…and scientific paradigm shifts, from A Jacksonian.
[Via Joe Katzman]
Category Archives: Science And Society
The Origin Of Life
An interesting new theory, for those well versed in organic chemistry.
[Update in the afternoon]
This seems related:
Not content with achieving one hallmark of life in the lab, Joyce and Lincoln sought to evolve their molecule by natural selection. They did this by mutating sequences of the RNA building blocks, so that 288 possible ribozymes could be built by mixing and matching different pairs of shorter RNAs.
What came out bore an eerie resemblance to Darwin’s theory of natural selection: a few sequences proved winners, most losers. The victors emerged because they could replicate fastest while surrounded by competition, Joyce says.
“I wouldn’t call these molecules alive,” he cautions. For one, the molecules can evolve only to replicate better. Reproduction may be the strongest – perhaps only – biological urge, yet even simple organisms go about this by more complex means than breakneck division. Bacteria and humans have both evolved the ability to digest lactose, or milk sugar, to ensure their survival, for instance.
Joyce says his team has endowed its molecule with another function, although he will not say what that might be before his findings are published.
More fundamentally, to mimic biology, a molecule must gain new functions on the fly, without laboratory tinkering. Joyce says he has no idea how to clear this hurdle with his team’s RNA molecule. “It doesn’t have open-ended capacity for Darwinian evolution.”
Not yet.
Daisyworld
…meet rainmaking bacteria:
Barbara Nozière of Stockholm University, Sweden, and colleagues suggest that surfactants secreted by many species of bacteria could also influence the weather. While these are normally used to transport nutrients through membranes, the team have shown that they also break down the surface tension of water better than any other substance in nature. This led them to suspect that if the detergent was found in clouds it would stimulate the formation of water droplets.
This is the kind of thing that makes me skeptical about bureaucratic solutions to planetary engineering, natural or otherwise.
Recommendations For The Academies
Paul Spudis provides us with his thoughts for the goals of future space policy. I pretty much agree with it. In fact, it seems as though it should be obvious that we should be working to develop the resources off planet, but you’d never know it from NASA’s current plans.
My Brain Hurts
Living in a city apparently dulls the mind:
…scientists have begun to examine how the city affects the brain, and the results are chastening. Just being in an urban environment, they have found, impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control. While it’s long been recognized that city life is exhausting — that’s why Picasso left Paris — this new research suggests that cities actually dull our thinking, sometimes dramatically so.
Could this explain why they vote Democrat?
Kermit Feels Their Pain
It’s not easy being green:
The unexpected discovery of a nest of red-cheeked squirrels amidst the huge, partially constructed MegaPyre Solar Power plant has halted construction, casting doubt on the viability of what has been considered to be the environmentalist’s crown jewel of renewable power facilities.
The 20 gigawatt plant was expected to provide electricity to much of southern California, and was only 6 months away from completion when the nest of squirrels, which are on the endangered species list, was found. Due to federal regulations regarding endangered species, moving the nest to another location is not permitted.
The situation has confounded local environmentalists, who are now evenly divided on whether the solar power plant or the nest of squirrels is more important to their cause.
Hear that little sound? That’s the sound of the world’s tiniest violin.
[Yes, I know it’s a joke. The twenty gigawatts, if nothing else, is a dead giveaway.]
Into Arthropods?
Here’s the blog for you. It’s a good guide for IDing creepy crawlies.
[Update a few minutes later]
Not related, and yet it sort of is. How did pterosaurs get into the air?
In The Eye Of The Beholder
The science of attractive faces.
A Critical Space Technology Issue
Would entry heating from orbit pop a kernel of popcorn?
I don’t really have time to think about it much right now, but the answer is (as is often the case), it depends…
Man Bites Dog
Here are two stories that are kind remarkable, in terms of their locale. First, the Huffpo, of all places, says that Al Gore is a scam artist:
You are probably wondering whether President-elect Obama owes the world an apology for his actions regarding global warming. The answer is, not yet. There is one person, however, who does. You have probably guessed his name: Al Gore.
Mr. Gore has stated, regarding climate change, that “the science is in.” Well, he is absolutely right about that, except for one tiny thing. It is the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind.
Contemplate it for a moment, even go read it in whole, before considering the second, a protest of thousands of people supporting Israel…in Paris.
Unfortunately, it was still smaller than the pro-terrorist crowds.