15th May 2008 : UC Berkeley is going to court this week over their Understanding Evolution web site (that's an excellent resource, by the way, especially if you're just trying to get up to speed on the science). At issue is the fact that the site dares to point out that some religions contradict the evidence, and other religions try to avoid conflict with science; that is interpreted to be a sectarian endorsement of certain religions over others. This is where separation of church and state becomes insane: when you are not allowed to point out obvious idiocies because they are protected religious beliefs. Here's the offending section: I think it's pretty namby-pamby and bends over backwards to give deference to superstitious nonsense, but some people are apparently irate over a simple, accurate truth statement: "some religious beliefs explicitly contradict science". They do, but a university isn't allowed to say so?

14th May 2008 : In a major article in the newly released anthology, Secularism & Science in the 21st Century (published by the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture, at Trinity College), I look critically at their writings. I find little evidence for their claim, and put forward my own hypothesis, which I dub The Dawkins Effect.

11th May 2008 :

11th May 2008 : Richard Dawkins pointed out that nature is Darwinian and dominated by the short-term greediness that is required within competitive ecosystems to pass on one's genes. Humans are no different and are dominated by those instincts, but with our complex brain-power we have the ability to rise above these destructive tendencies and be a good steward to the planet and ourselves.

9th May 2008 : Monotreme's genome shares features with mammals, birds and reptiles.

8th May 2008 : AMERICAN science is in trouble, and if you wonder why, just go to the movies. Popular culture is gradually turning against science, and Ben Stein's new movie, "Expelled," is helping to push it along.

6th May 2008 : Eyes are one of evolution's most useful and prevalent inventions, equipping approximately 95 percent of living species. They exist in many different forms across nature, having evolved convergently across different species. Learn how the ancestors of jellyfish may have been the first to evolve light-sensitive cells. In the pre-Cambrian era, insects, in particular the dragonfly, would take the compound eye to new heights. Find out how dinosaurs adapted their eyes to become such successful hunters of prey. And while dinosaurs remained at the top of the food chain for 150 million years, tiny early mammals developed night vision to populate the night as a survival technique. Finally, learn how primates underwent several adaptations to their eyes to better exploit their new habitat, and how the ability to see colors helped them find food.

5th May 2008 : Switches within DNA that govern when and where genes are turned on enable genomes to generate the great diversity of animal forms from very similar sets of genes

5th May 2008 : If there is life on Mars, it might soon be coaxed out of hiding by a new instrument designed to detect the subtle chemical traces of biological activity.

5th May 2008 : Scientists at the University of Konstanz in Germany and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated an ultrafast laser that offers a record combination of high speed, short pulses and high average power. The same NIST group also has shown that this type of laser, when used as a frequency comb—an ultraprecise technique for measuring different colors of light—could boost the sensitivity of astronomical tools searching for other Earthlike planets as much as 100 fold.

5th May 2008 : ScienceDaily (May 5, 2008) — Parents of children with autism were roughly twice as likely to have been hospitalized for a mental disorder, such as schizophrenia, than parents of other children, according to an analysis of Swedish birth and hospital records by a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researcher and colleagues in the U.S. and Europe.

5th May 2008 : "Rock star physicist" Brian Cox talks about his work on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Discussing the biggest of big science in an engaging, accessible way, Cox brings us along on a tour of the massive complex and describes his part in it -- and the vital role it's going to play in understanding our universe.

5th May 2008 : Experimental results are beginning to shed light on the psychological foundations of our moral beliefs

5th May 2008 : PARIS (AFP) - A new, simplified family tree of humanity has dealt a blow to those who contend that the enigmatic hominids known as Neanderthals intermingled with our forebears.

4th May 2008 : We are preparing to run another fMRI study of belief and disbelief, and we need volunteers to help us refine our experimental stimuli. This promises to be the first study of religious faith at the level of the brain. By responding to the four surveys I have posted online, you can make an enormous contribution to this work.

3rd May 2008 : They have spent years working school boards, with only minimal success. Now critics of evolution are turning to a higher authority: state legislators.

