The Creative Commons is launching a similar project with respect to scientific papers, the Science Commons. It is set to launch Jan. 01, 2005.

The mission of Science Commons is to encourage scientific innovation by making it easier for scientists, universities, and industries to use literature, data, and other scientific intellectual property and to share their knowledge with others. Science Commons works within current copyright and patent law to promote legal and technical mechanisms that remove barriers to sharing.

via Slashdot

We really are mapping out life, I wonder where this will take us. It’s only a matter of time before we figure out enough about how we work. At that point, the sky is the limit as far as I can see.

Regulatory DNA, Levine explains, controls how and where a gene is expressed in a cell. Of the three types of regulatory DNA–enhancer, silencer, and insulator–”enhancers are king, activating gene expression in specific cell types for specific tissues,” he says. Scientists conservatively estimate that while the human genome has less than 30,000 genes, it may contain 100,000 enhancers at the minimum. So far, just 50 or so have been identified.

“It’s hard to come up with an accurate estimate because they’re so elusive,” Levine says. “You can take an unknown genome and find a protein-coding gene just by reading the code. You may not know a thing about the gene, but at least you can identify it. So far though, we haven’t found the code for regulatory DNA, if one even exists.”

via Science Matters @ Berkley

A team of US physicists has proved a theorem that explains how our objective, common reality emerges from the subtle and sensitive quantum world.

If, as quantum mechanics says, observing the world tends to change it, how is it that we can agree on anything at all? Why doesn’t each person leave a slightly different version of the world for the next person to find?

Because, say the researchers, certain special states of a system are promoted above others by a quantum form of natural selection, which they call quantum darwinism. Information about these states proliferates and gets imprinted on the environment. So observers coming along and looking at the environment in order to get a picture of the world tend to see the same ‘preferred’ states.

We are mapping the edge of objective reality and the lines are becoming very blurred. I’m just waiting for the theory that ties together physics and consciousness neatly.

via Nature

Now this is pretty interesting work in my mind. Essentially they are expressing genes of their choice to make proteins, in this case a cool looking green fluorescent protein, but I’m sure the technique is adaptable. Amazing.

The soft cell walls are made of fat molecules taken from egg white. The cell contents are an extract of the common gut bug E. coli, stripped of all its genetic material.

This essence of life contains ready-made much of the biological machinery needed to make proteins; the researchers also added an enzyme from a virus to allow the vesicle to translate DNA code.

When they added genes, the cell fluid started to make proteins, just like a normal cell would.

A gene for green fluorescent protein taken from a species of jellyfish was the first they tried. The glow from the protein showed that the genes were being transcribed.

via WorldChanging
via Near Near Future
via PSFK
via BBC News

This is some interesting and surprising work. We are figuring out so much about ourselves so fast it really makes me wonder what the future holds for us.

For 50 years, thousands of labs around the world have studied cells’ critical internal communications, and scientists had assumed the speakers were known. But now, in the Dec. 17 issue of Science, Johns Hopkins researchers report finding not just a new participant, but a brand new conversation that has implications for treating disease and understanding biology.

Much of cells’ internal communication revolves around two very important words — “stop” and “go” — elicited when a small bit, called phosphate, is added onto proteins. This addition turns protein activities up or down and fine tunes cells’ responses to what’s happening outside their borders. This communication can go awry in diseases, including cancer, and be corrected by various drugs.

The source of these phosphate bits has been known — a molecule called adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. But in their new report, the Johns Hopkins scientists describe a brand new source of phosphate that seems to work with as many proteins as targeted by ATP, but in a completely different way.

Unlike ATP, the new phosphate source, known as inositol pyrophosphate (IP7), modifies proteins without any help, just binding directly to the protein and leaving behind one of its phosphates, the researchers report. Their early evidence also suggests IP7 might be most important in regulating the release of chemicals in the brain and in controlling the cellular machinery that builds proteins.

via Crumb Trail
via John Hopkins Medicine
via Science (subscription required)

Seriously?!? The states is a scary place nowadays. Read the study. Researchers were “startled by the correlation with religion and exposure to television news.” In other words, broadcast fear into the people and the people will be fearful.

