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Best of the Web /
SuperSearch - - - This post includes links to the best websites for science, including text excerpts from most of the included Wiki- pedia links regarding science. For the updated graphic version of this post, see Best of the Web / SuperSearch (2 of 3 : Science - Graphic Version) http://prohuman.net/bestoftheweb2.htm The graphic version of this post, and its associated 'Best of' the Web' posts on Disbelief and History/Social/Legal are accessible from the "Best of the Web / Supersearch" drop- down menu bar on every Pro-Humanist FREELOVER page. - - - Encyclopaedia Britannica http://www.britannica.com/ - - - Scientific American http://www.scientificamerican.com/ - - - PBS - Science http://www.pbs.org/science/ PBS - Stephen Hawking's Universe http://www.pbs.org/wnet/hawking/html/home.html PBS - Savage Earth http://www.pbs.org/wnet/savageearth/ PBS - Into the Abyss http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/abyss/ PBS - Triumph of Life http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/triumph-of-life/introduction/1873/ PBS - Odyssey of Life http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/odyssey/ PBS - Intimate Strangers : Unseen Life on Earth http://www.pbs.org/opb/intimatestrangers/ PBS - Cut to the Heart http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/heart/ PBS - Galileo's Battle for the Heavens http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/galileo/ PBS - Judgment Day : Intelligent Design on Trial http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/beta/evolution/intelligent-design-trial.html PBS - Evolution, A Journey Into Where We're From and Where We're Going http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/ PBS - Closer to Truth : Science, Meaning and the Future http://www.pbs.org/kcet/closertotruth/ - - - The Official String Theory Website http://superstringtheory.com/ - - - Space.com http://www.space.com/ - - - BBC - Walking With Dinosaurs http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/prehistoric_life/tv_radio/wwdinosaurs/ - - - Tree of Life Web Project http://tolweb.org/tree/phylogeny.html - - - Dinosauria On-line http://www.dinosauria.com/ - - - An On-line Biology Book http://www.estrellamountain.edu/faculty/farabee/biobk/biobooktoc.html - - - Science and Creationism : A View from the National Academy of Sciences http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=6024 - - - University of California Museum of Paleontology http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/ - - - BBC - Human Beginnings http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/prehistoric_life/human/ - - - National Academies Press : Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=5787 - - - DNA from the Beginning http://www.dnaftb.org/dnaftb/ - - - Nature - Genomics Gateway http://www.nature.com/omics/index.html - - - Science Magazine - The Human Genome http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol291/issue5507/ - - - National Geographic http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ - - - Discovery Channel http://dsc.discovery.com/ - - - New Scientist Magazine http://www.newscientist.com/ - - - Hooper Virtual Natural History Museum http://hoopermuseum.earthsci.carleton.ca/lobby.html - - - Paleomap Project http://www.scotese.com/earth.htm - - - Physorg.com Evolution News http://www.physorg.com/biology-news/evolution/ - - - Science Portal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Science Science, in the broadest sense of the term, refers to any system of knowledge attained by verifiable means. In a more restricted sense, science refers to a system of ac- quiring knowledge based on empiricism, experimenta- tion, and methodological naturalism, as well as to the organized body of knowledge humans have gained by such qualified research. Scientists maintain that scientific investigation must ad- here to the scientific method, a rigorous process for properly developing and evaluating natural explanations for observable phenomena based on reliable empirical evidence and neutral, unbiased independent verification, and not on arguments from authority or popular prefer- ences. Science therefore bypasses supernatural explan- ations, it instead only considers natural explanations that may be falsifiable. ... - - - Anthropology Portal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Anthropology Anthropology is the study of the physical, social and cul- tural characteristics of humanity. Anthropology has origins in the natural sciences, the humanities, and the social sci- ences. ... anthropology has been distinguished from other social sciences by its emphasis on in-depth examination of con- text, cross-cultural comparisons, and the importance it places on participant-observation, or long-term, experi- ential immersion in the area of research. ... - - - Archaeology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology Archaeology... studies historical human cultures through the recovery, documentation, analysis, and interpretation of material culture and environmental data, including archi- tecture, artifacts, biofacts, and landscapes. Archaeology aims to understand humankind through these humanistic endeavors. In the United States it is commonly considered to be a subset of anthropology ... Archaeology involves surveyance, excavation and eventu- ally analysis of data collected in order to learn more about the past. ... archaeology is particularly useful in discovering information about human Prehistory, which comprises over 99% of total human history, due to of the lack of written sources for this period and the full reliance on archaeolog- ical evidence. However, alongside this it is also used to investigate more recent history, even that reaching back only a few decades. ... - - - Astronomy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomy