; "Mysterious Monthly Rhythms," Natural History, 87:64, December 1978.) Comment. It would, or course, be outright heresy to suggest that heavenly bodies may be the sources of unrecognized but biologically significant forces. Reference. Correlations of lunar phase and disturbed human behavior are cataloged at BHB4 in: Biological Anomalies: Humans I. Further information on this book is located at: here . From Science Frontiers #7 , June 1979 . 1979-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... The body's immuno-logical system is trying to cope with up to 10 million defensive cells. The only defensive cells that survive and multiply are those that happen to encounter an invader that they can lock onto and destroy. The "fittest" defensive cells are those that have just the right characteristics to knock off invaders, and only they survive permanently in the body's defensive arsenal, giving it acquired immunity. The Lamarckian part of this story occurs when the RNA of the selected defensive cells gets passed on to the organism's progeny. (Tudge, Colin; "Lamarck Lives -- In the Immune System," New Scientist, 89:483, 1981.) Comment. The picture evolving here is one of a hierarchy of evolutionary struggles -- say, humans on one level and their contained defensive cells on another level. The levels are not completely independent. The question that arises next is whether there are other evolutionary struggles going on, possibly in the mitochondria and chloroplasts, which possess their own genetic material. Or, waxing speculative, are there hierarchies of evolutionary struggle above humanity of which we know nothing except for perhaps a few anomalies representing cross talk between levels? From Science Frontiers #15, Spring 1981 . 1981-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... January 24, 1998, while drilling to construct a water drainage system at Monk's Mound, workers hit stone -- at least 32 feet of it -- perhaps a region of cobbles or slabs of rock. This region of stone, of undetermined geometry, is located 40 feet below one of the terrace surfaces, but still well above the base of the mound. The stones could well be an artificial structure of some sort. The discovery challenges the current thinking about the culture that built Cahokia. Only further research will reveal the extent and configuration of the stony region and where the stones may have come from. An editorial in the March 14, 1998, St. Louis Post-Dispatch put the Cahokia discovery in the larger context: New World archeology is in flux. Humans occupied the Americas long before 12,000 BP, and some of them may have been Caucasian (e .g ., Kennewick Man). We now quote two incisive paragraphs from this editorial. "This burst of uncertainty surrounding the meaning of the stones beneath Monk's Mound is just the latest discovery shaking what was settled fact. Archeological finds are even challenging the conventional wisdom about when and how the Americas were settled. "It is a humbling and thrilling reminder that in all fields of human inquiry, what we take for certain knowledge at one point in history is highly mutable, subject to continuous revision, revolution and even rejection." (Allen, William; "Cahokia Mounds Finding Stuns Archaeologists," St. Louis Post-Dispatch , March 9, 1998. ...
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... with maternal mtDNA. This unexpected invasion makes the mtDNA clock run more slowly. So, African Eve, if she ever existed, is probably twice as old as originally thought. (Day, Michael; "All about Eve...," New Scientist, p. 4, March 13, 1999.) Maybe There Were Two Eves! Not only has African Eve aged precipitously but there may have been a non-African Eve, too. J. Hey and E. Harris, at Rutgers, have presented data suggesting that the famous African Eve was the mother of only modern sub-Saharan Africans. Everyone else seems to have descended from an entirely different Eve. These data, if confirmed, demolish the African Eve theory and support the often-reviled multiregional theory of humans origins. (Pennisi, Elizabeth; "Genetic Study Shakes Up Out of Africa Theory," Science, 283:1828, 1999. Bower, B.; "DNA Data Yield New Human-Origins View," Science News, 155:181, 1999.) Genetic Clocks Are Fickle. mtDNA clocks have implied that modern birds and mammals were contemporaneous with dinosaurs, and that some animals evolved millions of years before their first fossils. For good reasons, evolutionists are becoming wary about these molecular clocks. It is fast becoming obvious that: "Clocks tick at different rates in different lineages and at different times. And new work on the biology of mitochondria suggests that their evolution may be more complicated than researchers had suspected." (Strauss, Evelyn; "Can Mitochondrial Clocks ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 97: Jan-Feb 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Mentally Influencing The Structure Of Water If the presence of water can physiologically affect a human dowser, as claimed in the preceding item, perhaps the physiological state of a human can affect the properties of water. Well, it's worth a try! G. Rein and R. McCraty, of the Institute of HeartMath, first define two physiological states: "We have recently defined two new physiological states in terms of their unique electrophysiological characteristics. These states are generated using specially designed mental and self-management techniques which involve intentionally quieting the mind, shifting one's awareness to the heart area and focussing on positive emotions. Time-domain and frequency spectral analysis of heart rate variability, pulse transit time and respiration were used as electrophysiological measures of these states." Next, the two researchers brought together subjects immersed in one of these states and samples of water: "The present study reports on PK [psychokinetic] effects associated with these intentionality states. ECG monitoring was used to demonstrate when the individuals were in the entrained state. At this point a sample of distilled water in a sealed test tube was presented to the subjects. Five individuals were used in this study...While holding a beaker containing the samples, subjects were asked to focus on the samples and intentionally alter the molecular structure for five minutes. In an adjacent room, control samples were aliquoted from the original stock solution into test tubes. ...