In a study to determine how much the public fears terrorism, almost half of respondents polled nationally said they believe the U.S. government should — in some way — curtail civil liberties for Muslim Americans, according to a new survey released December 17th by Cornell University.

About 27 percent of respondents said that all Muslim Americans should be required to register their location with the federal government, and 26 percent said they think that mosques should be closely monitored by U.S. law enforcement agencies. Twenty-nine percent agreed that undercover law enforcement agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations, in order to keep tabs on their activities and fund raising. About 22 percent said the federal government should profile citizens as potential threats based on the fact that they are Muslim or have Middle Eastern heritage. In all, about 44 percent said they believe that some curtailment of civil liberties is necessary for Muslim Americans.

Honestly, I don’t even know what else to say. As a Canadian, I am shocked.

via Science Blog
via MSNBC
via Under the Same Sun

An interesting article about consumerism, or rather anti-consumerism. The basic idea is that most of what we think of as anti-consumerism is in fact just anti-mass society/conformity. People still consume, they just do so in different ways. While I wouldn’t take it all word-for-word, it does get the mind thinking in some different directions.

via This Magazine

Researchers at Rutgers University are using X-ray crystallography, a technique to determine the structure of molecules, to develop drugs that target a key submicroscopic protein in HIV. Dr. Smith said, “If you can really inhibit reverse transcriptase, you can stop AIDS.” Researchers are optimistic about a new class of RT inhibitors, including a drug known as R278474. It interfers with an enzyme that the virus needs to copy and insert itself into a human cell.

via The Globe and Mail

Scientists have performed a delicate surgical operation on a single living cell, using a needle that is just a few billionths of a metre wide. They claim the procedure could be used to manipulate embryonic stem cells intended for use in medical treatment.

This is quite cool, as they are able to insert material into the cell causing less damage and deformation to the cell than with previous methods. It is so accurate they are able to inject material directly into a cell’s nucleus.

via BBC
via KurzweilAI.net

The convergence of nano and biotech is happening, and will continue to produce more powerful applications.

Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed an encapsulation technique to protein-encapsulate single-walled carbon nanotubes to alter their fluorescence in the presence of specific biomolecules. This could generate many new types of implantable biological sensors, such as their example sensor which detects glucose.

In a paper accepted for publication in the journal Nature Materials, and posted on its Web site, the researchers showed the viability of their technique by creating a near-infrared nanoscale sensor that detects glucose. The sensor could be inserted into tissue, excited with a laser pointer, and provide real-time, continuous monitoring of blood glucose level.

via Medical News Today via KurzweilAI.net

A team of US researchers has shown that controlling devices with the brain is a step closer.

Four people, two of them partly paralysed wheelchair users, successfully moved a computer cursor while wearing a cap with 64 electrodes.

What is really cool here is the fact that this this isn’t using implanted electrodes, but a cap fitting over the skull. Complex algorithms translate the brains electrical activity into instructions to direct the computer.

via BBC via Occam’s Razor

This is one of the coolest buildings I have seen in a long while. It is called the Watercube, and will be the national swimming centre for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The building’s skin, made from an innovative and lightweight transparent ‘teflon’, abbreviated as etfe, has been designed to react specifically to lighting and projection – and particularly the advanced systems which will become available in the coming four years – to create a stunning visual and sensory experience that will also be shared by millions of television viewers around the world. This state-of-the-art material provides a cost effective cladding solution for modern architecture, enabling a wide range of applications where traditional materials, such as glass, may not be possible.

It is essentially a very efficient green house:

“90% of the solar energy falling on the building is trapped within the structural zone and is used to heat the pools and the interior area”

via Danda