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Links Tagged With “science” (Show All Items Tagged With “science”)

Making Babies in Space May Be Harder Than It Sounds | Wired Science | Wired.com

Bookmarked via Diigo on Thursday, August 27, 2009 @ 08:54 CDT by Daniel Andrlik

This Wired article documents an interesting experiment to test the effect of zero gravity on embryo fertilization and development, but the methodology seems flawed to me, primarily because they are testing it on Earth:

To test these effects, the researchers artificially fertilized mouse eggs with sperm that had been stored inside a three-dimensional clinostat, a machine that mimics weightlessness by rotating objects in such a way that the effects of gravity are spread in every direction.

The same results may hold true in space, but we really need to be doing these experiments in orbit before drawing a conclusion.

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A Drug That Could Give You Perfect Visual Memory - io9

Bookmarked via Diigo on Friday, July 3, 2009 @ 17:43 CDT by Daniel Andrlik

This io9 article is reporting on research being conducted in Spain on a drug that enhances visual memory.

From the article:

Mice with the RGS-14 boost could remember objects they had seen for up to two months. Ordinarily the same mice would only be able to remember these objects for about an hour.

[snip]

If this protein boosts visual memory in humans, the implications are staggering. In their paper, the researchers say that it could be used as a memory-enhancer…

It’s interesting that this drug only enhances visual memory, and I’m very curious about any potential parallels this research has with the memory editing/enhancement research that has been going on in Brooklyn.

It now seems almost a certainty that we’ll all be taking memory enhancing drugs at some point in the future, as well as utilizing technologies that make direct use and manipulation of our memories possible. This raises a number of ethical questions, of which I’m not confident we as a society will answer appropriately. That’s a larger subject that I am not prepared to address in this post, but definitely worth thinking about.

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Wolfram|Alpha

Bookmarked via Diigo on Saturday, May 16, 2009 @ 08:55 CDT by Daniel Andrlik

Quite simply, I think this is one of the greatest advances in library science and computing in recent memory. This isn’t just a toy or a search engine, this is a knowledge processor that makes any factual data in its system instantly computable.

If you are a teacher or scientist, you need to be paying attention to this. In fact, if you are a human being who is engaged with any sort of data, you need to be paying attention to this as well, because while Wolfram|Alpha may not live forever, this advance, as well as any of its inevitable successors, are the future of information computing.

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Dark flow: Proof of another universe? - New Scientist

Bookmarked via Diigo on Monday, January 26, 2009 @ 08:57 CST by Daniel Andrlik

Cosmology has always fascinated me. This article, describing a dark flow discovered by scientist Sasha Kashlinsky that, if confirmed, would indicate significant flaws in our current model of the universe. It may indicate that space-time could be irregular, that matter/energy may not be distributed evenly throughout the universe, and it may indicate that after the Big Bang our universe may have collided with another.

Also, for a bit of a mind-bender check out the bit about how our universe might have been formed with a fractal distribution of matter and how that changes so much.

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Chemical brain controls nanobots

Bookmarked via Diigo on Tuesday, March 11, 2008 @ 17:44 CDT by Daniel Andrlik

How can people say we don’t live in the future when stories like this are starting to become a common place thing?

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Sea cucumber “new malaria weapon”

Bookmarked via Diigo on Sunday, December 23, 2007 @ 12:40 CST by Daniel Andrlik

This article on the BBC is about how sea cucumbers produce a protein which impairs the development of the malaria parasites. Which sounds all well in good until you find out that the solution they are seeking is to make a new class of mosquitoes.

“Ultimately, one aim of our field is to find a way of genetically engineering mosquitoes so that the malaria parasite cannot develop inside them.”

They apparently have already created a strain of mosquitoes that produce the same protein in their gut, with some success, however introducing these insects to the wild will be difficult.

“‘You would have to get the modified version to become the predominant species, and that has never been done in any setting before,’ [Dr Ron Behrens] said.”

Okay, we all know this sort of thing is the future and that it is indeed inevitable, but I can’t help being a little alarmist regarding the creation and introduction of genetically designed mosquitoes that are still interested in human blood to the world.

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Rare Mummified Dinosaur Unearthed: Contains Skin, and Maybe Organs, Muscle

Bookmarked via Diigo on Monday, December 3, 2007 @ 09:00 CST by Daniel Andrlik

“Scientists announce the discovery of the world’s most intact dinosaur mummy — a 67-million-year-old plant-eater that contains fossilized bones and skin tissue, and possibly muscle and organs.”

This is so cool.

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Velociraptor was just a scary turkey, say scientists | Science | The Guardian

Bookmarked via Diigo on Thursday, September 20, 2007 @ 20:59 CDT by Daniel Andrlik

“Velociraptor, the fearsome dinosaur made famous in the Jurassic Park films, had feathers and probably more closely resembled a big turkey than the killer screen dinosaur, scientists have discovered.”

For some reason I find this hilarious.

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Space Dust is Alive, and It’s Us

Bookmarked via Diigo on Friday, August 17, 2007 @ 21:36 CDT by Daniel Andrlik

Apparently, space dust can organize into helical shapes and begin to display some of the attributes of life. It’s interesting as yet another question of how did life start on earth. Seems plausible, but I’m withholding judgment until more research is done.

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Octosquid - starbulletin.com | News

Bookmarked via Diigo on Friday, July 6, 2007 @ 21:13 CDT by Daniel Andrlik

Possibly a new oceanic species has been discovered. The animal, which got stuck in a deep sea filter, appears to be some sort of half-octopus/half-squid creature. It’s also a very fetching shade of red.

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