As the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 spreads across the globe, with cases surpassing 284,000 worldwide today (March 20), misinformation is spreading almost as fast. One persistent myth is that this virus, called SARS-CoV-2, was made by scientists and escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, where the outbreak began. A […]
Science
Official names have been announced for the virus responsible for COVID-19 (previously known as “2019 novel coronavirus”) and the disease it causes. The official names are: Disease coronavirus disease (COVID-19) Virus severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Why do the virus and the disease have different names? Viruses, and the […]
A new law in Mississippi has made it legal for doctors and nurses to refuse care to certain patients on religious grounds.(New law makes it legal for atheist doctors and nurses to refuse care to religious patients) The law allows medical staff to refuse treatment to members of the LGBQT community […]
While we were migrating around the globe, inventing agriculture and visiting the moon, chimpanzees — our closest living relatives — stayed in the trees, where they ate fruit and hunted monkeys. Modern chimps have been around for longer than modern humans have (less than 1 million years compared to 300,000 […]
Teeth from a cave in China suggest that modern humans lived in Asia much earlier than previously thought, and tens of thousands of years before they reached Europe, researchers say. (Humans Exited Africa, and Trekked to China, Fossils Reveal) This discovery yields new information about the dispersal of modern humans […]
Another Nigerian kid has made the nation proud again as she got a great win on the international scene in a spelling bee competition the US. Izoduwa emerged the first winner of the Sawnee Elementary spelling bee. Sanwee Elementary school is a part of West Community School in Georgia, Unites […]
In April, the pope made history when he told his flock to accept divorced Catholics. Last week, NPR reported a gay preacher had been ordained as a Baptist minister. Next year it might well be evangelicals in the deep South turning pro-choice. Everywhere around us, traditional Christian theology and its culture is breaking down […]
The world’s first-ever human-monkey hybrid has been grown by a Spanish scientist in a lab in China, which was viable and could have been born, but the process was terminated. Monkey embryos were genetically modified to create a hybrid embryo. They deactivated certain genes that lead to the formation organs, […]
For most of our history, scientists have primarily believed that is eternal and unchanging. Aristotle in the fourth century BC asserted that the world is without beginning or end. But this view was not without direct opponents who believed the universe had a beginning. Aristotle’s works were largely lost for […]
