Thursday 22 May 2014

MIRACLE or MISTAKE?


 
The Royal Miracle
What strange creatures we are!  A mum’s precious baby is her little miracle…..while others are discarded as ‘mistakes’??
Sperm that enter the vagina are immature until undergoing capacitation by uterine secretions and the female immune system recognises the same male.          
More of the miraculous!

The first sperm to enter the zona pellucida around the ovum blocks entry for all other sperm and the two gamete cells now form the zygote, carrying your complete genome: all the genetic information to make YOU!   Yes, we have a new miracle: YOU.
Next day, this zygote divided miraculously by mitosis to produce 2 daughter nuclei, each with 23 pairs of chromosomes. (Just as well you started with 23+23 not 46+46 because 92 chromosomes are found in a rat!)

Mitosis continued and on about Day 5 differentiation miraculously decided the future roles of your 8 identical cells - that have extended arms to huddle together!
Before your mum knew you were there you miraculously had your own pulse by about Day 21 and your own heart after 4 weeks.

There’s sure to be much more of the miraculous behind your birth but here is one that most mums have never heard of:
We were all born with 3 shunts, including a ‘hole-in-the-heart’ – the foramen ovale, which closed the moment you were born.
Yes! You and I really are miracles – NOT mistakes.                                                             

So is the Bible wrong when it says...?

“…He giveth to all life, and breath, and all things…for in Him we live, and move, and have our being…for we are also His offspring.”
Maybe even old Job had it right after all...?

“The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life.”    
“Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round about….”

NEXT:  ‘The Unique You’

Quotations from KJV Bible: Acts 17:25-28, Job 33:4 ; 10:8-

Photo credit:
people.com
                                                                                
 

Saturday 10 May 2014

FLIGHT FEATHERS & VELCRO

Rainbow lorikeet
Have you ever had to pick Bathurst burrs out of your socks?  

In 1941, Swiss electrical engineer George De Mestrel was picking burrs out of his socks and his dog's coat after a ramble in the woods when George cleverly realized the potential for hook fasteners and invented Velcro, borrowing the idea from the design of burrs. 

Did he realize that birds would be unable to fly if there were no hook fasteners in their flight feathers? 
So who designed these? 

We have all seen the main shaft (rachis) of a bird's flight feather and the barbs that branch off this.  What is harder to see are the barbules branching off the barbs and without a microscope you will never see the barbicel hooks that lock the barbules together. Try unzipping the barbs of a feather then re-zipping the gap by stroking it between your fingers.
But that’s not all!  A flight feather is designed with stiffness for the downward wing stroke, and somehow knows how long to grow and what colour pattern to display, depending on its location on the wing or tail.  Birds have hollow bones and can manipulate their flight feathers, even in flight – but that’s a story for later.


Acknowledgements:
Dr. Gary Parker, biologist
www.whitcombministries.org
wikipedia.org
Photo credit: australiananimallearningzone.com
Image credit: daviddarling.info


 


 

Thursday 8 May 2014

HUH?...DINOSAURS IN THE BIBLE?

We continue our series: 'Holy Bible of Science', following the 2nd article: 'Wildlife Park Safari':
http://hotspuds.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/wildlife-park-safari.html
 
So the Science Master hasn't finished with Job, hey?
Now He points out the behemoth to Job.

Behemoth??  Never heard of it!
Maybe not but ask the kids to name an animal that ate grass, had huge muscles, with bones like metal beams and bars, and a tail the size of a cedar tree...straightaway they'll tell you it’s got to be the Brachiosaurus.

The first specimen was discovered by Elmer S. Riggs beside the Colorado River in 1900 and was probably not full size. It seems like they grew to about 26 metres long and weighed up to 45 tonnes. Other Sauropods were even larger: the Seismosaurus was about 40 metres long and weighed about 77 tonnes.
Imagine big game hunters trying to bag one of those.  Nigh on impossible!


You think that would be a challenge?... what about the livyathan!               
The leviathan was apparently a huge rough-scaled sea-dragon that even breathed fire. Try to catch one and you'd never try again!
Mmm...not the sort of pet you'd take home for your kids to play with. We began this safari with lions but it looks like this dragon was the king of the beasts.

So there’s two species in the Bible for palaeontologists to study. Sir Richard Owen coined a name for this new find in 1842 – dinosauria: terrible lizard….but here they were in the Holy Bible of Science all along. Some scientists claim that dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago but the Master Scientist tells Job: “I made with thee”…what do you know…dinosaurs created on the same day as Man!                          
No wonder they are finding dinosaur haemoglobin, blood vessels still elastic, collagen, osteocalcin, and even skin…all remarkably preserved.
NEXT:   'More Science.....wind & waves'
http://hotspuds.blogspot.com.au/2014/07/more-sciencewind-waves.html

The series: 'Holy Bible of Science' appears on hotspuds.blogspot.com.au 
Why not click on this link to see the 1st article?...
http://hotspuds.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/science-master-in-twister.html


Acknowledgements:
sciencekids.co.nz 
about.com
World Book 2005
Sarfati J. ‘The Greatest Hoax On Earth’, 2010, Creation Book Publishers, Atlanta 
Image credits:
surfab.it 
thanasis.com


 




  
 
 
       
 
      
     
                                                                           
                                                                                          
                                                                                                                  
                                                                                 
 
                                                                               
                                                                                                    
 

 

 

 

 

Sunday 4 May 2014

JUST A BAG OF CHEMICALS?


