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... Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Is the earth a giant methane reservoir?T. Gold, of Cornell, theorizes that a vast reservoir of methane resides in the earth's crust -- a left-over from the formation of the earth. This accumulation of methane, he suggests, has been the major source of carbon at the surface throughout geological time. The existence of subterranean methane is manifested when flames shoot up during earthquakes. Tsunamis or tidal waves are probably caused by the release of immense bubbles of methane during quakes rather than by actual motion of the sea floor. (Lewis, Richard S.; "Is the Earth a Giant Methane Store?" New Scientist, 78:277, 1978.) Comment. Gold has also correlated offshore booms with sea-floor methane releases. More of his heretical thoughts on these matters are to be found in Section ESC in our Catalog: Anomalies in Geology. This volume is described here . From Science Frontiers #4 , July 1978 . 1978-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 4: July 1978 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Out-of-the-body traveller exerts no influence Many out-of-the-body travellers describe remote scenes observed during their ad ventures and some are credited with registering their presences on instruments and animals. Tests with a subject using "human detector" instruments a quarter mile away showed no consistent results while the subject was "out-of the-body." A kitten in the area gave no sign of a presence. Although the subject described some of the remote targets accurately, the results did not differ from chance. (Morris, Robert L., et al; "Studies of Communication during Out-of-Body Experiences," American Society for Psychical Research, Journal, 72:1 , 1978.) From Science Frontiers #4 , July 1978 . 1978-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 82: Jul-Aug 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects EVEN TODAY NATURAL SELECTION IS MOLDING HUMAN POPULATIONS Nauru is a remote Pacific atoll with a population of 5,000 Micronesians. Formerly, the Nauruans led energetic lives -- fishing, subsistence farming -- and they were slim and healthy. Then came colonization and phosphate mining; with these came wealth, imported caloriepacked food, sedentary lives, obesity, and, unhappily for this tropical paradise, diabetes. The incidence of diabetes mellitus shot up to 60%, an astounding statistic by world standards. On one of the wealthiest of the Pacific islands, the inhabitants have the shortest life spans! The same scenario is being played out in other parts of the world where life styles have changed drastically; for example, some Polynesians, American Indians, and Australian aborigines are similarly afflicted. Furthermore, an epi-demic of diabetes mellitus is anticipated as the "benefits" of civilization are brought to India and China. Two questions must be answered: (1 ) Why is the incidence of diabetes mellitus only 8% among American junkfood-eating couch potatoes? Probable answer: natural selection has already modified the American genotype by eliminating those who are supersensitive to diabetes mellitus under conditions of rich diets and sedentary lives. (2 ) Why are modern populations still living under Spartan conditions so sensitive to diabetes in the first place? Possible answer: the so-called "thrifty genotype" hypothesis. In this view, the genotype that is ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 84: Nov-Dec 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects THE WOMAN WHO COULDN'T DESCRIBE ANIMALS The astounding complexity of the human brain was underscored recently by a 70-year-old woman, who could describe anything she saw except animals. The woman had an immune-system disorder that had damaged a small portion of her brain's temporal lobe. Her other mental faculties were intact. "The woman could name plants, foods, and inanimate objects and describe them without hesitation. The scientists were impressed that when shown a trellis, not exactly your everyday object, she could correctly name it and describe its cross-hatched geometry. "But when shown a squirrel or a dog, she froze. She couldn't find the right name for either, nor could she describe their size or shape or furry coats. "Her deficit, involving only a tiny portion of her language skills, was amazingly narrow." (Bor, Jonathan; "The Woman Who Couldn't Describe Animals," Baltimore Sun, p. A1, September 7, 1992.) The implications of this strange case were described in Science News: "The peculiar inability of a 70-yearold woman to name animals has led scientists to propose that the brain harbors separate knowledge systems, one visual, the other verbal or language-based, for different categories of living and inanimate things, such as animals and household objects." (Bower, B.; "Clues to ...
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... significant excess redshifts. He also pointed out the inconsistency that local galaxy groups seem to have velocity dispersions of less than 100 km/s , while distant groups seem to have members with dispersions up to 1000 km/s . "Jack Sulentic spoke about multiple redshifts seen in some quasars and AGNs. Line profiles come in all types; symmetric, double-peaked, and asymmetric. Relative shifts are both toward the red and the blue. Arguments against an accretion disk/black-hole model were reviewed. Apparently a non-Doppler redshift-blueshift mechanism is needed. For example, one broad line (in 1404+ 28) shifts back and forth by 1000 km/s relative to another narrow H-line, with an average offset of 2000 km/s . These shifts correlate perfectly with intensity." Less technically speaking, the longheld belief that redshifts are solely due to the Doppler effect is receding along with the expanding universe! (Van Flandern, T.; "Recent Meeting: XIIIth Krakow Summer School of Cosmology," Meta Research Bulletin, 1:25, September 15, 1992.) From Science Frontiers #84, NOV-DEC 1992 . 1992-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 59: Sep-Oct 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects OBSERVATIONS OF LUMINOUS PHENOMENA AROUND THE HUMAN BODY In front of us is a 13-page paper dealing at length with phenomena normally considered impossible. The paper's abstract is not as informative as the introductory paragraph, which we now quote: "Mysterious and unexplained luminous phenomena have fascinated humankind since ancient times. The psychical research literature offers a variety of unexplained luminous phenomena such as reports of glows seen around mag-nets, crystals and minerals, lights reportedly seen with mediums, and luminous apparitions, among others." The paper then goes directly into a review of specific observations. We shall have to be satisfied here with just one of the many examples: "D .D . Home was reported to produce many striking luminous phenomena. In one seance Dunraven observed that one of Home's hands 'became quite luminous,' and that two persons 'saw tongues or jets of flame proceeding from Home's head.' On another occasion: 'He was elongated slightly.. and raised in the air, his head became quite luminous at the top, giving the appearance of having a halo round it. When he was raised in the air, he waved his arms about, and in each hand there came a little globe of fire (to my eyes blue)...' (Alvarado, Carlos S.; "Observations of Luminous Phenomena around the Human Body: A Review," Society ...
