"Beams lost during ramp. Investigating..."
"Beams lost during ramp. Investigating..."
"Beams lost during ramp. Investigating..."
First physics at 13 TeV to start tomorrow, early morning of Wednesday 3 June 2015...
Mass grave of saiga antelopes in Kazakhstan, May 2015.
(Foto: Sergei Khomenko/Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations)
Mysterious wave of antelope deaths
Around half of the world's critically endangered Saiga antelope have died suddenly in Kazakhstan since 10 May 2015. The animals die within hours of showing symptoms, which include depression, diarrhoea and frothing at the mouth.
Herd fatality is 100% once infected, with an estimated 40% of the species' total population already dead. More than 120,000 carcasses had been found as of late May, while the estimated total population was only 250,000.
(Washington Post, BBC, Reuters)
One of many Piranesi drawings rediscovered by Georg Kabierske, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe.
"Scythians used a plant to produce smoke that no Grecian vapour-bath can surpass which made them shout aloud." (Herodotus)
Ancient Solid-Gold Bongs Discovered, Used for Weed and Opium
Archaeologists have uncovered two 2,400-year-old pure gold 'bongs' that were used by tribal chiefs to smoke cannabis during ceremonies. The historic drug paraphernalia was found alongside 7lbs of other gold items when an area of land was dug up in Russia to make way for power lines. They items had been buried in a chamber lined with stones before being concealed by a thick layer of clay. Criminologists have since carried out tests which indicate that the thick, black residue found inside the vessels comes from the cannabis and opium which the tribal royal smoked. Experts believe the items belonged to the Scythians, a nomadic warrior race who ruled large swathes of Europe and Asia between the 9th century BC and the 4th century BCE. ( Read More »
"The Image of King Uthal, the merciful, noble-minded servant of God, blessed by God."
Material Speculation: ISIS
by Morehshin Allahyari
“Material Speculation” is a digital fabrication and 3D printing project by Morehshin Allahyari that inspects Petropolitical and poetic relationships between 3D Printing, Plastic, Oil, Technocapitalism and Jihad.
The first series “Material Speculation: ISIS” is a 3D modeling and 3D printing project focused on the reconstruction of selected artifacts (statues from the Roman period city of Hatra and Assyrian artifacts from Nineveh) that were destroyed by ISIS in 2015.
Der Wissenschaftsphilosoph Prof. Dr. Olaf L. Müller zum Streit zwischen Newton und Goethe
Seit Goethe mit der tausendseitigen Farbenlehre (1810) seinen Generalangriff auf Newtons Optik (1672, 1704) lancierte, herrscht Streit über die Farben, das Licht und die Dunkelheit. Dieser Streit geht jetzt in eine neue Runde: mithilfe präziser Experimente & auf Grundlage modernster Wissenschaftsphilosophie.
Im Buch Mehr Licht (2015) präsentiere ich die wichtigsten Ergebnisse jahrelanger Forschung zum Farbenstreit, für die ich mit Physikern, Farbforschern, Wissenschaftshistorikern und Künstlern zusammengearbeitet habe.
Die Quintessenz davon finden Sie hier im Netz. Wie Sie sehen werden, hatte Goethe bessere Argumente gegen Newton, als man oft denkt. Natürlich lag Goethe nicht in allem richtig, was er gegen Newton vorbrachte. Aber seine Arbeit lässt sich als seriöser Beitrag zur Optik verstehen, von der sich Newtons Anhänger durchaus hätten beeindrucken lassen müssen. Aber sehen Sie selbst! Read More »
Science is often flawed. It's time we embraced that.
by Julia Belluz and Steven Hoffman (Vox, May 2015)
Source: Jonathan D Schoenfeld & John PA Ioannidis: Is everything we eat associated with cancer? A systematic cookbook review. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, January 2013, vol. 97 no. 1 127-134, doi: 10.3945/ajcn.112.047142.
