... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 66: Nov-Dec 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Doubts About Two Ritually Recited Theories Do you think humans originated in Africa? We have heard for so long now that modern humans got their start in Africa. (This assertion is as hackneyed as: "Life began in a warm little pond"!) There is, of course, some evidence for the African claim. Studies of genetic material and the fossil record are suggestive, although the latter includes the Middle East as a possible birthplace. Other data, however, put the "founding group" of modern humans in Southeast Asia. The iconoclast here is C.G . Turner, II, an anthropologist at Arizona State University. He has analyzed secondary dental traits (number of roots, bumps, etc.) of 12,000 individuals from around the world - both ancient and modern. Turner believes that the "great web of humanity" originated in Southeast Asia. Since then, two large populations, each recognizable by their dental features, have evolved.: (1 ) northeast Asians and the ancient residents of the Americas; and (2 ) southeast Asians, Europeans, ancient Australians, and Africans. Also of note is the close resemblance between native Australians and Africans. (Bower, B.; "Asian Human Origin Theory Gets New Teeth," Science News, 136:100, 1989.) Did the eruption of Thera do in the Minoans? According to popular archeolo-gical doctrine, ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 36: Nov-Dec 1984 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Evolution Of Man And Malaria Malarial parasites are customarily classified according to the species infected and then further subdivided by morphology and biological characteristics. The two assumptions implicit in this classification procedure, which is supposed to mirror actual historical evolution, are: Malarial parasites evolved in parallel with their hosts; and Morphology is a measure of evolutionary relatedness. With modern biochemical techniques it is possible to test these assumptions by comparing the DNA structures of the different malarial parasites. P. falcipa rum, the parasite transmitting the most deadly human malaria, turns out to be more closely related to rodent and avian malaria than the other primate malarias. Therefore, assumption #1 above is in correct in this view. Assumption #2 is also wrong because some species of malaria parasites which are very similar morphologically are quite different DNAwise. (McCutchan, Thomas F., et al; "Evolutionary Relatedness of Plasmodium Species as Determined by the Structure of DNA," Science, 225:808, 1984.) Comment. The article does not draw attention to still another assumption; namely, that similarities are measures of evolutionary relatedness. If this as sumption isn't correct, evolutionary family trees based on bodily structure, which means most of the family trees in the textbooks, may not truly reflect what really happened in the development of life. Further, if malarial parasites did evolve along with their hosts, hu man evolution seems farther removed from the evolution ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 14: Winter 1981 Supplement Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Do lightning channels accelerate matter?E.W . Crew suggests in this paper that two rare classes of meteorological observations may be created by the intense electrostatic accelerating forces present in lightning channels. The first class of observations consists of blasts of hot air noted some distance from violent lightning strikes but seeming associated with the discharges. Second, some superhailstones (hydrometeors) also seem to be correlated with violent lightning. The physical mechanism for the concentration and propulsion of matter is the electrostatic force naturally present in lightning discharge channels; it functions much the same as the particle accelerators in the physics lab. The observations of hot air blasts and superhailstones collected by Crew to support his theory are indeed suggestive, but more are needed. Crew also feels that some UFO sightings may be produced by the same mechanism. (Crew, E.W .; "Meteorological Flying Objects," Royal Astronomical Society Quarterly Journal, 21:216, 1980.) Comment. Note also that the fall of thunderstones is usually coincident with lightning discharges; and that some high quality observations of thunderstone falls are on record -- despite the tendency of Science to relegate them to myth. One must also consider the possibility that the passage of a meteor or superhailstone through the atmosphere might trigger lightning, thus putting the cart before the horse. From Science Frontiers #14, Winter 1981 . 