Youtube summarizes pop culture, so I can do other stuff February 5, 2023
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I have no words for this February 1, 2023
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1980s Hallucination January 29, 2023
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This gem is apparently a production of something like the Swedish Film Board (they have one, right?) and many, many nights of substances illegal the world over. I laughed all the way through, and I’m a seriously old fart with no sense of humor anymore.
Nanobots Cure Pneumonia in Mice December 13, 2022
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Well, that’s an exciting title, but a trifle misleading. Yes, the mice were fully cured of pneumonia but not by nanobots. It was algal cells whose surfaces are speckled with nanoparticles containing antibiotics. A bit of a cheat I admit, but I would never have thought of it. The algal cells migrate through the lungs delivering antibiotics (actually the cell membranes of neutrophiles, which I also would not have thought to do). Looks like this:
Pretty slick, right? The big green bit is the algal cell itself and the crumbly crust is the added cell membranes. The researchers (Wang and Zhang) treated the infected mice directly through their windpipes. Some were treated with this nanobots and got well in a week. The untreated mice died in three days.
I’ve had pneumonia twice; I know how they feel.
Homework: “Nanoparticle-modified microrobots for in vivo antibiotic delivery to treat acute bacterial pneumonia” by Fangyu Zhang, Jia Zhuang, Zhengxing Li, Hua Gong, Berta Esteban-Fernández de Ávila, Yaou Duan, Qiangzhe Zhang, Jiarong Zhou, Lu Yin, Emil Karshalev, Weiwei Gao, Victor Nizet, Ronnie H. Fang, Liangfang Zhang and Joseph Wang, 22 September 2022, Nature Materials.
DOI: 10.1038/s41563-022-01360-9
Dunno Why It’s Such a Big Deal November 26, 2021
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Apparently making a flying car is not that tough.
Local Color January 29, 2021
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Around the corner from me on King Road in San Jose. This is possibly the nicest bit of graffiti in my admittedly suburban neighborhood. In fact, I don’t recall seeing any in my daily 3-6 miles of walking around the neighborhood (old people need lots of exercise to stay fit) except this lovely bit. It is certainly a mutant with the Buddha among the cactus and the Mayan dragon and all.
COVID-19 Cracked by A.I. November 7, 2020
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The Summit computer at Oak Ridge has looked at scads and scads of data about Covid and pretty much figured out what Covid is and what to do about it therapeutically. There is an excellent writeup of it on Medium.com which I am not going to plagiarize, but tell you all to read right here.
Game-changing engineered PET enzyme to break down and recycle plastic bottles April 13, 2020
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Nature published a paper by researchers at Carbios and Université de Toulouse that describes an enzyme that breaks down PET plastics (the kind in those clear water bottles that everyone uses…and throws away–like 800 billion tons, which is only an estimate) really, really fast and efficiently. They made the protein which “achieves, over 10 hours, a minimum of 90 per cent PET depolymerization into monomers, with a productivity of 16.7 grams of terephthalate per liter per hour (200 grams per kilogram of PET suspension, with an enzyme concentration of 3 milligrams per gram of PET)” with good, old-fashioned genetic engineering to solve a recycling problem two generations in the making.
Carbios plans to begin testing its enzyme in 2021 in a demonstration plant near Lyon, France.
The paper is available at Nature (not just the abstract, if using the link below), and is fairly readable by a layman.
Homework: An engineered PET depolymerase to break down and recycle plastic bottles: V. Tournier, C. M. Topham, A. Gilles, B. David, C. Folgoas, E. Moya-Leclair, E. Kamionka, M.-L. Desrousseaux, H. Texier, S. Gavalda, M. Cot2, E. Guémard, M. Dalibey J. Nomme, G. Cioci, S. Barbe, M. Chateau, I. André , S. Duquesne & A. Marty
A.I. and Gene Regulation December 27, 2019
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Understanding gene regulation is a bitch. Seriously, this is one of the thornier problems of science today and it is because the complexities of living cells, with the thousands of proteins in each cell, make tracing a single protein’s regulation just as complex as hell. Smart guys Tareen and Kinney have figured out a way for AI to interpret (some) interactions using massively-parallel reporter assays to figure out the biophysical basis for (some) gene regulation…which is more than we have had heretofore. They did this by assigning nodes and weights with explicit physiochemical interpretations. This last is the important bit; many AI algorithms are very difficult to interpret, so the underlying “logic” is impenetrable to humans. The smart guys made many of the decisions explicit, so they would be better able to understand the “logic” by which the characterizations were derived.
Homework: Biophysical models of cis-regulation as interpretable neural networks,
Nanowired Brain-like Functions December 25, 2019
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Nation Institute of Material Science geeks have created a complex metallic nanowire structure that mimics brain-like functions, such as memorization, learning, forgetting, becoming alert and returning to calm.
