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Darwin in the Dock: C.S. Lewis's Limited Acceptance of Common Descent Common descent is the claim that all organisms currently living have descended from one or a few original ancestors through a process Darwin called "descent with modification." According to this idea, not only humans and apes share an ancestor, but so do humans, clams, and fungi. Common descent is a hallowed dogma among today's evolution proponents, held with quasi-religious fervor. C.S. Lewis clearly believed that Christians can accept evolution as common descent without doing violence to their faith. This is what Lewis was getting at when he wrote to evolution critic bernard Acworth, "I believe that Christianity can still be believed, even if evolution is true."18 In Lewis's view, whether God used common descent to create the first human beings was irrelevant to the truth of Christianity. As he wrote to one correspondent late in his life, "I don't mind whether God made man out of earth or whether 'earth' merely means 'previous millennia of ancestral organisms.' If the fossils make it probable that man's physical ancestors 'evolved,' no matter."19 In The Problem of Pain (1940), Lewis even offers a possible evolutionary account of the development of human beings, although he makes clear he is offering speculation, not history: "[I]f it is legitimate to guess," he writes, "I offer the following picture -- a 'myth' in the Socratic sense," which he defines as "a not unlikely tale," or "an account of what may have been the historical fact" (emphasis in the original). Lewis then suggests that "[f]or long centuries God perfected the animal form which was to become the vehicle of humanity and the image of himself... The creature may have existed for ages... before it became man."20 Elsewhere, Lewis seemed smitten by the idea of embryonic recapitulation, the discredited evolutionary idea that human beings replay the history of their evolution from lower animals in their womb. And in a letter to his f

Science research is a rich mine of valuable knowledge if one knows how to go about it with care and precision. As in all scientific endeavours, there is a system to follow whether one is trying to solve a simple problem such as how to kill garden weeds or improving on Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Even before the advent of the Internet and the unlimited amount of knowledge and information we have available in a matter of seconds, research has generally been misunderstood as a simple process of going to the library (Googling, for most of us today) and getting the data one needs to make a report or "thesis". Unfortunately, this is nothing but a single step in the whole process of scientific research. Academics will call this data-gathering or collating observations. The purpose of scientific research is to observe physical phenomena and to describe them in their operation or functions. The essential question is WHY. Why do things behave as they do? We can predict some things because it is how things are supposed to behave; but we want to know the causes of such phenomena. Discovering the causes through our research, we can then explain these things and use the knowledge to our advantage in many practical ways. That is, we can then build ships that can carry as many people as we can or explain that the moon, like the apple, is falling into the Earth because it is subject to the force of gravitation. Why it never crashes into the Earth is another question which Newton, fortunately, had to settle for us. Science research or what others would call the Scientific Method requires several steps to be considered one. Let us look at them with simple examples for the beginner: 1. Basic or general questions about a phenomenon Sometimes, it all starts with a casual observation followed by a curious question. W

Info Mag Koyal Group Mars Rover Marks an Unexpected Anniversary With a Mysterious Discovery Ten years ago, NASA's Opportunity rover bounded to the surface of Mars for what was planned to be a three-month exploration. Opportunity is still going today - and still making discoveries. The latest, scientists said on Thursday at a news conference celebrating an anniversary none had expected 10 years ago, is a small rock that seemingly appeared out of nowhere. The rock, whose chemical composition was also unexpected, appears in an image taken Jan. 8. There was no rock in a picture taken of the same spot less than two weeks earlier. "This is strange," said Steven W. Squyres, the principal investigator for Opportunity, during the NASA news conference. But he added, "We don't think anything particularly exotic happened here." Dr. Squyres said the most likely explanation was that as the rover pirouetted at an uphill location, its lame right front wheel, which has not turned for years, dragged across the rock and flicked it out of the ground to its new location. The scientists have not yet spotted the divot where the rock popped out, but that spot may be obscured by the rover's solar panels. Year after year, Opportunity goes farther than anyone dreamed. The expectation had been that it would drive about a kilometer - six-tenths of a mile - before dust accumulated on the solar panels and the batteries drained. Unexpectedly, fortuitous winds periodically cleaned off the solar panels, and Opportunity, as well as its twin, Spirit, continued to operate. Spirit got stuck in a sand dune 2009 and then fell silent in 2010 after it was not able to point its solar panels toward the sun during the winter months. Info Mag Koyal Group Mars Rover Marks an Unexpected Anniversary With a Mysterious Discovery Instead of one kilometer, Opportunity has driven 38.7 kilometers, or about 24 miles, exploring a series of ever larger craters, taking 170,000 pictures along the