3rd May 2008 : 16 Apr 08: Neanderthal expert Dr Chris Stringer discusses new ideas of how neanderthals and early man co-existed with Telegraph Science Editor Dr Roger Highfield.

29th Apr 2008 :

25th Apr 2008 : Harvard Scientists Say T-Rex Was A Close Cousin Of Barnyard Fowl

17th Apr 2008 :

17th Apr 2008 : If you think you understand it, you don't know nearly enough about it

16th Apr 2008 : Nobel winner battles plan to let teachers challenge Darwin's theory

14th Apr 2008 : Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss sat down for a public discussion at Stanford University on Sunday, March 9th 2008. The focus was on Science education, but the discussion also covered religion, physics, evolution and more. This video will be released on DVD soon at RichardDawkins.net , along with other unmoderated discussions with Richard Dawkins.

11th Apr 2008 : A fossil animal locked in Lebanese limestone has been shown to be an extremely precious discovery - a snake with two legs.

10th Apr 2008 : WHAT happened before our universe began? According to two theoretical physicists, if there was a universe before ours then it should have been remarkably similar to this one, with the same basic ingredients and properties. It may even be possible to see a faint picture of our parent universe imprinted on the sky.

10th Apr 2008 : WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A rare and primitive frog living in a remote Borneo stream has no lungs and apparently absorbs oxygen through its skin, researchers reported on Wednesday.

10th Apr 2008 : I have to make this really, really simple for the "Hitler was an evolutionist" dimwits.

9th Apr 2008 : A new "Darwin chip" could make evolution as easy as pressing play.

2nd Apr 2008 : In the first experiment of its kind conducted in nature, a University of British Columbia evolutionary biologist has come up with strong evidence for one of Charles Darwin's cornerstone ideas – adaptation to the environment accelerates the creation of new species.

2nd Apr 2008 : The Y chromosome retains a remarkable record of human ancestry, since it is passed directly from father to son. In an article published online today in Genome Research scientists have utilized recently described genetic variations on the part of the Y chromosome that does not undergo recombination to significantly update and refine the Y chromosome haplogroup tree.

2nd Apr 2008 : Professor Sean Carroll was on the BBC Radio 4 "Today Programme" this morning, talking about the subject of his new book The Making of the Fittest, and he mentions that the argument against creationism/intelligent design is now stronger than ever.

27th Mar 2008 :

8th Mar 2008 : Can a thinking, remembering, decision-making, biologically accurate brain be built from a supercomputer?

6th Mar 2008 : PASADENA, California (AP) -- New observations by a spacecraft suggest Saturn's second-largest moon may be surrounded by rings.

6th Mar 2008 : I have been taken aback by the inexplicable hostility of Mary Midgley's assault.1 Some colleagues have advised me that such transparent spite is best ignored, but others warn that the venomous tone of her article may conceal the errors in its content. Indeed, we are in danger of assuming that nobody would dare to be so rude without taking the elementary precaution of being right in what she said. We may even bend over backwards to concede some of her points, simply in order to appear fair-minded when we deplore the way she made them. I deplore bad manners as strongly as anyone, but more importantly I shall show that Midgley has no good point to make. She seems not to understand biology or the way biologists use language. No doubt my ignorance would be just as obvious if I rushed headlong into her field of expertise, but I would then adopt a more diffident tone. As it is we are both in my corner, and it is hard for me not to regard the gloves as off. I will try to make my reply constructive, in the hope that it may interest those who have not read Midgley's article, as well as those who have. Unattributed quotations with page numbers will all be taken from her article. Since it was my book, The SelJish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), which stimulated her attack, it will also be necessary for me to quote from it. I shall divide my reply into eight sections.

6th Mar 2008 : SOLOMONS, MARYLAND—On a clear January day, Stephen Godfrey is dressed for fossilhunting: frayed baggy jeans, a puffy green vest, and a leather jacket that's seen better times. A paleontologist and curator at the modest Calvert Marine Museum here, Godfrey frequents the nearby Calvert Cliffs, which rise from the shoreline of Chesapeake Bay and hold everything from ancient shark teeth to dolphin skulls. "You start collecting them because, well, they're beautiful," he says of his beloved fossils.

