World needs death and decay claims an article is ScienceDaily 12 September 2018 about a study published in Ecological Monographs 11 September 2018, doi: 10.1002/ecm.1331. When animals and plants die there is a need for their remains to be broken down and decomposed so that nutrients and other substances are returned to the earth to […]
Category: Microbes
Rain Spreads Crop Diseases
Rain spreads crop diseases, according to an article in ScienceDaily 20 November 2017. Previous research has shown that raindrops can spread microscopic pathogens, i.e. disease causing bacteria, viruses and fungi. A team of researchers at the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics at Virginia Tech have now studied how the spread actually happens, using laser […]
Steve Jones on Evolution Again
Steve Jones on evolution again: In a lecture for the Royal Society 11 April 2006 Steve Jones claimed that fossils were the best evidence for evolution and went on to describe what he called a “fossil virus” – an HIV virus found in a preserved pathology specimen from an African who died in 1959. Since […]
Spring Loaded Plankton Inspire Engineers
Spring loaded plankton inspire engineers, according to a report in New Scientist, 17 December 2005, p12. Danielle France of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has studied the way a pond dwelling protozoan named Vorticella convallaria attaches itself to surfaces such as rocks and leaves by a stalk called a spasmoneme. If the cell is […]
Soil Superbugs
Soil superbugs found, according to a report in news@nature 19 January 2006 and Science, vol 311, p374, 20 January 2006. Bacteria resistant to many different antibiotics, often called “superbugs,” are becoming a serious problem in hospitals and other healthcare facilities. A team of researchers led by Gerard Wright of McMaster University, Ontario, Canada grew 480 […]
Single Celled Dinosaurs
Single celled dinosaurs are fossilised single celled organisms named Nummulites which have provided evidence that large size in living organisms is related to long life. Geologists at Oxford University (UK) studied fossilised shells of nummulites found in England and estimated that they had life span of approximately five years. Nummulite fossils are also found in […]
Sickle Cell Malaria Survival
Sickle cell malaria survival secret found, according to a report in Nature News 10 November 2011 and ScienceDaily 18 November 2011. It has been known for many years that people who carry one gene for a disease named sickle cell anaemia have some increased resistance to malaria, and the sickle cell gene is more common […]
Resistance Genes Pre-Date Antibiotics
Resistance genes pre-date antibiotics by “millions of years” according to a report in ScienceNOW 25 September 2002. One reason antibiotic resistance spreads so rapidly is that bacteria carry resistance genes on small loops of DNA called plasmids, which they can pass to other bacteria. Many evolutionists have claimed that resistance genes moved from the main […]
Rats and Jellyfish Join Bomb Squad
Rats and jellyfish combine to join bomb squad, as described in an article in New Scientist, 12 May 2007. Scientists at Temple University, Philadelphia are developing an explosive detector using smell receptor proteins found in rats. Smell receptor proteins work by sending electrical signals when certain chemicals attach to them. In animals the electrical signals […]
Predicting Cholera Epidemics
Predicting cholera epidemics now possible, suggests an article in ScienceNOW 17 Feb 2004. Cholera bacteria are normally found in coastal and estuarine waters where they live attached to the shells of tiny crustaceans called copepods. Cholera epidemics occur when the water supply is contaminated by large numbers of copepods. By understanding the climatic and other […]