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... of Public Health, in Baltimore, have discovered four AIDS victims in a group of 1000, who seem to have lost their AIDS antibodies but not the AIDS virus itself. Curiously, two of the four later lost the AIDS virus, too. It is possible that the AIDS virus is not really "lost" but merely hiding out somewhere, perhaps in the brain where tests of circulating blood cannot detect it. (Anonymous; "Antibodies Can Disappear from Infected People," New Scientist, p. 4l, June 9, 1988.) Comment. Another possibility, of course, is that of a spontaneous cure. Whatever the answer, AIDS is a tricky disease. Reference . The AIDS debate is covered in considerable detail in BHH14-BHH22 in our catalog: Biological Anomalies: Humans II. Details here . From Science Frontiers #59, SEP-OCT 1988 . 1988-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... in France, Italy, Israel, and Canada. What makes it even more fun is the homeopathy connection. Homeopathic medicine is based on the theory that substances causing the symptoms of a disease in a healthy person can cure a sick person displaying these symptoms, providing the dose administered is vanishingly small. Science strongly and passionately debunks homeopathic medicine. The Editor of Nature thinks that there must be a systematic error somewhere. Other scientists suggest that, perhaps, somehow, the antibodies left an "imprint" on the diluting water molecules. So far, we have not read that Sheldrake's "morphic resonance" theory has been invoked. The first phase of this controversy is about complete, and we now list the references we have used so far. (Davenas, E.; "Human Basophil Degranulation Triggered by Very Dilute Antiserum against IgE," Nature, 333:816, 1988. Also: Browne, Malcolm W.; "Impossible Idea Published on Purpose," New York Times, June 30, 1988. Cr. D. Stacy, M Truzzi. Also: Nau, Jean-Yves, and Nouchi, Franck; "La Memoire de la Matiere," Le Monde, p. 1, June 30, 1988. Cr. C. Mauge. Also: Beil, L.; "Dilutions of Delusions," Science News, 134:6 , 1988. Also: Vines, Gail; "Ghostly Antibodies Baffle Scientists," New Scientist, p. 39, July 14, 1988. Also: Pool, Robert; "Unbelievable Results Spark ...
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... greater heights every 11-or-so years. Right now, near the peak of the present cycle, the earth is being bombarded by extra-high fluxes of X-rays, ultraviolet light, and other energetic radiation. A century ago, no one would have noticed or cared, but today our technological infrastructure is suffering. K.H . Schatten has listed some of the "sunburn symptoms" in a recent article in Nature. Fade-outs of over-the-horizon radio communications Greater aerodynamic drag on satel lites and earlier reentry Glitches and outright damage in satellite electrical systems Anomalous induced voltages in elec trical power systems and long-line communications Blackouts of high-frequency polar communications oInduced errors in VLF (Very Low Frequency navigation systems Occasional radiation levels that are hazardous to humans in high-flying aircraft. (Schatten, Kenneth H.; "The Sun's Disturbing Behavior," Nature, 345:578, 1990.) Comment. It would be interesting to learn whether the "computer errors" we encounter so frequently follow the sunspot cycle. One phenomenon, at least, seems anticorrelated with solar activity: The number of solar neutrinos measured here on earth falls as sunspots multiply. This is particularly puzzling because neutrinos are presumably generated in the solar core, whereas sunspots are supposed to be manifestations of solar-surface activity. One phenomenon "should not" affect the other. (Waldrop, M. Mitchell; "Solar NeutrinoSunspot Connection Found," Science, 248:444, 1990.) From Science Frontiers #71, SEP-OCT ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 35: Sep-Oct 1984 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects ARE BLUEBLOODS MORE OFTEN TYPE A? In the 1983 issue of Nature (303:522), J.A . Beardmore and F. Karimi-Booshehri reported that, based on a study of a specific British population, A-blood groups are significantly more common among the higher socio-economic groups. As one might predict whenever someone asserts that human success is genetically determined, an avalanche of mail descended on the Nature office. Two other studies that did not show the blueblood effect were offered, although somewhat different populations were involved. Many letters tried to find an explanation for this anomaly in the constitution of the sample. By the time one got to the response by the authors, the whole issue was clouded. (Mascle-Taylor, C.G . N., et al; "Blood Group and Socio-Economic Class," Nature, 309:395, 1984.) From Science Frontiers #35, SEP-OCT 1984 . 