Pushing Ice, by Alastair Reynolds March 19, 2019
Posted by stuffilikenet in Awesome, Books, Brilliant words.add a comment
Pushing Ice, by Alastair Reynolds is a heck of an audiobook. The story is of comet miners detoured to the outer reaches of the solar system to chase Janus, an ice moon of Saturn[0] that has suddenly accelerated away from orbit. They are the only ship within range, so not really a lot of choice…and there is the rub. Some choices get made, and some terrible things happen.
In Space!
Sorry. Had to get that out.
This isn’t just a scantily-clad space opera; I genuinely felt for the characters as mountains of Bad Things happened to them over really long time spans…because they got a little tiny bit time-dilated[1]. Okay, more than a tiny bit. There are ultimately power grabs, friendships lost, horrible deaths, miraculous medicine, aliens[2], war, rebellion, intrigue, tropical fish, heroic rescues and weird science.
A yummy confection that took about twenty hours and I found it intense enough to turn off often, as I was feeling the characters fear and grief. Nice work, that.
Available on Amazon (link above) and at sfpl.org.
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[0] “Janis, Ice Maid of Saturn” would make a great movie serial.
[1] Not a science book at all, but simple discussion of physics here and there didn’t break narrative flow.
[2] It’s no fun without aliens.
Malaria Cure in the Offing March 11, 2019
Posted by stuffilikenet in Awesome, Science.add a comment
Shamelessly stolen words:
“In 2016, 216 million people fell sick due to the Plasmodium falciparum parasite and 441,000 died of malaria, according to the report.
The study demonstrated that a single oral dose of 400 mg DSM265 — given seven days after blood stage infection was experimentally induced in healthy subjects who had not previously been exposed, is sufficient to clear low-level P. falciparum parasitemia.
The study confirmed multiple previous studies collectively comprising more than 100 subjects, which also found that DSM265 could clear the disease-causing, non-sexual stage parasites from infected humans.”
This is far too good a bit of news to not shout from rooftops. My uncle (sort of) suffered from malaria from Guadalcanal in 1945 until he passed away eight years ago. Millions of others are a few years from total cure, possibly in a single dose.
No Homework Tonight: Don’t have a cite for this yet; it’s supposed to be in today’s Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology, but I can’t find it.
EXCITING UPDATE: American Society for Microbiology. “Anti-malarial shows promise in human clinical study.” –don’t ask me what page.
Stuffilike.net 