Category Archives: Impact

Sci-Tech impact area topics

Clothes that generate electric power

“Someday we’ll all be wearing clothing that generates electricity.” (…not just static) This statement or something comparable appears in a science or technology story at least a couple of times a year. The broad implication is that by some (new) technology, the motions of daily life will cause our clothing to generate electricity, which can [...]
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Protein pathway competition regulates embryo development

One thing I’ve noticed in following scientific developments for a long time is that when something unexpected is discovered it very often adds to the complexity. Here’s a recent case in point, first, I’ll let a piece of the announcement speak for itself, and then I’ll explain the context: Until now, scientists believed these pathways operated [...]
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New study: Metagenomics gets a gut feel

I couldn’t resist the pun in the title of this post: Metagenomics gets a gut feel. The newly released study behind it, which is having considerable play in the media and on the internet, is the first genetic catalog of the microbes (bacteria, fungi, others) that make up the microbiome (ecosystem) of the human gut. [...]
Posted in Impact: DNA Decoding | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Species Loss: It is statistics but not a game

Most biologists will tell you that the Earth is losing species faster than it is replacing them. One prominent biologist, Simon Stuart, chair of the Species Survival Commission for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), has said about two new reports coming out in March (2010): “Measuring the rate at which new species [...]
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Climate Change: Madness in their methane?

A few years ago the whole ‘cow farts are global climate threat’ thing seemed more than a bit overblown. (Cow and other farts being mostly methane, dontcha know.) It became difficult to mention methane in connection with global warming without raising images of bovine herds worldwide in a massive chorus of postprandial flatulence. Besides, CO2 [...]
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Follow-up: Maybe Chicxulub didn’t do it

Not enough evidence. It’s one of the most important, and difficult to evaluate, criticisms in science. In his blog “In terra veritas” post 41 Angry Scientists, Bryan (a geologist) takes on the Science article The Chicxulub Asteroid Impact and Mass Extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary. He has two main complaints: The ‘panel of 41’ that [...]
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Reading the brain for motor control – without implants

It’s been decades since neuroscience began the search for ways ‘read the brain’ so that people can move, communicate, and respond when their physical body can no longer do so. Just about every year there are advances, and announcements, of this and that device, which can interpret the brain’s neuron electrical pulses to perform something [...]
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Science panel: Chicxulub did it

Sometimes ‘the facts’ discovered by science answer questions by themselves, but much of the time facts are used for competing hypotheses. Sometimes more facts settle the issue of which hypothesis better fits the facts, but like as not, the ‘better fit’ is a matter of interpretation. If the issue at hand is important enough, scientists [...]
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Can culture change the genome?

Almost from the beginning of our knowledge of genetics, it’s been asked, “Can the way we (humans) live change our genetics?” These days this is much the same as asking if culture can change the genome. It’s actually a relatively old question. The question got its biggest boost from one who is now a boogeyman for [...]
Posted in Impact: Genetic Modification | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Giving Roger Ebert a voice

The Pulitzer prize-winning movie critic, Roger Ebert, lost his voice to cancer several years ago. He is one among many thousands of people a year who lose their ability to speak from disease or injury. There are some technology fixes for replacing the physical reproduction capability. (See SciTechStory: Replacing the larynx with a palatometer) However, [...]
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The Bloom Box fuel cell system

Normally this would be a simple news item: Bloom Energy, Inc. (California, USA) introduces a new electric power producing fuel cell device – the Bloom Box. There would be some description: The Bloom Box uses inputs of methane-type fuel (from natural gas to bio-fuels), burns them at about 1000C, and with proprietary catalytic converters produces [...]
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Small RNA: New pathways for gene regulation?

Sometimes research discovers more than expected. (It could be called serendipity.) In this case, researchers from the Max Planck Institute in Berlin (Germany) were exploring the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, which is a microscopic beasty that lives in the gut of about 50% of humanity. H. pylori, as it is abbreviated, has been linked to a [...]
Posted in Impact: DNA Decoding | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

More ‘junk DNA’ that actually does something

This is not a screed, or it shouldn’t be. However, the next time you read something about ‘junk DNA’ – check its provenance. It’s true that for years researchers have looked at the huge tracts of genetic material that doesn’t appear to do anything vital (that is, coding for proteins) – which is about 98% [...]
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Four-letter codons: A new synthetic biology playground

All life (that we know of) is built from the 4 nucleotides of DNA (Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine, Thymine and in RNA Uracil instead of Thymine), which provide the code for creating 22 amino acids, which are then combined into proteins. An important part of the process is the reading of the DNA code by RNA [...]
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iGEM: Proselytizing for synthetic biology

What happens when genetic engineering goes viral? I’m using the word viral in its Internet sense. The New York Times has a fascinating article on the rise of synthetic biology and genetic engineering in the ranks of amateurs, mostly students, and under the guidance of an organization called iGEM. Here’s where “viral starts”… …synthetic biologists want [...]
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Quantum chemistry – a new world

Here’s the story in a nutshell: Scientists have long known how to control the internal states of molecules, such as their rotational and vibrational energy levels. In addition, the field of quantum chemistry has existed for decades to study the effects of the quantum behavior of electrons and nuclei—constituents of molecules. But until now scientists have [...]
Posted in Impact: Quantum Physics | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Doubling down on climate change prediction

For many years, decades really, climatologists, meteorologists, ecologists and other scientists have labored to produce hundreds of reports, studies, books that detail their own field’s view of what’s happening to the Earth’s climate. Thousands of scientists, several decades of work, googolplexes of data, unending discussion and debate – in the end, however, a rather simple [...]
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Microtelecom – where few phones have gone before

It’s called synergy, combining the technology of solar cells with the technology of a low wattage cell-phone base station. It’s also called ‘microtelecom’ – a telephone network built with minimal requirements for energy, technical knowhow, and money. An example is the work of VNL in Haryana, India, which is rolling out its ambitious “WorldGSM” cellular [...]
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Global warming may have unforeseen (and nasty) tipping points

Similar to the financial crisis of 2008, or the over-fishing of the seas, the dynamics of the global warming problem are pretty well known. What is not known are all the possible ‘tipping points,’ those events (big or small) that can push the dynamic forces into crisis, and how rapidly crises can develop. That’s the [...]
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Pervasive Gaming

If you’re not a gamer (one who plays computer-based games), and maybe even if you are; you may not be aware of a relatively new ‘field of study’ called pervasive gaming. Don’t go off on the wrong track with “all-pervasive” gaming; this is localized. Pervasive gaming is heralded as an ‘emerging genre.’ (How’s that for [...]
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