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Bypass Surgery Has Long-term Benefits For Children With Kawasaki Disease, Study SuggestsCoronary artery bypass surgery provides "excellent" long-term survival for children who have severe inflammatory heart and blood vessel damage caused by Kawasaki disease. While post-operative problems may increase over time, these can be managed with proper follow-up care. Most of the young patients have normal lives, including participation in sports.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 4 Jul 2009 | 9:00 pm Coolest Spacecraft Ever In Orbit Around L2 (-273 Degrees Celsius)On July 2 the detectors of Planck's High Frequency Instrument reached their amazingly low operational temperature of -273°C, making them the coldest known objects in space. The spacecraft has also just entered its final orbit around the second Lagrange point of the Sun-Earth system, L2.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 4 Jul 2009 | 9:00 pm Rush Of Blood To The Head: Anger Increases Blood FlowMental stress causes carotid artery dilation and increases brain blood flow. A series of ultrasound experiments also found that this dilatory reflex was absent in people with high blood pressure.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 4 Jul 2009 | 9:00 pm Cancer-causing Protein Can Also Help Fight The Tumors It CausesNew research uses the Ras protein to fight its own malign effects.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 4 Jul 2009 | 9:00 pm 'A Touch Of Glass' In Metal, Settles Century-old QuestionScientists have found evidence of an important similarity between the behavior of polycrystalline materials -- like metals and ceramics -- and glasses, research that could lead to better predictions of how many valuable materials behave under stress.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 4 Jul 2009 | 9:00 pm 'Jumping Gene' Diminishes The Effect Of New Type 2 Diabetes Risk GeneResearch has identified a new gene associated with diabetes, together with a mechanism that makes obese mice less susceptible to diabetes. A genomic fragment that occurs naturally in some mouse strains diminishes the activity of the risk gene Zfp69. The researchers also found that the corresponding human gene (ZNF642) is especially active in overweight individuals with diabetes.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 4 Jul 2009 | 9:00 pm Super-energetic Bursts Discovered Near Giant Black HoleCombining gamma-ray telescopes with the supersharp radio 'vision' of the Very Long Baseline Array showed astronomers the location from which very-high-energy gamma rays are emerging from the core ot the giant galaxy M87.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 4 Jul 2009 | 3:00 pm Novel Light-sensitive Compounds Show Promise For Cancer TherapyChemists have developed novel compounds that show promise for photodynamic cancer therapy, which uses light-activated drugs to kill tumor cells. The new compounds, called dye-sensitized ruthenium nitrosyls, are absorbed by cancer cells and respond to specific wavelengths of light by releasing nitric oxide, which triggers cell death.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 4 Jul 2009 | 3:00 pm Patients With Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms More Likely To Suffer From Metabolic SyndromeResearchers have determined that individuals with mild to severe symptoms of lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) are more likely to suffer from metabolic syndrome, a collection of cardiovascular risk factors thought to be linked by insulin resistance). LUTS encompass voiding (incomplete emptying, weak stream, intermittency, straining) and storage (frequency, urgency, nocturia) difficulties.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 4 Jul 2009 | 3:00 pm Existing Parkinson's Disease Drug May Fight Drug-resistant TBExisting drugs used in the treatment of Parkinson's disease could be repositioned for use in the treatment of extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis, which kills about 2 million people each year, according to a new study. The rise of these strains of TB throughout the world, including industrialized countries, poses a great threat to human health.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 4 Jul 2009 | 3:00 pm Bugs: The Forgotten Victims of Climate Change (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - This Behind the Scenes article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation. If it were up to Jessica Hellmann, insects such as butterflies and beetles would wield just as much conservation clout as traditional conservation icons, such as polar bears, tigers and dolphins.