It is common in mainline Christian circles these days to view religious faith and biological evolution as entirely compatible.

Many believe that rejection of evolutionary theory is restricted to fundamentalist Christians who read the Bible literally and view modern science as the work of Satan. But this is nothing more than a stereotype; evolutionary skepticism is a growing and respected intellectual movement populated by many people lacking fundamentalist Christian views. I should know; I am one of them.

For fifty-three of my sixty years on this planet, I accepted the truth of modern evolutionary theory without question and saw no incompatibility between it and my own admittedly liberal Christian faith. But in 2013, a senior colleague at Luther College who had taught a science and religion course for many years retired and knowing of my undergraduate degree in science and engineering, he asked me to continue teaching this course. I did so gladly, anxious to help my students see that evolutionary theory need not be an impediment to their religious faith. But then I did something very dangerous - I read!

Chinese scientists are optimistic about a COVID-19 vaccine after finding that monkeys that were infected with the novel coronavirus developed immunity to the disease after recovering from it.

Scientists at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences found that when four rhesus monkeys were infected with a COVID-19 strain, they developed fevers and respiratory issues and lost their appetites. The disease viral loads were highest three days after infection but reached undetectable levels at around the 14-day mark.

About a month later, two of the monkeys that had recovered completely were reinfected through their mouths. The researchers found that their body temperatures increased slightly after infection, but that was the only symptom that appeared. Around two weeks later, the monkeys were found to have very high levels of antibodies for the disease, signifying that their immune systems were ready to fight the virus.

The smaller a design is, the harder it may be to detect. But miniature designs can inspire awe even more than large ones.

In the Roaring 20s (the 20th century, not the present one), DeWitt Mott married Allegra Mitchell and discovered that she had an unusual collection: three shoeboxes full of miniature toys from Cracker Jacks boxes. Fascinated by the idea of miniature replicas of things, DeWitt started carving doll house furniture, and Mott's Miniatures was born. The couple gathered miniatures in addition to the ones DeWitt carved. The collection grew to include tiny churches, miniature doll houses with furniture inside, and other wonders on the small scale, including microscopic chessboards with all the pieces, miniature tea sets, tiny libraries with tiny books, storefronts with shelves full of goods, and even tiny ballrooms with dancers in costume. In addition to the ones DeWitt carved by hand, they collected miniatures from around the world.

The Mott collection grew into a museum that was exhibited at Knott's Berry Farm (a California amusement park) for 34 years, and was seen by millions. Some items were so small, they needed artificial magnifiers to appreciate, like the paintings on the heads of pins, including reproductions of Washington, Lincoln, and Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper. Visitors were amazed at the details on such small scales, and the skill and patience of the creators to make these tiny works of art.

The world is filled with microorganisms, which have a profound impact on many facets of life. Do these microbial communities influence cancer¹? Many studies of microbes and their genomes (collectively called the microbiome) have focused on the gut, where most of the body's microbes reside. This work has revealed a role for the gut microbiome in several types of cancer that arise in the intestinal lining itself^2-4, and indicated that the gut microbiome might influence cancers at distant sites through its impact on the immune system¹. In addition, emerging evidence indicates that microbial signatures (such as nucleic acids) can be found in tumours at other sites in the body^5,6 and in the tissues and blood of individuals who don't have cancer^7,8. Writing in Nature, Poore et al.⁹ build on this evidence, identifying signatures of microbial DNA and RNA, both in tumours and in the blood, across multiple human cancers. The authors further suggest that these signatures might augment existing clinical diagnostic tools, although further work is needed in this area.

Poore et al. used The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) — an online resource that includes DNA and RNA sequences — to analyse data for 33 cancer types, totalling more than 17,000 samples from some 10,000 patients. They analysed data sets derived from bulk tumour samples (primary tumours as well as recurrent ones, and tumours that had spread through metastasis), normal adjacent tissue and blood samples. The authors used multiple computational approaches, including independently trained artificial-intelligence (AI) models, to filter, normalize and classify microbial sequences in these samples. After stringent filtering approaches to address potential contamination and other variables, the group classified 7.2% of the total sequencing reads as non-human. Approximately one-third of those mapped to known sequences of bacterial, archaeal or viral origin, and 12.6% of these resolved to a particular genus from one of these groups.