Following:  ‘Who made Jack ‘n’ Jill?’
http://discoveryiopna.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/who-invented-jack-n-jill.html

Are you and I just bags of chemicals?  Hardly. Science is forced to admit that life cannot arise from non-living chemicals. Period.          
Tale of Louis Pasteur by Spencer Johnson
Famous bacteriologist Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) put that one to bed long ago when he proved dead meat cannot produce living maggots without the help of living flies.  Simple.           
So where did life come from?
Geneticists say we all carry the same ‘mitochondrial DNA’ (the energy program), as if from one woman.  
In fact they call it: 'the mitochondrial Eve'!

“Adam called his wife’s name Eve (Heb:Chavvah); because she was the mother of all living.”
Of course, ever since then people have been making people – right??  Sort of.                     

The human body comprises at least 10,000,000,000,000 somatic (body) cells which are constantly being replaced – miraculously by mitosis! (cell division)  Every new cell has been produced by an existing cell – so where did the first cells come from?  
Let's look for more miracles that medicos can't explain.                                                 

The basic building-block of life is the amino acid, assembled into linear chains as protein, with over 100,000 different proteins in our bodies.  Nearly all cells contain 2 metres of Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) programmed with 3 billion characters and necessary for making protein, BUT… 
protein is needed to have DNA, AND…                         
it takes about 150 proteins to make 1 protein.                                                            
Come to think of it…who wrote that DNA program?                                                       
Another set of miracles!                                                                                                         
By the way, only ‘left-handed’ amino acids are found in organic molecules, AND.... proteins are assembled into architectural components that fit together like Lego.  Two more miracles! 
All somatic cells carry 23 pairs of chromosomes, except the gamete cells – the ovum and sperm, which carry only 23 single chromosomes, thanks to meiosis.               
Yes - another miracle. 

So what happens when sperm meets ovum?                          
More miracles??

Click on video link: 'Programming of Life
'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00vBqYDBW5s
 
NEXT:  'Miracle or mistake?'
Click on: http://discoveryiopna.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/miracle-or-mistake.html

 
Quotation from KJV Bible: Genesis 3:20                                                         

Acknowledgements:                                                                   
Programming Of Life, LaBarge Media, 2011                                                         
Anatomica, Global Book Publishing, 2001, Lane Cove, Aust                                             
World Book 2005                                                                               
Wieland, C. ‘One Human Family’, Creation Book Publishers, 2011, Atlanta GA                                     
Image credit: morrison.net.nz

 

Saturday 3 May 2014

THE SHEARWATER - just a dumb mutton-bird?

Let's say its spring-time on the beautiful Mid North Coast of New South Wales so we head to our favourite beach to check out the surf only to find it littered by small mutton-birds that have died from exhaustion.  Actually they are Short-tailed and Sooty Shearwaters that have been very successful in 'shearing the water' to fish and had nearly completed a 30,000 km round trip, making them one of the greatest migratory birds in the world.
They had started life as a fledgling that had to learn to walk, swim, fly, dive, and fish all on about the 3rd May, and wait for it.....find mum and dad who had already left for New Zealand three weeks earlier!

These Short-tailed Shearwaters (Tasmanian mutton-bird, Puffinus tenuirostris) and Sooty Shearwaters (New Zealand mutton-bird, Puffinus griseus) that we find littering our beaches in September, making for an ugly tourist scene, have flown right across the Pacific Ocean from California, heading for the islands in Bass Strait.  In fact there will be at least 16 million of these birds around Tasmania this summer so the Government will allow harvesting of chicks on the Furneaux Group of islands.

Let's make it easy for ourselves and go to Griffiths Island at Port Fairy in south-west Victoria, arriving on 22 September.  Most of the adult shearwaters have already arrived but are out on the ocean, bobbing around as a raft, waiting for the cover of darkness. Now they silently swoop in to find that same burrow they used last year, on an island covered with tens of thousands of burrows under long grass.  All being well the same lifelong mate joins them to sleep off the jet-lag, then they will spruce up the burrow ready for mating in early November.

On the 12 November all the birds go off for a honeymoon over the Southern Ocean to return right on schedule on the 25th.  Once mum has laid her egg and gone fishing its time for dad to do his bit - incubation for a lonely fortnight, to be relieved by mum for another fortnight.  They repeat this cycle twice more until the chick is hatched early January. By early April little 'chicky' is not so little, weighing nearly twice as much as mum or dad.

Come the 16th, they bid goodbye to their fat youngster and depart east.
Hang about!  You haven't even taught your baby how to walk properly, let alone fly, swim, dive, fish, or navigate over the vast oceans.
The fledgling finds its own way down to the sea and swims out to join its learner mates.
Somehow they manage to get airborne and then head for the northern tip of New Zealand 2700 kms away, where they catch up with the adults! Now they all head for Japan, then Siberia and finally Alaska, with juveniles often stopping off in a port of call until next year.
As the temperature drops and the breeding season approaches they move on down to California ready for the long haul across the Pacific Ocean to Australia.
"I still call Australia home."

So, how did 'chicky' get those clever instincts in it's tiny brain?
Who programmed the baby mutton-bird that we thought was only good for food and oil?

Acknowledgments: Dept. of Sustainability& Environment - Victoria
                                        National Parks & Wildlife Service - NSW                                

Photo credit: Ryan Shaw