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... JUL-AUG 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Midi-Chlorians are with Us!Whoops! We meant to write "mitochondria" in that title. In the movie Star Wars, Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, Jedi master Qui-Gon Jinn explains the origin of the supernatural powers possessed by Jedi knights. It arises, he says, from microscopic lifeforms called chlorians" that dwell within all living cells and reveal the will of the Force. Mitochondria are popularly seen as mere powerhouses within cells, with little influence on the organisms they inhabit. They are, it is believed, just the distant progeny of bacteria that invaded complex cells hundreds of millions of years ago. With only 37 genes in their arsenal, human mitochondria would not seem to pose any threat to humanity. After all, we have about 100,000 genes per cell. Of course, mitochondria do evolve separately from us, and this is a bit disconcerting. Could they be more than mere symbionts? The midi-chlorians of the Jedi knights were "good guys", but our mitochondria sometimes seem to be working for an insidious alien Force. There is good evidence that they: Selected which of your mother's germ cells matured to produce you; Have decided your odds of living to be 100; and May influence your being afflicted with Parkinson's and Alzheimer's , as well as rarer disorders. The first item (or "force") is the most disturbing. Mitochondria (with only 35 genes ...
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... 136: JUL-AUG 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Were The First Americans Australians?Ask this question in a college class in archeology and you'll surely receive an "F "! Everyone knows that the first inhabitants of the New World filtered across the Bering Land Bridge and eventually worked their way all the way down to the tip of South America. Perhaps so, perhaps no. Conceivably some venturesome Australian seafarers could have island-hopped across the South Pacific or taken a polar route (as the Vikings did in the north) when the world was warmer. Radical as this notion seems, three classes of evidence hint that Australians may have set foot on South American shores more than 10,000 years ago. Human fossils. As revealed in SF#118, an 11,500-year-old human skull found in Brazil possesses features of South Sea Islanders rather than Asians. Stone artifacts. Scrapers and other simple stone artifacts from Los Toldos Cave in Patagonia, dated as 12,000 years old, are suspiciously similar to late-Pleistocene tools in Australia. (Ref. 1) Cave paintings. At Los Toldos and especially another Patagonian site called Estancia La Maria, there is distinctive artwork virtually identical to some from Australia. Specifically, this artwork consists of "hand negatives" (silhouettes of the artists' hands) and spiral and circular drawings composed of little spots. (Ref. 1) Additionally, a remarkable and entirely distinct form of Australian art -- the famous Bradshaw paintings ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 136: JUL-AUG 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Are We Merely Fancy Crystals?Just about everyone will concede that when sodium and chlorine atoms arrange themselves to build salt crystals that they are simply obeying the well-known laws of physics. In other words, salt crystals are "natural." "Intelligent design" need not be invoked in explaining their existence. This is OK for salt crystals but can we say the same for biological forms such as proteins and, ultimately, human beings? Are these more complex biological forms also natural; that is, reducible to and explainable by the laws of physics? Human beings certainly seem irreducible; and some proteins are so large and complex that one is unsure that physics is up to the task of explaining these tangled structures consisting many hundreds of atoms. Some of these doubts have been relieved by recent advances in protein chemistry. It appears that the different types of protein folds, which number in the thousands, can be classified and sorted into distinct structural families -- just like the much simpler crystals of salt, quartz, galena, etc fall into orderly classes. The clear implication is that protein folds and, by extension via further research, the protein molecules themselves, are also natural and reducible just like the salt crystals. If proteins are natural, perhaps even more complex biological forms are also, and so on up the complexity ladder to viruses (which often look like crystals through the microscope), bacteria, and ...
