Why I want to move to Reykjavik

Reykjavik’s mayor won’t form coalition with anyone who hasn’t seen The Wire

  Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Gladwell uses several stories to support his hypothesis that a person's innate abilities do not solely determine their success in life. He argues that it is also, if not more, important to understand the situations and circumstances throughout a person's life to pick out a true "Outlier."

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Battling global warming...with whale poop

 "Sperm whale faeces may help oceans absorb carbon dioxide from the air, scientists say." This is due to the iron content of the poop, which stimulates the growth of phytoplankton (photosynthetic marine plants).   http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10323987.stm

Come on med schools, pick up the slack

Until recently, most medical schools provided little information on financial factors, like how the insurance system works and how treatment costs affect patients’ behavior.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/health/04cost.html

Technology's smallest microscope, medicine's biggest ally

Engineer invents world's smallest, lightest telemedicine microscope

-Aydogan Ozcan, whose invention of a novel lensless imaging technology for use in telemedicine could radically transform global health care, has now taken his work a step further -- or tinier: The UCLA engineer has created a miniature microscope, the world's smallest and lightest for telemedicine applications.

-Telemedicine involves performing medical tests in the field and requires portable tools in a resource-limited environment and integration into a medical network e.g. hospital or central lab.

-This lensless microscope solves both these problems: (a) it is small & lightweight, and (b) simple to operate - anyone (not necessarily a doctor) can use it, and then upload the digital image via smart phone/computer to be analyzed by a medical professional.

-Potential to monitor diseases and water quality in 3rd world countries with limited health care facilities, and at a realistic cost.
http://www.physorg.com/news191170981.html

Quantum mechanics drives photosynthesis - you lost me at quantum

-Everyone has heard of photosynthesis - a process used by green plants to convert sunlight into electrochemical energy at an efficiency of nearly 100%.
-Although the overall pathway and major players are known for this process, the nitty-gritty details have eluded scientists, until now.
-Physical chemists at UC Berkeley observed 'entanglement' (a distinctive property of quantum mechanical systems) in the light harvesting complex in plants.
-Importance: huge step towards developing (a) artificial photosynthesis systems as renewable, non-polluting electrical energy sources and (b) quantum-based technologies e.g. quantum computers which are potentially thousands of times faster than conventional computers.

http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2010/05/10/untangling-quantum-entanglement/

It's about time windmills grew sea-legs

Regulators Approve First Offshore Wind Farm in U.S.

After nine years of review, the approval of the 130-turbine farm off the coast of Cape Cod gives a significant boost to the nascent offshore wind industry n the U.S.

Nanofoods - coming soon to a grocery store near you

Dangerous tampering of the fruits of nature or the solution to ending world hunger? My-oh-my, what a future debate this is going to be.

http://food.change.org/blog/view/are_nanofoods_sustainable

The future of healthcare, patient-patient interaction

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/25276/

Low battery? Just plug it in...to yourself

MEMS device generates power from body heat -- In an attempt to develop a power source that is compact, environmentally friendly, and has an unlimited lifetime, a team of researchers from Singapore has fabricated an energy harvesting device that generates electricity from body heat or any environment where there is a temperature gradient. Their device, called a thermoelectric power generator, attaches to the body and generates a power output of a few microwatts, which could be useful for powering implanted medical devices and wireless sensors.

How to make a cell for dummies

Peering Over the Fortress That Is the Mighty Cell

The scientists who created a synthetic variant are in debt to nature, time and billions of years of evolution.

Just another day in the life of a carbon nanotube

Carbon Nanotubes Boost Cancer-Fighting Cells

-One defensive strategy in the human immune system utilizes T cells, which are able to detect bad stuff in the body, replicate in lymph nodes, and then induce a strong immune response.
-Tumor cells are able to survive because they prevent tumor-specific T cells from replicating and therefore suppress any immune response.
-A technique called 'Adoptive Immunotherapy' is a treatment option, where patient's blood is drawn and T cells are stimulated and replicated in the lab before being transferred back into the patient.
-A major drawback right now is that it can take several weeks until sufficient T cells are produced.

-Yale scientists have found that carbon nanotubes mimic lymph nodes in the lab and reduce the time to produce enough tumor-fighting T cells by 1/3.
-All that is needed now is find an efficient way of removing the carbon nanotubes before re-injecting the T cells into the patient.

BP - Big Pansies

Goodbye LOST

http://espn.go.com/espnradio/player?rd=1#/podcenter/?id=5213533&autoplay=1&callsign=ESPNRADIO

Bill Simmons breaks down the series finale and wonders if 'The Wire' was both the greatest and worst thing to happen to television.

http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/lost-the-end-see-you-in-the-other-life-brother#
TV critic Alan Sepinwall's review of the series finale.

One small step for man, One giant leap for cancer treatment

(PhysOrg.com)
-'DNA -> RNA -> Protein' is the central dogma of genetics.
-A good way for me to remember complex scientific concepts is to put them in context with something simpler that I understand.
-For me the best context for this genetic concept is comparing it to opening a zip file on the computer.
     -Say you have a zip file (DNA). You cannot simply open the zip file, because it is only useful for storage.
     -In order to open the zip file you must first unzip it (transcription) into a readable file (RNA).
     -Now, when you try and open the unzipped file (RNA) it results in something usable such as a word document, pdf, or mp3 (protein).

-Most anticancer drugs target certain proteins unique to the growth and survival of tumor cells.
-These therapeutics have some limitations because of the 3-D shapes of proteins and the possibility of mutations which 'hide' the protein from the drug without changing the protein's use for the cell.
-A new approach using small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) targets a type of RNA in the cell called messenger RNA (mRNA).

-Unlike protein, mRNA is linear in shape (no bends/folds to hide itself) and has fewer potential mutations.
-This therapy is very exciting because it allows for the indirect targeting of virtually every protein.
-A major hurdle of this therapy (other than getting the siRNA into the cell is targeting only the tumor cell(s).
-Solution = packing the siRNA into nanoparticles which bind only to cancerous cells, then release the siRNA into the bound tumor cell.
-Most importantly, this combined treatment was found to be effective in a human patient during a phase I clinical trial.
-This therapy is being developed for treating cancer, but I can see it being utilized for treating nearly every disease.

NBA's Next Dunk Contest?

Nuclear fusion power - the ultimate clean energy

(PhysOrg.com) -- Imagine if you could generate electricity using nuclear power that emitted no radioactivity: it would be the answer to the world's dream of finding a clean, sustainable energy source.

Solar cells - I think they can, I think they can

Solar cells: UQAM researcher solves two 20-year-old problems
Thanks to two technologies developed by Professor Benoit Marsan and his team at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal (UQAM) Chemistry Department, the scientific and commercial future of solar cells could be totally transformed. Professor Marsan has come up with solutions for two problems that, for the last twenty years, have been hampering the development of efficient and affordable solar cells.

http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/dep_chim/rindex.php?dossierprof=prof&pagehtm=marsan.htm

How many scientists does it take to replace a light bulb? None, cause it never burns out

(PhysOrg.com) -- Light bulbs that last 100 years and fill rooms with brilliant ambiance may become a reality sooner rather than later, thanks to a National Renewable Energy Laboratory discovery.

Can you hold your breath forever?

(PhysOrg.com) -- Oxygen may not be the staple of modern complex life that scientists once thought. Until now, the only life forms known to live exclusively in anoxic conditions were viruses, bacteria and Archaea. But in a new study, scientists have discovered three new multicellular marine species that appear to have never lived in aerobic conditions, and never metabolized oxygen.