1981-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 38: Mar-Apr 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Subtle Placebo A most interesting series of placebo experiments have been carried out by J.D . Levine and N.C . Gordon, of the University of California at San Francisco. The subjects were all dental patients who were tested when their surgical anesthesia was wearing off. The substances administered were: (1 ) a placebo; (2 ) morphine; and (3 ) naloxone, a substance that blocks the opiates produced in the brain. The doses were administered: (1 ) openly, when the experimenter knew which substance was being given; (2 ) by a person hidden from both experimenter and patient; and (3 ) by a machine. Two findings are particularly revealing. First, pain always increased after naloxone was administered, implying that the opiates blocked by naloxone are probably the same as those released by placebos. More significant, however, was the fact that both the open and hidden administrations of the placebo reduced pain while the machine-applied placebo resulted in more pain. In other words, when either the experimenter or the hidden administrator knew that the placebo was being given, the placebo worked. Levine and Gordon supposed that there must have been subtle clues, detected subconsciously by the patients, that the hidden person was administering the placebo. (Anonymous; "The Subtle Strength of Placebos," Science News, 127:25, 1985.) Comment. If no subtle clues existed, ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 15: Spring 1981 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Those Darn Quarks There's no escaping it, those fractionally charged niobium balls just can't be swept under the rug. In fact, more recent experiments have served only to accentuate the anomaly. Researchers at Stanford University have been magnetically suspending superconducting niobium spheres in a modern version of Millikan's oil-drop experiment. With the niobium spheres thus suspended, their net electrical charges can be measured. The trouble is that several of the spheres have fractional electrical charges -- + 1/3 or -1 /3 electronic charges. For decades the charge on the electron was supposed to be the basic, indivisible natural unit of electrical charge. In 1964, however, theorists began muddying the waters with talk of new fundamental constituents of matter called quarks, which could possess 1/3 or 2/3 electron charges. No one really expected that quarks, if they existed at all, would be floating around free. But the niobium balls tell us that not only are quarks free but that we could have detected them with relatively simple experiments decades ago if we had not been so blinded by the idea of integral electronic charges. (Robinson, Arthur L.; "Evidence for Free Quarks Won't Go Away," Science, 211:1028, 1981.) From Science Frontiers #15, Spring 1981 . 1981-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 49: Jan-Feb 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Slice Of Ocean Crust In Wyoming Tucked among Wyoming's Wind River Mountains is a region of exotic crustal rocks. The best explanation conventional geology has come up with is that they were formed some 2.5 billion years ago by geological processes not in operation today. G. Harper, however, thinks that these Wyoming rocks look very much like some of the slices of ocean crust (terranes) that continental drift's conveyor belt has plastered against North America's west coast. The conveyor belt is, of course, the ocean floor that dives under the continent. The more he looked, the more Harper was convinced that there, in the middle of the continent, was a substantial chunk of ancient ocean crust. The implications: continental drift and terrane plastering have been in operation for billions of years: ". .. from their very beginnings continents have been built up from the bits and pieces of plate tectonics." Some other geologists concur and point to similar rocks in northern Canada and around the Great Lakes. (Kerr, Richard A.; "Plate Tectonics Is the Key to the Distant Past," Science, 234:670, 1986.) Comment. If the continents have been slapped together in such a disorganized manner, have stratigraphy and geological dating been compromised? Reference. "Exotic" terranes are discussed in ESR9 in Inner Earth. Information on this catalog here . Pangaea circa ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 71: Sep-Oct 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Nature Communicates In Mysterious Ways Most of us will recall that the wings of butterflies and moths sometimes display eyespots, which, according to current thinking, are designed to startle potential predators. Perhaps so, but butterfly and moth wings can convey a wide range of "signals." K.B . Sandved, a nature photographer, has also found remarkable renditions of all the letters in the English alphabet (one at a time, of course) on the wings of these insects. In fact, he has accomplished this several times over using different species. He has found all the Arabic numerals, too, as well as ampersands, question marks -- you name