Thunderf00t: Cesium, the most reactive Alkalai metal

July 21, 2013 — xanthippa
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Catching up…

July 2, 2013 — xanthippa

Here are some links to articles I wish I could blog about, but just cannot seem to catch up enough to do so

And, in ‘awesome’ news:

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A silver bullet to fight bacteria?

June 20, 2013 — xanthippa

Well, almost…

‘Like werewolves and vampires, bacteria have a weakness: silver. The precious metal has been used to fight infection for thousands of years — Hippocrates first described its antimicrobial properties in 400 bc — but how it works has been a mystery. Now, a team led by James Collins, a biomedical engineer at Boston University in Massachusetts, has described how silver can disrupt bacteria, and shown that the ancient treatment could help to deal with the thoroughly modern scourge of antibiotic resistance. The work is published today in Science Translational Medicine1.’

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June 22, 2013 – Help Measure the Size of the Earth

June 20, 2013 — xanthippa

 

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US Supreme Court Ruling: naturally occuring DNA cannot be patented, but synthesized DNA can

June 14, 2013 — xanthippa

The full ruling can be found here.

While I have not had a chance to study the ruling in detail yet, I have no illusions that my non-legally-trained mind would be able to grasp all of the nuances of the ruling, so, please, do read it for yourself.

In the meantime, this is what the news folks are saying about it:

The Sydney Morning Herald:

‘The US Supreme Court has issued a potentially far-reaching ruling, stating that DNA in the human genome is a “product of nature” that cannot be patented.

The nine-member court’s unanimous finding on Thursday overturns exclusive rights to use genes that have been issued in recent decades by the US Patent and Trademark Office, but does allow companies to patent their developments of synthetic, so-called composite DNA.

“A naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent-eligible merely because it has been isolated,” wrote Justice Clarence Thomas, author of the decision. 

However, he went on to write that composite DNA “is patent-eligible because it is not naturally occurring”.

The decision strikes down patents issued to Myriad Genetics, which had isolated a rare gene associated with very high rates of breast and ovarian cancer in women who carry the mutation. The company had claimed the exclusive right to offer tests for the gene, based on its patent.’

Of course, this patenting of the naturally-occurring cancer genes has been the highest obstacle in cancer research and even cancer treatment, as per many medical professionals.  If you had a naturally occurring breast cancer,  you yourself could not use your own tissue to try to get better, because someone else held a patent on the DNA that had naturally occurred inside of you!
Frankly, that sounds to me like slavery by another name – and I am glad that the US Supreme Court has struck it down! It corrects some (no, not all, but you have to start somewhere) of the incredible patents irresponsibly (and, hopefully ignorantly) granted by the US Patent Office.
More sources…here is what BBC is saying:

‘The opinion said DNA came from nature and was not eligible for patenting.The US biotechnology industry had warned any blanket ban on such patents would jeopardise huge investment in gene research and therapies.

“We hold that a naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in Thursday’s opinion.

But his ruling said that synthetic molecules known as complementary DNA can be patented “because it is not naturally occurring”.’

And from The Blaze:

‘For more than 30 years, the  U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been awarding patents on human genes. But Thursday the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a patent could not be placed on naturally occurring human genes, because researchers didn’t “create” them.

Those who are praising the decision believe it will benefit both the progress of research and protect the human body  ”from the assertion of private property rights.”’

Considering that over quarter of human DNA had been patented, this is an important ruling indeed!

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CodeSlinger on Combinatorics

June 13, 2013 — xanthippa

A couple of days ago, I mentioned to CodeSlinger that one of my sons was doing research in the branch of Mathematics known as ‘Combinatorics‘.  His response was not only informative, it was just as passionate as my son gets when he talks about the subject. 

So, for your pleasure and elucidation, here is CodeSlinger’s commentary on Combinatorics:

