Now Josef Penninger of the Austrian Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Vienna and Min Zhao of the University of Aberdeen, UK, have demonstrated that natural electric fields and currents in tissue play a vital role in orchestrating the wound-healing process by attracting repair cells to damaged areas.

The researchers have also identified the genes that control the process. "We were originally sceptical, but then we realised it was a real effect and looked for the genes responsible," Penninger says. "It's not homeopathy, it's biophysics."

I wonder if further research could lead to a reconciliation of sorts between eastern and western medicine?

[Rad. ]

NewScientist: To heal a wound, turn up the voltage

Scientists want to adopt a set of declarations to improve the security of research that uses DNA synthesis. A proponent discusses the whys and wherefores of this effort.

They seem to be taking the K. Eric Drexler approach, being that we can't completely prevent potential threats from getting their hands on this stuff, so lets cooperate amongst ourselves and make sure we're ahead of the curve.

I basically support that, mostly because I basically agree that it's impractical and dangerous to assume you can keep people from acquiring certain technologies.

Keeping Synthetic Biology Away from Terrorists

Willy Wonka could have powered his Great Glass Elevator on hydrogen produced from his chocolate factory.
Microbiologist Lynne Mackaskie and her colleagues at the University of Birmingham in the UK have powered a fuel cell by feeding sugar-loving bacteria chocolate-factory waste. "We wanted to see if we tipped chocolate into one end, could we get electricity out at the other?" she says

Just one more thing to love chocolate for, right? I knew I should have kept my initial science major instead of my english one. I too could experiment with chocolate for a living!

Seriously though, found this very interesting.

~Heathyr

[ It's interesting more for the broad implications than the actual experiment. I'm sure recycling 100% of chocolate waste couldn't generate enough electricity to make a meaningful contribution to our power needs. But, if you can make a general purpose bacterium (or set of bacteria) that can produce useful byproducts while eating, say, normal garbage, then we've got something. -k]

New Scientist Tech - Technology - Chocolate generates electrical power

In the next decade, single-celled animals might be some of the most important figures in high technology.

"We always overestimate the immediate impact and underestimate the long-term ones. The truly revolutionary stuff will take some time to mature."

Very cool stuff. I shoulda studied molecular biology.

Playing science's genetic lottery | CNET News.com

This is Dyson at his best -- a silver star, at the very least. I can't believe no one told me about this article before now. If you're not a subscriber, check it out on your local newsstand today.

When children start to play with real genes, evolution as we know it will change forever, argues physicist and futurist Freeman Dyson.

Will the domestication of technology, which we have seen marching from triumph to triumph with the advent of personal computers, GPS receivers and digital cameras, soon be extended from physical technology to biotechnology? I believe the answer is yes.

When you were a kid, maybe you had a chemistry lab. Maybe you thought it was cool. Perhaps you also had a family pet -- a cat, maybe, or a dog. Possibly a bird, fish, or hamster.

For tomorrow's kids, the family pet and the chemistry set are become one. This is the new convergence.

And here you thought growing up with cell phones and YouTube was interesting.

[ Flying kittens, here I come! -k]

Make me a hipporoo, by Freeman Dyson | New Scientist

In 1995, Steve Sillett received a Ph.D. in botany from Oregon State University, in Corvallis. Soon afterward, he took his present job, at Humboldt, and began to explore the old-growth redwood canopy.

No scientist had been there before.

The tallest redwoods were regarded as inaccessible towers, shrouded in foliage and almost impossible to climb, since the lowest branches on a redwood can be twenty-five stories above the ground. From the moment he entered redwood space, Steve Sillett began to see things that no one had imagined. The general opinion among biologists at the time -- this was just eight years ago -- was that the redwood canopy was a so-called "redwood desert" that contained not much more than the branches of redwood trees.

Instead, Sillett discovered a lost world above Northern California.

Gold Star.

Gold star for the sense of wonder and awe.

Cimbing the Redwoods, by Richard Preston | The New Yorker

But they also declare that basic Darwinian theory — that all life had a common origin and that natural chemical processes created the building blocks of life — has been challenged in recent years by fossil evidence and molecular biology.
In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.

They also redefined math so it is no longer limited to the quantitative assessment of problems.

[ Sadly enough, I couldn't tell if the math comment was sarcasm or not at first.

I feel that this decision is bad for everyone. I have nothing against educating kids to be skeptical... in fact, the scientific method embodies that principle already. I don't even have a problem with educating kids about the variety of religious beliefs in the world. Personally, I wouldn't consider it a violation of church and state to have a section of the social studies (or whatever it's called these days) curriculum dedicated to comparative religion. I think it'd be healthy for kids to know something about other cultures' religious beliefs. That assumes, of course, that the curriculum is fair and even-handed, which is possibly a big assumption in certain places.

The truth of the matter is that any good science curriculum will teach skepticism as part and parcel of what is meant by "doing science". It's all about challenging assumptions, looking for unconsidered possibilities. If these people were serious about making science classes better, they'd encourage those things. They're *not* interested in making better scientists, but in discrediting the very nature of science, in order to dilute it with vague and untestable beliefs. It's the first step in a campaign to cause enough doubt in the scientific process that the confused masses will turn to the only apparent bastion of certainty available, which is the false certainty of the Church.

I'm not so foolish as to think any mention of religious principles in school violates rights. But I don't believe for one second that the proponents of ID have any interest in promoting science. They're destroying it, and for them to succeed will do signficant and irrevocable damage to the nation. -k]

Evolution Critics Score Win in Kansas - Yahoo! News

“If we could land the space shuttle on the moon, fill the cargo with canisters of helium-3 mined from the surface and bring the shuttle back to Earth, that cargo would supply the entire electrical power needs of the United States for an entire year,” he said.

Sounds *great* guys! If only you could A) land a space shuttle on the moon, B) extract the helium in that quantity C) PRODUCE NUCLEAR FUSION and D) sell the public on said NUCLEAR FUSION, we'd all be happy energy consumers forever.

Don't get me wrong, as a forward looking, yay-for-the-future, maybe someday, blue sky kinda thing, i'm all for it. But really, this article should have been titled "Moon potential source of helium-3, in case we ever get this fusion thing to work."

US: UW scientists want to mine moon energy | EnergyBulletin.net | Energy and Peak Oil News

The best way for doubters to control a questionable new technology is to embrace it, lest it remain wholly in the hands of enthusiasts who think there is nothing questionable about it.

Stewart Brand on the environmental movement.

[ This is a very good article, as expected. Technology Review is the only magazine I pay cover price for on any kind of regular basis... i really should just subscribe.

I want to point out the extended debate between Brand and Joseph Romm on Brand's TR blog, which I think pushes the whole thing up to almost gold star rating... I hope all the Energy and Environment people on memestreams will spend a few minutes on it : http://brand.trblogs.com/index.html

My thinking on nuclear has wavered a little lately, although I still think it's the best we've got in a lot of ways. Still, the arguments about how much benefit could be extracted from aggressive conservation are very compelling. Romm makes some good points. -k]

Environmental Heresies

This was the moment Nasa's Deep Impact projectile blasted into Comet Tempel 1, more than 130 million km from Earth. The picture was taken by the probe's mothership.

BBC News | Comet impact in pictures