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... 1989. He con tinued as follows: "The events of 1990 and 1991 (totalling about a further 1000 over the two years) certainly present a puzzle. Hoax is beyond doubt in some cases, but it seems very unlikely as a general explanation. Many events have been very large and very elaborate; they have occurred widely about the country (sometimes several on the same night in counties far from each other); there have been very few cases of detection of hoax, despite massive surveillance in the Mariborough/Devizes area, where so many of the events took place; circles (including a dumbbell formation) occurred within visual and radar range of a hi-tech watch mounted by [G .T .] Meaden and supported by anti-hoax equipment without a trace of human action. It is clear that hoax cannot account for all we have been seeing. "Very recently, laboratories in the US, acting in collaboration with CCCS's Crop Research Panel, have reported interesting physical changes in crops and soil collected from circle formations as compared with control samples. Other 'hard' evidence is accumulating for the action of some short-lived force in the formation of genuine events, and its nature seems to be such that human activity cannot account for it. It may or may not be evidence for the operation of Meaden's 'plasma vortex' (in whatever form he decides to develop it). The only thing to add at this stage is that if the "plasma vortex" is in question, it seems capable of far more elaboration ...
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... , stone-covered cist in eastern Washington County, Maine. This cist contained several stone artifacts bearing remarkable symbols, writing, and portrayals of a man and a slain animal. Naturally, mainstream archeologists look askance when amateur archeologists come across such anomalous materials. Happily in this instance, a professional archeologist, J.B . Petersen, Director of the University of Maine's Archaeological Laboratory, took an interest in the site near Grand Lake Stream. After careful study of the site and its artifacts, he has prepared a preliminary report. Petersen's report is accompanied by many photos and sketches made during his excavations. On p. 000 we reproduce a photo of the amulet with its strange epigraphy. Now, we add a sketch of the "elongated hafted ground biface, with human figure." Over 13 inches long, this artifact depicts a trousered, bearded man of European countenance, who is missing one arm and a foot. Petersen asserts that the artifacts have no affinities with American Indian artifacts: rather they have a European flavor. What can one make out of all this? Petersen is only able to state: "Although the site is undoubtedly human-made, its function, antiquity and cultural attribution cannot be precisely specified on the basis of the unique characteristics of both the artifacts and the cist. Tentative interpretations allow suggestion that it is attributable to some portion of the historical period, a European cultural tradition, and probably is contemporaneous with or postdates local stone working at the site." In other words, we could have anything from a pre- ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 111: May-Jun 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Extraterrestrial Handedness Human life forms favor right-handedness over left-handedness by a 9:1 ratio. Other terrestrial animals are also asymmetrical in various ways. But on the molecular level, terrestrial biochemistry is all left-handed. As far as scientists can determine, only left-handed amino acids are incorporated into proteins. In nonlife (if such a state really exists), amino-acid molecules are right- and lefthanded in equal numbers -- as least this has been the theory up until now. Amino acids are found in substances we assume are non-life or of abiotic origin. In fact, amino acids are present in meteorites, often in substantial amounts. They are profuse in Australia's Murchison meteorite, a carbonaceous chondrite. However, analysis of the Murchison's amino acids indicates that there are slightly more (7 -9 %) left-handed than right-handed amino acids present. This extraterrestrial handedness is of great import to both cosmologists and biologists, because the carbonaceous chondrites are thought to have formed 4.5 billion years ago -- long before life on earth originated. Furthermore, some of the Murchison's amino acids have never been found in terrestrial life, and they are also slightly left-handed. For some unfathomed reason, chemical and biological evolution both tilt to the left! (Bada, Jeffrey L.; "Extraterrestrial Handedness?" Science, 275 ...
