Fast Food FOR INSECTS

Insects readily feast of quick, high-calorie food. A convenient source is a flower head. Like fast-food chains, flowers advertise their presence with bright colors. Finding the flowers attractive, insects alight on the flowers, where they can munch on pollen or sip nectar.
Being particularly sluggish after a cool night, these cold-blooded creatures need the sun’s energy to get going. Many flowers offer the insects a complete package-nutritious food and a place to bask in the sun. Let’s take a look at a familiar example.
The oxeye daisy is a common flower that grows throughout much of Europe and North America. It may not seem special, but if you take the time to inspect it, you will see a lot of activity. This daisy offers an ideal place for insects to start the day. The white petals reflect the sun’s warmth, and the yellow center offers a good resting place where insects can soak up solar energy.
To make the visit even more appetizing, the center of the daisy is replete with pollen and nectar, nutritious foods that many insects thrive on. What better place could an insect find for having a good breakfast and enjoying the sun?
Thus, a whole parade of insects alights on oxeye daisies during the course of the day. You many spot beetles, colorful butterflies, shield bugs, crickets, and flies of every sort. Of course, if you are not observant, you may never notice these fascinating insect “fast-food chains.”
Therefore, the next time you are in the country-side, why not make an effort to examine some of these inconspicuous daisy ecosystems? If you do, the experience is likely to enhance your appreciation for the Creator who designed them all.

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Nature Had It First

“Ask, please,…the winged creatures of the heavens, and they will tell you…. The hand of Jehovah itself has done this.” –Job 12:7-9

Everything about birds appears to be designed for flight. For example, the shafts of wing feathers must support a bird’s entire weight during flight. How can the wings be so light yet so strong? If you cut through the shaft of a feather, you may see why. It resembles what engineers call a foam-sandwich beam. It has a pithy interior and a rough exterior. Engineers have studied feather shafts, and foam-sandwich beams are used in aircraft.
The bones of birds are also amazingly designed. Most are hollow, and some may be strengthened by internal struts in a form engineers call the Warren girder. Interestingly, a similar design was used in the wings of the space shuttle.
Pilots balance modern aircraft by adjusting a few flaps on the wings and tail. But a bird uses some 48 muscles in its wing and shoulder to change the configuration and motion of its wings and individual feathers, doing so several times a second. No wonder that avian aerobatic ability is the envy of aircraft designers!
Flight, especially takeoff, consumes a lot of energy. So birds need a powerful, fast-burning “engine.” A bird’s heart beats faster than that of a similar-size mammal and is usually larger and more powerful. Also, a bird’s lungs have a different, one-way-flow design that is more efficient than a mammal’s.
How efficient is a bird’s “engine”? A measure of an aircraft’s efficiency s whether it can take off carrying sufficient fuel. When a Boeing 747 takes off for a ten-hour flight, roughly a third of its weight is fuel. Similarly, a migrating thrush may lose almost half of its body weight on a ten-hour flight. But when a bar-tailed godwit takes off from Alaska heading for New Zealand, over half its body weight is fat. Astonishingly, it flies for about 190 hours (eight days) nonstop. No commercial aircraft can do that.

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WAS IT DESIGNED?

The Kingfisher’s Beak
Traveling at speeds of nearly 300 kilometers an hour, the Japanese bullet train is one of the fastest in the world. In part, it owes its success to a small bird-the kingfisher. Why?
Consider: In pursuit of a tasty meal, the kingfisher can dive into water with very little splash. That fact intrigued Eiji Nakatsu, an engineer who directed test runs of the bullet train. He wondered how the kingfisher adapts so quickly from low-resistance air to high-resistance water. Finding the answer was key to solving a peculiar problem with the bullet rain. “When a train rushes into a narrow tunnel at high speed,” Nakatsu explains, “this generates atmospheric pressure waves that gradually grow into waves like tidal waves. These reach the tunnel exit at the speed of sound, generating low-frequency waves that produce a large boom and aerodynamic vibration so intense that residents 400 meters away have registered complaints.”
The decision was made to pattern the front end of the bullet train after the kingfisher’s beak. The result? The bullet train now travels 10 percent faster and consumes 15 percent less energy. In addition, the air pressure produced by the train has been reduced by 30 percent. Thus, there s no large boom as the train passes through a tunnel.
What do you think? Did the kingfisher’s beak come about by chance? Or was it designed?