1984-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 30: Nov-Dec 1983 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects THE AORTIC ARCH AND EVOLUTION Comparative anatomy is supposed to tell us which creatures are closely related so that we can draw those familiar evolutionary family trees. That anatomical similarities may be misleading is proved by the various configurations of the mammalian aortic arch -- certainly one of the major body structures. Five prin-cipal configurations of mammalian aortic arches are sketched in the accompanying figure. The species possessing these various configurations make kindling of the usual evolutionary family trees. Horses, pigs, deer; Whales, shrews; Marsupials, rats, dogs, apes, monkeys; The platypus, sea cows, some bats, humans; African elephants, walruses. (Davidheiser, Bolton; "The Aortic Arch," Creation Research Society Quarterly, 20:15, 1983.) Comment. On this basis alone, humans are more closely related to sea-cows than the apes. Why aren't such discrepancies highlighted in the mainstream scientific literature? Mammalian aortic arch . The key is as follows: RC: right carotid; LC: left carotid; RS: right subclavian; LS: left subclavian; A: aorta. The kinds of animal which have various arrangements are mentioned in the text. From Science Frontiers #30, NOV-DEC 1983 . 1983-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 159: May - Jun 2005 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Incredible Discoveries in Mexico The Too-Ancient Human tools at Valesquillo Reservoir What the Polynesians Brought and What they tool Away Astronomy Rewriting Mars' History Again, Again, Again What's the Matter with Matter? Biology Rover's Leap Be Late and It's All Over between Us! Pleistocene Hanky-Pank? The Inversion of Chromosome 17 Geology Bot a Subtle Signal! Deep-Earth Methane Generation Geophysics Extreme LDEs (long-Delayed Echos) Unclassified 13 Things that don't make sense A Very High Satellite Some very Low Satellites? ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 130: Jul-Aug 2000 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Still Another East-Coast Pre-Clovis Dig There are More Pyramids in Sudan than All of Egypt Astronomy Anomalous High Altitude Luminosity (AHAL) Biogenic Magnetite in ALH84001 The Drifters Biology Attention, Pupils! Has Human Evolution Been Directed by Bacteria? The Midi-Chlorians are with Us ! Geology Baikal: The Inland Ocean Bog Breath Geophysics The Saguenay Earthquake Lights Hailstorms as Imaginative Sculptors Psychology Epiphanies as Vascular Anomalies! Physics Two Wrong-Way Phenomena! Unclassified A Magic Square with a Magic Product The Wimpatch ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 142: Jul-Aug 2002 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology The impossible stones How bad was that nuclear catastrophe of 12,500 BP? Black-balling very earlier Americans Astronomy Our Big Bang lost in the cosmic cacophany The spookiness of it all Biology Passenger pigeons in New York Life is sweet Are human tears irreducibly complex? Geology Weird vibes from the Antarctic A shrinking dipole and migrating flux patches Wrong-way flood? Geophysics Bailey's prairie light The Kokomo hum Psychology The pressures of music Physics Inside some 'fundamental' particles What really lies beneath it all? ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 150: Nov - Dec 2003 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Australians First in the New World? Origin of Clovis Culture Disputed A "Magic Number" Encoded in Three of the World's Major Pyramids Astronomy Mapping and Analyzing Dark Matter Biology Frog Poison Factory Puffin Tongue Trick? Human-chimp DNA Dissimilarities Four-Dimensional Biology A Squid's Eyes that Look Up and Down Tuberculosis and the Extinction of the Megaforna Dark Matter in our Genome Unknown Source of Animal Diversity Communication among Bacteria Geology When the Earth Gets Cracking Subduction Doesn't Check Out Chicxulub Didn't Do It! Geophysics Squishy Ball Lightning Far-Floating Fowl Psychology Natural-Born Readers Physics Mixed Anomalies ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 158: Mar - Apr 2005 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Untranslatable Mohenjo-Daro Script? A very Early Compound Machine Khufu's Secret Burial Chamber: A Phony Discovery? Astronomy Allez Allez Old Galaxies in a Young Universe Biology Do Dolphins Sense the Coriolis Force? Disappearing Animals Wayward DNA: Does it Affect the Shapes of Family Trees? Geology Bermuda Triangles in the Desert! Plate-techtonics 'theory' is slowly and inevitably Dyning Geophysics Hum Update Psychology Motherese: A precursor of Human Language? Unclassified Multimedia Communications in the Cosmos Computer Bacteria ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 148: Jul-Aug 2003 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Who or What Exterminates the Pleistocene Megafauna? Illinois's Ancient Maginot Line A Cold Barrier to Internal Parasites Astronomy Are there no other Earths out there? Where's the Fuzz? Biology Snakes Aloft Woman's Barr Bodies The Eyes have it A Major Problem for Darwinism Geology Why are old Mountains High? Subterranean Ecosystems Geophysics Milky-sea Phenomenon Is the Min Min Light a Fata Morgana (mirage)? Pre-Quake Anomalies Psychology Correlations of Brain Activity Physics A Revolution in Electrostatics Mathematics Ordering a Piece of Pi Prime Squares ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 135: May-Jun 2001 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology The Most Mysterious Manuscript A Nuclear Catastrophe in Paleoindian Times? Astronomy Asteroid Ponds, Beaches and Boulders 0.999999999999999999999999c Sourceless Magnetic Fields? Biology Host Tapeworms for Health! Fall Babies Live Longer Longevity and Sardina Where is the Maestro? Geology Oil Deposits and Rotary Phenomena Does the Earth Breath? Geophysics Kisses from Heaven Don't Stomp on Ball Lightning! Whence Whitings? Psychology Modelling Exceptional Human Experience (EHEs) Unclassified Let There Be Dark! ...
