Some questions we've posed persistently through the ages have remained largely unanswered: Why are we here? Is there a purpose to our lives? Is there a Creator who brought us here?

All of us have asked these questions sometime in our lives. That's when we have traditionally turned to spirituality to find the answers. However, since we live in the age of science that pervades our daily lives, it would be essential to ask: Can science support our belief in spirituality?

You might ask: Aren't science and spirituality like apples and oranges? Most people including many scientists think science and spirituality are just too different to be mixed. This apparent perception of conflict is perhaps not without some justification.

Science Could Support Spiritual Beliefs

Why are some computational problems so hard and others easy? This may sound like a childish, whining question, to be dismissed with a shrug or a wisecrack, but if you dress it up in the fancy jargon of computational complexity theory, it becomes quite a serious and grownup question: Is P equal to NP? An answer—accompanied by a proof—will get you a million bucks from the Clay Mathematics Institute.

Accidental Algorithms

Researchers are teasing out the ways we perceive flavor, from our tongue to our nose to the genes that dictate how we taste food. In the process, they're uncovering exactly which flavors will transform a dish into an offer you can't refuse

The Science of Yummy

What I.Q. doesn’t tell you about race.

If what I.Q. tests measure is immutable and innate, what explains the Flynn effect -- the steady rise in scores across generations?

Gladwell reviews What is Intelligence?

None of the Above | Malcolm Gladwell

Pregnant women do not tip over, and researchers say an evolutionary curve has a lot to do with the reason why.

Why Pregnant Women Don’t Tip Over

Keynote Address, Day 1 Network Complexity and Robustness -- John Doyle, California Institute of Technology
Neurons, Networks, and Noise: An Introduction -- Nancy Kopell, Boston University
Mixing Patterns and Community Structure in Networks -- Mark Newman, University of Michigan and Santa Fe Institute
Dynamic Networks -- Embedded Networked Sensing (Redux?) -- Deborah Estrin, University of California at Los Angeles
Dynamic Network Analysis in Counterterrorism Research -- Kathleen Carley, Carnegie Mellon University
Data and Measurement -- Current Developments in a Cortically Controlled Brain-Machine Interface -- Nicho Hatsopoulos, University of Chicago
Some Implications of Path-Based Sampling on the Internet -- Eric D. Kolaczyk, Boston University
Network Data and Models -- Martina Morris, University of Washington
The State of the Art in Social Network Analysis -- Stephen P. Borgatti, Boston College
Keynote Address, Day 2 -- Variability, Homeostasis per Contents and Compensation in Rhythmic Motor Networks -- Eve Marder, Brandeis University
Dynamics and Resilience of Blood Flow in Cortical Microvessels -- David Kleinfeld, University of California at San Diego
Robustness and Fragility -- Jean M. Carlson, University of California at Santa Barbara
Stability and Degeneracy of Network Models -- Mark S. Handcock, University of Washington
Visualization and Scalability -- Characterizing Brain Networks with Granger Causality -- Mingzhou Ding, University of Florida
Visualization and Variation: Tracking Complex Networks Across Time and Space -- Jon Kleinberg, Cornell University
Dependency Networks for Relational Data -- David Jensen, University of Massachusetts

Proceedings of a Workshop on Statistics on Networks

In December 2006, the National Academy of Sciences sponsored a colloquium (featured as part of the Arthur M. Sackler Colloquia series) on "Adaptation and Complex Design" to synthesize recent empirical findings and conceptual approaches towards understanding the evolutionary origins and maintenance of complex adaptations. Darwin's elucidation of natural selection as a creative natural force was a monumental achievement in the history of science, but a century and a half later some religious believers still contend that biotic complexity registers conscious supernatural design. In this book, modern scientific perspectives are presented on the evolutionary origin and maintenance of complex phenotypes including various behaviors, anatomies, and physiologies. After an introduction by the editors and an opening historical and conceptual essay by Francisco Ayala, this book includes 14 papers presented by distinguished evolutionists at the colloquium. The papers are organized into sections covering epistemological approaches to the study of biocomplexity, a hierarchy of topics on biological complexity ranging from ontogeny to symbiosis, and case studies explaining how complex phenotypes are being dissected in terms of genetics and development.