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 4 Jul 2009 | 1:35 pm Thai zoo's 1st baby panda goes on display (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 4 Jul 2009 | 10:57 am The Nation's weather (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 4 Jul 2009 | 9:29 am Heavy rain in southern China forces 150,000 to flee (Reuters)Reuters - Torrential rain battering southern China has forced more than 150,000 people from their homes, toppled hundreds of houses and punched a dangerous hole in the spillway of a dam, Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 4 Jul 2009 | 8:45 am The man who fell to EarthForty years ago Buzz Aldrin became the second man to walk on the moon. He was there for two and a half hours, but the breakdown which followed lasted a decade. He tells Stephen Moss how he has finally managed to fill the space left by space Buzz Aldrin has been on many journeys in his remarkable life, and in some respects the one to the moon was the least challenging. Being the second man to walk on the moon in July 1969, stepping down from the landing craft 20 minutes after Neil Armstrong, gave him eternal name recognition, but it also brought a heap of problems in the decade that followed - alcoholism, depression, two divorces. He was on the moon for two and a half hours; his post-Nasa breakdown lasted for a decade as he looked for something to fill the space left by ... space. But now, praise the Lord and Alcoholics Anonymous, 79-year-old Buzz is sitting in front of me, tanned, alert, as sharp as the Apollo 11 badge pinned to his colourful tie, chiding me for waving the mic around carelessly, telling a fan who is showing him his grandfather's 60s space scrapbook that he doesn't sign autographs, treading the careful divide between ego and generosity, self-regard and fellowship that is essence-of-Buzz. Armstrong lives in near-seclusion at his Ohio farm, so Buzz - off the booze for 30 years - has come to represent the crazy glory of manned space travel, and is in London as part of a global mission to get us interested in space again. He's also flogging a book, Magnificent Desolation, which charts his rise, fall and return to equilibrium. Major Tom eventually made it back to Earth, and has quite a tale to tell. The key thing when interviewing Aldrin is not to get too technical. He is a man who would happily fill the entire hour with a discussion of docking manoeuvres. I also make the mistake of mentioning God - he secretly took communion moments after the module landed on the moon ("My soul didn't belong to Nasa," he says) - and he gives me an impenetrable 10-minute explanation of the evolution of his faith. He is nothing if not systematic, which is great for the meticulous planning of moon landings, less good for quick life surveys. But get him off technicalities and AA-style moral lessons, and he is far more articulate and engaging than most interviewers would have you believe. He has always had problems putting into words the grandeur of that moment 40 years ago. "People want to know what it felt like," he says. "They want us in a few words to generate the enthusiasm that the world had as they contemplated what we were about to do. Well, what it felt like is something that we trained for. We were trying to treat it as calmly as we could and perform to the best of our ability. We tried to repress feelings of exuberance, of disappointment, and be proud and responsible people accomplishing the task that was given to us. That sounds kind of boring. Except that what we did was kind of earth-shaking." I ask him whether he was disappointed to be the second person to set foot on the moon. He tries to have it both ways. "We're dealing with very competitive people who always want to get the most out of the opportunities that come along, even though I did not relish the idea of speeches, celebrations and being on a pedestal as a hero. I didn't enter the space programme to want to do that. Being first outside the spacecraft would bring much more responsibility, and I really wasn't looking for that." I press a little, and you can sense the 40 years of frustration at being labelled second. "I was continually being asked, 'Didn't it bother you?', and always being introduced as the second man on the moon. That is a degrading title right off the bat, instead of being a member of the first landing mission to reach the moon." What comes across most strongly in his description of the mission in the book is its black comedy - and the way that he, Armstrong and Michael Collins, who was orbiting the moon in the command module, really were flying on a wing and a prayer. Aldrin worries that he will close the hatch to the landing craft, locking out him and Armstrong and condemning them to a slow, oxygen-starved death; he frets when he finds it difficult to plant the American flag in the dusty lunar soil and imagines half a billion viewers laughing at his public humiliation; and he has to use a felt-tip pen as a circuit breaker when a switch breaks in the module. "We were human beings carrying out a very demanding task," he says. "We had to improvise." That was the appeal of the Apollo missions: these crop-haired thirty-somethings dicing with death going somewhere no one else had been. Aldrin sees his role now as reactivating that spirit. He reckons we should go back to the moon, this time to develop it, and look to get to Mars in a couple of decades. "We have to take the new generation with us, so they can say that their generation participated." He'll try anything to reach that new generation: he writes children's books, is using Twitter (or Tweeter, as he calls it), and recently recorded a rap record called Rocket Experience with Snoop Dogg - one huge step for a man of a certain age. Aldrin holds nothing back when talking about how bad things were