it! Although Greek pi and capital omega have turned up, butterflies and maths are clearly trying to impress people who utilize the Roman alphabet. After all, it is difficult enough to evolve an ampersand; generating Chinese characters would strain credulity too much. (Amato, Ivan; "Insect Inscriptions," Science News, 137: 376, 1990.) Comments. Incidentally, of what survival value are these wing symbols? Obviously, the butterflies and moths have not got their act completely together as yet. Words and phrases will come soon, we are certain. Look at the eggplants for example. They have specialized in Arabic. It has recently been reported in British newspapers and on BBC Radio 4 that when the Kassam family sliced up an eggplant, ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 25: Jan-Feb 1983 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Anomalons Are Lazy Or Fat No, an "anomalon" is not an animal unknown to science. "Anomalon" is the name that has been given to unusual fragments that are created in high-energy collisions of atomic nuclei. The fragments are peculiar because they appear not to travel as far as expected in the special "nuclear" emulsion used to study the interactions of high-energy nuclei from heavy-ion accelerators or in cosmic rays. This suggests that the anomalons are either much larger than conventional nuclei, and are more likely to interact in the emulsion and therefore do not travel so far, or are some unusually long-lived form of matter, lasting for around 1011 seconds or more." One thought is that anomalons may be constructed of two triplets of quarks. These sextets are called "demon deuterons." Another hypothesis has small nuclei bound loosely together -- they don't say by what. The whole thing is up in the air, or should we say in the emulsion? (Sutton, Christine; "Anomalon Data Continue to Baffle Physicists," New Scientist, 96:160, 1982.) Comment. One thing is sure, nuclear physicists have a lot of fun naming their newly found particles. From Science Frontiers #25, JAN-FEB 1983 . 1983-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... 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 Reinventing The Neandertals The public image of the Neandertal is that of a brutish, hardly human creature clad in a ragged skin and unable to speak save for a few grunts. Forget that picture. Several hundred meters deep inside a cavern near Bruniquel, in southern France, spelunkers stumbled across a complex quadrilateral structure, 4 x 5 meters in extent, built up from chunks of stalactites and stalagmites. Within its "walls" they found a piece of burnt bear bone that was later carbondated as at least 47,600 years old. A burnt bone and a geometrical structure certainly suggest the work of an intelligent creature, as does the site's great distance from the surface. Torches would have been a necessity that far in. That 47,600-year figure, though, presents a problem. The first Cro-Magnons didn't filter into western Europe until about 35,000 BP. According to the accepted anthropological schedule, only those subhuman Neandertals inhabited that part of France in 47,600 BP. So, we must conclude that the Neandertals knew well the sophisticated use of fire. They also had enough curiosity to venture deep into the earth, where for some unknown purpose they piled together an enigmatic structure. All this also seems to require more information transfer than possible with a few "ughs"! (Balter, Michael; "Cave Structure Boosts Neandertal Image," Science, 271:449, ...

... 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 G: The Embarrassing Constant Of Nature Of the four fundamental forces of nature, gravity was the first to be discovered. Even the Neanderthals knew of it! That's hardly surprising; it's everywhere. Unfortunately, we don't know much more about it than the Neanderthals. Though it seems powerful when you trip and fall, gravity is the weakest of the fundamental four. In a helium nucleus, the force of repulsion between two protons is 1040 times the gravitational attraction between them. Weak though it may be, gravity controls the trajectory of a baseball, the motion of the planets, and the shape of our Galaxy. Physicists describe gravitation with Newton's Law of Gravitation, which incorporates the Gravitational Constant G. Here's where the embarrassment arises. Many other constants of nature, such as the charge on the electron, are known to eight significant figures. We only know G to three. What's worse, modern attempts to refine the measurement of G come up with wildly different answers. Torsion-pendulum experiments in the U.S ., Germany, and New Zealand are far apart in their G-measurements. And physicists are perplexed -- to put it mildly. Of course, G is hard to measure. Seismic waves from ocean surf hundreds of miles away can affect the experiments. If a colleague a few offices away brings in some boxes of books for his ...

