Clipmarks | aizwaikcha's clips

GEO

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:45:07 GMT

clipped by: aizwaikcha

Can biotechnology safely reverse the course of our deteriorating biosphere?

We can alter the translational code within an organism by modifying the DNA bases of its genome, making the organism effectively immune to viral infection. My colleagues and I are exploring this within E. coli, the microbial powerhouse of the biotech world. By simply changing a certain 314 of the 5 million bases in the E. coli genome, we can change one of its 64 codons.

GEOs could take over ecosystems. This might be handled by making engineered cells dependent on nutritional components absent from natural environments. For example, we can delete the genes required to make diaminopimelate, an organic compound that is essential for bacterial cell walls (and hence bacterial survival) yet very rare in humans and our environment

Clean Water

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:36:53 GMT

clipped by: aizwaikcha

Clip Source: seedmagazine.com

In a small village in the center of Gujarat, India, a society grows from clean water and satellite maps.

Water availability has become such an intractable problem in Gujarat that the chief minister has started a program of converting farmers to industries such as salt working.

After each monsoon, the village wells would fill up, indicating that the underlying aquifer here was rain-fed. The problem was that most of the monsoon rains were streaming off and disappearing before reaching the aquifer.

Jadeja approached scientists at the India Space Research Centre in Ahmedabad, who used satellite mapping to reveal the geology of the village,

Where a lineament appeared on the satellite maps, they dug down until the route to the aquifer was exposed. At the highest ground, relying on gravity, and where the lineaments ran, he created a catchment lake for the scanty monsoon rains.

And it works. The rainwater trickles down and fills the aquifer so that village wells are full throughout the year.

Nature Capital

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:30:00 GMT

clipped by: aizwaikcha

Clip Source: seedmagazine.com

Putting the "invisible hand" to work for nature could reshape the values of capitalism.

The carbon dioxide released from deforestation accounts for roughly 20 percent of annual greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, and reducing that rate could be among the easiest and cheapest ways to slow global warming, according to experts.

(Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Degradation), is elegant in concept: REDD mechanisms will assign a carbon storage value to forests, and nations that forego razing their trees will receive credits, which can then be sold on the carbon market.

But REDDs will also test a much bigger idea: that it is possible to put a monetary value not just on nature’s goods—like oil and timber—but also on nature’s services; that we might begin accounting for the role an intact ecosystem plays as a carbon sink, a filter for water and air, a pollinator, and a home for biodiversity.

Green collar Jobs

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:25:58 GMT

clipped by: aizwaikcha

Clip Source: seedmagazine.com

Will efforts to jumpstart the economy — even ostensibly green ones — collide with efforts to save the planet?

“Shuttered factories don’t spew carbon dioxide; the unemployed drive fewer miles and turn down their furnaces, air-conditioners, and swimming-pool heaters; struggling corporations and families cut back on air travel; even affluent people buy less throwaway junk.”

The very popular answer is a new green economy replete with hybrid cars and LEED-certified buildings and green collar jobs for all.

It means weatherizing homes, upgrading heating and air-conditioning systems, building new light rail systems — all of which reduce pollution while creating new jobs that are impossible to outsource.

Bio-fuel from Algae

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:19:21 GMT

clipped by: aizwaikcha

Clip Source: seedmagazine.com

The same organisms that created the oil and gas now powering our industrial society and warming the globe can also be used to make carbon-neutral fuels.

Algae, by comparison, do not require land or clean water to grow. They flourish anywhere there is water, sunlight, and carbon dioxide, and can yield much more energy-per-acre than most other biofuel crops. In addition, algae can be engineered to secrete biofuels, which can be siphoned off without damaging the organisms themselves.

Synthetic Genomics plans to use genetically modified (GM) microalgae to produce a variety of biofuels and may even tweak some organisms to directly produce hydrocarbons, which can then be refined into gasoline, jet fuel, and other products.

Fall colors

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 14:18:00 GMT

clipped by: aizwaikcha

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

Why Fall Colors Are Different in U.S. and Europe

The red color comes from anthocyanins, which unlike carotenoids are produced only in the fall. These red pigments act as sunscreen for the trees by blocking out harmful radiation and preventing overexposure to light. They also act as an antifreeze, preventing leaf cells from freezing easily in the autumn chill.

In North America, as in East Asia, north-to-south mountain chains enabled plant and animal 'migration' to the south or north with the advance and retreat of the ice according to the climatic fluctuations. And, of course, along with them migrated their insect 'enemies'. Thus the war for survival continued there uninterrupted.