when he fell to earth in the early 70s. He rejoined the US air force - he had been a fighter pilot - but his role as commander of a test pilot school didn't work out, he quit the armed services at 42, started drinking, had an affair, suffered depression, his marriage broke up, he went through another brief marriage, and eventually found himself selling Cadillacs (or, rather, not selling - he was a terrible salesman) in Beverly Hills and becoming dependent on drink. He outlines the reasons for his collapse in his somewhat convoluted Buzz-ese, but it's a perceptive self-analysis: "I inherited tendencies in different directions [depression and an addictive personality] and those directions, if you feed them with a life of perfection and discipline and then remove that all of a sudden, it's probably going to go back to some of the more deep-seated concerns about self-worth and achievement. You did that as part of a team; what are you doing now? You get a job as a car salesman and you're a horrible car salesman. What does that do to a person's ego." What he did was to get sober, marry again - this time for keeps - and re-engage with space. It's no accident that Buzz Lightyear, the space ranger in animated film Toy Story, is named after Aldrin, who shares his limitless enthusiasm for exploration. Lucky, though, that Aldrin abandoned his real name, Edwin, preferring the nickname given by one of his two sisters, who said "buzzer" instead of "brother". Edwin Aldrin would just have been the second guy on the moon; Buzz Aldrin is the ur-spaceman, if not quite declaring, "To infinity and beyond", convinced that eventually we can get pretty close. • Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon (Bloomsbury, £16.99). Buzz Aldrin will be speaking tonight, 7.30pm, at the London Literature Festival, Royal Festival Hall, London SE1 Whatever happened to Neil Armstrong?Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, is intensely private and, in the eyes of the media, unforgivably normal. He is the JD Salinger of space exploration: the super-celebrity who shuns publicity. Having uttered the immortal line, "That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind," he hasn't felt the need to say anything significant since. It was thought that Buzz Aldrin, as pilot of the lunar module, would be first out, but according to James Hansen's biography of Armstrong, existing practice was overturned because Nasa chiefs realised the first man on the moon would have to bear the burden of fame for a lifetime and preferred the undemonstrative, ego-free Armstrong. He retired from Nasa in 1971 to become professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati, where he remained until 1979. Since then he has held numerous corporate directorships and, uncharacteristically, appeared in an ad campaign for Chrysler (reportedly to help the ailing firm, rather than for the cash). He lives with his second wife on a farm in southern Ohio, suspicious of fans and autograph hunters since discovering in 2005 that his barber had sold some of his hair to a collector for $3,000. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 3 Jul 2009 | 11:01 pm PR and prejudice: why rape story erredThere is nothing like science for giving that objective, white-coat flavoured legitimacy to your prejudices, so it must have been a great day for Telegraph readers when they came across the headline: "Women who dress provocatively more likely to be raped, claim scientists." Ah, scientists. "Women who drink alcohol, wear short skirts and are outgoing are more likely to be raped, claim scientists at the University of Leicester." Well there you go. Oddly, though, the title of the press release for the same research was: "Promiscuous men more likely to rape." Normally we berate journalists for rewriting press releases. Had the Telegraph found some news? I rang Sophia Shaw at the University of Leicester. She was surprised to have been presented as an expert scientist on the pages of the Daily Telegraph, as she is an MSc student, and this was her dissertation project. Also it was not finished. "My findings are very preliminary," she said. She had been discussing her dissertation at an academic conference when the British Psychological Society's PR team picked it up, and put out the press release. We will discuss that later. But first, the science. Shaw spoke to about 100 men, presenting them with "being with a woman", and asking them when they would "call it a night". The idea was to explore men's attitudes towards coercing women into sex. "I'm very aware that there are limitations to my study. It's self-report data about sensitive issues, so that's got its flaws, and participants were answering when sober, and so on," she said. But more than that, she told me, every single one of the first four statements made by the Telegraph was an unambiguous, incorrect, misrepresentation of her findings. Women who drink alcohol, wear short skirts and are outgoing are more likely to be raped? "This is completely inaccurate," Shaw said. "We found no difference whatsoever. The alcohol thing is also completely wrong: if anything, we found that men reported they were willing to go further with women who are completely sober." And what about the Telegraph's next claim, or