Category: Uncategorized
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Headlines promote a breakthrough in “artificial photosynthesis.” It’s exciting technology, but–artificial? So what are those bacteria doing twined around the photocathodes? The Berkeley scientists’ article in Nano Letters is titled “Nanowire–Bacteria Hybrids for Unassisted Solar Carbon Dioxide Fixation to Value-Added Chemicals.” What they seem to have made is: (1) A silicon-nanowire array (the “photoanode”) splits water (H2O)…
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While high-minded researchers earnestly debate the necessity for caution on editing the human germ line, it appears that everyday bacteria and fungi have done so for millions of years–perhaps ever since the evolution of multicellular life. We are talking about horizontal gene transfer (HGT), that is, the “illegitimate” transfer of DNA from one organism to another, without…
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Back to the future—Award-winning scientists propose to ban their own Franken-genetics? Jennifer Doudna, bacterial molecular biologist, called the meeting, along with Nobel winners David Baltimore and Paul Berg. Back in 1975, Berg’s Asilomar conference famously called for banning certain kinds of “recombinant DNA,” the splicing of DNA from one species into another. A long time since then,…
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As we pointed out, yes, beaming “clean” energy to Earth still produces waste heat. So we want to spend as much of that energy as possible out there–in space. Amazingly, this is more than science fiction–NASA is doing it. Yes, despite all the sequester-hungry Congress, NASA has contracted with Tethers Unlimited to build large parts…
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This past week saw an advance in our long journey toward energy from space. As I have argued, and depict in my Frontera series, energy from space is our only hope for long-term protection of our home planet. The idea of beaming energy from solar collectors was just that–an idea–back in the twentieth century. But Japanese…
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It’s been a while since Ultraphyte blogged on biological sex. Since Brain Plague in 2000, I’ve felt there was little more to be said on the postgender world. However, trust the cell biologists to reveal twists even more bizarre than science fiction. For perspective: Back in the sixties, we were taught that people came in two sexes…
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You will recall from our Antarctic Upside Down Lakes that we came across some amazing alien life forms emerging out of five meters of ice, from another fifteen meters or more in the lake below. Our expedition was led by Rachael Morgan-Kiss, at Miami U-Ohio, sponsored by NSF–her research blog is here. These life forms are…
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This week, geologist Nora Noffke reports a study of Curiosity rover images that resemble Earth’s life forms. Noffke has long experience of interpreting fossils of ancient Earth in three billion-year-old rock formations such as Pilbara, Australia. In other words, writing grants persuading us to fund one’s camping in of Earth’s most scenic places. The diagram above shows…
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Recall the mitochondrial singularity–my hypothesis that not only did the singularity already happen, we are evolving into the mitochondria of our own machines? And, like mitochondria, we don’t even notice. From the mitochondrion’s point of view, the organelle just gives up on activities that its host cell performs for it. Welcome to our posthuman future…
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Thanks to all my friends for keeping my spirits up, while I survived Antarctica, that “harsh and unforgiving continent.” At my return, my new Ultraphyte was here waiting, custom designed by Little Fingers Gifts. You can meet the new ultra with me in February, at Boskone. Those cyano mats haven’t yet come home (still frozen at Crary Lab, I…
Joan Slonczewski 