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... : Mar-Apr 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Circles Of Contention No, this is not about crop circles, although these are easily as controversial -- at least among anthropologists. The story broke last September (1996), in Sydney, Australia, and has been simmering ever since. We have let the story cook for a while, hoping to get some confirmation of the dates involved. This will have to come later. These "circles of contention" are engraved on tall boulders (about 2 meters high on average) arranged in arcs hundreds of meters long at a site the aborigines call Jinmium. Jinmium is located near the western boundary of Australia's Northern Territory. The circles are obviously the work of humans. There are thousands of these etchings all told. Dimensions: 2-3 centimeters across and about half as deep. No one doubts that the Jinmium site is ancient. Judging from the sediments that cover the lowest circles, these engravings are about 60,000 years old. If this date survives scrutiny, the Jinmium carvings will be the oldest human art on the planet -- twice as old as anything found in Europe. No wonder the circles have created a stir. Actually, though, a larger issue is at stake. In the sediments around the engraved boulders, anthropologists have discovered what seem to be even-more-ancient signs of human activity: stone tools stratigraphically dated at 116,000 and 176,000 years. The problem here is that most anthropologists hold ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 115: Jan-Feb 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Strangely Selective Spider Australia's funnel web spider is one of the world's deadliest. Before an antivenin became available, this species killed one human every four years. It is not this low death rate that impels us to mention this spider. It is because the bite of the funnel web is deadly only to insects and humans. All other mammals are said to be immune. Analysis of the venom yields the remarkable fact that it consists of 45 active compounds. One of these is specific to insect brain cells; another, to human nerve cells. (da Silva, Wilson; "Spider Gives Kiss of Death to Pests," New Scientist, p. 23, May 17, 1997.) Comment. Since humans are not on the funnel web's menu, it must be only a coincidence that its venom kills people so selectively. It would be nice to know if chimps, gorillas, and orangs really are immune. A related phenomenon is seen in the venoms of cone shells. These snails are much more dangerous to humans, particularly naive shell collectors. Their venoms are extraordinarily complex and contain hundreds, perhaps thousands, of toxins. Many of these are specific to potential prey. Once again, humans are not on the menu but are included anyway. (Concar, David; "Doctor Snail," New Scientist, p. 26, October 19, 1996.) Comment. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Eyeless Vision Tomatoes see red. And other colors, too! We touched on this subject over a decade ago. (SF#54) Then we described how the use of red plastic mulch greatly improves the yields of tomato plants. More recent research reveals that fruit quality and resistance to pests are also improved. How can this be? Plant leaves, it turns out, contain color sensors -- light-sensitive pigments similar to those it the human retina. Obviously, the plants do not "see," but the pigments provide environmental information. Here's the mechanism: plant leaves reflect infrared light well, so when a tomato plant's pigments detect a lot of infrared, the plant "thinks" that it may be crowded out by competing vegetation. The tomato plant responds aggressively by growing more rapidly. The red plastic mulch between the rows also reflects a lot of infrared light, and it thereby tricks the tomato plant into accelerating its growth. (Raloff, Janet; "When Tomatoes See Red," Science News, 152:376, 1997.) Fire-detecting beetles. The beetle Melanophila acuminata seeks out forests that have just been ravaged by fires so that it can lay its eggs in the nutritious, freshly burnt wood. These insects are capable of detecting fires up to 32 kilometers (20 miles) distant. They do not see the fire with their eyes but instead detect the ...
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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 Deflating a paradigm: brazil's pedra furada The paradigm. The New World was peopled from Asia by migration across the Bering Land Bridge about 12,000 years ago, or perhaps a wee earlier. The Pedra Furada site has been dated at 50,000 BP by N. Guidon and her team of archeologists. This challenge to the dominant paradigm is powerful and unambiguous. Picking up the gauntlet, several more-conservative archeologists visited the Brazilian site and penned a blistering critique in Antiquity. (Ref. 1) Their major contention was that the 500+ supposedly human-made stone "artifacts" collected by Guidon's team are actually "geofacts"; that is, they were chipped and flaked naturally as rocks fell one upon the other from nearby cliffs. We discussed this problem in some detail in SF#105. Several other reservations about the Pedra Furada work are also offered in Ref. 1. The reaction of Guidon et al to the Antiquity paper was thunderous to say the least. It revealed the depth of the chasm separating archeologists on the date of human occupation of the New World as well as internecine politics in archeology. (Ref. 2) Guidon et al flung two serious charges at the authors of the first Antiquity paper: (1 ) They had their facts all wrong; and (2 ) Their objectivity was distorted by their loyalty to the aforestated paradigm. Not withholding any punches, ...
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... testimonies was this from a 17-year-old NDE percipient: "I was informed that mankind was breaking the laws of the universe and as a result of this would suffer. This suffering was not due to the vengeance of an indignant God but rather like the pain one might suffer as a result of...defying the law of gravity. It was to be an inevitable educational cleansing of the earth... "At the end of this general period of transition, mankind was to be "born anew" with a new sense of his [or her] place in the universe." Surveying his collection of like testimony, Ring generalized: "Surprising commonalities in these visions predicted a rising tide of natural, economic, and political crises culminating around 1988. Unless human beings turned toward God, took better care of the planet and each other, an apocalyptic cleansing would occur, possibly including a nuclear war, followed by the long promised New Age." 1988 has passed and we are still here. Is there objective evidence that humans mended their ways and averted the promised "cleansing? A.S . Alschuler, the author of this provocative paper thinks so, and he produces four graphs to prove his point. Each addresses a concern transmitted via people who experienced NDEs: (1 ) production of chlorofluorocarbons; (2 ) nuclear arsenal levels; (3 ) weapons exports; and (4 ) the number of peacekeeping missions. (We reproduce only two of Alschuler's graphs.) All four graphs show global "sea changes" commencing ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Did Mozart Use The Golden Section?Does the brilliance of Mozart's compositions derive entirely from his musical genius, or did he rely in part upon a mathematical construct: the famous Golden Section or Golden Ratio? The Golden Section is a mathematical formula for dividing into two parts: a geometrical line, a musical composition, or anything else possessing the property of length. The ratio of the two divided parts is the Golden Section, which equals 0.618.* For some artists, musicians, architects, the Golden Section is the most esthetic way of dividing the length of anything. For humans, the history of the Golden Section goes back at least as far as Euclid in 300 BC. For nature, it began eons ago: The shapes of pine cones, starfish geometry, and other dimensions of living things incorporate the Golden Section. The questions we address here are: (1 ) Did Mozart consciously make use of this ratio, 0.618, in his music? (2 ) Why is the Golden Section esthetically pleasing? It is not well known that Mozart was fascinated by mathematics as well as music. He even jotted down equations in the margins of some of his compositions. Chances are excellent that he knew of the Golden Section and its reputation for conferring elegance on structures -- even musical compositions. J.F . Putz, a mathematician, has measured some of Mozart's works ...