rather, the paper's reassuringly objective assertion, that it is scientists who claim that women who dress provocatively are more likely to be raped? "We have found that people will go slightly further with women who are provocatively dressed, but this result is not statistically significant. Basically you can't say that's an effect, it could easily be the play of chance. I told the journalist it isn't one of our main findings, you can't say that. It's not significant, which is why we're not reporting it in our main analysis." So who do we blame for this story, and what do we do about it? Shaw said: "When I saw the article my heart sank, and it made me really angry, given how sensitive this subject is. To be making claims like the Telegraph did, in my name, places all the blame on women, which is not what we were doing at all. I just felt really angry about how wrong they'd got this study." Since I started sniffing around, and since Shaw's complaint, the Telegraph has quietly changed the online copy of the article, although there has been no formal correction, and in any case, it remains inaccurate. But there is a second, less obvious problem. Repeatedly, unpublished work, often of a highly speculative and eye-catching nature, is shepherded into newspapers by the press officers of the British Psychological Society, and other organisations. A rash of news coverage and popular speculation ensues, in a situation where no one can read the academic work. In this case I could only get to the reality of what was measured, and how, by personally tracking down and speaking to an MSc student about her dissertation on the phone. In any situation this type of coverage would be ridiculous, but with a sensitive subject such as rape, it is blind, irresponsible foolishness. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 3 Jul 2009 | 11:01 pm Neil Armstrong: I want to be aloneNeil Armstrong was the first man on the moon. Pretty impressive. So impressive that 40 years later, people still make documentaries wondering what that must've been like. Being Neil Armstrong (Sun, 9pm, BBC4) is the latest. Its premise is this: Neil Armstrong has become a recluse. He never signs autographs and doesn't speak to the press. Why? Why don't you want to come out and talk to us, Neil? Why Neil? Why? Why? Why? What's the matter with you Neil? What's your problem? OI, NEIL! WHY? Since we're repeatedly told that Neil Armstrong effectively now lives a hermit-like existence in which he scarcely acknowledges the existence of humankind, an interview seems unlikely, so presenter Andrew Smith has to find different ways of discovering what makes him tick. He goes to Neil's home town and talks to a woman who used to be friends with his sister. She reveals that he wasn't a particularly unusual or talkative character. The woman now runs a model airplane shop, so Smith buys one, goes back to his motel, assembles it, and throws it out of the window. Maybe Neil Armstrong used to do stuff like when he was a kid, he says. Then he chats to one of Neil's old schoolfriends who reveals that, yes, Neil did play with model planes. Brilliant. We're getting somewhere. When he wasn't making planes, did he like to jump up and down yelping and pointing excitedly at the moon? No. The erstwhile schoolfriend also recalls Neil as fairly subdued person. We see photos of Neil at school, looking quiet. "Who would have guessed this quiet boy would one day become one of the most famous men on the planet?" ponders Smith. Nobody did. Perhaps if he'd spent his childhood bellowing, "I LOVE THE MOON," or, "ONE DAY I'LL GO TO THE MOON," or simply shrieking the word "MOON!" at passers-by, maybe someone might've guessed. But he didn't, so they didn't. Next Smith's in his car, thinking. "Maybe he was just an ordinary, nice man," he says. As you may have gathered by now, not much is happening in this documentary. He drives to a house in the middle of nowhere where Neil used to live. Can he have a look round? No, because he doesn't have permission. He's not even allowed up the driveway. Someone else is in there, though: a couple being shown round by an estate agent. As they leave, Smith, still standing outside, stops them. Did they know this used to be Neil Armstrong's house? No they didn't. Thankfully, before things devolve to the point where Smith is looking at a napkin on the basis that Neil Armstrong probably once looked at a napkin, we get to the part of the story where Neil goes to the moon, and there's lots of thrilling footage of that and some good interviews with other former astronauts. The pressures of fame would overwhelm Neil, they reckon. When you've been an astronaut, everyone asks you to repeat the story of how you walked on the moon again and again until you're not even sure of the details yourself. For Neil, the pioneer, it would be intolerable. We meet a barber who once sold a bag of Neil's hair sweepings for $3,000. Little wonder the poor man became a recluse. Little wonder he lives in a lightless cave, shunning all contact with the world outside. It's a sobering moment. So imagine my surprise when, after the credits roll, I visit Wikipedia in search of some more facts about this solitary, mankind-dodging loner and quickly discover that as recently as 2005 he