SR Transport og SR Group var en av de første transportørene som fulgte etter skipsbransjen og innførte et variabelt drivstofftillegg. Første gang dette ble forelagt våre kunder var i 2005. Vi har opp gjennom tidene foretatt endringer med ujevne mellomrom, hele tiden basert på at våre endringer skulle være basert på en endring i vår netto pumpepris på + / - 5%. Dette har så langt fungert veldig bra. For å imøtekomme ønske fra våre kunder vil vi fra 1. september 2011 samkjøre vårt dieseltillegg med SSB's kostnadsindeks. Dette slik at våre endringer skal kunne spores direkte til det som er offentlig utarbeidede tall. Vårt dieseltillegg justeres fra 14,9 % til 13,8 % med virkning fra 1. januar 2014. Tillegget samsvarer da med 120,9 i indeks (Kostnadsindeks for lastebiltransport - indeks nr 10 - Drivstoffelementet). BAF for båtfrakt holdes uendret på 30,0 % i januar. Ved gjennomføring av denne endringen vil våre justeringer ikke lenger være basert på +/- 5% - men på eksakte endringer. Det vil for begge parter - både våre kunder og oss bety et mer korrekt tillegg. Det til enhver tid gjeldende dieseltillegg og BAF finner du her.

One in 13 Kinder konnte sehen, dass ihr Leben verkürzt durch Rauchen, es sei denn, die Nation aggressivere Maßnahmen braucht, den Tabakkonsum zu beenden, sagte die US Surgeon General Freitag--, erstaunlicherweise sogar Wissenschaftler hinzugefügt noch mehr Krankheiten auf der langen Liste von Zigaretten Harms.

Google could soon be more than just a search engine for those with diabetes. Amid the hype surrounding creations like Google Glass, a new device designed to make hands-free communication easier, are technological advances that are spilling over into more areas of people's lives than just the way they communicate or search for information. Google is changing the way people live, as well as the quality of their lives. The company looks to expand that reach into digital health and that can make a real difference in the health epidemics, such as diabetes, that the country currently faces. With Google technology, people may soon be able to manage diabetes through the use of a specially created contact lens.

Two New Space Discoveries Have Rocked the Science World - Each Will Be a Game Changer The news: Two hot discoveries are rocking the way astronomers, physicists, and space scientists view the universe - and they're truly something. The first is intense: Scientist John Bradley from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California took a microscopic look at the interplanetary dust particles lurking at the edge of Earth's stratosphere. He found minuscule bits of water hidden in the <25 micrometre flakes of dust, which are already half the width of a single human hair. New Scientist explains: And in another stunning discovery: cosmologists from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in HeidelBerg might have just viewed dark matter for the first time, as pictured above. For more info: http://koyalgroupinfomag.com/ https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Koyal-Group-Info-Mag/369705673155113 https://twitter.com/koyalgroup

In legend, Yeti is a huge and furry human-resembling creature also referred to as the Abominable Snowman, but in science, Yeti is just a bear. Now the question is: what kind of bear? A new study, published in the journal ZooKeys, concludes that hair sample "evidence" for Yeti actually comes from Himalayan brown bears. The finding refutes an earlier study that the hair belonged to an unknown type of bear related to polar bears. Top 10 Reasons Why Bigfoot's a Bust At the center of the controversy are DNA analysis studies. Prior research, led by Bryan Sykes at the University of Oxford, determined that hairs formerly attributed to Yeti belonged to to a mysterious bear species that may not yet be known to science. Sykes told Discovery News that his paper "refers to two Himalayan samples attributed to yetis and which turned out to be related to an ancient polar bear. This may be the source of the legend in the Himalayas." The new study, however, calls this possibility into question. The research, in this case, was authored by Eliécer E. Gutiérrez of the Smithsonian Institution and Ronald Pine at the University of Kansas.