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... .K . Gregersen and M. de Andrade were able to locate 126 perfect-pitchers. In this select group, 5.5 % had parents with perfect pitch, and 26% had siblings thus gifted. Among musicians lacking perfect pitch, the figures were 1.1 % and 1.3 %, respectively. (Ref. 2) An unexpected (to us, anyway) correlation of perfect pitch and synethesia (SF#68) was made by Freimer's group. Some perfect-pitchers swear they can "see" musical notes, and even "smell" and "taste" them! (Ref. 1) References Ref. 1. Day, Michael; "Keeping Perfect Pitch in the Family," New Scientist, p. 19, November 23 ... 1996. Ref. 2. Travis, John; "Pitching in to Find a Musical Gene," Science News, 150:316, 1996. Comment. Since perfect pitch would seem to be of little use to primitive humans in hunting and gathering, why was it selected for? Likewise, synethesia seems to have little adaptive value; in fact, it might even be detrimental if humans on the brink of survival were confused by exotic sensations. Perfect pitch and other curiosities of tone perception can be found at BHT14 in our Catalog: Humans I . To order this book, visit here . From Science Frontiers #111, MAY-JUN 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 121: Jan-Feb 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Problems Of Aboriginal Art In Australia In SF#117, we reproduced some Australian rock art featuring sylph-like, flowing human figures quite unlike today's aborigines. In our more recent library searches, we have come across an old article that provides additional examples of the socalled Bradshaw paintings -- more of those graceful human forms with long, billowing tresses. Very out-ofplace in today's Outback. The same article adds an even more puzzling human representation to the burgeoning file of mysterious Australian art. It is a carving found in a cave of northwestern Australia. Here is the text accompanying the sketch. "Another cave introduced a fresh problem. Fronting it, high up on the vertical face of a cliff, and unreachable without mechanical aid, had been carved out of the solid stone a human head in profile, which I show. It was 2 feet long and 16 inches across, and 1 -inch thick; and I leave my hearers to say whether it is not a striking and distinguished face. It is absolutely different from the heads of modern Aborigines. The worn edges of the cameo, where it joined the rock-surface, seemed to mark a long interval since it was carved; the difficulty of carving it where it stood must have been immense -- unless, indeed, the rock face had been near the ground at the time, and the ground had worn away since - ...
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... history of the Golden Ratio, it is surprising to learn that a test of 51 established artists and sculptors has cast doubt upon the whole business. The subjects were asked to take a pencil and divide line segments into two parts such that they formed the most pleasing proportion. The ratio of choice was a disappointing 1:2 rather than 0.618! (Macrosson, W.D .K ., and Stewart, P.E .; "The Inclination of Artists to Partition Line Sections in the Golden Ratio," Perceptual and Motor Skills , 84:707, 1997.) Why Barbie Is Beautiful. A study of a long series of hominid fossils reveals a progressive loss of some physical attributes and the acquisition of other characteristics. One wonders why evolution has been remodeling the human form in what often seem to be nonadaptive ways. A curious, superficially frivolous test may offer some insights, some of which may be profound. Drawings and photographs showing humans with various physical traits were prepared and shown to 495 subjects, who were asked to select the most attractive characteristics. In disfavor were: short shins, short legs, bowed legs, large and pointed canines, gums showing above the teeth, short thumbs, long palms, curved fingers, jutting jaws, short necks. These are all primitive features still seen in apes and monkeys. Favored were: tallness, long legs, slim waists, long necks, curved red lips, large eyes, square shoulders, straight teeth, straight fingers, smooth and hairless skin, nonsloping foreheads, flat abdomens. These are ...