Ronald Campbell Macfie: Metanthropos, or, The body of the future. (1928)
CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene editing in human tripronuclear zygotes
by Puping Liang, Yanwen Xu, Xiya Zhang et al. (Guangzhou, China)
Protein & Cell, May 2015, Volume 6, Issue 5, pp 363-372,
10.1007/s13238-015-0153-5
ABSTRACT
Genome editing tools such as the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)-associated system (Cas) have been widely used to modify genes in model systems including animal zygotes and human cells, and hold tremendous promise for both basic research and clinical applications. To date, a serious knowledge gap remains in our understanding of DNA repair mechanisms in human early embryos, and in the efficiency and potential off-target effects of using technologies such as CRISPR/Cas9 in human pre-implantation embryos. In this report, we used tripronuclear (3PN) zygotes to further investigate CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene editing in human cells. We found that CRISPR/Cas9 could effectively cleave the endogenous β-globin gene (HBB). However, the efficiency of homologous recombination directed repair (HDR) of HBB was low and the edited embryos were mosaic. Off-target cleavage was also apparent in these 3PN zygotes as revealed by the T7E1 assay and whole-exome sequencing. Furthermore, the endogenous delta-globin gene (HBD), which is homologous to HBB, competed with exogenous donor oligos to act as the repair template, leading to untoward mutations. Our data also indicated that repair of the HBB locus in these embryos occurred preferentially through the non-crossover HDR pathway. Taken together, our work highlights the pressing need to further improve the fidelity and specificity of the CRISPR/Cas9 platform, a prerequisite for any clinical applications of CRSIPR/Cas9-mediated editing. Read More »
Understanding life on the atomic level.
Pic from: Hiroshi Nishimasu, F. Ann Ran, Silvana Konermann et al., "Crystal Structure of Cas9 in Complex with Guide RNA and Target DNA", Cell 156, No. 5, 27 February 2014, pp 935–949, doi:10.1016/j.cell.2014.02.001
Nachtmonolog eines mechanischen Wurms
Jetzt bitte keine Panik: Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard kennt die Geheimnisse des Lebens
by Ulrich Kühne, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 22. März 2004, Literaturbeilage S. 25.
Nach der Geburt, meinte Plinius der Ältere, sind Bärenkinder formlose weiße Fleischklumpen, nur wenig größer als Mäuse, einzig die Krallen sind schon ausgebildet. Die Mutter leckt sie dann in die richtige Form. Wie lebende Materie ihre natürliche Gestalt ausbildet, aus dem amorphen Zellklumpen einer Eizelle ein in funktionsfähige Gliedmaßen und Organe strukturiertes Lebewesen entstehen, gehört zu den Rätseln, die schon manchen skeptischen Philosophen in den Glauben an die Existenz eines planvollen Schöpfers getrieben haben. Und wenn kein allmächtiger Gott, so doch zumindest die Zunge der Bärenmutter. Dass die Formen des Lebens durch blinde Mechanik entstehen könnten, scheint von vornherein ausgeschlossen. Read More »
(20.05.2015 - UNESCOPRESS) The Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, has called for an immediate end to hostilities in Palmyra (Syria) following reports from several sources that armed extremist groups have infiltrated the World Heritage site, where fighting is now ongoing.
'Cyber-archaeology' salvages lost Iraqi art
by Jonathan Webb, BBC News
Priceless historical artefacts have been lost recently, to violence in Iraq and earthquakes in Nepal. But "cyber-archaeologists" are working with volunteers to put you just a few clicks away from seeing these treasures - in colourful, three-dimensional detail.
Continue: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32742622
(The Nirgul Tablet: The beauty goddess of Hatra (Atara'ta), 2nd century CE)
Project Mosul
Project Mosul is a response to the destruction of cultural heritage by the Islamic States, and proposes to use crowd-sourced imagery to digitally reconstruct the heritage that has been destroyed.
Get Involved!
Want to help out? Pick a
location, and start uploading, sorting, masking, or processing any of the reconstructions available.
Not sure where to start? Why not start here
(Mosul Museum).
Do you know how to code?
Why not help out with building some of the tools
here
.
Whatever the case, join the conversation with the community of volunteers with our Slack channel.
Dennis Upper: The unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of “writer's block”, Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis 1974 Fall; 7(3): 497. doi: 10.1901/jaba.1974.7-497a
(The shortest scientific paper ever published.)
Engineered yeast paves way for home-brew heroin
Advance holds potential for better opiate painkillers — but raises concerns about illicit use.
by Rachel Ehrenberg, 18 May 2015
Biotechnology is about to make morphine production as simple as brewing beer. A paper published on 18 May in Nature Chemical Biology [DeLoache, W. C. et al. Nature Chem. Biol. 2015] reports the creation of a yeast strain containing the first half of a biochemical pathway that turns simple sugars into morphine — mimicking the process by which poppies make opiates. Combined with other advances, researchers predict that it will be only a few years — or even months — before a single engineered yeast strain can complete the entire process.
Continue: http://www.nature.com/news/engineered-yeast-paves-way-for-home-brew-heroin-1.17566 Read More »