PUNE: From reporting important findings on parental care among Arthropods to establishing the antiquity of metazoans (multi cell organisms), the Department of Geology and Palaeontology at the city-based Agharkar Research Institute (ARI) has come a long way in emerging as a leader in the study of trace fossils in the country. The department, whose golden jubilee celebrations begin on Friday, has made landmark contributions in the study of fossils in the past 50 years. For future research, the department aims to focus on studying the secondary porosity of rocks for exploring hydrocarbon resources as well as in establishing modern analogues to their fossil counterparts. Rajani Panchang-Dhumal, a project scientist at the department, said, "The Geology and Palaeontology department at ARI hosts a large fossil repository with over 7,000 type specimens in its collection. This repository is consulted regularly, both by research scholars as well as scientists from India and abroad. This national facility is now undergoing modernization and will soon be available on the web." [Visit Koyal Info Group Mag - Blog] Why study fossils? After a living organism died, it became buried under the ground in the layers of sediment. Once these layers become rock, the remains are said to be fossilized. They tell us about the organisms that lived on Earth from the time of the oldest fossils, about 3.8 billion years ago, to the present. By studying fossils we can learn not only about the creatures and plants of the distant past, but how they grew, what they ate, how they interacted, and many aspects of their behavior. Read Full Article Here…

LETTER: Scientific findings on climate are real, not optional The letter by James Policelli ("America is heading down dangerous path," Jan. 22) is proof that the far right lunatic fringe disavows science. On the next page of that day's paper was a statement by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that 2013 was the fourth warmest year on record. Policelli would likely claim that NOAA is a puppet of the Obama administration and has broadcast false information to further a socialist agenda. (What!) Let's look at some indisputable facts. A comparison of NASA space shots of polar ice caps clearly indicates they are shrinking. Ocean levels have been measured to be rising. (Where do you think the melting polar ice caps go?) As a scientist, I have never been amused by junk science or those who espouse it. As one who helped develop some of the spectroscopic fingerprints used to monitor ozone-destroying man-made molecules in the upper atmosphere, I find the climate change denials of the far right lunatic fringe to be extremely offensive and exceptionally dangerous. This Content: http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/01/letter_scientific_findings_on.html Koyal Info Group Mag: http://koyalgroupinfomag.com/science.html http://koyalgroupinfomag.com/blog/ Koyal Info Group Mag - Twitter: https://twitter.com/koyalgroup

In March of this year, a team of Georgetown University scientists published research showing that, for the first time ever, a blood test has the potential to predict Alzheimer's disease before patients start showing symptoms. AACC is pleased to announce that a late-breaking session at the 2014 AACC Annual Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo in Chicago will expand upon this groundbreaking research and discuss why it could be the key to curing this devastating illness. According to the World Health Organization, the number of Alzheimer's patients worldwide is expected to skyrocket from the 35.6 million individuals who lived with it in 2010 to 115.4 million by 2050. Currently, however, all efforts to cure or effectively treat the disease have failed. Experts believe one explanation for this lack of success could be that the window of opportunity for treating Alzheimer's has already closed by the time its symptoms manifest.Continue reading More discoveries you might want to know about

An international team of scientists has made a major step forward in our understanding of how enzymes 'edit' genes, paving the way for correcting genetic diseases in patients. Researchers at the Universities of Bristol, Münster and the Lithuanian Institute of Biotechnology have observed the process by which a class of enzymes called CRISPR - pronounced 'crisper' - bind and alter the structure of DNA. The results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) today, provide a vital piece of the puzzle if these genome editing tools are ultimately going to be used to correct genetic diseases in humans. CRISPR enzymes were first discovered in bacteria in the 1980s as an immune defence used by bacteria against invading viruses. Scientists have more recenty shown that one type of CRISPR enzyme - Cas9 - can be used to edit the human genome - the complete set of genetic information for humans. Did you know?? Blood Test Has Potential to Predict Alzheimer's

