as I live a few more questions

Connections: How gold testing 2500 years ago led to the atomic bomb today

Science historian James Burke begins each episode of this popular TV series with a particular event or innovation in the past (usually in Ancient or Medieval times) and traces the path from that event, through a series of seemingly unrelated connections, to a fundamental and essential aspect of the modern world.  Episode 2 is the gold-to-bomb story.  Wikipedia states: "The series is well-known for Burke's impeccable narration (especially its dry humor), historical reenactments, intricate working models, skillful use of classical music (most notably O Fortuna from Carmina Burana), and shots on location as far afield as Penang."

The link below takes you to all ten episodes of this 1978 documentary series.  Each episode is about an hour, and well worth the time. 

All ten episodes of Connections | digg story

Scientists Find Cancer Cure, But Big Pharma Isn't Interested

The drug dichloroacetate appears to target cancer cells, causing them to die. Its potency as a cancer killing agent has been tested in tissue cultures and mice, with very promising results.  However, clinical trials need to be run. Since the drug is not patentable and can be produced very cheaply, pharmaceutical companies won't fund those trials.

Why isn't this story front-page news in every newspaper?  Just because there's no pharmaceutical industry PR firm handling it?  This Canadian scientific discovery has appeared in very, very newspapers, one among them being The National Post:

A simple molecule, used for decades to treat children with rare metabolic diseases, commits "immortal" cancer cells to a natural death and could soon be used to treat many forms of cancer, according to a new study.

University of Alberta researchers were excited to discover that dichloroacetate (DCA) causes regression in several cancers, including lung, breast and brain tumours.

"It's important for the future of cancer," said Dr. Evangelos Michelakis, a professor at the University of Alberta's department of medicine and an author of the study. (Source: Leong, Melissa. "Cancer finding hailed", National Post, January17, 2007)

read more | digg story

From Digg: Scientists Watch Supernova in Real-Time

For the first time a star has been observed in real-time (well, O.K. real time plus the 440 million light-years it took for the light to reach us) as it goes supernova – a mind-bogglingly powerful explosion as the star ends its life, the resulting cosmic eruption briefly outshining an entire galaxy. UK scientists, in collaboration with international colleagues, used NASA's Swift satellite and a combination of orbiting and ground-based observatories to catch a supernova in the act of exploding.

read more | digg story

From Digg.com: Mindstorms NXT: New Lego Robotics

The $250 Lego Mindstorms NXT is somewhere between a really cool toy and a robotics lab in a box. The combination of a computerized controller, sensors, servo motors, and hundreds of Lego Technic pieces lets kids of all ages design and build sophisticated robotics.

My brother and my nephews are gonna love this :-) the whole family is LEGO builders.

read more | digg story

Colourful Universe

Click this picture for details.

Just to put things in perspective

You can't really see a galaxy with your eyes.  You can only see it with your imagination...I read in a book that there are a million grains of salt in a typical box, so 200,000 boxes have as many grains of salt as there are stars in the Milky Way.  And if you wanted to make a scale model of our galaxy by spreading all the salt out onto a big disk, the average distance between grains would be 7 miles.

Source: Rensvold, R.  "The Joy Of (Just) Looking", Sky & Telescope, July 2006, p. 126.

DNA is Cool.

This is one seriously cool project.  I may even sign up :-)

...and he only got a C?!?

He deserves at least an B+ for this idea!

Interactive Pillows

"Stemming from the need for more subtle forms of communication to complement existing IT devices, this project explores interactive pillows as a means of enhancing long-distance communications."

Hey, why stop at pillows? Why not quilts? T-shirts?? Hey, why not walk around all day wearing interactive underwear?!?!?   (Source: Smart Mobs blog)

And I also discovered a this interesting category on the Smart Mobs blog: How to Recognize The Future When It Lands On You.

Dr. Oswald Avery

Shameless plug for my hobby Web site Rainbow Lives: An Eclectic List of Over 3,500 Queer* Lives Around the World and Throughout History. Dr. Oswald Avery is just one of 3,500 gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered people listed. For a long time, biologists thought that 'genes', the units of inheritance, were made up of protein. In 1944, in what was arguably the defining moment for nucleic acid research, Oswald Avery, Maclyn McCartyand Colin MacLeod, at Rockefeller Institute (now University) Hospital, New York, proved that DNA was the material of inheritance, the so-called stuff of life. They showed that the heritable property of virulence from one infectious strain of pneumococcus (the bacterial agent of pneumonia) could be transferred to a noninfectious bacterium with pure DNA. They further supported their conclusions by showing that this 'transforming' activity could be destroyed by the DNA-digesting enzyme DNAase2'3. This work first linked genetic information with DNA and provided the historical platform of modern genetics. Their discovery was greeted initially with skepticism, however, in part because many scientists believed that DNA was too simple a molecule to be the genetic material. And the fact that McCarty, Avery and Macleod were not awarded the Nobel prize is an oversight that, to this day, still puzzles. Source: 50 Years of DNA. Ed. By Julie Clayton and Carina Davis. Nature Publishing, 2003.

Dr. Oswald Avery Originally uploaded by Quiplash.