Humor
Do you wish you knew more about molecular biology?
If you do but find conventional textbooks a little dry then this could be just what you're looking for....
Yes, it's the Manga Guide To Molecular Biology - surely the ultimate geek stocking filler?
Need to know how the liver enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase works in breaking down alcohol?
Fear not - the Manga will explain the science, but with plenty of crazy explosions and excessive motion blur as well!
Check it out now:http://www.neatorama.com/2009/09/30/the-manga-guide-to-molecular-biology/It may be very geeky, but if it can help…
I don't doubt for an instant that there are millions of guys (including myself) out there who would go see this if it was real:
h/t to Andrew Sullivan.
Read the feed:
Well, it seems that someone has finally decided that with all this talk of "end-times" and the "rapture" it was important that we have a more scientific approach to determining how close we actually are to such events.
Hence we have the Rapture Index, which is billed as "The prophetic speedometer of end-time activity". By going to this site, you can quickly see what the Rapture Index value is and determine whether to sit down with a cup of coffee and await the end, or whether you still need to go to work.
There is plenty of useful information provided that can help you assess the…
This is too funny. A website called Kill or Cure? has been compiling links to science stories in The Daily Mail (UK) and their apparent "ongoing effort to classify every inanimate object into those that cause cancer and those that prevent it".
A snippet of the entries under "M"...
The past few times I've driven in New Jersey (in NJ for work, through NJ to get to fun places), I've noticed a sign that says "Restricted CMV."
To me this means HLA-restricted cytomegalovirus. I doubt this is what the DMV is telling drivers. Then again, it is New Jersey, so you never know.
(N.B. I did a quick search and discovered that NJ has a law requiring Commercial Motor Vehicle drivers to obtain a New Jersey Commercial Driver's License. Mystery solved?)
I had occasion last week to tell the story of my high school friend Allen (name changed to protect his by now certainly stellar career). We had met again back in Evanston, before starting our sophomore years in college. I’d just finished a summer job as camp counselor in Wisconsin’s north woods; Allen had worked for Searle laboratories in Skokie.
I’d enjoyed my summer, but was a bit envious of Allen’s scientific job. “How was it?” I wanted to know.
“Fred, did you know that to test pharmaceuticals, they need a lot of sheep urine?” No, I didn’t know that…
Just when you thought you've heard every discrimination story in the book, another one comes along. The most recently persecuted group? Jedi Knights.
According to the story out of the UK, the "founder of a religion based on the Star Wars movies has accused Tesco of discrimination after he was ejected from one of their stores for wearing a hood.
Daniel Jones, 23, who founded the International Church of Jediism, was asked to leave the supermarket in Bangor, North Wales as his robes fell foul of Tesco rules which forbid the wearing of 'hoodies' in their premises. The leader of the Jedi Church…
I recently attended the International Developmental Biological Congress in sunny Edinburgh, Scotland. Here is my diary.
Day One
Saturday, 8:15 AM: Arrive Edinburgh hotel, early. Wait for room in hotel bar. Soccer, a hateful game, blares at 8:30 in the morning. Bourbon appropriate?
Saturday, 5:15 PM: Take walking tour of city. Discover no one in Scotland speaks English.
Day Two
Sunday, 1:00 PM: Pick up press credentials. Easy because no other sane journalists here.
Sunday, 1:15 PM: Discover that British have nickname for my profession that actually makes it sound dirty: “…
Knowing Josh, he probably trademarked his Second Cutest Babies EVER series (check out the most recent post here), so in hopes of pre-empting IP lawsuits I went for one notch lower on the cutest baby ever list. It's a baby, a zoo animal, and really cute, so I couldn't think of a better way to describe it than how he already has. Although honestly I think the adult's reaction is the best part of the whole video.
"The emission or absorption of a quantum by a nucleus bound in a crystal leads in general to an alteration of the vibrational state of the crystal lattice, which takes up the recoil momentum. On account of the quantization of the internal energy, the crystal can absorb the recoil energy only in discrete amounts. With decreasing temperature the probability of excitation of the internal states decreases more and more, so that for soft gamma rays for a part in the quantum transitions the crystal as a whole takes up the recoil momentum. The quanta emitted or absorbed in this situation undergo…