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... in Edinburgh, doctors have been examining a "boy" with an ovary and a fallopian tube instead of a left testicle. Part of "his" body's cells are male (one X and one Y chromosome), part female (two X chromosomes). This hermaphrodite-like condition apparently developed because "he" was conceived via in vitro (IVF) fertilization. Probably both a male embryo and a female embryo were transferred to "his" mother's uterus, where they fused and formed a single fetus. (Anonymous; "Two into One," New Scientist, p. 21, January 24, 1998. Cited source: The New England Journal of Medicine, 338:166, 1997.) Comments. We have already cataloged two similar conditions: Human blood-chimeras, where one person has two types of blood due to the absorption of one fetus by its twin, each having different blood types. (BHC15 in Biological Anomalies: Humans II) Birds that are female on one side and male on the other (bilateral gynandromorphism). (BBA1 in our forthcoming Biological Anomalies: Birds) From Science Frontiers #116, MAR-APR 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... daf-2 can cause fertile, active adult Caenorhabditis elegans hermaphrodites to live more than twice as long as wild type." (Kenyon, Cynthia, et al; "A C. elegans Mutant That Lives Twice as Long as Wild Type," Nature, 366:461, 1993.) Comment. C. elegans is a roundworm only about a millimeter long. Roughly a thousand cells make up its tiny body, and scientists have charted the birth and death of each cell from egg to adult. This roundworm's life is a mosaic of changing cells, as some die to make way for new cells with different agendas. Somehow this programmed sequence of cell death and birth can be slowed down by mutations and thus increase longevity. Wouldn't any mortal speculate that perhaps human longevity might, like that of C. elegans , be extended by modern gene manipulators? Sure, it's quite an extrapolation from roundworm to human, but our cells are programmed just like those of C. elegans . Change a gene here and there, and we might all live as long as Noah! From Science Frontiers #92, MAR-APR 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 98: Mar-Apr 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Vampire fish -- [x -rated item]A tiny, transparent, still-nameless fish swimming in the Araguaia River in the Amazon Basin comes out at night to suck blood from its victims. It wriggles into the orifices of animals, anchors itself with two hook-shaped teeth, and gorges on blood. The gills of other fish are its usual targets, but the orifices of other animals, including humans, are fair game, too. This Amazonian fish is only about 1 centimeter (less than ½ inch) long, making it smaller than the infamous candirus that threaten bathers in other South American streams. Once a candiru slithered into a cut on a researcher and could be seen wriggling under the skin toward a vein. Candirus also anchor themselves inside their victims' orifices, requiring surgical removal. (Homewood, Brian; "Vampire Fish Show Their Teeth," New Scientist, p. 7, December 3, 1994.) For more on this fish, see BHX12 in our catalog: Biological Anomalies: Humans III. To order: go to here . From Science Frontiers #98, MAR-APR 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 70: Jul-Aug 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A RELUCTANT, LONG-OVERDUE PARADIGM SHIFT How many times in SF have you read items about that 12,000-year barrier before which American archeologists would not permit serious consideration of human habitation in the Americas? Well, see SF#65, 59, and 57 for starters. In SF#55, written scarcely two years ago, establishment archeologist P.S . Martin wrote: "If humans lived in the New World more than 12,000 years ago, there'd be no secret about it." But, in late March, 1990, at a conference in Boulder, Colorado, D. Stanford lef off with: "It's time to acknowledge that we do have a pre-Clovis culture in the New World." (Pre-Clovis -before 12,000 years ago.) It's all true! A long-standing consensus has collapsed: the 12,000-year barrier, like the Berlin Wall, has disintegrated. The two most important demolition charges were the widely-accepted dates of 16,000 B.P . from the Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Pennsylvania, and 13,000 B.P . from the Monte Verde site in Chile. The Monte Verde date probably represents an American entry date of at least 20,000 years ago, if one accepts that the first Americans trekked all the way down from the Bering Strait to Chile. Will ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 46: Jul-Aug 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Music Of The Genes "S . Ohno has cracked a new genetic code. The 58-year-old geneticist doesn't have the whole thing worked out yet, but when he sets the genes to music -- or music to genes -- some strange and wonderful things occur. To wit: "The SARC oncogene, a malignant gene first discovered in chickens, causes cancer in humans as well. When Ohno translated the gene into music, it sounded very much like Chopin's Funeral March. "An enzyme called phosphoglycerate kinase, which breaks down glucose, or sugar, in the body revealed itself to Ohno as a lullaby." Seeing this item is from a newspaper, it was nearly consigned to the wastebasket. But wait a moment, Susumo Ohno is a Distinguished Scientist at the Beckman Research Institute of the City of Hope National Medical Center, Duarte, CA. Could there be something to it? Reading further; we find that Ohno believes that the structure of music seems to parallel that of the genes. He translates genes into