Self-Assembling Flu Vaccine

(Phenomena::Not Exactly Rocket Science) – Ed Yong:

Sculpture is all about deliberation. You painstakingly chip marble from a block, or slowly assemble Lego bricks into a shape, or carefully pile clay upon clay. But we’re now entering a world where people can sculpt with proteins, creating amazingly intricate nano-scale shapes just a few billionths of a metre across. And when it comes to these nano-sculptures, the deliberation lies in selecting your materials in the first place. Once that’s done, you throw them all together and watch them assemble themselves.

Masaru Kanekiyo and Gary Nabel used this approach to create a new breed of flu vaccine that (in animal tests) provides better and broader protection than the ones we currently have. …

phenomena…2013/05/22/better-flu-vaccine

One-Armed NGC 4725

(APoD) – NGC 4725 is over 100 thousand light-years across and lies 41 million light-years away in the well-groomed constellation Coma Berenices. …

apod/ap130530

Linux Mint 15 “Olivia”

(The H Open) – Sarah Nottingham:

Linux Mint 15 in the Cinnamon variant uses Cinnamon 1.8, which was introduced in early May with major new features including desklets, a new screen saver and screen locking tool and software for managing Spices (bundles of extensions, desklets and themes). …

h-online.com/-1873491

It’s a Miracle!

(FTB::Mano Singham) – It is hard for people to get their minds around small probabilities, very long times, the very small, and the very large, which is why people have a hard time accepting the theories of evolution, quantum mechanics, relativity, and cosmology, which depend crucially on them.

And the intuitions that we do have can lead us astray. This is why people attach great significance to events like someone dying after they dreamed about them or hearing from someone they had casually thought about a day earlier. It seems so unlikely that they think it must have some causal connection or deeper meaning. In reality, what would be truly extraordinary is if people experienced no such coincidences in their lives.

Mega-preachers in Africa claim to be able to produce miracles. One such preacher who has reportedly 500,000 people attend his monthly services tells a skeptical reporter that people would not flock to his church in large numbers if there were no miracles. On the surface, this seems like a reasonable argument. So if we exclude false information or fraud, what might be happening? …

singham/2013/05/30/its-a-miracle

Just-About-Birds and Not-Quite-Birds

(Phenomena::Not Exactly Rocket Science) – Ed Yong:

Scientists from the University of Bristol recently showed that the evolutionary relationships between different dinosaurs are continuously changing in the light of new fossils. It’s a bit of an etch-a-sketch science – no sooner are family trees drawn before they’re re-drawn again. Even well-known transitions are prone to big shake-ups. …

phenomena…2013/05/29/the-changing

120 Hours of Centaurus A

(Slate::Bad Astronomy) – Phil Plait:

Centaurus A is a nearby galaxy with a weird history. It’s an elliptical galaxy – a giant cotton ball collection of stars – that was, until recently, two separate galaxies that collided and merged. It has a huge dust lane cutting right across the middle, a sure-fire sign that the galaxy was the result of a cosmic train wreck.

Amateur astronomer Rolf Olsen has taken an image of Cen A. And it’s not just any image: It’s the result of a shocking 120 hours of total exposure! …

bad_astronomy/2013/05/29/active

A Curse in Miracles

(FTB::Pharyngula) – Sastra:

Woe is me and alas! Pity me, for I am a secular humanist and gnu atheist embarked on trying to read the quintessential New Age non-dualistic blueprint for spiritual transformation, Dr. Helen Schucman’s A Course in Miracles.

And it is heavy going indeed. …

pharyngula/2013/05/26/a-curse

The Girl Who Turned to Bone

(The Atlantic::Health) – Carl Zimmer:

Unexpected discoveries in the quest to cure an extraordinary skeletal condition show how medically relevant rare diseases can be. …

theatlantic…2013/06/the-mystery

Wikipedia:

ACVR1
BMP4

Lunar Corona over Cochem Castle

(APoD) – This bat-like apparition does not shine on clouds passing over Gotham city. Instead, the cloud bank in silhouette against a colorful lunar corona was spotted over Cochem, Germany from the banks of the river Moselle. …

apod/ap130525

Jurassic Park

(Slate Science) – Brian Switek:

