The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled on October 13 that the words "under God" that appear in the Texas Pledge of Allegiance are constitutional.

A team of investigators led by University of Arizona graduate student Sarah Horst has approximated, in a French lab, atmospheric conditions on Saturn's moon Titan. Through a series of experiments, they bombarded the gases with radiation, producing a number of compounds, including amino acids.

Could these molecules be the basis for the development of life on Titan?

Paleontologists at the University of Texas at Austin and other institutions have investigated the fossil of a giant penguin found in Peru. At five feet tall, it would have dwarfed today's largest living penguins. A UT press release stated, "The fossil shows [that] the flipper and feather shapes that make penguins such powerful swimmers evolved early."¹

Scientists believed and taught for ages that only gene-coding DNA (which is a small fraction of DNA in human and other genomes) was functional. All other DNA was "junk" leftovers from a long evolutionary past. But recent studies have shown that non-coding DNA actually carries useful and vital coded instructions.¹

Recent survey results released by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life suggest that atheists and agnostics know more about religion than evangelicals and Catholics.