We live in interesting times. From the (UK) Telegraph: Professor Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin, from the University of St Andrews in Scotland, have worked out a way of reversing this pheneomenon, known as the Casimir force, so that it repels instead of attracts. Their discovery could ultimately lead to frictionless micro-machines with moving parts that levitate. But they say that, in principle at least, the same effect could be used to levitate bigger objects too, even a person. More at Dr. Ulf Leonhardt’s page on this research. The dinosaurs were always doomed. From the BBC, a report on […]

We’ve heard it all by now. “Stem cells will cure everything.” “Stem cells kill embryos.” “Stem cells are overrated.” We hear much less about the science of it all. (Oh, no! Not science!) And that’s too bad, because it can tell us a lot about the rest of what we hear. Let’s get to it. Think of stem cells like tiny organ transplants, and you’ll be pretty close to grasping the essentials. If you could grow a new heart from your own tissues, there wouldn’t be any need to worry about transplant rejection. That’s how adult stem cells work when […]

RFID chips in employees and, for better news, the beautiful effects of adaptive optics in astronomical imaging.

There’s way more out there than a procrastinator like me can write good posts about. So, when the spirit moves me, I’ll post a few links. IBM researchers demonstrate the feasibility of storing data on a single atom. (Original sources here and here. Another, slightly more detailed, popular article here.) The storage densities are vast. Somebody pointed out you could put all of YouTube on one small chip, or thereabouts. I’m sure the advertising industry will figure out a way to fill it all with crap by tomorrow. Possible vaccine against multiple sclerosis. This is over two weeks old by […]

You know those “How to tell if you’re a redneck” lists? This morning it occurred to me that there’s a foolproof way to tell if you’re a geek: getting up at three a.m. to stare at the moon for a couple of hours because it’s a funny color. Better than television, as far as I’m concerned. Way better. Pictures below the fold.

A reinterpretation of 30 year-old Viking data could mean that there were about as many bacteria in the Viking samples as there are in some Antarctic environments. These were the samples confidently pronounced as totally lifeless, proof that there not only wasn’t, there couldn’t be, any life on Mars. Dr. Houtkooper hypothesizes that the carbon – oxygen balance observed in the samples could be a sign of microbes that use hydrogen peroxide as an anti-freeze. Bacteria like that are known from extreme environments on Earth. They’re not just an idea, at least on Earth. However, I can’t find the original […]

I know nobody here needs convincing that the free market doesn’t provide the best medical care for all. But it’s not just the care part that struggles. The real heart of medicine is cures and, best of all, preventing disease altogether. Profit-driven drug delivery actually hampers finding the best solutions. I’d say the most insidious effect is how research gets shunted away from the really good stuff. That takes away benefits in the future, and we don’t even know what we’re missing. It could be the cure for cancer or a vaccine against the common cold. Maybe it’s something that […]

Now all they need is the ten-minute cure. No, seriously, this is interesting and promising. While a patient is in a doctor’s or dentist’s office, the test can be run and provide results that are much more sensitive than x-rays or other diagnostic methods. It’s done with “biomarkers.” All cells have hundreds (thousands?) of different proteins on their surfaces, and the specific kinds are characteristic of specific cells. Cancer cells are bizarre in many ways, and have lots of unusual proteins not otherwise found on normal cells. It’s possible to produce a complementary protein that can bind to a specific […]

Mark Lilla, professor at Columbia University, has written a long article“The Politics of God” in the Aug. 19, 2007, NYTimes. Shorter Lilla: people who think belief and state should be separated exist, but lots of people want God, the whole God, and nothing but the God. The article explores the history of and people’s need for religion in politics. [O]ur problems again resemble those of the 16th century, as we find ourselves entangled in conflicts over competing revelations, dogmatic purity and divine duty. We in the West are disturbed and confused. Though we have our own fundamentalists, we find it […]

This is one of my Big Peeves. It’s so huge, it’s not even a pet. The incredibly dumb treatment of science in entertainment is only the beginning. As someone who’s on both sides of that fence, a professional biologist and a rarely-paid science fiction writer, the thing that drives me screaming batshit crazy is when the mental midgets don’t follow their own rules. Ars Technica has an excellent post on two physics profs in Florida, Efthimiou & Llewellyn, who detail a whole series of nonsense. The excuse for the crap is always that the story comes first. Can’t get in […]

This was on BoingBoing August 10th, but it’s too good to pass up so what the hell. Better late than never. Here’s a graphic example of how far away we are from tapping the energy that is all around us, while we stare ourselves cross-eyed on oil. It’s a Stirling engine, made from paper no less, chugging away on the heat from a coffee cup. Stirling engines, to define terms, work by using temperature differences as their source of power. Any difference will tend to equalize, like water flowing down hill, and that flow can be tapped. There are temperature […]

Due to anatomical constraints, humans (and mammals generally) can really only have sex with one partner at a time. And if two people are having sex, then the fact that person A is having sex necessarily means person B is too. We know all this. So how is it that we’re so ready to believe research which says men have more sex partners than women? How could the scientists who did the research not notice that little flaw in their project? Gina Kolata highlighted the issue with respect to heterosexuals in a recent NY Times article. She cites David Gale, […]

Actually, what Arthur Clarke said was “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” but that wouldn’t fit in a title, and it’s true either way. Paper batteries. Whoda thunk it. (Hat tip to Space Cowboy for giving me the idea of blogging this.) Seriously. Paper batteries. Actually, what they mean is carbon nanotubes arranged in a sheet of paper which acts as a battery when placed in the right sort of liquid. A battery is just a way of having a source of electrons, moving those electrons from point A (the electron donor) to point B (the electron acceptor) […]

We’re hearing more and more about biofuels because they’re an alternative fuel (i.e. “good”), because they don’t increase carbon dioxide in the air (“good”), because they can be produced any time any where (“good”), they can be used in current cars (best of all), and are generally the solution to a zillion looming problems. If it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is. The first problem with biofuels is figuring out what people are talking about. Ethanol from corn? Crop waste used in power plant cogeneration? Methane gas from landfills? Or composting toilets? Alcohol from cellulose? Fryer […]

These are astonishingly beautiful animals sometimes confused with jellyfish. They’re not. They are actually our cousins. (Admittedly, jellyfish are also beautiful, and if you go far enough back, they’re also our cousins, but work with me here, okay?) Since sea squirts are related to us, that means they’re useful as well as beautiful. Useful in medical research, that is. Pictures and fun facts below the fold. Painted tunicate, photo: divemasterking tunicate, with resident goby photo: Chika TunicateDidemnium molle,beautiful, but not quite the same movie star quality. photo: Boogies with Fish To be exact, only the immature stages have the famous […]

It’s gone by other names, primarily female circumscision, as if it was nothing more than the male equivalent of removing the foreskin. It’s supposedly another one of those awful things that “can’t happen here.” Read the CNN report about the British, who may finally get serious about stopping the practice, and you’d never guess that tens of thousands of children suffer through the mutilation and its lifelong consequences right here in the good old U. S. of A. Why the bizarre silence? Because it’s a “cultural issue,” you know. The approved term is now female genital cutting. Some people felt […]