I just saw this, and I’m so excited I can barely contain myself. This is like being there at the discovery of penicillin. MIT researchers have found a way to cure viral diseases, any viral diseases, from common colds through dengue and up to HIV. (Press release, PLoS One research article.) This is one huge, massive, “Wow!” Rider drew inspiration for his therapeutic agents, dubbed DRACOs (Double-stranded RNA Activated Caspase Oligomerizers), from living cells’ own defense systems. When viruses infect a cell, they take over its cellular machinery for their own purpose — that is, creating more copies of the […]

Genetically modified food was declared too safe to label years ago. Greenpeace has been fighting to have Monsanto’s original data released. Their RoundUp resistant crops (“RoundUp Ready” in adspeak) and Bt corn are a large majority of GM crops worldwide. Monsanto lost some legal cases, the data finally became available, and have now been reanalyzed. (Via Slashdot) The bottom line? You don’t have to stop eating, but it is time to get really, really, really mad. (Background info for those who’d like it: Monsanto produces RoundUp, a glyphosate-based herbicide. That interferes with plant growth via a pathway not present in […]

Really. That would be the general color of the night sky if the universe wasn’t expanding. You’ve probably never wondered why the night sky is black. “No sun,” you point out. “Duh.” But it’s not that simple. Every single bit of sky is full of stars, all blazing away. The light may take a long time to get here, but it does get here. So, on that basis, the night sky ought to be a carpet of light from all those uncountable stars. But since the universe is expanding, they’re all moving away from us. Since they’re moving, there’s a […]

History shows that . . . [CO2] Levels similar to those now commonly regarded as adequate to tackle climate change were associated with sea levels 25-40m (80-130 ft) higher than today. That’s meters. That’s enough to drown a 10-story building. That’s enough to make several billion people move to higher ground or die. Or both. It won’t be pleasant for the people they move in on either. And that is not conjecture or a probability statement or an extrapolation. The new research was able to look back to the Miocene period, which began a little over 20 million years ago. […]

Few things are more worth celebrating than bilbies, and the second Sunday in September is their day. It’s now nearly 7 AM on Sunday in Australia, so what are you waiting for? The omniscient Wikipedia notes: They are nocturnal omnivores that do not need to drink water, as they get all the moisture they need from their food, which includes [… let’s just say “everything”]. Most food is found by digging or scratching in the soil, and using their very long tongues. Unlike bandicoots, they are excellent burrowers and build extensive tunnel systems with their strong forelimbs and well-developed claws. […]

The last couple of weeks, the world in all of Greater Los Angeles has looked like this: I’m 70 miles further west. The skyscrapers would be too small to see (and they’d be hidden behind the curve of the Earth) but the cloud looked much the same. That’s how huge it was. (There are many more amazing fire pictures at the LATimes site, besides the one by Dan Bartletti above.) Three weeks earlier, I’d been up in the mountains that are now black stumps and grey ash, visiting Mt. Wilson. This was the view from the place that was going […]

Okay, I give up. Dealing with the media’s breathless messes when reporting on science feels like an endless game of whack-a-mole, and I’d decided life is too short for that. But this one is so hysterical, it’s pulled me back in. Obesity linked to stupidity, brain scans show shouts one headline. Obese People Have ‘Severe Brain Degeneration’ moans Yahoo News. Obesity Leads to Brain Degeneration says a copycat. I’m sure you’ve seen these things too. Well, let’s plow through a small dose of the actual science because the neat thing about the truth is that it’ll set you free. As […]

With the continuing flap over Caster Semenya, it may be interesting to get some background on the biology involved. A recent article I saw mentions testosterone levels, and that made me think that perhaps (yet another) post on the biology might be useful. So this isn’t about social gender, athletics, Caster Semenya herself, or anything but biology. Modal concepts of gender see it as a binary, either-or matter, but in reality it’s way fuzzier than that. The good old X and Y chromosomes themselves don’t always come in pairs, to start with. You can have XXX, XXY, XXXXY, XYY, and […]