2nd Mar 2008 : A major evolution exhibit opens in Toronto next week, which begs the question: Why so much fuss over a 150-year-old theory that seems to gather more scientific support by the decade?

28th Feb 2008 : "Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice," wrote the poet Robert Frost. Astronomers, it turns out, are in the former camp.

28th Feb 2008 : A fossilised "sea monster" unearthed on an Arctic island is the largest marine reptile known to science, Norwegian scientists have announced.

27th Feb 2008 : Being the second part of an occasional series looking at mutations.

26th Feb 2008 :

26th Feb 2008 : Imagine the Book of All Species: a single volume made up of one-page descriptions of every species known to science. On one page is the blue-footed booby. On another, the Douglas fir. Another, the oyster mushroom. If you owned the Book of All Species, you would need quite a bookshelf to hold it. Just to cover the 1.8 million known species, the book would have to be more than 300 feet long. And you'd have to be ready to expand the bookshelf strikingly, because scientists estimate there are 10 times more species waiting to be discovered.

24th Feb 2008 : This isn't "Part 2" in our 3-part tales videos, but this is a youtube video created by RodHullIAmHim for an actual section in The Ancestor's Tale, called "The Salamander's Tale". The audio is from the audiobook version, read by Richard Dawkins and Lalla Ward.

24th Feb 2008 : For decades, physicists have accepted the notion that the universe started with the Big Bang, an explosive event at the literal beginning of time. Now, computational physicist Neil Turok is challenging that model -- and some scientists are taking him seriously.

21st Feb 2008 : A guide at the Natural History Museum stated confidently that a particular dinosaur was 70,000,008 years old. When asked how he could be so precise he replied, "Well it was 70 million when I started this job, and that was eight years ago." The evident experience of Valentina Cruz, our wonderful Galápagos naturalist guide, suggests that I must add a similar margin to the estimate of 100 years that she gave us for the age of the black lava fields on the island of Santiago. The exact date of the great Santiago eruption is not recorded, but it definitely happened on one particular day in one particular year around 1900. I shall call it SV day (Santiago volcano day). I need to seem as precise as the museum guide, although the exact date doesn't matter. Perhaps it was January 19 1897, 100 plus eight years before my visit to the island.

21st Feb 2008 : Here's a nice illustration of the evidence behind our understanding of the evolution of whales, all in 7 minutes.

21st Feb 2008 : WOODS HOLE, Mass. — The cuttlefish in Roger Hanlon's laboratory were in fine form. Their skin was taking on new colors and patterns faster than the digital signs in Times Square.

21st Feb 2008 : ONE of evolution's missing links has been found lurking in Sydney Harbour.

19th Feb 2008 : New School Curriculum Standards Pass By Narrow Vote

18th Feb 2008 : A 70-million-year-old fossil of a giant frog has been unearthed in Madagascar by a team of UK and US scientists.

18th Feb 2008 : More than half of the sunlike stars in the galaxy could have terrestrial planets with the potential to harbor life, a new study suggests.

18th Feb 2008 : ROM researcher helps uncover the earliest fossil yet of a prehistoric bat

16th Feb 2008 : Is nanotechnology morally acceptable? For a significant percentage of Americans, the answer is no, according to a recent survey of Americans' attitudes about the science of the very small.

16th Feb 2008 : What is it with creationists and fruit? I hope you've had your coffee already, because this is an unpleasant way to wake up. The clip below is from a public hearing in Orlando, Florida, in which citizens had a chance to stand up and state their opinions of evolution. Are you braced to handle a little smug and stupid this morning?

15th Feb 2008 : Scientists have found a way to boost an organism's natural anti-virus defences - effectively making its cells immune to flu and other potential killers.