Astronomy is the scientific study of celestial objects ... and phenomena that originate outside the Earth's atmosphere ... It is concerned with the evolution, physics, chemistry, mete- orology, and motion of celestial objects, as well as the form- ation and development of the universe. ... the invention of the telescope was required before astro- nomy was able to develop into a modern science. ... Since the 20th century, the field of professional astronomy split into observational and theoretical branches. ... - - - Biology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology Biology ... is the natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. ... - - - Biotechnology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biotechnology Biotechnology ... Modern use of the term usually refers to genetic engineering as well as cell- and tissue culture technol- ogies. ... - - - Chemistry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemistry Chemistry ... is the science concerned with the composition, behavior, structure, and properties of matter, as well as the changes it undergoes during chemical reactions. It is a physical science for studies of various atoms, molecules, crystals and other aggregates of matter whether in isolation or combination, which incorporates the concepts of energy and entropy in rela- tion to the spontaneity of chemical processes. ... - - - Evolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution ... In biology, evolution is change in the genetic material of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. ... Two major mechanisms determine which variants will become more common or rare in a population. One is natural selection, a process that causes helpful traits (those that increase the chance of survival and reproduction) to become more common in a population and causes harmful traits to be- come more rare. ... The other ... is genetic drift, an independent process that produces random changes in the frequency of traits in a population. Genetic drift results from the role that chance plays in whether a given trait will be passed on as individuals survive and reproduce. ... - - - Evolutionary Biology Portal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Evolutionary_biology Evolutionary biology is a sub-field of biology concerned with the origin and descent of species, as well as their change, multi- plication, and diversity over time. Biologically, evolution is the change in the inherited traits of a population from generation to generation. These traits are the expression of genes that are copied and passed on to offspring during reproduction. Mutations in these genes can produce new or altered traits, resulting in heritable differences (genetic varia- tion) between organisms. New traits can also come from transfer of genes between popu- lations, as in migration, or between species, in horizontal gene transfer. Evolution occurs when these heritable differences be- come more common or rare in a population, either non-randomly through natural selection or randomly through genetic drift. - - - Evolutionary History of Life on Earth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_history_of_life The evolutionary history of life on Earth traces the processes by which living and fossil organisms evolved. It stretches from the origin of life on Earth, thought to be over 3,500 million years ago, to the present day. The similarities between all present day organ- isms indicate the presence of a common ancestor from which all known species have diverged through the process of evolution. Microbial mats of coexisting bacteria and archaea were the domin- ant form of life in the early Archean and many of the major steps in early evolution are thought to have taken place within them. ... - - - Genetics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetics Genetics ... is the science of heredity and variation in living organisms. The fact that living things inherit traits from their parents has been used since prehistoric times to improve crop plants and animals through selective breeding. However, the modern science of genetics, which seeks to understand the process of inheritance, only began with the work of Gregor Mendel in the mid-nineteenth century. ... Genes correspond to regions within DNA, a molecule composed of a chain of four different types of nucleotides-the sequence of these nucleotides is the genetic information organisms inherit. DNA natur- ally occurs in a double stranded form, with nucleotides on each strand complementary to each other. Each strand can act as a tem- plate for creating a new partner strand - this is the physical method for making copies of genes that can be inherited. ... - - - History of the Earth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Earth The history of the Earth describes the most important events and fundamental stages in the development of the planet Earth from its formation to the present day during the last 4.6 billion years. Nearly all branches of natural science have contributed to the understanding of the main events of the Earth's past. The Earth is approximately one third of the age of the universe. Immense geological and biological changes have occurred during that time span. ... - - - History of Science http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science Science is a body of empirical, theoretical, and practical knowledge about the natural world, produced by ... researchers making use of scientific methods, which emphasize the observation, explanation, and prediction of real world phenomena by experiment. ... Tracing the exact origins of modern science is possible through the many important texts which have survived from the classical world. However, the word scientist is relatively recent-first coined by William Whewell in the 19th century. Previously, people investigat- ing nature called themselves natural