Stanford researchers used advanced microscopy and mathematical modeling to discover a pattern that governs the growth of neurons in the flatworm brain, shown here. Using this technique, they hope to find patterns that guide the growth of cells in other parts of the body in order to pave the way to bioengineer artificial tissues and organs. Credit: Wang Lab

Life is rife with patterns. It's common for living things to create a repeating series of similar features as they grow: think of feathers that vary slightly in length on a bird's wing or shorter and longer petals on a rose.

It turns out the brain is no different. By employing advanced microscopy and mathematical modeling, Stanford researchers have discovered a pattern that governs the growth of brain cells or neurons. Similar rules could guide the development of other cells within the body, and understanding them could be important for successfully bioengineering artificial tissues and organs.

Not since December 2018 when Comet 46P/Wirtanen passed near the Pleiades star cluster has a naked-eye comet graced the night sky. It reached 5th magnitude at the time and looked like a small wad of glowing fuzz from a dark sky site. Wirtanen never developed a bright tail, one of the most distinguishing and beautiful aspects of a comet. Since then plenty of comets have passed by, but only a few have been visible in binoculars and most have required a telescope.

A scientist who believes coronavirus came from space by meteor now says prevailing winds are spreading the disease to the hardest-hit countries.

Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology has alleged that the meteor that exploded over China in October released viral particles.

Once in the upper stratosphere, the virus either fell to Earth or got caught up in the stratospheric air currents that circle the Earth, he told MailOnline.

From here, the virus has spread along 'a global band of between 40-60° latitude north', with all the 'main strong cases' appearing 'exactly along that range', he said.

Researchers have identified nitrogen previously thought to be "missing" in comets, helping to solve a longstanding mystery about the icy space rocks.

In analyzing the Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which was visited and studied by the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft, scientists have uncovered significant amounts of ammonium salts that ended up revealing this "missing" nitrogen.

Our solar system — which includes our sun and all of the planets and objects like comets and asteroids — formed from the condensation of a gaseous cloud known as the solar nebula. Scientists have long thought that the nitrogen-to-carbon ratio (N/C) of the sun should be roughly the same in comets, which formed in the cold outer reaches of the solar nebula far from the sun.

Eight restoration scientists put on hard hats and heavy-duty boots and stepped inside the blackened shell of Notre Dame de Paris, the world's most famous cathedral. Ten days earlier, a fire had swept through its attic, melted its roof, and sent its spire plunging like an arrow into the heart of the sacred space. Now, it was silent but for the flutter of house sparrows. The space, normally sweet with incense, was acrid with ash and stale smoke. Light beamed through voids in the vaulted stone ceiling, cutting through the gloom and illuminating piles of debris on the marble floor.

Yet the scientists, called in by France's Ministry of Culture to inspect the damage and plan a rescue, mostly felt relief — and even hope. Rattan chairs sat in tidy rows, priceless paintings hung undamaged, and, above the altar, a great gold-plated cross loomed over the Pietà, a statue of the virgin Mary cradling the body of Jesus. "What matters isn't the roof and vault so much as the sanctuary they protect," says Aline Magnien, director of the Historical Monuments Research Laboratory (LRMH). "The heart of Notre Dame had been saved."

In 2010, Craig Venter's lab embedded text and images into the DNA of a bacterium. Would a future investigator be able to tell? It would take special tools to see the insertion, but the difference should be detectable. What if bioengineers invent new genes that use the cell's translation machinery to build non-natural proteins? This is already coming to pass with CRISPR/Cas9 methods. If the insertion were made in an embryo, all the adult cells would inherit the change. The line between natural and artificial is getting more blurry.

In a sense, the new bioengineering developments are similar in principle to longstanding cases of artificial interference in nature, as in agriculture, camouflage, or construction of simple dwellings with available materials like grass or fallen branches. The Design Filter takes into account what chance and natural law can do. There will always be difficult cases; ID errs on the side of non-intelligent causes when the degree of specified complexity is borderline. But now, specified complexity exists in both "natural" DNA and DNA altered by human intelligence. There should be ways to distinguish between human intelligent causes and non-human intelligent causes, whether those be space aliens, spirit beings, or a transcendent Creator.