People who live with pets notice that some animals moult in the spring and fall. Losing feathers or fur is unattractive, but it leads to a beautiful new coat in which to survive the winter or to attract a mate. It turns out humans also moult and grow attractive new coats of hair. Read more…
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Humans go through moult and grow new pelts
The Universe is so big that it can be difficult to accurately measure the huge distances between things in it. But no longer, because now a team of researchers working on the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey can measure distances between galaxies with 1 percent accuracy . Read more…
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The Universe Can Now Be Measured to 1% Accuracy
ericgoldman writes “People often feel passionately about fonts, but government decisions shouldn’t depend on what font people choose for their written submissions. In Massachusetts, a sex offender overturned the decision of a hearing officer after it was determined that (among other possible biases) the hearing officer posted to Facebook that he ‘can’t trust someone who drafts a letter in arial font!’ and ‘I might be biased. I think arial is inappropriate for most things.’ This is just the latest example of how social media rants by government workers are causing problems for the workers — and the people they deal with.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Sex Offender Gets New Hearing After Hearing Officer Rants Against Arial Font
It may sound like a Halloween prank, but the Balkan News Agency claims that a team of scientists in a Transylvanian university has created artificial blood. The researchers say that they have successfully tried it on mice. If human tests work, this could be one of the biggest breakthroughs in modern medicine. Read more…
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Transylvanian university scientists create working artificial blood
schliz writes “A team of scientists from Japan and New Zealand have helped baker’s yeast live 50% longer than usual by artificially stabilizing a genetic sequence called ribosomal DNA. The study’s authors say that rDNA is a ‘hot spot for production of the aging signal.’ Because rDNA genes are very similar in yeast and humans, they say their experiment is a first step towards anti-aging drugs.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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New Research Could Slow Human Aging
For the last 10 years, if you wanted to understand a complex legal issue in the news, your first stop was Groklaw. A free, open source exchange of theories and ideas, Groklaw has been an invaluable resource for lawyers and laymen alike. Last night, its owner pulled the plug. It was a matter of privacy. Read more…
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Legal Site Groklaw Shuts Down Rather Than Face NSA in Heartrending Post
Synthetic biology researchers at MIT are creating simple analog computers in living cells, complete with fluorescent “displays.” Rahul Sarpeshkar and Timothy K. Lu engineered genetic circuits in E. coli so that the bacteria glows with a brightness determined by the amount of certain chemicals surrounding it. From Science News: By making bacteria glow more or less brightly depending on the number of different chemicals around, the new circuit can compute answers to math problems, Lu’s team reports May 15 in Nature. To add 1 plus 1, for example, the circuit would detect two chemicals and crank up the bacteria’s glow to “2.” ” Analog circuits boost power in living computers ” (Science News) ” Cell-Based Computing Goes Analog ” (The Scientist) ” Synthetic analog computation in living cells ” (Nature)
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E. coli engineered into an analog computer
Another day, another Johnny Cash-accompanied test of Elon Musk’s SpaceX Grasshopper rocket—which is not to say this isn’t exciting, because consistency is the name of the game for a commercial reusable rocket. Especially the Grasshopper, which can take off and land vertically. In this most recent test, the Grasshopper takes off, hovers at about 820 feet, and lands neatly back on its launch pad. For those who haven’t been keeping track, that’s about triple the height of the last test , and six times higher than the test before that ! [ Elon Musk ] More »
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Watch SpaceX’s Grasshopper Break Its Record For Taking Off and Landing Vertically
When Google announced it was rolling out a fiber network in Provo, Utah, it wasn’t clear how or why it had chosen the city. Turns out, Google has managed to secure a deal to buy its entire municipal fiber network—which cost $39 million to build—for just a single dollar. More »
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Google’s Buying Provo’s Entire Fiber Network, Worth $39m, For $1
The coming of the Hyperkin RetroN 3 marked the end of doing a rain dance while blowing into your childhood SNES. And now Hyperkin is so excited about expanding compatibility that they’re skipping ahead and calling their next console RetroN 5 . More »
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RetroN 5 Console: Play All the Best Games From Your Wasted Youth