approved the release of an official biography called First Man: The Life Of Neil Armstrong. There's also a photograph of him happily receiving a platinum disc of Fly Me To The Moon from Quincy Jones at a Nasa anniversary gala in 2008. He doesn't look like a man crushed by the weight of human expectation, but a normal guy who probably couldn't be arsed talking to the 7,000th film crew to contact him that week. Is that right Neil? Neil? Is it? Is it, Neil? WELL, NEIL? IS IT? guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 3 Jul 2009 | 11:01 pm Floating futureAll kinds of boats provide services to BangladeshisSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 3 Jul 2009 | 9:06 pm Environmental group WWF urges G8 to make climate pledge (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 3 Jul 2009 | 8:13 pm Monster haul: Three new dinosaurs discoveredThe remains of three new dinosaur species, including a flesh-eating predator, have been found in Queensland's outback. The carnivore, nicknamed Banjo, which was found near two giant herbivores in a waterhole in Winton, is the most complete meat-eater ever found in the country. A Queensland Museum palaeontologist, Scott Hucknall, said the animal, known as Australovenator wintonensis, was bigger than the velociraptor, whose "disemboweling" sickle claw helped earn its fierce reputation. "The cheetah of his time, Banjo was light and agile," Hucknall told the Sydney Morning Herald. "He could run down most prey with ease." The dinosaurs, which date back nearly 100m years to the middle of the Cretaceous period, have been named after Banjo Paterson, who composed Waltzing Matilda in Winton in 1885, and some of the characters from the song. The two herbivores Clancy – Witonotitan wattsi – a tall, slender animal similar to a giraffe, and Matilda – Diamantinasaurus matildae – said to be more hippo-like, are new types of titanosaurs, the largest animals to ever walk the earth. Banjo and Matilda, possibly predator and prey, were found buried together. The discoveries, published in the journal the Public Library of Science One, were announced by the Queensland premier, Anna Bligh, at the Australia Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History in Winton. John Long, a palaeontologist at Museum Victoria, called the finds amazing and said they put Australia back on the map of big dinosaur discoveries for the first time since 1981, when Muttaburrasaurus, a herbivore, was found. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 3 Jul 2009 | 7:00 pm GMO corn: France rejects report by EU food agency (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 3 Jul 2009 | 5:48 pm UK-born astronauts are to receive a commemorative pinThe five British-born individuals who have flown in space are being honoured with a commemorative pin.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 3 Jul 2009 | 5:38 pm Planck achieves ultra-cold stateEurope's Planck telescope reaches its operating temperature, making it the coldest object in space.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 3 Jul 2009 | 5:31 pm Birds Key to Serengeti EcosystemSeed-eating birds in the Serengeti are necessary in order to maintain the forest, scientists said this week.Source: Livescience.com | 3 Jul 2009 | 5:23 pm The Incredible Shrinking SheepLike a wool coat in the rain, sheep are shrinking. But it's not rain that's doing it.Source: Livescience.com | 3 Jul 2009 | 5:16 pm Wild Fireworks Spotted in Space (SPACE.com)SPACE.com - A new image of a gaseous space nebula reveals tens of thousands of giant comet-like knots raining down in a star-spangled cosmic fireworks display.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 3 Jul 2009 | 5:01 pm Australia discovers 3 new large dinosaurs (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 3 Jul 2009 | 4:45 pm Australia discovers 3 new large dinosaursSYDNEY (Reuters) - Fossils of three new species of dinosaurs have been discovered in Australia, including a meat-eater larger than Velociraptor from the Jurassic Park movies, suggesting Australia may have a more complex prehistoric past.Source: Reuters: Science News | 3 Jul 2009 | 4:45 pm This Week's Coolest Science ImagesThe images that made science news this week.Source: Livescience.com | 3 Jul 2009 | 4:42 pm Earth WatchEnvironmentally, is climate change our biggest concern?Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 3 Jul 2009 | 4:18 pm How honeybee mobs smother giant hornets to deathBees smother hornets in a "bee ball" that kills the giant predators with heat and carbon dioxide.