... 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 The Path Of The Pyramids About the same time the Egyptians were hauling 100-ton limestone blocks to the Giza Plateau, some South Americans were toting basketball-size rocks in bags woven from reeds to a site called Caral, located 23 kilometers from Peru's Pacific coast. While the Egyptians piled their weighty blocks neatly into pyramids, the South Americans simply dropped their stones, reed bags and all, onto crude but growing piles. When finished, the largest "rock pile" at Caral contained 7 million cubic feet of rocks and had assumed the shape of a pyramid (or platform mound) four stories high (60 feet) and covering an area 500 by 450 feet. This was probably the first monumental architecture in the New World; and it was constructed some 800 years earlier than mainstream archeologists had expected. In fact, Caral boasts six large platform mounds, three sunken plazas, and many impressive buildings. Layout of the Coral site in Peru. For all its precocious architecture, Caral is a "preceramic" site; that is, it was built before the advent of pottery in South America. Caral was "officially" discovered in 1905, but it was neglected by both archeologists and grave robbers because there were no artifacts to collect and nothing worth stealing. No one recognized its great age until recently. Today Caral is recognized as the work of the first complex society in the New World. (Solis ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 91: Jan-Feb 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Pairs Of Ghostly Spots Sweep Across Jupiter Atop Hawaii's Mauna Kea, NASA's Infra-red Telescope Facility has detected a pair of infrared-bright spots that race across Jupiter's upper atmosphere in tune with the motion of Io, one of Jupiter's large, Galilean satellites. This synchronism suggests some sort of energy interchange between Io and the top of Jupiter's atmosphere. The theory now in vogue states that Jupiter's rotating magnetic field induces a voltage across 2300-mile-diameter Io, resulting in an electrical current of some 5 million amperes flowing between Io and Jupiter, some 262,000 miles away. In this bizarre electrical circuit, the two moving "terminals" on Jupiter, in the northern and southern hemispheres, are heated by the current flow and show up as fuzzy infrared-bright spots. (Cowen, R.; "Jupiter and Io: Infrared Spots Mark Link," Science News, 144: 325, 1993.) Comment. In passing, it should be remarked that Io is mantled by a cloud of electrically conducting sodium vapor. A weird moon in other respects, too, Io occasionally casts double shadows on Jupiter's upper atmosphere during transits. See AJX4 in The Moon and the Planets. In addition, in AJX2, infrared-hot shadows of the satellites Ganymede and Europa are mentioned. Very strange! To order The Moon and the Planets ...

... 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 THE NEW ARCHAEOPERYX FOSSIL A new fossil of Archaeopteryx has been found in a private collection, where it was misclassified as a small dinosaur. The specimen was actually found many years ago by an amateur in the Upper Jurassic Solnhofen limestone in Bavaria, in about the same area as the Berlin and Eichstatt Archaeopteryx fossils. Under low-angle illumination, the new specimen shows parallel impressions originating from the lower arm of the left "wing." These impressions are "interpreted" as imprints of feather shafts. Thus, the new fossil reinforces the mainstream position that Archaeopteryx really did have feathers and was a link between reptiles and birds. Evolutionists will rest easier now. Two bothersome observations intrude, however. First, although the report on the new specimen states that the question of forgery does not arise here, even though the specimen's tail has been restored to the length deemed by the owner. In addition, the new Archaeopteryx is 10% larger than the London specimen, 30% larger than the Berlin specimen, and fully twice the size of the Eichstatt specimen. Is there more than one Archaeopteryx species? (Wellnhofer, Peter; "A New Specimen of Archaeopteryx," Science, 240:1790, 1988. Also: Wilford, John Noble; "Fossil May Help Tie Reptiles to Birds," New York Times, June 24, 1988. Cr. J. Covey) Comment. We wonder if Hoyle and ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 85: Jan-Feb 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Heavy traffic in near-earth space That region of outer space near the earth carries a heavier load of flotsam and jetsam than scientists expected. The devastation of the 1908 Tunguska impact in Siberia warns us that this space debris -- meteors, comets, asteroids -- is an active threat. A recent spate of articles paints an ominous future. The earth's retinue of mini-asteroids. "Asteroids as big as houses pass near the Earth 100 times more often than anyone suspected. On an average day, about 50 asteroids measuring at least 10 metres across come closer to the Earth than the Moon, and each year about five such objects may hit the planet." (Second reference below.) These startling data come from D. Rabinowitz and coworkers at the University of Arizona, who have been scanning nearby space with a telescope fitted with supersensitive charge-coupled devices (CCDs). They have picked up astronomical objects that have escaped conventional instruments. Several sources have been suggested for this unexpected, threateningly large population of small asteroids: (1 ) debris hurled earthward from collisions within the asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter; (2 ) the breakup of a large object formerly in orbit about the earth; and (3 ) fragments blasted off the moon by impacts of large asteroids there. (Kerr, Richard A.; "Earth Gains a Retinue of Mini-Asteroids," Science, 258 ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 37: Jan-Feb 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Parasites may reprogram host's cell The long, segmented filament shown in the illustration consists of the cells of a parasite that preys on the cells of red algae. Two such cells abut the parasitic filament. The small black circles are parasitic cell nuclei which, when confronted with a red alga cell, become wrapped in small "conjuctor cells" which are then somehow transferred to the host cell on the right. The actual transfer involves the formation on the host cell wall of a sort of dimple called a "secondary pit connection." (Why this forms is not known.) Once inside the host cell, the parasite nucleus and/or the cytoplasm transferred with it dramatically reprograms host cell operations. The host cell shifts into highgear food production, enlarging up to twenty times its normal size. The host cell wall thickens, its nuclei (large black circles) and chloroplasts multiply. Adjacent cells (left) remain unaffected. (Lewin, Roger; "New Regulatory Mechanism of Parasitism," Science, 226:427, 1984.) Comment. It is one thing for external stresses to stimulate cell reprogramming, but quite another when another species inserts its programs into those of the host. Is this another way of producing "hopeful monsters?" A parasitic filament growing between host cells, showing how parasite nuclei are first enclosed in bud-like conjunctor cells and then inserted into the host cell. From Science ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 16: Summer 1981 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Belief Systems And Health Can one's mind-set affect one's immunity to disease? Lenard explores (in popular style) the roles of mental attitude, visualization techniques, and placebos in fighting and preventing cancer and other ailments. Placebos are nothing new. Most doctors admit they sometimes work for some people. Why, they don't know. Placebo action seems closely allied to a person's mental attitude. Many doctors will also allow that a positive attitude helps a lot in fighting illness and that depression aggravates it. Visualization techniques, though, are hotly debated. Will cancer cells be destroyed, or at least stop growing, if the patient visualized them as weak things that are vulnerable to the body's killer cells? Proponents of visualization recom-mend that a cancer patient visualize his killer cells as protecting knights in armor that swoop down and skewer the enemy cancer cells. In a visualization session, one focuses one's mind on such images and, in essence, wills his body to fight back. There is some evidence that visualization helps. (Lenard, Lane; "Visions That Vanquish Cancer," Science Digest, 89:59, March 1981.) Comment. The crucial scientific question in all the above methods is: How does a belief system mobilize biological systems? From Science Frontiers #16, Summer 1981 . 1981-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... 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 Water's memory or benveniste strikes back J. Benveniste has broken a two-year drought in the "water-memory" or "infinite-dilution" saga. "Working with colleagues at INSERM, the French medical research council, in Paris, Benveniste has completed fresh experiments to test his assertion that solutions of antibody diluted to the point where they no longer contain any antibody molecules continue to evoke a response from whole white blood cells, as if they possess 'ghosts' of the original molecules. If proven, this would shatter the laws of chemistry and vindicate homeopaths, who say that extremely dilute drugs can have a physical effect." Benveniste's latest scientific paper was published in Comptes Rendus after being rejected by both Nature and Science. Benveniste states that he has corrected the flaws in his original research that evoked passionate responses from the scientific world. However, Benveniste's latest paper prompted one of Nature's reviewers to charge that Benveniste was "throwing out data because they don't fit the conclusion." This story is not yet finished, because Benveniste promises to reveal new research that demonstrates that a solution of histamine, from which all traces of histamine were subsequently diluted out, can still affect blood flow in the hearts of quinea pigs! Furthermore, this phenomenon can be inhibited by the application of weak magnetic fields!! (Concar, David; "Ghost Molecules' Theory Back from ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 71: Sep-Oct 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The bombardier beetle pulse-jet Creationists have long pointed to the bombardier beetle's jet-like defensive spray mechanism as a device that could not have evolved in many small steps. It must be complete and perfect to work at all. New high-speed photos and related research demonstrate that: "The ejection system of the beetle shows basic similarity to the pulse jet propulsion mechanism of the German V-1 'buzz' bomb of World War II." What the beetle has "evolved" is an intermittent explosive process that fires about 500 pulses per second. The explosive energy comes from the mixing of two separate fluids (hydroquinones and hydrogen peroxide with oxidative enzymes). (Dean, Jeffrey, et al; "Defensive Spray of the Bombardier Beetle: A Biological Pulse Jet," Science, 248:1219, 1990.) Comment. The fundamental question is, of course, how can many, small, random mutations contribute to the development of the mechanisms of the pulse jet, its two fuels, the pumps, the fuel reservoirs, the control system, etc., when only the complete, perfected system has survival value. Although creationists argue that the theories of evolution and natural section are unconvincing here; it is still possible that atheistic factors still beyond our ken are operating, and that what we really need is a better theory of evolution. From Science Frontiers #71, SEP-OCT ...