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... writer of the two articles digested below is an M.D . and a graduate of the Harvard Medical School. This is not a hoax! Melanoma sniffing. In 1989, the Lancet , a respected British medical journal, published an article relating how a female dog, half border collie, half doberman, sniffed out a spot of melanoma on a woman. In fact, the dog ignored all of the other moles on the woman and even tried to bite off the melanoma. Melanoma is the most dreaded form of skin cancer, so this bizarre report stimulated A. Cognetta, an American dermotologist, to try an experiment. First, another dog, named George, was trained to find tubes containing melanoma samples, which he did correctly 99% of the time. Next, a human with active melanoma was enlisted. Several bandages were placed on the subject's body including one over the melanoma site. Once again, George was almost 100% accurate in his diagnosis. Subsequently, George successfully identified malignancies on other patients. (Walker, Kenneth; "George the Dog Helps Take a Bite out of Skin Cancer," Chicago Sun-Times , September 6, 1998. Cr. J. Cieciel.) Seizure sniffing. An English woman subject to epileptic seizures never goes anywhere without her dog Rupert. Rupert has a nose for the odor that precedes epileptic seizures in humans. He barks about 40 minutes before the actual seizure, giving the woman a chance to get to a safe place. Of course, Rupert barks at other things, too, but his ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 110: Mar-Apr 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Is oliver a "humanzee"?Oliver: male, 30ish, very hairy, height 1.2 meters, weight 50 kilos, erect posture, unusual ears, offensive odor. Oscar always walks on two feet, uses a human toilet (which he flushes), can mix drinks, and enjoys a cup of coffee and a nightcap. Chimps ignore him; humans wonder what he is. Superficially, Oscar is definitely chimp-like; but shave his head and he becomes eerily human. Although Oscar was widely exhibited in the 1970s, his fame diminished in the 1980s. But now, scientists want to count his chromosomes and find out what he really is. One suggestion is a cross between a chimpanzee and a bonobo (a "pygmy chimpanzee"). Or how about a chimp-human hybrid? There have been dark rumors of hushhush experiments in China, Italy, and the U.S . We'll let you know what the geneticists conclude -- unless there is more "hush-hush." (Holden, Constance; "' Mutant' Chimp Gets a Gene Check," Science, 274:727, 1996. Also: Anonymous; "Oo-be-doo, I Want to Be Like You," Fortean Times, no. 95, p. 15, February 1997.) From Science Frontiers #110, MAR-APR 1997 . 1997-2000 William R ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Subversive Cancer Cells It has been generally believed that most cancers originate in a single founder cell, which then multiplies to create the tumor. But cancer is more insidious than expected. A precancerous founder cell may actually subvert nearby noncancerous cells and turn them into cancerous cells. In this sense, the first precancerous cell recruits and transforms healthy cells, enlisting them in its destructive operations, and thereby turning them against the body that produced them. No one yet knows how this subversion is effected or how it evolved. (Why is there cancer anyway?) The basis for this claim involves a few rare human mosaics, whose bodies are built of cells with two different genetic complements. Cancers in human mosaics have been found to contain both types of cells and, therefore, did not grow from a single cell alone. (Day, Michael; "Cancer's Many Points of Departure," New Scientist, p. 16, June 1, 1996) Comments. Curiously, some "primitive" animals, such as sharks, seem to have evolved defenses against cancer that mammals lack. With reference to "mosaics," see item in SF#105 on "Mixed-Up People." Also relevant is BHH25 "' Insidious' Properties of Cancer Metastases" in Humans II . For information on this book, visit here . From Science Frontiers #107, SEP-OCT 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 119: Sep-Oct 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The black death and ccr5-delta 32 Plagues are not all bad, and the Black Death (bubonic plague) that swept into Europe from Asia in 1346 was no exception. It is now common knowledge that bacteria, insects, plants, and even humans can build up resistances to poisons, diseases, and antibiotics. Mutations are always occurring; some good, some neutral, some bad. It has been found that a human mutation designated CCR5-delta 32 confers immunity to AIDS if inherited from both parents. People carrying the CCR5-delta 32 mutation lack the receptors to which the AIDS virus must attach itself if it is to infect the person. What has all this to do with the Black Death? "Although the origin of the mutation is obscure, it appears to have suddenly become relatively common among white Europeans about 700 years ago. That increase suggests that something must have occurred about that time to greatly favor the survival of people carrying the mutation." What biological catastrophe decimated Europe 700 years ago? The Black Death. One-quarter to one-third of the Europeans succumbed between 1347 and 1350. The Black Death strongly modified the European gene pool, increasing the frequency of CCR5-delta 32. This mutation may not have had any direct effect on the plague itself. It may just be a quirk of fate that the survivors of the Black Death had a higher frequency of the CCR5-delta ...
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... the assumption that our destiny is controlled by "selfish genes" (or "selfish DNA"). The idea that evolution works only at the gene level has been championed by R. Dawkins, and today it dominates much evolution philosophy. However, this "genetic imperialism" is now being challenged by some scientists who insist that culture also affects an organism's evolution, be it a human or an insect. In fact, it was Dawkins himself who first proposed the term "meme" for the cultural counterpart of the gene. A meme, in other words, is an "element" of culture that can be passed along to progeny by imitation and/or cultural pressures. In reductionist thinking, environmental challenges are met by gene mutations plus natural selection. In meme theory ... the same challenges are confronted by cultural changes (meme "mutation") plus natural selection. The meme approach is holistic rather than reductionist and is appealing because it allows us some control over our destiny. There are several phenomena in which some scientists profess to see memes overpowering the genes: Generations of female infanticide have led to more male births than female births. In dairy-farming societies, 90% of the population has the enzyme lactase that allows individuals to digest cows' milk. In other societies, 80% become ill when drinking cows' milk. A variety of cultural pressures have raised the percentage of lefthanders in North America to 12% compared with just 2% a century ago. In Taiwan, where cultural pressures are quite different, only 1% of the populace is ...