music by assigning notes according to molecular weights. His ultimate goal is the discovery of some basic pattern (melody?) that governs all life. (Anonymous; "Scientist Tunes in to Gene Compositions," San Jose Mercury News, p. E1, May 13, 1986. Cr. P. Bartindale.) Comment. Not too long ago the ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 77: Sep-Oct 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Pliocene sculptures or freaks of nature?We have at hand Number 20 of Archaeologische Berichten , 1990, 108 pp. This thick booklet bears the subtitle Picture Book of the Stone Age . And a picture book it is, with hundreds of drawings interspersed with 26 pasted-in color photos. The text is English. What do these photos and drawings show? Basically, they portray stones and pepples picked out of gravel pits and similar accumulations of rocky debris that look like human heads, ape heads, primitive tools, etc. Some of the pebbles do indeed resemble humanmade artifacts. (See accompanying sketch.) Most, though, require some imagination. The import of these artifacts, if that is what they really are, comes home when one learns that they come from deposits that are millions of years old! If any of these pebbles are really human-made, anthropology will be stood on its head. Since the present report is the 20th in a series, one can assume that the contributors to Archaeologische Berich ten have amassed incredibly large collections of ancient stones and pebbles that "look like" artifacts. Comment. Similar purported artifacts have been found at the controversial Calico Hills site, California, in Pleistocene deposits that may be 100,000 years old. And don't forget that "Face on Mars"! From Science Frontiers #77, SEP-OCT 1991 . 1991-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 57: May-Jun 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Did charles darwin become a christian?It has long been claimed by some Christians that Charles Darwin, who helped lay the intellectual foundations of secular humanism, reembraced Chris tianity as he neared death. A central figure in this tale is a Lady Hope, who supposedly visited Darwin in the months before he died. What is the basis for the Lady Hope story; and what do Darwin's own writings reveal about his religious beliefs? Alas, Darwin's return to the fold seems an apochryphal tale. W.H . Rusch, Sr., and J.W . Klotz, well-known scientific creationists, have prepared a 38page historical study of the question -- quoting at length from Darwin himself. They conclude about Darwin: "He had made the human mind his authority, and it led him from orthodoxy to theism to agnosticism. Indeed it appears he might well be characterized as an atheist, a doubter of the very existence of God. His caution, however, and his recognition of the impossibility from a scientific standpoint of proving a negative led him to characterize himself as an agnostic which he says he is content to remain." (Rusch, Wilbert H., Sr., and Klotz, John W.; " Did Charles Darwin Become a Christian? " Emmett L. Williams, ed., Norcross, 1988.) From Science Frontiers #57, MAY-JUN 1988 . ...
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... Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Two politically incorrect biochemical anomalies "Whether one views it as females attacking males or as a biological favoritism toward men, the fact is that men's bodies accept donor organs from women while women's bodies reject organs from men. Scientists speculated that a male-specific antigen -- a protein that exists in all cells of a man's body, but in none of a woman's -- causes this incompatibility." (Seachrist, L.' "Finding the Gene for Female Attack," Science News, 148:132, 1995.) Comment. Even so, females obviously do not reject male embryos. For more, see BHI4 "The Enigma of the Fetal Graft" in Biological Anomalies: Humans II*) "It is wellknown that if a bitch urinates on your lawn, you'll get a brown circle of dead grass, whereas a dog's urine does no visible harm. What is the chemical involved and why do only bitches excrete it? Does the same apply to the male and female of other animals (including humans)?" (Wylie, Andrew; "Wee Problem," New Scientist, p. 89, August 5, 1995.) *To order this book, see: here . From Science Frontiers #102 Nov-Dec 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 58: Jul-Aug 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Lanzarote: un noveau bimini?Yes, we are drawing on the Frenchlanguage journals again; this timme from Kadath , an archeological publication from Belgium. The reason, of course, is that the mainstream English-language archeological journals are notoriously conservative and, well, mainstreamish! The catchword in the title is "Bimini," a word which loses nothing in translation, for it is well-known in that States as one of the Bahamian resort islands. It was in the waters off Bimini that divers found the famous Bimini "road" or "wall," which some maintain is constructed of human-sculpted stone blocks. (See our handbook Ancient Man.) Lanzarote, on the other hand, is one of the Canary Islands. Here, too, one finds a submerged, Bimini-like row of apparently man-made blocks of stones. Some 22 meters down, the blocks are arranged in a sort of staircase, as shown in the figure. The steps, however, are 40-cm high, too big a step for humans. Is this structure a submerged pier, an altar, or something else. No one knows. Possibly relevant is a statuette, stylistically Olmec, which was also found in Lanzarote waters. (Bajocco, Alf; "Lanzarote: un Nouveau Bimini?" Kadath , no. 66, p. 6, Winter 1987.) Comment. The name, Kadath ...
