A growing number of science students on British campuses and in sixth form colleges are challenging the theory of evolution and arguing that Darwin was wrong. Some are being failed in university exams because they quote sayings from the Bible or Qur’an as scientific fact and at one sixth form college in London most biology students are now thought to be creationists. Earlier this month Muslim medical students in London distributed leaflets that dismissed Darwin’s theories as false. Evangelical Christian students are also increasingly vocal in challenging the notion of evolution. In the United States there is growing pressure to teach creationism or ‘intelligent design’ in science classes, despite legal rulings against it. Now similar trends in this country have prompted the Royal Society, Britain’s leading scientific academy, to confront the issue head on with a talk entitled Why Creationism is Wrong. The award-winning geneticist and author Steve Jones will deliver the lecture and challenge creationists, Christian and Islamic, to argue their case rationally at the society’s event in April. ‘There is an insidious and growing problem,’ said Professor Jones, of University College London. ‘It’s a step back from rationality. They (the creationists) don’t have a problem […]
NEW DELHI — The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has presented a robust defence of its claim that the world had ‘suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather related events since the 1970s’ partly on account of global warming. This was part of the Fourth Assessment Report of 2007. Media reports suggested that the UN climate panel had wrongly linked global warming to a rise in natural disasters. According to the report in UK’s Sunday Times, IPCC based its claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny. Further that the UN panel knew in 2008 that the link between extreme weather related events and global warming could not be proved but it did not alert world leaders. The IPCC in a statement said that the section where the controversial paper was used had a ‘number of qualifiers’ and the overall report was a balanced treatment of the issue that came to a number of conclusions about the role of climate change in natural disasters. The UN panel described the media report as a ‘baseless attack on the section of the report on trends in insurance losses from disasters. ‘This […]
Fox is the most trusted television news network in the country, according to a new poll out Tuesday. A Public Policy Polling nationwide survey of 1,151 registered voters Jan. 18-19 found that 49 percent of Americans trusted Fox News, 10 percentage points more than any other network. Thirty-seven percent said they didn’t trust Fox, also the lowest level of distrust that any of the networks recorded. There was a strong partisan split among those who said they trusted Fox – with 74 percent of Republicans saying they trusted the network, while only 30 percent of Democrats said they did. CNN was the second-most-trusted network, getting the trust of 39 percent of those polled. Forty-one percent said they didn’t trust CNN. Each of the three major networks was trusted by less than 40 percent of those surveyed, with NBC ranking highest at 35 percent. Forty-four percent said they did not trust NBC, which was combined with its sister cable station MSNBC. Thirty-two percent of respondents said they trusted CBS, while 31 percent trusted ABC. Both CBS and ABC were not trusted by 46 percent of those polled. ‘A generation ago you would have expected […]
High levels of vitamin D cut risk of colon cancer: study – Health News, Health & Families High levels of vitamin D are linked with a lower risk of colon cancer, according to a comparison of more than half a million Europeans, published online Friday by the British Medical Journal (BMJ). Patients with the highest levels of vitamin D in their blood had a nearly 40 percent lower risk of colorectal cancer compared to those with the lowest levels. Vitamin D, derived mainly from sunlight but also found in foods, plays a key role in bone strength by increasing levels of calcium in the blood. Whether it affects incidence of cancer has been hotly debated and the evidence is sketchy. The paper draws on a very large study, the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer (EPIC) project, carried out in 10 Western European countries. The authors sound a note of caution, saying it is unclear whether vitamin D supplements are any more effective than a balanced diet or getting regular exposure to sunlight. Further work is needed, they add, to show whether the statistical link in this investigation is born out – and whether […]
Companies for years have toyed with light-emitting diodes, which use the same technology as computer chips. Now LEDs are having their day in the sun. An assortment of new LED bulbs, including two models from Philips (top), Cree (bottom right), and Lemnis (bottom left), surround Philips’s 60-watt replacement bulb, which hasn’t hit the market yet. The $100 billion global lighting industry is undergoing radical change: New office buildings and retail outlets are abandoning fluorescent lighting in favor of LEDs, or light-emitting diodes, those tiny, energy-efficient, long-lasting, and blindingly bright points of light. Giants such as GE (GE) and Philips are shifting production from incandescent bulbs to LEDs. Even the local Home Depot (HD) – which today probably stocks only a couple of LED lighting products – will soon carry a bouquet of LED bulbs, ultimately edging out fluorescents and halogen lamps. By the end of the decade, analysts predict, LEDs will be the dominant source for commercial and residential lighting. LEDs, which are based on a technology similar to that of computer chips, have more in common in their design and manufacture with your laptop than with the incandescent bulb that Thomas Edison patented almost 130 years […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