... 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 Parapsychology: a lack-of-progress report Speculating, 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 ...

... 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 Possible Survival Of Giant Sloths In South America For many years, rumors have been filtering out of trackless western Amazonia telling of a 6-foot, 500-pound giant sloth clothed in reddish hair. Rubber gatherers of the region report that this fearsome creature emits a hideous odor and transfixes one with a paralyzing stare! It also seems impervious to spears and shotgun pellets. Natives and some cryptozoologists equate this animal to the legendary Mapinguari. P. J. Wynne's impression of South America's late-surviving giant sloth. D.C . Owen, an American biologist working with the Goeldi Natural History Museum in Belem, Brazil, has been tracking these stories. The present fossil record asserts that giant ground sloths resembling the supposed Mapinguari did occupy western Amazonia up to about 8700 years ago. To this must be added the appearance of an apparently fresh skin of the animal in 1897. Even more recently, gold miners are said to have killed a giant sloth. As with the North American Bigfoot, hard data are elusive, particularly actual specimens, dead or alive. Owen is optimistic, however. He sees his hunt for the Mapinguari as more than just another useless monster hunt: "If South America's largest terrestrial mammal has been hidden to science until 1994, what else does the Amazon have in terms of biodiversity that's new to us?" (Stolzenberg, William; "Bigfoot of the ...

... 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 Heretical Evolutionary Theory "Over the past 15 years, away from the limelight of mainstream evolutionary argument, cell biologists have been debating a concept that is fundamental to our understanding of how cells evolved. It is the proposal that some of the structures that are found in the larger cells of animals, plants and fungi (eukaryotic cells) are the descendants of simpler bacteria-like organisms (prokaryotic cells) that had at some stage entered into an intracellular existence, or endosymbiosis. The idea is not a new one, but only in the light of modern experimental evidence has it become acceptable to many biologists. If the hypothesis is correct, then virtually all the major groups of familiar organisms originated 'suddenly' through endosymbiotic associations." Following this lead paragraph, with its paradigm-shaking final sentence, are three pages summarizing the biological evidence favoring evolution by endosymbiosis. (Kite, Geoffrey; "Evolution by Symbiosis; The Inside Story," New Scientist, p. 50, July 3, 1986.) Comment. We cannot possibly do justice to this exciting idea of evolution forced by the uniting of different organisms in the limited format of Science Frontiers. Instead, we encourage readers to purchase a new book by L. Margulis and D. Sagan (son of Carl Sagan and L. Margulis) entitled Micro Cosmos. In passing, we must also remark on the obvious relationship of endosymbiosis to F. Hoyle's ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 64: Jul-Aug 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Halley: a young, combusting, alien interloper Can this be the comet Halley of the textbooks? Comets are supposed to be as old as the solar system itself (4 .6 billion years), born of solar-system stuff when a gaseous cloud condensed. Above all, comets do not "burn" or combust! The vision of a "burning" comet was advanced by recent observations that the velocity and temperature of the gases escaping from Halley are higher than one would expect from the sublimation of ices under solar radiation. Also, the concentration of expelled material in large, hypersonic jets carrying large quantities of fine dust further undermine the sublimation model. E.M . Drobyshevski has concluded "The new observations, together with some earlier data still poorly understood (e .g ., the appearance in the coma of large amounts of C3 ) can be accounted for by assuming the cometary ices to contain, apart from the hydrocarbons, nitrogen-containing compounds, etc., also of free oxygen (about 15 wt. %) . Under these conditions, burning should occur in the products of sublimation under deficiency of oxidizer accompanied by the production of 'soot,' 'smoke,' etc. The burning should propagate under the surface crust and localize at a few sites. "The presence of oxygen in cometary ices follows from a new eruption theory assuming the minor bodies of the Solar System to have formed ...