As a person who can only do one thing at a time (if that), all I have to say is: HA! BBC | Multitaskers bad at multitasking The people who engage in media “multitasking” are those least able to do so well, according to researchers. A survey defined two groups: those who routinely consumed [Ed. note: “consumed”?] multiple media such as internet, television and mobile phones, and those who did not. In a series of three classic psychology tests for attention and memory, the “low multitaskers” consistently outdid their highly multitasking counterparts. The results are reported in Proceedings of the […]

Not with a financial collapse. Not with death by insurance company. Those are all just human disasters. We hear them loud and clear, but they drown out the faint thrumming which is the hoofbeats of all four horsemen of the Apocalypse. They’re coming up way too fast for us. This is the worst news out there: BBC | Methane seeps from Arctic sea bed Scientists … have evidence that the powerful greenhouse gas methane is escaping from the Arctic sea bed. … As temperatures rise, the sea bed grows warmer and frozen water crystals in the sediment break down, allowing […]

Not only have I told you so, repeatedly, but so did everybody else who’s capable of coming up with four when adding two plus two, going right back to Amory Lovins and the DFHs. US’ best source of carbon-free energy is efficiency. Not just the US of course. The laws of physics are the same all over the planet. The McKinsey report [pdf] arrived at [its] figures by performing a fairly simple economic analysis: what measures, if rolled out on a large scale starting in the near future, would have a positive return on investment by 2020. Those are fairly […]

I haven’t got much done these last few days. I’ve been too busy watching the Nasa TV live feed from the Hubble servicing mission. Click on image for full size The problems they have on a mission like this are so wonderfully groan-in-sympathy familiar: stuck bolts. Like working on old plumbing, with the same issues. They’re too professional to say it, but if I was in the control room there’d be a lot of, “Watch out! Don’t strip that thing. Omigod. You stripped it.” And so on. Yesterday, Mike Massimino had to get at a failed power card inside the […]

Ecological disaster bad enough to destroy people has happened before. The only difference was the limited technology of the times, and therefore the limited scope of the dying. Sean Gallagher has a striking report, a series of pictures each worth thousands of words. That was then. Two thousand years ago, Yinpan in Central Asia was a major stop on the Silk Road. The water table changed. People couldn’t or didn’t adapt, until the water –and the people — disappeared over a thousand years ago. Soil erosion still uncovers traces of them, but the water never came back. This is now. […]

update below The news is spreading everywhere: Mexico flu ‘a potential pandemic’. In the next few days we’ll probably have a replay of the bad old bird flu days. Tamiflu! Hide in your house! Shoot the postman! Or whatever level of idiocy we achieve this time. I did one of my POPs (Pissed Off Posts) on that occasion, and I think it’s time for a rerun. First, this newest flu strain, H1N1 (CDC info), sounds vicious. It’s communicable between people (in the US, as of this morning, there were 11 cases with no fatalities) but it’s already killed dozens of […]

Actually, what I’m about to discuss is the search for ET life, but you have to start somewhere and it’s getting more clear by the day that alien intelligence is the best hope for us blog denizens to find someone to talk to. The idea that we’re not alone has a long and fascinating history, going back to Giordano Bruno who got burned at the stake for it. By the time SETI came along, things had advanced from that point. But not too far. You pretty much got burned at the academic stake for being involved in it, if they […]

Some of the codswallop on what to do about global warming — okay, ALL of the codswallop — is driving me nuts. Nuts, I tell you. If a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, next-to-no knowledge is radioactive. The latest comes via the Times: Plants buy Earth more time as CO2 makes them grow. The first breathless sentences are “Trees and plants are growing bigger and faster in response to the billions of tons of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by humans, scientists have found. The increased growth has been discovered in a variety of flora, ranging from tropical […]