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POPSGFP Researchers Win Nobel Prize Osamu Shimomura (pictured), Martin Chalfie, and Roger Tsien won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work on green flourescent protein, a tool that has become ubiquitous in modern biology as a tag and molecular highlighter, vastly improving our ability to understand what goes on inside cells. I wrote about the discovery of GFP back in 2001. Click on the link to see my story, Biotech's Glowing Breakthrough.
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POPSCoca-Cola is a spermacide and kills AIDS? Kind of scary to think that Coca-Cola is shown scientifically to kill life... I guess Doctor MOM was right all along... Oh did you catch the thing about it killing the AIDS virus too?
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POPSEven Royal Eugenicists Can't Stop GM Foods -Professor Norman Ellstrand, ecological geneticist at the University of California, and Dr. Harash Narang, a microbiologist at the university of Leeds have both echoed Prince Charles' assertion that GM foods are a potential ecological disaster, along with dozens of other scientists and researchers who admit that GM foods have not been properly tested.
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POPSDevastation of World's Coral Imminent? According to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters, the world's coral could be devastated by rising CO2 levels. This isn't just an issue for science --- the tourist economy in various countries would also be devastated if coral reefs were to vanish. I've written about this before here: http://www.forbes.com/2008/03/06/travel-sustainable-coastlines-forbeslife-cx_rr_0307travel.html. More recently, I wrote about endangered natural wonders and the business of tourism here: http://www.forbes.com/travel/2008/09/15/travel-endangered-ecosystems-forbeslife-cx_rr_0915travel.html.
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POPSHappy Chocolate! This is great information. One Happy Chocolate is 11.5gm. Not sure the weight of B vitamins and amino acids but still, one chocolate a day may keep the Dr. away. See my Home Page for more information.
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POPSBiologists on the Verge of Creating New Form of Life "We've made more progress on how the membrane of a protocell could grow and divide," Szostak said in a phone interview. "What we can do now is copy a limited set of simple sequences, but we need to be able to copy arbitrary sequences so that sequences could evolve that do something useful." By doing "something useful" for the cell, these genes would launch the new form of life down the Darwinian evolutionary path similar to the one that our oldest living ancestors must have traveled. Though where selective pressure will lead the new form of life is impossible to know.
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POPSThe Teen Brain Human and animal studies, Jensen and Urion note, have shown that the brain grows and changes continually in young people—and that it is only about 80 percent developed in adolescents. The largest part, the cortex, is divided into lobes that mature from back to front. The last section to connect is the frontal lobe, responsible for cognitive processes such as reasoning, planning, and judgment. Normally this mental merger is not completed until somewhere between ages 25 and 30—much later than these two neurologists were taught in medical school. There are also gender differences in brain development. As Urion and Jensen explain, the part of our brain that processes information expands during childhood and then begins to thin, peaking in girls at roughly 12 to 14 years old and in boys about two years later. This suggests that girls and boys may be ready to absorb challenging material at different stages, and that schools may be missing opportunities to reach them.
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POPS68 Molecules that hold the key to all Cellular Life Currently, the vast majority of medical research looks to the human genome and proteome for answers, but those answers remain elusive, and perhaps for good reason. “We have now found instances where the pathogenesis of widespread and chronic diseases can be attributed to a change in the glycome, for example, in the absence of definable changes in the genome or proteome,” Marth said, adding that, as biomedical researchers, “we need to begin to cultivate the integration of disciplines in a holistic and rigorous way in order to perceive and most effectively manipulate the biological mechanisms of health and disease.” Marth believes that biology should become more integrative both in academic and research settings. “I’m one who believes that we don’t need to sacrifice breadth of knowledge in order to acquire depth of understanding.”
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POPSBig step in tiny technology Dr Manfred Buck, of the University¿s School of Chemistry, explained, "One of the central issues in nanotechnology is the development of simple and reliable methods to precisely arrange molecules and other nanoscopic objects. One promising route intensively investigated by scientists around the world involves the ability of molecules to spontaneously assemble onto a surface. What we have done is successfully combined two strategies which are complementary but, so far, have been explored independently, and it is this combination which opens up unprecedented opportunities for accessing the ultrasmall length scale." "The potential of this approach lies in its flexibility on a scale, about 1/10000 of the diameter of a human hair. Using molecules as building units, the features of our structures are less than 5 nanometres in size, which enables us to control structures and materials at dimensions where new properties emerge."
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POPSMcCain's VP pick... I thought these two excerpts were especially relevant to how the pick of Palin will viewed. All i can say for now is that it sure does shake up the chemistry of the election.
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POPSK Streeters Bring About a Little Bipartisan Comity To "Mile-High City" Home Run. More than two dozen corporations and associations rented out Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies, for the day on Tuesday, giving Members, lobbyists and little kids the chance to take in some batting practice on real major league grounds. The highlight of the day: Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) hitting one out of the park. Like any good ballgame, the event featured beer and burgers — all courtesy of a long list of sponsors. They included Citi, Consumer Electronics Association, BNSF Railway, AT&T, AstraZeneca, Amgen, American Chemistry Council, Brown Rudnick, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America, U.S. Telecom, Qwest, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, National Association of Manufacturers, Lilly, Koch and Comcast. The names of those sponsors rotated throughout the event on the scoreboards.
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POPSElements brought to life online from BBC News: The chemical elements are being brought to life online in a series of YouTube videos filmed at a UK university. The project by a team in Nottingham is designed to stimulate interest in chemistry and comprises videos illustrating each of the 118 elements. They feature a variety of experiments, some of which are too dangerous to be performed in classrooms. In the videos, scientists also recall personal anecdotes and amazing facts about each element in the table, from hydrogen (1) to Ununoctium (118).
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POPSTransformers - The Nature of Alien Life
The driving factor is a pragmatic desire to improve mental capacity. Alien beings may have already reached a point in their evolution where, having exhausted the potential of their biological brains, they have taken the next logical step and opted for robotic brains equipped with artificial intelligence. This brain swap may not be as far off for humans as one might think. In only a few decades, the computer revolution here on Earth has produced supercomputers capable of performing more than a quadrillion calculations per second. According to research by Hans Moravec, an artificial-intelligence expert at Carnegie Mellon University, that rate trumps the human brain’s estimated top speed of 100 trillion calculations per second. Some scientists speculate that in a few decades, an event called the technological singularity will occur, and machines armed with computer brains will become sentient and surpass human intelligence. Civilizations equipped with technology light-years ahead
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