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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 Circaseptennial Rhythm In Ear Growth J. Verhulst and P. Onghena have carefully measured the ears of a sample of British men aged from 30 to 83 years. Every seven years, they discovered, the rate of ear growth peaked. In this finding, Verhulst and Onghena supported the contention of the Ancient Greeks that there is a seven-year rhythm in human development. (Anonymous; "Rhythmic Ear Growth...," Science News, 151:26, 1997. If you are skeptical about this item, the source cited is: British Medical Journal, December 21/28, 1996.) Cross reference. We have already re-corded rhythmic growth spurts in child-ren in SF#85 and SF#86. A related phenomenon, extremely rapid growth, is cataloged under BHF27 in our Catalog: Humans II . Information on this volume is posted at here . From Science Frontiers #111, MAY-JUN 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... of Beijing, China, to hear the tree make a coughing sound at night. According to the Beijing Evening News, the tree makes the unusual sound several times during the night and resembles an old man coughing. "The tree is nearly 83 feet (25 m) high and nearly 50 feet (15 m) in circumference and is regarded as a living fossil. As many as 1,000 people at a time have visited the tree to witness the phenomenon since it was first reported April 5th. Speculation abounds as to what causes the coughing sound at night, but no reasonable explanation has yet been presented." (Anonymous; "Coughing Tree Attracts Hundreds," World Explorer , 1:6 , no. 8, 1996) Synchronicity and death. In category BHF35 in Humans II , we cataloged several cases where identical twins died almost simultaneously. We can add the following to that collection: "Identical twins John and William Bloomfield lived their entire 61 years together in Australia and died only minutes apart, on Sunday. Both John and William suffered heart attacks." (Anonymous; "Twins Die," Saginaw News, May 22, 1996. Cr. B. Kingsley via COUD-I .) Reference. For more on the book: Biological Anomalies: Humans II, visit here . Crow woes. "YOKOHAMA -- Crows are being blamed for placing small stones on train tracks, which obstructed JR East train service on at least five occasions this month in Kanagawa Prefecture, prefectural police said. "The evidence was provided by an office worker who ...
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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 Riddles Of The Sphinx Riddle 1. The body of the Sphinx, which is obviously lionesque, is in bad shape compared to the head. The head we see today is human with a pharaoh's headdress. The head's workmanship is excellent and comparable to that seen in the nearby Great Pyramid. The Sphinx's body, on the other hand, is highly eroded, even though it was completely buried under sand for centuries. This severe erosion led R.M . Schoch to proclaim that the Sphinx is actually thousands of years older than the Giza pyramids, much to the annoyance of conventional Egyptologists. (SF#79) Be that as it may, no one denies that the Sphinx's head and body are quite different. Riddle 2. The head of the Sphinx seems too small for the body. None of the many other sphinxes carved by the ancient Egyptians show such an error of proportion. To answer both riddles, R. Waters suggests that the original Sphinx was actually carved as a complete lion several millennia before the Giza pyramids were erected. It was these later pyramid builders -- those master craftsmen in stone -- who recarved the head into human form, necessarily reducing its size relative to the body. (Waters, Richard; "The Lion King," Fortean Times, p. 54, no. 91, October 1996) Comment. Waters is not the first to ...
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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. 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. 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. 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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... 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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... 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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... 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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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 115: Jan-Feb 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Evolvable Hardware First, you must envision a computer chip as an evolvable entity -- an array of logic gates that can be connected in an almost infinite number of ways. A soft-ware instruction becomes the equivalent of a biological gene. Software instructions can be changed to achieve certain hardware goals just as genes can be rearranged to modify an organism. Furthermore, human operators can specify a hardware goal to the chip and let it evolve on its own, something it can do in microseconds rather than millions of years. This is not a frivilous subject. D. Fogel, chief scientist at Natural Selection, Inc., in La Jolla, California, asserts: "Eventually, we will need to know how to design hardware when we have no idea how to do it." A few demonstration devices have already been built, and in them we see something worthy of note for Science Frontiers. One such device, built by A. Thompson, University of Sussex, was tasked to identify specific audio notes by certain voltage signals. Given 100 logic gates, the device needed only 32 to achieve the result. The surprise was that some of these working gates were not even connected to others by normal wiring. Thompson admitted that he had no idea how the device worked. Something completely unexpected had evolved. Perhaps, thought Thompson, some of the circuits are coupled electromagnetically rather than by wires. Human engineers would never ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 118: Jul-Aug 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Biological Miscellany Sisterly synchrony. In Utah, three of E. Carey's four daughters gave birth on the same day, March 11, 1998, at 7:18 AM, 3:25 PM, and 8:58 PM. The daughters are aged 28, 27, and 24 -- no twin phenomena here. Odds against this synchrony were said to be 50 million to 1. (Anonymous; "3 Sisters Deliver 3 Babies -- All on Same Day," San Francisco Chronicle, March 14, 1998. Cr.J . Covey.) Oliver is all chimp. That aberrant chimp, Oliver, thought by some to be a humanchimpanzee hybrid (SF#110), is 100% chimpanzee say geneticists at the University of Texas. Even so, Oliver always walks erect and can mix drinks! (Holden, Constance; "Oliver no 'Humanzee'," Science, 280:207, 1998.) Phase changes. He was not frightened by a ghost or abducted by aliens, but the hair of a healthy, 45-year-old French farmer turned from black to pure white in less that 14 days. For six months the embarrassed man endured, but then over a period of four months, his hair grew back to full black. (Nelson, Douglas; "Aaaaaargh," New Scientist, p. 93, April 11, 1998.) Mummified llamas yield ...