Western Antartica's immense glaciers are melting fast and giving up ice to the sea at a rate that is considered already past "the point of no return," according to recent research work done by two different groups of scientists. The resulting scenario is compelling: an increase in the world sea levels of 4 feet or more in the next centuries, according to findings announced Monday by scientists from the University of Washington, the University of California-Irvine and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at NASA. "It truly is a startlingly disturbing situation," says Pennsylvania State University glaciologist Sridhar Anandakrishnan, who was not associated with any of the research studies. "This is a big part of West Antarctica, and it appears to have been pushed violently over the edge." The researchers claim the glaciers are most certainly bound to be lost. One study confirms that a river of ice named Thwaites Glacier is possibly starting to collapse and that complete collapse is likely to occur. A second research illustrates that six glaciers are giving up ice into the sea at an ever-increasing rate. At that rate, there will be a 4-feet increase in the sea-level, states study author Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at the University of California-Irvine, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Perhaps it was too good to be true. Two months ago, a team of cosmologists reported that it had spotted the first direct evidence that the newborn universe underwent a mind-boggling exponential growth spurt known as inflation. But last week a new analysis suggested the signal, a subtle pattern in the afterglow of the big bang, or cosmic microwave background (CMB), could be an artifact produced by dust within our own galaxy. "We're certainly not retracting our result," says John Kovac, a cosmologist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and co-leader of the team, which used a specialized telescope at the South Pole known as BICEP2. Others say the BICEP team has already lost its case. "At this time, I think the fair thing to say is that you cannot claim detection-period," says Paul Steinhardt, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University. From 2010 through 2012, BICEP2 peered at a small patch of the CMB to measure the polarization of the microwaves as it varies from point to point. On 17 March, BICEP researchers announced at a press conference in Cambridge that they had spotted ultrafaint pinwheel-like swirls in the sky. Those swirls, or B modes, are most likely traces of gravitational waves rippling through space and time during the 10-32 seconds that inflation lasted, the BICEP team says, and they fulfill a key prediction of the theory of inflation. Many cosmologists hailed the detection as a smoking gun for that theory.

The Koyal Group Info Mag: Higgs Boson Discovered In Superconductors A team of physicists from India, Israel, Germany and US reportedly detected the Higgs boson, which is believed to be the thing responsible for every mass in the universe, for the first time in superconductors. What's more, these newly-detected Higgs boson using superconductors is more stable and way cheaper to achieve. Scientists will now have an easier way to observe the Higgs boson even in ordinary laboratories.

The Koyal Group Info Mag on Unusual square ice discovered The surprising discovery of "square ice" which forms at room temperature was made by an international team of researchers last week. The study was published in Nature by a team of scientists from UK and Germany led by Andre Geim of University of Manchester and G. Algara-Siller of University of Ulm. The accompanying review article was done by Alan Soper of Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in UK. "We didn't expect to find square ice ... We found there is something strange in terms of water going through [nanochannels]. It's going too fast. And you can't explain that by just imagining a very thin layer of liquid. Liquids do not behave in that way. The important thing to realize is that it is ice in the sense of a crystallized structure, it's not ice in the familiar sense in that it's something cold and from which you have to protect yourself," said Professor Irina Grigorieva, one of the researchers. To study the molecular structure of water inside a transparent nanoscale capillary, the team used electron microscopy. This enabled them to view individual water molecules, especially because the nano-capillary was created from graphene which was one atom thick and would not impair the electron imaging. Graphene was also chosen because it has unusual properties like conducting electricity and extreme strength. It's a 2D form of carbon that once rolled up in cylinders will form a carbon nanotube, a material, which according to The Koyal Group Info Mag, is a subject of further study because of its unusual strength. The scientists themselves were admittedly surprised at finding out that small square-shaped ice crystals formed at room temperature where the graphene capillaries are narrow (3 atomic layers of water at most). The water molecules formed into square lattices arranged in neat rows -- an arrangement that is uncharacteristic for the element that is known for forming consistent triangular structures

During the year that is just starting the U.S. economy will face major challenges. The pressures built in health care, monetary, and immigration policies are likely to lead to decisions that can have a major impact on economic growth. There are always chances for additional positive and negative shocks. A faster move to freer trade with Europe would be a positive shock. A liberalization of North American energy markets, including the approval of the Keystone pipeline and continued progress in Mexico is another. Negative shocks can come not only from the economic arena, but also for national or international security threats, such as acts of terror or wars affecting the U.S. or its major allies. Think Tanks are playing an important role in most of these battles.