philosophers. ... - - - Human Evolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution ... The study of human evolution encompasses many scientific disci- plines, including physical anthropology, primatology,archaeology, linguistics and genetics. The term 'human' in the context of human evolution refers to the genus Homo, but studies of human evolution usually include other hominids, such as the Australopithecines. The genus Homo had diverged from the Australopithecines by about 2.3 to 2.4 million years ago in Africa. Scientists have estimated that humans branched off from their common ancestor with chimpanzees - the only other living hominins - about 5-7 million years ago. Several species of Homo evolved and are now extinct. These include Homo erectus, which inhabited Asia, and Homo neanderthalensis, which inhabited Europe. Archaic Homo sapiens evolved between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago. The dominant view among scientists concerning the origin of anatom- ically modern humans is the 'Out of Africa' or recent African origin hypothesis, which argues that H. sapiens arose in Africa and migrated out of the continent around 50-100,000 years ago, replacing popula- tions of H. erectus in Asia and H. neanderthalensis in Europe. ... - - - Molecular Anthropology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_anthropology Molecular anthropology is a field of anthropology in which molecular analysis is used to determine evolutionary links between peoples, ancient and modern populations, as well as between contemporary species. Generally, comparisons are made between sequence, either DNA or protein sequence, however early studies used comparative serology. By examining DNA sequences in different populations, scientists can determine the closeness relationships between populations (or within populations). Certain similarities in genetic makeup let molecular anthropologists determine whether or not different groups of people belong to the same haplogroup, and thus if they share a common geographical origin. ... Molecular anthropology has been extremely useful in establishing the evolutionary tree of humans and other primates, including closely related species like chimps and gorillas. ... - - - Multiverse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse The multiverse (or meta-universe, metaverse) is the hypothetical set of multiple possible universes (including our universe) that together comprise everything that physically exists: the entirety of space and time, all forms of matter, energy and momentum, and the physical laws and constants that govern them. The term was coined in 1895 by the American philosopher and psychologist William James. The different universes within the multiverse are sometimes called parallel universes. The structure of the multiverse, the nature of each universe within it and the relationship between the various constituent universes, depend on the specific multiverse hypothesis considered. Multi- verses have been hypothesized in cosmology, physics, astronomy, philosophy, transpersonal psychology and fiction, particularly in science fiction and fantasy. ... - - - Paleontology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleontology Paleontology ... is the study of prehistoric life, including organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments (their paleoecology). As a 'historical science' it tries to explain causes rather than conduct experiments to observe effects. Paleontological observations have been documented as far back as the 5th century BC. The science became established in the 18th century as a result of Georges Cuvier's work on comparative anatomy, and developed rapidly in the 19th century. Fossils found in China since the 1990s have provided new informa- tion about the earliest evolution of animals, early fish, dinosaurs and the evolution of birds and mammals. ... Body fossils and trace fossils are the principal types of evidence about ancient life, and geochemical evidence has helped to decipher the evolution of life before there were organisms large enough to leave fossils. ... The final quarter of the 20th century saw the development of molecular phylogenetics, which investigates how closely organisms are related by measuring how similar the DNA is in their genomes. ... - - - Physical Cosmology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_cosmology Physical cosmology, as a branch of astronomy, is the study of the larg- est-scale structures and dynamics of our universe and is concerned with fundamental questions about its formation and evolution. ... Cosmology as a science originates with the Copernican principle, which implies that celestial bodies obey identical physical laws to those on earth, and Newtonian mechanics, which first allowed us to understand those motions. ... Physical cosmology, as it is now understood, began with the twentieth century development of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity and better astronomical observations of extremely distant objects. The twentieth century advances made it possible to speculate about the origins of the universe and allowed scientists to establish the Big Bang as the leading cosmological model ... Cosmology ... drawing heavily on the work of particle physicists' exper- iments, and research into phenomenology and even string theory; from astrophysicists; from general relativity research; and from plasma phy- sics ... unites the physics of the largest structures in the universe with the physics of the smallest structures in the universe. ... - - - Timeline of Evolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolution This timeline of the evolution of life outlines the major events in the development of life on the planet Earth. ... In biology, evolution is the process by which populations of organisms acquire and pass on novel traits from generation to generation. Its