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... Subjects Initial bipedalism!Our anomaly-collecting net has pulled in an interesting catch; namely, CERBI (Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur la Bipedie Intiale). This Center, operated by F. de Sarre, publishes a little journal called Bipedia . In the first issue of Bipedia , de Sarre sets out, in English, his basic thesis: Abstract. "The explanation of Man's special nature is to be sought in the original combination formed by a primordial brain, the globular form of the skull and initial bipedalism. The ape, when compared with Man, appears to be rather a vestige of Man's ancestral line than his predecessor, according to the views of Max Westenhofer, Serge Frechkop, Klaas de Snoo and Bernard Heuvelmans. The study of the human morphology allows logically to carry the problem of Man's origin back to a very early stage of the evolution, and not to which has been reached by apes. From chromosomal and DNA comparison in the cells of living apes and people, several researches argue to-day that humans are genetically more like the common ancestor than is either Chimpanzees or other apes. The array of facts and considerations should be sufficient for an unbiased mind to discount away any idea of simian antecedents in Man's ascent." The body of the article supports de Sarre's thesis with observations from embryogenesis, comparative anatomy (skull, hand, foot), and phylogenesis. (de Sarre, Francois; "Initial Bipedalism: An Inquiry into Zoological Evidence," Bipedia , 1:3 , ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 103: Jan-Feb 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects I Hiss Therefore I Am E.R . Moliner, a neurologist, has written a curious yet provocative article for New Scientist. It is really a not-too-subtle attack on the Anthropic Principle, Darwinism, and science's insistence that the universe must be purposeless. He notes first that most proponents of the Anthropic Principle postulate that, in the beginning (whatever that was!), many different universes may have been created. The only one we observe is the one offering just the right combination of properties for evolving life and, especially, humankind. If this or that physical constant had been a tad different, humans would not have evolved. Even though humans obviously did evolve, it was all purposeless -- just the way atoms and molecules happened to combine. This outlook fits right in with Darwinism, for almost all Darwinists also see evolution as purposeless. It was blind chance that gave us the capabilities to build aircraft and tunnel into opposite sides of a mountain and meet in the middle. Moliner is highly skeptical that such amazing, "cooperative, adaptive" talents could have come about in an unbiased, purposeless universe. Suppose, he asks, vipers were philosophically minded. They might look at their marvelously complex fangs with the canals inside, a nearby poison gland, a poison storage reservoir with special ducts leading to the fangs, a fang-erection mechanism, a set of muscles to squeeze ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 68: Mar-Apr 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Conformity Strikes Again It is difficult to believe how hard it is to get new ideas funded in science. T. Gold has contributed a rather plaintive article to the Journal of Scientific Exploration detailing some of his experiences down the years. His first "bad" experience occurred just after the end of World War II when, fresh from intensive work in radar signal processing, he proposed that the human ear is an active rather than passive receiver; that is, it actually emits sound itself. This self-generated tone aids the ear in signal processing. The thought that the ear could be a sound source was patently ridiculous, and Gold's idea got nowhere. However, recent experiments confirm that the human ear does indeed emit a tone at about 15,000 Hz. Another, more recent, proposal for research on the behavior of hydrocarbons under high temperatures and pressures got very high marks from reviewers on all points but one: Should the proposal be funded? Several reviewers thought not; one saying that the whole idea was "misguided." In what way was Gold misguided? Well, it seems that his proposed work on hydrocarbons related to his idea that primordial hydrocarbons deep in the earth's crust contribute heavily to the reservoirs of oil and methane we tap on the planet's surface. And everyone knows that all oil and gas is biogenic; that is, derived from buried organic matter! Gold has ...
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... Welsh pony, when they heard a strange, high-pitched hum emanating from its right ear. The hum was surprisingly loud and quite obvious to the surgical team standing a meter away. The hum's pitch was a steady 7 kilohertz. E. Douek, an ear, nose and throat surgeon, stated that audible sound coming from ears is extremely rare. Such sounds are usually caused by muscle spasms in the inner ear or throat, or by resonance due to abnormalities in the ear's blood supply. (Bonner, John; "Humming Horse Puzzles Vets," New Scientist, p. 5, April 29, 1995.) Comment. This is not the first time we have heard about humming ears. In SF#31*, H. Zuccarelli stated that human ears normally emit a faint reference sound, which mixes with incoming sound to form an interference pattern inside the ear. The resulting "acoustic holograms" allow humans and some other primates to locate the source of a sound without turning their heads. The affliction called "tinnitus" is evidently not involved. *SF#31 Science Frontiers #31. The book Science Frontiers also contains this reference. It is described here . From Science Frontiers #100, JUL-AUG 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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