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 3 Jul 2009 | 3:48 pm Darwin's doubtersBelief in evolutionary varies around the world, but there's some evidence that Darwin-scepticism may have an Islamic flavour When the public theology think tank Theos published its study into evolution and theism in the UK earlier this year, it found that people in London were consistently more ignorant of and hostile towards Darwinism than those who lived elsewhere. Although Londoners were more likely to know that 2009 was Darwin's big anniversary (28% vs. 21% nationally), they were less likely to know what he was famous for (63% said evolution vs 70% nationally), more likely to believe that humans had been created by God at some point in the last 10,000 years (20% vs 17%), and less likely to agree that "evolution is a theory so well established that it's beyond reasonable doubt" (28% vs 37%). These findings have been supported by a recent British Council/Ipsos-MORI (pdf) study which reports that "nearly a quarter of those who live in London believe in creationism … compared to a nationwide average of 16%." Similarly, a fifth of Londoners said they had never heard of Darwin and his theory of evolution and less than a half (48%) "agreed that there was enough scientific evidence to support his evolutionary theory." The British Council survey interviewed 973 respondents, the Theos one 2,060 – neither, sadly, large enough to allow for statistically significant analysis by region. The British Council did, however, conduct their study internationally (pdf), interviewing around 1,000 people in each of Argentina, China, Egypt, India, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Spain, the US and Great Britain. The full results are not yet published but topline findings show that South Africans were most ignorant about Darwin (only 27% had heard of him) and his theory (8% said they knew a good/fair amount), whilst Americans were most antagonistic (24% said they did not think there was scientific evidence for evolution). The reasons for American antagonism are well known but why is South Africa so disproportionately ignorant? Interestingly, Egypt followed closely behind in both instances, 38% having heard about Darwin, 14% knowing a lot/fair amount about his theory, and 19% rejecting its scientific validity. Egyptians were also most likely to say that they thought belief in God and evolution were incompatible. As Egypt was the only Islamic country studied it is not possible to say whether its level of hostility reflects a general antagonism to Darwinism across the Muslim world. But the odds are that it does. According to the Theos survey, UK Muslims were twice as likely to be young earth creationists as the general public (35% vs 17%) – although, again, the sub-sample was small. If there proves to be clear correlation between Islamic belief and evolution rejection, it is likely to be for its own distinct reasons. A forthcoming Theos/ESRO qualitative research report analyses a series of one-to-one interviews with anti-evolutionary opinion-formers in the UK in order to understand in greater detail why they reject Darwinism. The majority were Christians but a number were Muslims, and the report, to be published this autumn, recognised that there were subtly different reasons for their respective reactions. For the Christians, the position and significance of the Genesis creation stories presented origins as a defining, theological issue. Muslim respondents, on the other hand, argued that the fact that the account of creation in the Qur'an was not as significant or prescriptive as the biblical account had implications for their theology of creation. Accordingly, they did not propose new kinds of science based on the Qur'an (after the fashion of "creation science") and many sought to distance themselves from Christian creationism. A more significant problem for them was the supposed degradation of human nature intrinsic to a theory of chance and purposelessness. The issue was not so much the science or even the hermeneutics (respondents were open to a flexible reading of the relevant verses). Rather it was "the perceived amorality of the evolutionary narrative as compared with the Islamic understanding of the accountability of man to God". For those Muslims who rejected evolution, it was the way the theory had become tangled up with anthropological (and social) suppositions that was the problem. It is early days in the study of Muslim attitudes to evolution and it is certainly false to say, as someone said to me recently, that the majority of "creationists" in Britain were Muslims. But both the British Council and the Theos studies suggest there is the potential for the evolution-scepticism of the 21st century to be marked with distinctively Islamic concerns, and these must be understood and not simply dismissed or ridiculed if we are to avoid having this debate on the next big Darwin anniversary. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 3 Jul 2009 | 3:30 pm No safe haven for rarest antelopeHopes are dashed that some of the few remaining hirola antelope have managed to colonise new, safer territory.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 3 Jul 2009 | 2:40 pm No Fireworks in Space on July 4 (SPACE.com)SPACE.com - This Fourth of July weekend will be filled with dazzling fireworks displays for many Americans, but not for NASA astronaut Michael Barratt, who is flying high above Earth on the International Space Station.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 3 Jul 2009 | 2:15 pm Bugs: The Forgotten Victims of Climate ChangeResearchers consider the impact of relocating species to new environments to save them from the effects of global warming.Source: Livescience.com | 3 Jul 2009 | 1:53 pm Even Cockroaches Get Fat on Bad FoodCockroaches who eat an unhealthy diet become fat and mature late.Source: Livescience.com | 3 Jul 2009 | 1:43 pm
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