In the Light of Evolution: Volume 1. Adaptation and Complex Design

I've long been peeved by the ambiguity of phrases like the name of this club. What's so secret? Is it a secret club about open science? Or is it an open club about secret science? Maybe it's a nonexistent club about the science of contradiction.

The Secret Science Club is a free science lecture and arts series. It is open to the public and meets the first Wednesday of every month in the basement of Union Hall in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

So how do you keep the science secret? If you read the article by Thomas Powers about the Nine little words in the NIE, then you know that

One of the basic laws of intelligence is that no big secret can be kept that can be written on the back of an envelope.

So I guess these secrets must be like the toner in The Diamond Age:

"See, there's mites around all the time. They use sparkles to talk to each other," Harv explained. "They're in the food and water, everywhere. And there's rules that these mites are supposed to follow. They're supposed to break down into safe pieces... But there are people who break those rules [so the] Protocol Enforcement guys make a mite to go out and find that mite and kill it. This dust - we call it toner - is actually the dead bodies of all those mites.

Secret Science Club

Apropos of the stem cell news.

Synthetic biologists aim to make biology a true engineering discipline. In the same way that electrical engineers rely on standard capacitors and resistors, or computer programmers rely on modular blocks of code, synthetic biologists wish to create an array of modular biological parts that can be readily synthesized and mixed together in different combinations.

Synthetic biology has already produced important results, including more accurate AIDS tests and the possibility of unlimited supplies of previously scarce drugs for malaria. Proponents hope to use synthetic organisms to produce not only medically relevant chemicals but also a large variety of industrial materials, including ecologically friendly biofuels such as hydrogen and ethanol. The relationship of synthetic biology to intellectual property law has, however, been largely unexplored.

Two key issues deserve further attention.

First, synthetic biology, which operates at the confluence of biotechnology and computation, presents a particularly revealing example of a difficulty that the law has frequently faced over the last 30 years -- the assimilation of a new technology into the conceptual limits around existing intellectual property rights, with possible damage to both in the process. There is reason to fear that tendencies in the way that the law has handled software on the one hand and biotechnology on the other could come together in a "perfect storm" that will impede the potential of the technology.

Second, synthetic biology raises with remarkable clarity an issue that has seemed of only theoretical interest until now. It points out a tension between different methods of creating "openness." On the one hand, we have intellectual property law's insistence that certain types of material remain in the public domain, outside the world of property. On the other, we have the attempt by individuals to use intellectual property rights to create a "commons," just as developers of free and open source software use the leverage of software copyrights to impose requirements of openness on future programmers, requirements greater than those attaching to a public domain work.

Previously:

Synthetic Biology's Implications for Science, Society, and Mass Media

Essay: Our Synthetic Futures by Rudy Rucker

How Do You Like Your Genes?

Ethics of Emerging Technologies : Scientific Facts and Moral Challenges

Drew Endy

BioBricks to help reverse-engineer life

The Implications of Synthetic Biology

Synthetic Biology

Experts worry that synthetic biology may spawn biohackers

Keeping Synthetic Biology Away from Terrorists

Synthetic Biology: Caught Between Property Rights, the Public Domain, and the Commons

One-dimensional (1D) conductive nanowire is one of the most important components for the development of nanosized electronic devices, sensors, and energy storage units. Great progresses have been made to prepare the 1D-conducting polymeric nanofibers by the low concentration process or the synthesis with hard or soft templates. However, it still remains as a great challenge to prepare polymeric nanofibers with narrow dispersity, high aspect ratio, and good processibility. With the rod-like tobacco mosaic virus as the template, 1D-conducting polyaniline and polypyrrole nanowires can be readily prepared via a hierarchical assembly process. This synthesis discloses a unique way to produce composite fibrillar materials with controlled morphology and great processibility, which can promote many potential applications including electronics, optics, sensing, and biomedical engineering.

Biological Templated Synthesis of Water-Soluble Conductive Polymeric Nanowires