Category: Uncategorized
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Sorry I’ve been busy starting new students at Bacteria Lab Kenyon. For the moment: Today my office PC received an unexpected visitor. No, it’s not a leaf. How it got here, up on third floor of a building with sealed windows, we have no idea. Can anyone identify this amazing insect?
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At a fan’s request, I’m sharing more about my brief stint with the Antarctic Fire Department. Yes, there is a fire department in McMurdo–you can see above, the Antarctic medallion on the truck, and Ob Hill in the background. The Christmas tree ornament on the pole was cute–it was December after all. Intrigued, I asked the fire…
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The most amazing experience I had in London was visiting the Natural History Museum. Built in 1881–just a few years after Darwin’s Origin of Species–this extraordinary building (by Alfred Waterhouse) intended to represent a “cathedral of nature.” The columns of this ornate building purposely differ in style, representing the diversity of natural life. Animals of all…
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This Antarctic crab gets my vote for the most bizarre summer lifestyle. The crab grows in hydrothermal vents, part of the ocean floor where volcanic heat drives hydrogen-rich molecules up through a super-heated spring. Hydrogen sulfide, methane etc. Bacteria can oxidize these molecules for food; such bacteria inhabit the guts of tube worms and giant clams…
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“Prove to the court that I am sentient.” Picard’s famous challenge from STNG Measure of a Man inverts the question most asked about AI, “Prove it’s sentient.” There is a growing drumbeat about the Singularity, the day the machines take over. My own take is the Mitochondrial Singularity, the argument that the singularity is ongoing, ever since humans invented…
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This remarkable report claims that scientists have built a new limb from the collagen matrix of a rat’s paw. They started with the limb from one rat, and used a detergent to wash away all the cells from the collagen that holds the limb’s shape. Presumably they kept the bone too; I’ve not yet got…
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My appearance on Inside Story didn’t work out (travel mixup–someone confused Kenyon with Ohio State) but still generated some blog discussion on one of our favorite themes: When will computers be as smart as humans? What about their lack of common sense, intuition, and other intrinsically human qualities? What happens to humans once singularity is achieved? Thoughts, anyone?
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Bacteria Lab students are wrapping up a paper on “polar aging” of E. coli. What does that mean? Every time a bacterial cell divides, each daughter cell inherits an old pole (preexisting cell division) and a new pole (formed by division). Inevitably, a line of cells inherits an old pole for many generations. In the colony…
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A 3D tracheal splint was custom designed for each baby, suffering a rare disorder in which the baby can’t breathe out. The splint holds the trachea open, then dissolves naturally as the baby grows and no longer needs the help. No doubt this is just one of many such ingenious devices to come out of…
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Human blastocyst (early embryo) produces virus-like particles (green) We’ve discussed before how ancient endogenous retroviruses evolved into our own human genes, including HERVs (human endogeount retroviral genes) that encode essential products such as placental syncitin. So far, though, it has been assumed that the viruses themselves were extinct; that only their nucleobase sequence (ATCG etc.)…
Joan Slonczewski 