... 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 Lunacy In Trees More than a half-century ago, Yale biologist H.S . Burr inserted electrodes into trees and found that the voltages between them varied with the phase of the moon. (Ref. 1) The influence of the moon upon trees is even more palpable: the diameters of tree stems also bloat and shrink with the position of the moon in the sky. There is a tide in the affairs of trees, it seems. If tides occur twice a day, so do the swellings and shrinkings of trees. These tidal patterns are evident even when the trees are kept in darkness and at constant pressure and humidity. Even more surprising, chunks of tree stems that are sealed to prevent water from flowing in or out will still expand and contract according to the 24-hour, 49-minute lunar cycle as long as the cambium, the most active growing region, survives. The dimensional changes are small -- only tenths of a millimeter, but even these seem too large, given the weakness of the moon's gravitational field here on earth. (Ref. 2 and 3) References 1. Burr, H.S .; "Moon Madness," Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 19:249, 1944. 2. Zurcher, Ernst, and Cantiana, MariaGiulia; "Tree Stem Diameters Fluctuate with Tide," Nature, 392:665, 1998.) 3 ...

... 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 Song Of The Earth After a major earthquake, the entire earth quivers like a sphere of jelly suspended in space. Already a slightly oblate sphere, the planet becomes successively a bit more oblate, then a bit more prolate, as illustrated. The amplitudes of these deformations are small, just a centimeter or so after big quakes. The tone or frequency of the quivers is just a few millihertz, which translates to periods ranging from 3-54 minutes. We doubt that the telestomping elephants mentioned under BIOLOGY can detect these quiverings. That the earth does indeed "ring" is old news. Geophysicist A.E .H . Love mentioned the possibility in 1911. It is also recognized that large earthquakes can set the earth to ringing (" quivering" is better). What is news is the discovery by N. Suda et al that our planet rings even when no major quakes are occurring, and no one yet knows why. Suda et al write: "The observed "background" free oscillations represent some unknown dynamic process of Earth." Suda and his colleagues detected these oscillations using a superconducting gravimeter, which they installed in a seismically-quiet place: Antarctica. The favorite explanation for the background oscillations is turbulence in the earth's atmosphere. Ocean tides and currents are also on the list as potential "bell-ringers." [El Ninos were not mentioned!] (Suda, Naoki ...

... 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 Ants Like Amps Those pesky fire ants that plague man and beast alike in the southern states have a curious weakness: they dote on electrical equipment. They don't eat it; they just "like" it! Why, nobody knows. They invade a wide variety of outdoor electrical devices: airport runway lights, stoplight control boxes, household electrical meters, etc. In particular, they favor relays, where they congregate in masses, interfering with current flow and damaging circuitry. The phenomenon is made stranger by the fire ants' complete abandonment of their usual search for food and water (and ankles). They starve in droves and clog up everything. It's a mothand-candle story. Searching for the fatal attractor, researchers have already eliminated magnetic fields, vibrations, and ozone emissions. Apparently, the fire ants "see" something we can't and are smitten by it. (Weiss, Rick; "Ants Get a Transforming Charge," Science News, 136:412, 1989.) From Science Frontiers #68, MAR-APR 1990 . 1990-2000 William R. Corliss ...