occurrence over large stretches of time explains the origin of new species and ultimately the vast diversity of the biological world. Contemporary species are related to each other through common descent, products of evolution and speciation over billions of years. ... - - - Timeline of Human Evolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_human_evolution The timeline of human evolution outlines the major events in the development of human species, and the evolution of humans' ances- tors. It includes a brief explanation of some animals, species or genera, which are possible ancestors of Homo sapiens sapiens. It does not address the origin of life, which is addressed by abio- genesis, but presents a possible line of descendants that led to humans. This timeline is based on studies from paleontology, developmental biology, morphology and from anatomical and genetic data. The study of human evolution is a major component of anthropology. ... - - - Timeline of Solar System http://tinyurl.com/timelineofsolarsystem - - - Timeline of Stars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_timeline_of_the_Stelliferous_Era - - - Timeline of Universe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_timeline_of_our_universe - - - Transhumanism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism Transhumanism is an international intellectual and cultural movement supporting the use of science and technology to improve human men- tal and physical characteristics and capacities. The movement regards aspects of the human condition, such as disability, suffering, disease, aging, and involuntary death as unnecessary and undesirable. Trans- humanists look to biotechnologies and other emerging technologies for these purposes. ... The term "transhumanism" is ... often used as a synonym for 'human enhancement'. Although the first known use of the term dates from 1957, the contemporary meaning is a product of the 1980s when futurists in the United States began to organize what has since grown into the transhumanist movement. Transhumanist thinkers predict that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into beings with such greatly expanded abilities as to merit the label 'post- human'. ... - - - Universe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe The Universe comprises everything we perceive to physically exist, the entirety of space and time, all forms of matter and energy, and the physical laws and constants that govern them. However, the term Universe may be used in slightly different contextual senses, denoting such concepts as the cosmos, the world, or Nature. The word Universe is usually defined as encompassing everything. However, using an alternate definition, some have speculated that the 'Universe' composed of expanding space-as-we-know-it, is just one of many disconnected 'universes', which are collectively denoted as the multiverse. ... Observations of older parts of the universe (which are far away) sug- gest that the Universe has been governed by the same physical laws and constants throughout most of its extent and history. However, in bubble universe theory, there may be an infinite variety of 'universes' created in various ways, and perhaps each with different physical constants. ... According to the prevailing scientific model of the Universe, known as the Big Bang, the Universe expanded from an extremely hot, dense phase called the Planck epoch, in which all the matter and energy of the observable universe was concentrated. Since the Planck epoch, the Universe has been expanding to its present form, possibly with a brief period ... of cosmic inflation. ... Recent observations indicate that this expansion is accelerating because of the dark energy, and that most of the matter and energy in the Universe is fundamentally different from that observed on Earth and not directly observable. ... Current interpretations of astronomical observations indicate that the age of the Universe is 13.73 (± 0.12) billion years, and that the diameter of the observable universe is at least 93 billion light years ... It is uncertain whether the size of the Universe is finite or infinite. ... - - - Guardian - Science News http://www.guardian.co.uk/science - - - Discover Magazine http://discovermagazine.com/ - - - Australian Broadcasting Corporation - Science News http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/ - - - Science Daily http://www.sciencedaily.com/ - - - Nature Publishing Group http://www.nature.com/ - - - How Stuff Works http://www.howstuffworks.com/ - - - The Why Files - The Science Behind the News http://whyfiles.org/ - - - Web MD http://www.webmd.com/ - - - Pro-Humanist FREELOVER History/Origins/Future of Energy, Matter, Space, Time, and Life ... Universe(s) Origin(s) / Introduction http://prohuman.net/origins_august2009intro.htm Pro-Humanist FREELOVER Top Books/Videos for SHANANNAREEFERS (Immortality) http://prohuman.net/top_books_videos_immortality.htm Pro-Humanist FREELOVER Top Books/Videos for SHANANNAREEFERS (Science/Biology-Genetics) http://prohuman.net/top_books_videos_science_biology_genetics.htm Pro-Humanist FREELOVER Top Books/Videos for SHANANNAREEFERS (Science/Cosmology) http://prohuman.net/top_books_videos_science_cosmology.htm Pro-Humanist FREELOVER Top Books/Videos for SHANANNAREEFERS (Science/General) http://prohuman.net/top_books_videos_science_general.htm Pro-Humanist FREELOVER Top Books/Videos for SHANANNAREEFERS (Science/Origins) http://prohuman.net/top_books_videos_science_origins.htm Pro-Humanist FREELOVER Top Posts - Science http://prohuman.net/science/index.htm - - - SuperSearch http://www.dogpile.com - - - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ ~~~ Pro-Humanist FREELOVER http://prohuman.net (Freethinking Realist Exploring Expressive Liberty, Openness, Verity, Enlightenment, & Rationality) ~~~
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