Koyal Info Group Mag Discovery of Oxygen in Soils New discoveries show biological formation of oxygen in soils In the 1930s, the ability of green plants to form oxygen through oxidation of water -- photosynthesis -- was discovered. Since then, no other large-scale biological formation of oxygen has been found, until now. New research results show that down in the dark depths of the soil, a previously unknown biochemical process is under way, in which oxygen is formed and carbon dioxide is reduced to organic material. He made the assumption that the bewildering result could be explained if water, which is present everywhere, contributes to reducing carbon dioxide to organic material down in the dark depths of the soil. The fact that this process takes place without sunlight, as is the case with plants, was however something completely outside current knowledge and accepted views. Professor Fleischer, however, went further, with this as his working hypothesis. An international assessment of the scientific research, carried out at Halmstad University in 2013, called the results "potentially ground-breaking." Professor Fleischer conducted the five-year project in collaboration with Lovisa Bauhn and Arvid Ödegaard-Jensen of the Division of Nuclear Chemistry at Chalmers University, and Patrik Fors at Vattenfall. 

We live in an age shaped by scientific research. Medical practice, for example, changes a bit each year because of new discoveries in the laboratory or in drug trials. We have come to expect progress in a variety of technical fields, and science often lives up to our hopes for it. But science can also falter. One of the challenges for non-scientists - whom I call "normal people" - must address is how to interpret new scientific studies. Which ones contain valuable information that should influence our activities or government policies? Which can be put on the back burner of our minds, awaiting further evidence? Scientists are human. Scientists are people. We do our best, but that doesn't make us perfect. Scientists have several reasons to try to promote the work that's been done, quite apart from whatever merit it may have. Scientists want to have successful careers and that means promoting results obtained in the lab or field. For some scientists, professional status really matters, and for most scientists today, further funding is an issue always kept in mind. Dr. E. Kirsten Peters, a native of the rural Northwest, was trained as a geologist at Princeton and Harvard. This column is a service of the College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences at Washington State University. Read This Article

Honoured researchers urge colleagues to fight anti-science Scientists need to fight against a growing anti-science sentiment worldwide by joining the debate, say two researchers acknowledged in today's Australia Day Honours. Professors Bruce McKellar and Sam Berkovic, both associated with the University of Melbourne, received the nation's highest honour when they were appointed Companions in the General Division of the Order of Australia. McKellar, a theoretical physicist, says the honour for his "eminent service to science, particularly the study of theoretical physics" came as a "surprise". However it highlights a remarkable journey from a NSW bush school playground to the hallways of Switzerland's Large Hadron Collider. "One of the things that is very nice about me getting this award is the fact I went to a bush school with 50 students and one teacher," he says. That one teacher at Budgeregong Public School near ForBes in NSW also happened to Be his father. "In part it is to he that I owe my appreciation of mathematics and various forms of science," he says. Although officially retired, the 72-year-old will later this year Become the first Australian and first southern hemisphere president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. The prestigious position comes at a time when science - most notably climate and immunisation science - is under attack in western societies. "The basic denial is the denial that science has done anything for us," says McKellar. He cites the example of basic radio astronomy research to analyses radio signals from the universe that led to the development of mo

The "Rising Star Expedition", known for its recent recovery of one of the largest troves of hominin (early human) fossils ever discovered in one place, is now ambitiously seeking new early-career scientists to study the more than 1,200 fossil elements retrieved from the site and now housed at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University) in Johannesburg, South Africa. The workshops are also intended to help build a bigger, brighter future for the science. "We are recruiting an international team, and we are especially interested in building a group that will continue to produce great science in the future," says Hawks.* More information about the Rising Star Expedition can be acquired at the National Geographic website dedicated to covering the project. For scientists interested in applying for the Workshop, see this website for additional information. Read this post here...

Researcher studies crystal growth that may lead to biomaterials for both and tooth repair In nature, some organisms create their own mineralized body parts--such as bone, teeth and shells--from sources they find readily available in their environment. Certain sea creatures, for example, construct their shells from calcium carbonate crystals they build from ions found in the ocean. "The organism takes brittle carbonate and turns it into a structural shape that protects it from predators, and from being bashed against the rocks," says Lara Estroff, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at Cornell University. "There is much scientific interest in how the organism controls the crystal growth, and what mechanisms are involved in strengthening and toughening the shells, especially in comparison to their components, which are brittle." For more info: http://koyalgroupinfomag.com/ https://plus.google.com/communities/111201207993912562120 https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Koyal-Group-Info-Mag/369705673155113