I wish that digging dinosaurs were as easy as Jurassic Park made it look. I really do. The “raptor” fossil – called Velociraptor in the film, but really a Deinonychus to paleo pedants such as myself – that Grant and Sattler’s team exposes is buried under the thinnest coating of sand. And the complete, articulated skeleton is so sturdy that one of the field assistants can stick his grubby hands right into the dinosaur’s nasal cavity and flick out the sand. Watch the scene carefully. It’s the only time I know of that someone picking a dinosaur’s nose has ever been shown in a feature film. …

slate…2013/04/jurassic_park

Journalism = Conspiracy to Commit Espionage

(FTB::Mano Singham) – When the US government began its harsh crackdown on WikiLeaks, mainstream journalists and media organizations in the US did not condemn it as much as they should, partly I believe because they were resentful that WikiLeaks had exposed their own failings by exposing wrongdoing that they should have uncovered if they were doing their job. At that time, some of us warned that what the US government was doing to WikiLeaks, if unchecked, would eventually be turned against the mainstream media as well. …

singham/2013/05/26/everything

Sunday Funnies

(FTB::Chris Rodda) – “Quit worrying about corroborating your sources – it’s not as if anyone’s going to take all this literally.” …

rodda/2013/05/26/sunday-funnies

ProjectLibre

(opensource.com) – Jason Hibbets:

ProjectLibre is an open source project management solution ready to give Microsoft Project a run for their money.

In late summer, there will be a new version of the Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGI) modular architecture that will allow connector modules for better integration with enterprise solutions. The ProjectLibre team will also be releasing a cloud version, allowing project teams to effectively work together regardless of location, and a Portfolio Project Management solution is also in the works.

We interviewed Marc O’Brien, co-founder of ProjectLibre, to find out how they plan to edge their way into the market. …

opensource…13/5/projectlibre

Interview With a Dead Man

(New Scientist Health) – Helen Thomson:

Nine years ago, Graham woke up and discovered he was dead.

He was in the grip of Cotard’s syndrome. People with this rare condition believe that they, or parts of their body, no longer exist.

For Graham, it was his brain that was dead, and he believed that he had killed it. Suffering from severe depression, he had tried to commit suicide by taking an electrical appliance with him into the bath. …

newscientist…23583

The Word ‘Terrorism’

(FTB::Mano Singham) – ‘Terrorism’ has now become a word without much meaning except to be brandished as a political weapon. Witness the absurd fuss in the US over the fact that president Obama initially referred to the Benghazi attack as an ‘act of terror’ as opposed to ‘terrorism’. In the wake of the recent ghastly murder of British soldier, Glenn Greenwald revisits the question of the selective use of the word, and of what causes some acts to be labeled as terrorism and others not. …

singham/2013/05/24/selective

Opening Prayer

(FTB::Mano Singham) – In 1993, Tom Snyder submitted the following prayer to the Salt Lake City council with the request that he be allowed to recite it.

OUR MOTHER, who art in heaven (if, indeed there is a heaven and if there is a god that takes a woman’s form) hallowed be thy name, we ask for thy blessing for and guidance of those that will participate in this meeting and for those mortals that govern the state of Utah; We fervently ask that you guide the leaders of this city, Salt Lake County and the state of Utah so that they may see the wisdom of separating church and state and so that they will never again perform demeaning religious ceremonies as part of official government functions;

We pray that you prevent self-righteous politicians from misusing the name of God in conducting government meetings; and, that you lead them away from the hypocritical and blasphemous deception of the public, attempting to make the people believe that bureaucrats’ decisions and actions have thy stamp of approval if prayers are offered at the beginning of government meetings;

We ask that you grant Utah’s leaders and politicians enough courage and discernment to understand that religion is a private matter between every individual and his or her deity; we beseech thee to educate government leaders that religious beliefs should not be broadcast and revealed for the purpose of impressing others; we pray that you strike down those that misuse your name and those that cheapen the institution of prayer by using it for their own selfish political gains;

We ask that the people of the state of Utah will some day learn the wisdom of the separation of church and state; we ask that you will teach the people of Utah that government should not participate in religion; we pray that you smite those government officials that would attempt to censor or control prayers made by anyone to you or to any other of our gods;

We ask that you deliver us from the evil of forced religious worship now sought to be imposed upon the people of the state of Utah by the actions of misguided, weak and stupid politicians, who abuse power in their own self-righteousness;

All of this we ask in thy name and in the name of thy son (if in fact you had a son that visited Earth) for the eternal betterment of all of us who populate the great state of Utah.

Amen.

…

singham/2013/05/23/an-opening