Nature inverviews Senator Obama on science issues

Darkfrog submitted, created time 1 month 3 weeks (www.nature.com)

The title says it all. Obama, in his own words, responds to Nature magazine on scientific issues. The original idea for the article had been to get both candidates' views, but McCain's campaign declined Nature's invitation. Summaries of Senator McCain's views are given instead.

The only scientific issue for which McCain shows more enthusiasm than Obama is the space program. On others, he is either surpassed or matched by Obama

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Education: Royal Society's Director of Education steps down over creationist remarks

Darkfrog submitted, created time 2 months 3 days (www.nature.com)

The Royal Society's Director of Education seems to have been forced to step down. Michael Reiss, who is both a professor at England's Institute of Education and an Anglican priest, stepped down the other day after a speech in which he advocated "engage in dialogue with the creationist views some children express in science classes" [Nature's words] re-raised old questions about whether priests should be appointed to such positions at all.

Frankly, I think it is perfectly possible for a priest to serve in such a capacity

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Evolution and historical continguency caught on tape! E. coli amass traits over time.

Darkfrog submitted, created time 5 months 1 week (www.pnas.org)

Historical contingency is a new phrase for me. I gather that it means "the idea that a given new mutation cannot create a new trait unless certain other, related mutations have already taken place." Anyway, it's been observed, repeatedly, in a laboratory setting.

Researchers split some identical E. coli into twelve colonies and gave them a glucose-poor medium that contained citrate, which E. coli cannot ordinarily process. Eventaully, around generation 32,000 some of the E. coli gained the ability to use citrate as food

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Bacteria make major evolutionary shift in the lab

sea-maid submitted, created time 5 months 1 week (www.newscientist.com)

A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers' eyes. It's the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait.

Ordinarily E. coli cannot process citrate. In fact, this trait is one of the things that researchers use to distinguish E. coli from other species. This team separated E. coli into twelve separate cultures and allowed it to divide. No matter how they replayed things, only extracts from the one citrate-plus culture ever re-developed citrate processing abilities

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Evolution opponents use "strengths and weaknesses" rhetoric to undermine science in schools

Darkfrog submitted, created time 5 months 2 weeks (www.nytimes.com)

"Creation science" didn't work. "Intelligent design" didn't work. Thank God. The new move for opponents of the theory of evolution, according to this article in the New York Times, is "strengths and weaknesses." Strictly speaking, I have nothing against pointing out the scientific weaknesses of evolution, but most textbooks could probably handle that in half a page. The advocates of the "strengths and weaknesses" ideology want the textbook to say, "evolution has an inability to explain the Cambrian explosion," when it really ought to say, "we don't know what caused the Cambrian explosion

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