15th Feb 2008 : Astronomers said Wednesday that they had found a miniature version of our own solar system 5,000 light-years across the galaxy — the first planetary system that really looks like our own, with outer giant planets and room for smaller inner planets.

15th Feb 2008 : From the 60 Second Science Podcast.

11th Feb 2008 : The University of Oxford has advertised the Charles Simonyi Professorship in the Public Understanding of Science. I retire from the Chair in September 2008. The advertisement can be seen at http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/fp/wd9-018.shtml

7th Feb 2008 :

7th Feb 2008 :

5th Feb 2008 : Cosmic flares shot from exploding black holes could provide long-sought proof of extra spatial dimensions, new calculations suggest.

4th Feb 2008 : Supposedly, there's no place like home. But a new study suggests that earthlike planets orbit or are forming around many, if not most, nearby sunlike stars, providing places where life might have gained a foothold.

4th Feb 2008 : Far from having stopped, the pace of 'advantageous mutation' is moving much faster than we thought, a new study discovers

1st Feb 2008 : P.Z. Myers, biologist at the University of Minnesota Morris, host of the website Pharyngula( http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/ ), and indefatigable defender of evolution, shares his expertise and insights on brain function, explaining how research into the brain reveals the evolutionary causes of religious belief.

1st Feb 2008 : Dr. Geoffrey Simmons, Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute and Dr. PZ Myers, Biologist and Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota-Morris will debate Darwin's theory of evolution.

30th Jan 2008 :

25th Jan 2008 : Man's true nature meets market economics.

24th Jan 2008 : US scientists have taken a major step toward creating the first ever artificial life form by synthetically reproducing the DNA of a bacteria, according to a study published Thursday.

24th Jan 2008 : Scientists believe they could be a step closer to solving the mystery of how the first birds took to the air.

23rd Jan 2008 : Many who support the separation of church and state say that the intelligent design theory of creation ought not to be taught in public schools because it contains a religious bias. They dislike its suggestion that the evolutionary development of life was not the result of natural selection, as Charles Darwin suggested, but was somehow given purposeful direction and, by implication, was guided by God.

21st Jan 2008 : The Sunshine State is in the process of approving new standards for science that (gasp) actually mention the word 'evolution'! You would think that would be good news, inasmuch as the Fordham Foundation has consistently rated Florida as 'poor' on its teaching of evolution, as the graphic above illustrates.

20th Jan 2008 : The ancestral relationships of people living in the widely scattered islands of the Pacific Ocean, long a puzzle to anthropologists, may have been solved by a new genetic study, researchers reported Thursday.

19th Jan 2008 : A scientist has achieved a world first... by cloning himself. In a breakthrough certain to provoke an ethical furore, Samuel Wood created embryo copies of himself by placing his skin cells in a woman's egg.

19th Jan 2008 : ScienceDaily (Jan. 20, 2008) — According to Darwin's theory of evolution, individuals in a species pass successful traits onto their offspring through a process called "deterministic inheritance." Over multiple generations, advantageous developmental trends – such as the lengthening of the giraffe's neck – occur.

18th Jan 2008 : Reconciling the biblical God with Darwin's theories would challenge even an omnipotent being. But a growing number of thinkers and scientists are altering their concept of the deity to make room for evolution.

17th Jan 2008 : Stephen's guest is Neil Shubin author of Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body.

17th Jan 2008 : The fossilised skull of the largest rodent ever recorded has been described by scientists for the first time.

17th Jan 2008 : Scientists fearful that Texas was about to approve a program to offer online master's degrees in science education — from a creationist perspective — received some good news Tuesday.

15th Jan 2008 : The Institute of Medicine of The National Academy of Sciences, USA, recently
released a report on the issues of science, evolution and creationism. The
publication is intended as a resource for people who find themselves
embroiled in debates about evolution.

13th Jan 2008 : Hernias, hiccups, and snores—oh, my! It's been 3.5 billion years, and the human body's past still plays a role in our lives and health.

13th Jan 2008 : Evolution accounts for a lot of our strange ideas about finances.

12th Jan 2008 : Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug?