Topics: Biology, Planetary Science, Research, Tardigrades They can survive temperatures close to absolute zero. They can withstand heat beyond the boiling point of water. They can shrug off the vacuum of space and doses of radiation that would be lethal to humans. Now, researchers have subjected tardigrades, microscopic creatures affectionately known as water bears, toContinue reading “Every Tank Has Its Limits…”
Category Archives: Biology
Adversary, Friendly, or Neutral…
Topics: Aerodynamics, Applied Physics, Biology, Exoplanets, General Relativity, SETI May 17, 2019- No, little green men aren’t likely after the conquest of humanity. Boyd’s piece for Phys.org highlights the reason why the Pentagon wants to identify UFOs: they’re unidentified. If a warfighter on the ground or in the sky can’t ID an object, that creates aContinue reading “Adversary, Friendly, or Neutral…”
Ransomware, and Biofuels…
Topics: Biology, Biofuels, Climate Change, Dark Side, Economics, Environment The carbon footprint of corn ethanol shrunk by 23% between 2005 and 2019 as farmers and ethanol producers adopted new technologies and improved efficiency, according to a new analysis published in the academic journal Biofuels Bioproducts and Biorefining by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory.Continue reading “Ransomware, and Biofuels…”
Biological Fukushima…
Topics: Biology, COVID-19, Existentialism, Pandemic Note: Many stories are coming out of Seychelles. It is the most vaccinated nation on earth that is seeing rising cases of the Coronavirus due to tourism by Indian elites. We’re not going to solve this piecemeal, nor treating each other in our backward, moribund tribal “traditions.” This fight isContinue reading “Biological Fukushima…”
Panspermia…
Topics: Astrobiology, Biology, Cosmology, SETI Life, for all its complexities, has a simple commonality: It spreads. Plants, animals, and bacteria have colonized almost every nook and cranny of our world. But why stop there? Some scientists speculate that biological matter may have proliferated across the cosmos itself, transported from planet to planet on wayward lumpsContinue reading “Panspermia…”
Elephants, Mice, and Clocks…
Topics: Biology, DNA, Evolution, Research In her laboratory in Barcelona, Spain, Miki Ebisuya has built a clock without cogs, springs, or numbers. This clock doesn’t tick. It is made of genes and proteins, and it keeps time in a layer of cells that Ebisuya’s team has grown in its lab. This biological clock is tiny,Continue reading “Elephants, Mice, and Clocks…”
Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics…
Topics: Biology, COVID-19, Dark Humor, Existentialism, Mathematics, Politics Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Mark Twain, also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics A follow-up to Tuesday’sContinue reading “Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics…”
VOC…
Topics: Biology, COVID-19, DNA, Research Variant Reported cases in US Number of Jurisdictions Reporting B.1.1.7 16,275 52 B.1.351 386 36 P.1 356 25 Source: CDC Download Accessible Data [XLS – 738 B] CDC is closely monitoring these variants of concern (VOC). These variants have mutations in the virus genome that alter the characteristics and cause theContinue reading “VOC…”
Asteroids, Dinosaurs, and Rain Forests…
Topics: Asteroids, Biology, Evolution, Existentialism, Research Note: Working on two reviews, and my research proposal. It’s a very busy writing semester. Dinosaur and fossil aficionados are intimately familiar with the meteorite strike that drove Tyrannosaurus rex and all nonavian dinosaurs to extinction around 66 million years ago. But it is often overlooked that the impact also wipedContinue reading “Asteroids, Dinosaurs, and Rain Forests…”
Women’s History Month, and CRISPR…
Topics: Biology, Chemistry, DNA, Nobel Prize, Research, Women in Science This year’s (2020) Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to two scientists who transformed an obscure bacterial immune mechanism, commonly called CRISPR, into a tool that can simply and cheaply edit the genomes of everything from wheat to mosquitoes to humans. The award went jointlyContinue reading “Women’s History Month, and CRISPR…”
Physics and Nano 