At the end of the repeated ice ages, most tree species that had survived in Europe had no need to cope with many of the insects that had become extinct, and therefore no longer had to expend efforts on producing red warning leaves.

flight patterns

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 09:26:01 GMT

clipped by: aizwaikcha

Clip Source: seedmagazine.com

Richard Barnes's photographs, taken over two years in a Rome suburb, beautifully highlight the tension between the individual and the collective. They also highlight a growing field of research studying how animals self-organize into moving bodies. The results may provide clues to questions ranging from how cells aggregate around a wound to how financial markets swing on the aggregate choices of individuals.

PORTFOLIO Flight Patterns 1/4

Stressed Skull Reveals Early Human Diet

Mon, 11 May 2009 18:16:36 GMT

clipped by: aizwaikcha

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

Stressed Skull Reveals Early Human Diet

In the image, bright colors correspond to high stresses and indicate that a bony pillar running alongside the opening of the nasal cavity acts as a strut that structurally reinforces the face against premolar loads.

Using state-of-the-art computer modeling and simulation technology, the same kind that engineers use to simulate how a car reacts to forces in a front-end collision, the researchers built a virtual model of an A. africanus skull and were able to see just how the jaw operated and what forces it could produce.

Slow down and Live

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:55:43 GMT

clipped by: aizwaikcha

Clip Source: padhumai.blogspot.com

Fix it where your eye rests

Have you ever
watched kids
on a merry-go-round?

Or listened
to the rain
slapping on the ground?

Ever followed a
butterfly's erratic flight?
Or gazed at the sun
in the fading night?

You better slow down.
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last.

Advaita philosophy and concept of Aham Brahmasmi – I am God

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:52:12 GMT

clipped by: aizwaikcha

Clip Source: destinationinfinity.wordpress.com

Advaita philosophy and concept of Aham Brahmasmi – I am God

In the above picture that I have made on ‘God’, notice one thing – It is made of so many rectangles arranged together in a pattern. We can either look at it as the rectangles arranged in pattern or look at it as the word ‘God’. Depending on how we look at it, it becomes that – either a combination of rectangles or the word.

Kamal Hassan came close to using this concept in the first song of Dasavatharam (Tamil version) – “Kallai mattum kandal, Kadavul theriyathu. Kadavul mattum kandal, kalladi theriyathu” (Meaning, if you look at it as a Stone, you don’t see God. If you look at it as God, you don’t feel the pain of even stone-pelting).

ted talks

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:42:56 GMT

clipped by: aizwaikcha

Clip Source: www.ted.com

Elizabeth Gilbert on genius; the Siftables demo;

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button won the Oscar for Best Special Effects on Sunday night. Want to know how they did it? Digital Domain effects guru Ed Ulbrich shows how Brad Pitt became the many faces of Benjamin Button.

Ed Ulbrich on aging Brad Pitt,

from land to sea

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:28:06 GMT

clipped by: aizwaikcha

Clip Source: www.earthmagazine.org

How amphibious whales returned to the sea

Millions of years ago, the first animals emerged from their watery habitat to live on dry land. After becoming fully adapted to a terrestrial environment, however, some animals, such as whales, ultimately returned to the ocean. But the evolutionary steps involved in that watery return have long been a mystery. Now, some exceptional fossils — and one really old baby — are shedding some light on how whales went back to the sea.

missing matter

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:26:35 GMT

clipped by: aizwaikcha

Clip Source: sciencenow.sciencemag.org

X-ray Vision Reveals Intergalactic Medium

Invisible web. In this computer simulation, WHIM (blue) runs along filaments between galaxies and clusters of galaxies.

Three ingredients make up the universe. Normal atomic matter accounts for less than 5%, according to analysis of the microwave afterglow of the big bang. About 22% of the universe consists of mysterious dark matter--weighty stuff whose gravity appears to keep the stars from flying out of galaxies and to hold clusters of galaxies together but that has never been directly observed. A whopping 73% of the universe consists of bizarre space-stretching dark energy that's accelerating the expansion of the universe.

remember faces

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:15:10 GMT

clipped by: aizwaikcha

Clip Source: www.seedmagazine.com

A Hormone to Remember

Oxytocin emerges as a key player in our facility for social memory.

Given only a small dose of oxytocin, individuals in a recent study found that their memory significantly improved. Not for historical dates, strings of digits, or bars of music, but for something much more significant: each other.

block fear factor

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:11:56 GMT

clipped by: aizwaikcha

Clip Source: abcnews.go.com

Beta Blocker Blocks Feelings of Bad Memories

Merel Kindt and colleagues used a beta blocker called propranolol (Inderal) to erase, at least in the short-term, the fear response induced by a laboratory-induced painful memory in humans.