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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 Dolphin Refrigerators Dolphins and other cetaceans have an overheating problem. For high hydrodynamic performance, their bodies must be nicely streamlined. For males, this means that their testicles must be stored internally. But dolphins are very active animals, and their muscles generate considerable heat -- too much heat for sperm to survive without some sort of special cooling system. (Recall that human males with undescended testicles may become sterile.) Since dolphins are obviously procreating, evolution must have come to the dolphins' rescue. Evolution's engineering solution installs heat exchangers in the dolphins' tails and dorsal fins. Blood heated in the vicinity of the testes is pumped through special veins in the tail and dorsal fin, where it is cooled by seawater and then returned to the dolphins' heat-sensitive innards. Female dolphins have similar heat exchangers to cool their uteri. The same article in Discover points out still another remarkable adaptation conferred on dolphins: They do not have to expend a lot of energy in diving to great depths. Below about 70 meters, the water pressure collapses their lungs so that they sink like rocks! Of course, returning to the surface does require some exertion. (Zimmer, Carl; "The Dolphin Strategy," Discover, 18:72, March 1997.) Comments. One automatically supposes that the dolphin dorsal fin is needed for stabilization when swimming -- like an airplane's rudder. But several cetacea ...
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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 Flat Face Of Mars Mars has two puzzling "faces": (1 ) That human-like visage at Cydonia; and (2 ) The whole northern hemisphere or "face." The latter is definitely real and consists of an immense, low-lying plain centered roughly on the planet's North Pole. The opposite face of Mars is occupied by rough, cratered highlands. This sharp, profound crustal dichotomy has been known for many years and has resisted explanation. In SF#113, T. Van Flandern advanced the theory that the rugged southern highlands are composed of the debris from an exploded planet which Mars once attended as a satellite. Be that as it may, there is something puzzling about the northern plains. We now have information from the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), now orbitting the red planet, that the low-lying northern plains are much flatter than thought. For thousands of kilometers, they are smooth on a scale of hundreds of meters. This is flatter than the lava flows of the lunar maria; flatter than the smoothest central Sahara. These startling data come from the MGS's laser altimeter that can measure elevation of the terrain below it with 10meter accuracy averaged over the beam width of 150 meters. The only known terrain in the entire solar system that can match this flatness is the abyssal, sediment-filled floor of the South Atlantic. Hmmm! Does this ...
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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 Evolution Of Computers So, you thought this item was going to be about advances in chips, modems, and related hardware? It's not about software either. It's about bioware. The title of a recent article in Science began with: "Genomic Cis-Regulatory Logic." That's obscure enough to make you move on to the next article, particularly when you see that sea urchins are involved. But buried in all the technical jargon is a profound discovery: The genes of all living things, from sea urchins to humans, are in reality systems consisting of thousands of simple computational devices. Very, very briefly, the regulatory regions for animal genes, are termed "promoters." Promoters typically consist of a few hundred to several thousand bases of DNA. In the work of Yuh et al, the article's authors, these promoters are seen to perform as logic circuits, just like those bits of silicon in your PC. These tiny, DNA-based biological logic circuits determine how genes are interpreted (each gene may be interpreted in several ways), and, in the end, how lifeforms develop from embryo to adult. (Yuh, Chiou-Hwa, et al; "Genomic CisRegulatory Logic: Experimental and Computational Analysis of a Sea Urchin Gene," Science, 279:1896, 1998. Also: Wray, Gregory A.; "Promoter Logic, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 118: Jul-Aug 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Day The Laws Of Physics Changed Well, maybe there weren't such things as "days" as we now know them back when the universe was very young. In fact, "time" then might have been different from "time" now. This sounds like so much physics-speak; but, seriously, during the birth pangs of the universe, there seems to have been what cosmologists call a "phase change," a mysterious moment when the laws of physics suddenly became more complex. You can reasonably ask: "How can supposedly immutable physical laws change?" The answer seems to be that anything can happen when something is being made from nothing! This apparent plasticity in the laws governing the cosmos is suggested by observations of how galaxies in the early universe were distributed. The standard theory for the origin of the universe predicts that clumps of galaxies of all sizes were created early on. This is not what a survey by S. Sarkar et al, at the University of Oxford, found. A split second after the Big Bang, galaxies were organized in structures about 300-million light years across. The standard model of particle physics cannot account for this preferred size. The theorists' recourse is a phase change, a point in time when the warp and woof of the universe changed; that is, change the rules until they fit. (Chown, Marcus; "In the ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 118: Jul-Aug 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Archeological Revisionism During the past bimonthly collecting period, we have amassed -- with very little effort -- over 40 reports on archeology that were interesting enough to attract our attention. Fully 30 of these are exciting enough to summarize for Science Frontiers, but we have room for merely four! What does this all mean? Easy! The entire picture of human exploration and colonization of our planet is probably radically different from what we have been led to believe. From Science Frontiers #118, JUL-AUG 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Who Built The Kaimanawa Wall?Some 30 kilometers south of Lake Taupo, in New Zealand, stands an enigmatic array of stone blocks. It "looks" like a wall; a human-built wall. It also "looks" old; perhaps 2,000 years old according to some. Who built it? Passions are running high in New Zealand, where three hypotheses are being advanced: The wall was built some 2,000 years ago by the first settlers of New Zealand, the Waitahas, who were subsequently nearly exterminated by the Maoris, who arrived only 800 years ago. There are political problems with this theory, for the Maoris insist they are the original New Zealanders and therefore are due compensation for lands expropriated by later Europeans. The wall is merely what's left of a sawmill built only 50 or so years ago. The wall is simply a natural rock formation that has happened to split neatly into rectangular blocks -- like those slabs of beach rock that comprise the controversial Bimini "road" in the Bahamas. Future study of the "wall" will doubtless narrow the list to one. Meanwhile, let's take a look at the wall itself. B. Brailsford, of Christchurch, has been the chief investigator of the Kaimanawa wall, aided by American D.H . Childress, and others. The stones that make up the wall are 4-ton blocks of ignimbrite, ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 15 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf107/sf107p00.htm