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Powered Flight

For centuries, men dreamed of flying. But a man does not have muscles powerful enough to lift his own weight into the air. In 1781, James Watt invented a steam engine that produced rotary power, and in 1876, Nikolaus Otto furthered the idea and built an internal-combustion engine. Now man had an engine that could power a flying machine. But who could build one?
The brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright had wanted to fly ever since they learned to fly kites as boys. Later, they learned engineering skills by building bicycles. They realized that the key challenge of flight was to design a craft that could be controlled. A plane that cannot be balanced in the air is as useless as a bicycle that cannot be steered. Wilbur watched pigeons in flight and noticed that they bank into a turn, as a cyclist does. He concluded that birds turn and keep balance by twisting their wing tips. He hit upon the idea of building a wing that would twist.
In 1900, Wilbur and Orville built an aircraft with twistable wings. They flew it first as a kite and then as a piloted glider. They discovered that it needed three basic controls to adjust pitch, roll, and side-to-side movement. However, they were disappointed that the wings did not produce enough lift, so they built a wind tunnel and experimented with hundreds of wing shapes until they found the ideal shape, size, and angle. In 1902, with a new aircraft, they mastered the art of balancing the craft on the wind. Could they mount an engine on it now?
First, they had to build their own engine. With knowledge gained from the wind tunnel, they solved the complex problem of designing a propeller. Finally, on December 17, 1903, they started the engine, the propellers whirred, and the craft lifted off into an icy wind. “We had accomplished the ambition that stirred us as boys,” said Orville. “We had learned to fly.” The brothers became international celebrities. But how did they manage to power themselves into the air? Yes, nature played a part.

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Hummingbirds-‘Faster Than Fighter Jets’

In terms of body lengths per second, a diving hummingbird flies faster than a fighter jet, says researcher from the University of California, Berkeley, U.S.A. Christopher Clark filmed the courtship rituals of male Anna’s hummingbirds and calculated that when swooping to impress females, “the feathered acrobats reached speeds of almost 400 body lengths per second.” Such a speed is comparatively “greater than [that] of a fighter jet” at full throttle, says Clack. When pulling up at the end of its dive, the bird is subject to a force ten times the pull of gravity-more than fighter pilots can stand without losing consciousness.

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The human eye contains a retina-a membrane with approximately 120 million cells called photoreceptors, which absorb light rays and convert them into electric signals. Your brain interprets these signals as visual images. Evolutionists have contended that where the retina is placed in the eyes of vertebrates, creatures with a backbone, proves that the eye had no designer.
Consider: The retina of vertebrates is inverted, placing the photoreceptors at the back of the retina. To reach them, light must pass through several layers of cells. According to evolutionary biologist Kenneth Miller, “this arrangement scatters the light, making our vision less detailed than it might be.”
Evolutionists thus claim that the inverted retina is evidence of poor design-really, no design. One scientist even described it as a “functionally stupid upside-down orientation.” However, further research reveals that the photoreceptors of the inverted retina are ideally place next to the pigment epithelium-a cell layer that provides oxygen and nutrients vital to keen sight. “If the pigment epithelium tissue were place in front of the retina, sight would be seriously compromised,” wrote biologist Jerry Bergman and ophthalmologist Joseph Calkins.
The inverted retina is especially advantageous for vertebrates with small eyes. Says Professor Ronald Kroger, of the University of Lund, Sweden: “Between the lens of the eye and the photoreceptors, there must be a certain distance to get a sharp image. Having this space filled with nerve cells means as important saving of space for the vertebrates.”
Additionally, with the nerve cells of the retina tightly packed and close to the photoreceptors, analysis of visual information is fast and reliable.
What do you think? Is the inverted retina an inferior structure, a product of mere chance? Or was it designed?

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WAS IT DESIGNED?

The Cold Light of the Firefly

In tropical and temperate regions, the firefly is recognized by the flashing light it uses to attract a mate, Interestingly, the firefly's light is superior to the incandescent and fluorescent light produced by man. In fact, the next time you look at your electric bill, think of what this small insect can do.
Consider: An incandescent lightbulb emits only 10 percent of its energy as light; the rest is basically wasted, discharged as heat. A fluorescent bulb performs much better, emitting 90 percent of its energy as light. But neither of these is a match for the firefly. With very few ultraviolet or infrared rays, the light emitted by this insect is nearly 100 percent energy efficient!
The firefly's secret lies in the chemical reactions of the substance luciferin, the enzyme luciferase, and oxygen. Special cells called photocytes use luciferase to trigger this process, with oxygen as fuel. The result is cold light-so named because it produces virtually no heat. Horticultural and environmental educator Sandra Mason aptly remarked that lightbulb inventor Thomas Edison "must have neen envious of fireflies."
What do you think? Did the cold light of the firefly come about by chance? Or was ti designed?

Firefly on leaf: @E.R. Degginger/Photo Researchers, Inc.; Firefly in flight: @Darwin Dale/Photo Researchers, Inc.

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