Combinatorics… the art of counting.  Hah.  Sounds trivial.  But it is slowly becoming clear that combinatorics lies at the root of everything.
Everything.
The fundamental equations of physics are symmetrical in time – if we watch a movie of two particles coming in from infinity, bouncing off each other, and proceeding back towards infinity, we have no way to determine whether or not we are watching it backwards.  Yet a movie in which a vase falls from the table and shatters on the floor is easily distinguishable from the time-reversed version, in which a myriad of shards come flying together, assemble themselves into a vase, and jump up onto the table!
The difference, of course, is that there are many ways for the shards to be distributed about the floor, but only one way for them to be assembled into a vase.  And that difference is the essence of… counting.  This leads us to the second law of thermodynamics: entropy increases with time.  Or, if you prefer, systems evolve towards states of higher probability.  But probability is nothing other than a relative count of possibilities.  Counting again.
Without counting, there is no arrow of time.
But it gets better.  The whole idea of counting presupposes the existence of things to count.  Which requires us to draw distinctions.  And indeed, we find that distinction is the fundamental act by which something comes out of nothing.  Assuming that a distinction can spontaneously arise out of the void, it will do so – because there are more ways for the void to be cloven than for it to be whole.  Counting again.
If we picture a distinction as a boundary in a space – a closed curve in the plane, a closed surface in space, and so on, then we see that the lowest number of dimensions in which a boundary can assume a configuration that cannot shrink to nothing is… three (the simplest such configuration is the trefoil knot).  Thus we see hints of how a universe of 3 spatial dimensions and one time dimension can spontaneously arise out of nothing.  All because of counting.
Similar considerations explain how this universe comes to contain fundamental particles, and why the have the properties they do.  And ultimately, why consciousness is possible.  All of human feeling can be reduced to drawing or perceiving distinctions, and all of human thought can be reduced to classifying and counting them.
Thus we have the age-old question of which is more fundamental: mathematics or logic.  For centuries men have been trying to derive one from the other.  Finally, a little-known genius by the name of George Spencer-Brown settled it by showing that you cannot derive mathematics from logic, and you cannot derive logic from mathematics.  But there is a more fundamental system, which he called the Laws of Form, from which you can derive both.
He begins with one primal element, which can be viewed as an entity (a distinction) or an action (drawing a distinction).  A boundary can be seen as a way of naming the interior (calling), or as an injunction to cross into the interior (crossing).  Having drawn a distinction, we can draw another one, either beside the first (recalling), or around the first (recrossing).  On this base he lays down two laws, as follows
The law of calling: recalling is the same as calling.
The law of crossing: recrossing is the same as not crossing.
If we denote a boundary as (), then recalling is ()() and recrossing is (()), and we can write these two laws very succinctly as
()() = ()
(()) =
where the right hand side of the second equation is literally empty, denoting the void.
And from this basis, utterly brilliant in its irreducible simplicity, he derives all of mathematics and symbolic logic:

Spencer-Brown, G, 1969: Laws of Form, London: George Allen & Unwin.

But this is only the beginning of the story.  Frederick Parker-Rhodes asked what happens when you repeatedly draw a distinction and get a multitude of identical entities.  From this, he developed a calculus of distinct but indistinguishable entities:
 

Parker-Rhodes, A F, 1981: The Theory of Indistinguishables: A search for explanatory principles below the level of physics, Synthese Library, vol. 150, Springer.

And on that, he constructed what he called the Combinatorial Hierarchy – system whereby the spontaneous emergence of distinctions from the void leads to… the standard model of particle physics.  Astounding!  Even more astounding, he never published this work!  It was finally published for him posthumously by John Amson (see linked pdf):
 

Parker-Rhodes, A F, & Amson, J C, 1998: Hierarchies of descriptive levels in physical theory.  Int’l J. Gen. Syst. 27(1-3):57-80.

The construction he outlines in this paper was implemented as a computer program by H. Pierre Noyes and David McGoveran (again, see linked pdf):
 

Noyes, H P, & McGoveran, D O, 1989: An essay on discrete foundations for physics.  SLAC-PUB-4528.

So when I say that combinatorics lies at the root of everything, I really do mean everything!
It is brilliant!
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It’s Alchemy, I tell you!

May 27, 2013 — xanthippa

Turning cement into metal?

Apparently so:

“This phenomenon of trapping electrons and turning liquid cement into liquid metal was found recently, but not explained in detail until now,” Benmore said. “Now that we know the conditions needed to create trapped electrons in materials we can develop and test other materials to find out if we can make them conduct electricity in this way.”

The results were reported May 27 in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the article “Network topology for the formation of solvated electrons in binary CaO–Al2O3 composition glasses”.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-05-cement-metal.html#jCp

 

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Catching Up on Interesting Stuff

May 27, 2013 — xanthippa

Over the last little while,  have come across some very interesting articles and such which I want to post about – but simply don’t have the capacity to fully explore.  So, I’d like to catch up by presenting a whole bunch of them in one post for your pleasure!

UPDATE:  A pregnant British woman is arrested for walking down the street in Great Britain and carrying the British flag.  Really!

Interesting DIY inventions are coming out of China.

The mystery of the ‘Skeleton Lake’ (India) seems to be solved.

Were the Eastern Crusades defensive wars?

On the copyright/erosion-of-privacy/governments-spying-on-citizens/corporatism front:

Meanwhile, in Science:

And in the economy:

Islam:

Political Islam/Creeping Sharia:

General politics:

And if you want more links to various articles to read, check out Steynian 468nth.

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Thunderf00t: The Potential of Mankind

May 23, 2013 — xanthippa

 

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NASA, Google to share a quantum computer

May 16, 2013 — xanthippa

Let me just say – quantum computers are neat!

Not that I know that much about them, but my older son is rather fascinated with them and is actively focusing his education so as to work with them.  As a matter of fact, he recently started his first research job in Mathematics – and, yes, it is in the field of combinatorics.

When I heard that NASA is getting a quantum computer, and that Google is going in on the deal, I got very excited indeed!

It will be shared by Google, Nasa, and other scientists, providing access to a machine said to be up to 3,600 times faster than conventional computers.

Unlike standard machines, the D-Wave Two processor appears to make use of an effect called quantum tunnelling.

This allows it to reach solutions to certain types of mathematical problems in fractions of a second.

Effectively, it can try all possible solutions at the same time and then select the best.’

Science rules!

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