This indicates that self-organizing structures can be built from random arrangements of conducting fibers. This suggests that many different types of brain-like activity can be induced from stuff other than the kind of materials from which you and I are made.
Intelligent life on other worlds might be made of very different stuff indeed.
Homework: “Emergent dynamics of neuromorphic nanowire networks” by Adrian Diaz-Alvarez, Rintaro Higuchi, Paula Sanz-Leon, Ido Marcus, Yoshitaka Shingaya, Adam Z. Stieg, James K. Gimzewski, Zdenka Kuncic and Tomonobu Nakayama, 17 October 2019, Scientific Reports.
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-51330-6
Two-headed Bearded Dragon December 23, 2019
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Octobrella December 11, 2019
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Purloined from reddit.
Meanwhile, at Hydra HQ November 10, 2019
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Fluorescent Pink Flying Squirrel February 8, 2019
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Not a punk band name, the North American flying squirrel fluoresces pink at night under ultraviolet light. Not a mistake, either:
“I looked at a ton of different specimens that they had there,” Kohler said. “They were stuffed flying squirrels that they had collected over time, and every single one that I saw fluoresced hot pink in some intensity or another.”
In order to expand the search, the team at Northland College in Wisconsin went to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and gathered more specimens. In all, they researched over 100 specimens ranging across numerous states, all confirming the “pink theory.”
I mean it’s not hunter’s orange, but it’s a start.
Tentacle-nosed Catfish February 8, 2019
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This is one of six catfish species recently discovered in Amazonian basin rivers and streams.
Cute little creatures, aren’t they?
Joshua Trees National Park February 8, 2018
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Warning: foul language
JTNP is a dangerous place for the unwary naturalist or hiker. Forget about scampering naked through the desert during a full moon; this place is populated by a truly bewildering variety of spiked, barbed,pointed and sharp plants guaranteed to impale an incautious passerby on the briefest hike, or trip to the restroom.
Take, for example, this beautiful specimen of Darwinian selection:
This is known as the Spanish Bayonet, the Pointy Bastard or the Unwary Thighstabber. My wife says this is her least favorite plant, possibly due to unfortunate personal experience. Spanish Bayonet is very stiff and the point is very hard. I do not doubt this pointy bastard could be used as a bayonet.
Next a more delicate, elegant stiletto of a plant:
Note the barbed thorns and tips. This herd-culling flora is known as the Lacerating Motherfucker, for good reason. Sometimes called the Wait a Minute, it grabs anything organic which brushes it and drags it towards itself in a series of painful spasms. One presumes the plant benefits passively from the organic matter of its victims decaying around it, thus enriching the local soil. It is perhaps worth noting that many desert species secrete chemicals which inhibit the germination of other plants. This helps explain why there are small bare patches surrounding most plants in Joshua Tree National Park. Worth noting, too, is that the space is just large enough for small critters to pass, but not humans.
Ouch.
Then there are the more obvious instruments of torture, the standard cacti, some of which are exceptionally well defended1, such as the Malevolent Spiny Fucker:
Closely related in terms of armament and disposition is That Dangerous Spiked Fucker:
Not lastly (because I’m typing this in a very cramped camping chair and I need to go have a beer) is the Psychotic Rapier Clusterfuck. Do not trip near this plant.
As usual, the wonders of Nature make me sit back and admire her ingenuity from safely inside a locked room with air conditioning, a stereo system playing Vivaldi and powerful adult beverages to celebrate my narrow escapes.2
I would not have you finish reading this little note without understanding that the grandeur of the place is unparalleled in my experience. The Flintstonesesque scenery will make any visitor think they have landed on another planet designed by Irwin Allen, or maybe Ray Harryhausen.3:
1. The best defense is a good offense.
2. I haven’t even talked about the night hikes through the Stabby Wastelands following an experienced madman to “my spot”, nor the boulder scrambling urges that demand to be addressed by the Flintstones’ rock formations here. Honestly, I don’t know what I was thinking.
3. Seriously. Maybe Luc Besson?
EXCITING UPDATE:
The Best Things in Life January 1, 2018
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The momentous stuff in my life pales in comparison with a good camping trip…like this one. At our favorite local (abandoned) campground:
Within walking distance of here we found, well, this:
All found within twenty minutes, each cluster was part of a greater whole.
This is the view across the pond…reflected in the water, then rotated and cropped in GIMP, the poor man’s Photoshop.
Absolutely Juvenile July 26, 2017
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I enjoyed this immensely, but it is about one in the morning and I have been up since about five cleaning house and preparing for my next Great Adventure.
I am probably punchy.
My Next Hobby February 7, 2017
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Stuffilike.net 