I was a bit turned off from this book, primarily because i didn't think i'd be smart enough to fisnish it with any real gain, within a reasonable time frame. It seemed that this was the kind of book that you really would need to take into a room, and lock the door, for at least an hour a day, to grasp fully.

Also, it was big, and expensive. Not so any longer... if you can handle reading a 1000 page tome on the intarnet, at least. Here it is.

Stephen Wolfram: A New Kind of Science | Online

] According to De Pasquale, the circles in the cells are
] nothing but the first numbers of the Fibonacci series, in
] which each number is a sum of two previous: 1, 2, 3, 5.
]
]
] The abacus would then work on a base 40 numbering system.

sounds pretty cool, if unverifiable for the time being.

Incan Counting System Decoded?

] A Danish biotech company has developed a genetically
] modified flower that could help detect land mines and it
] hopes to have a prototype ready for use within a few
] years.

hot damn that's cool.

Yahoo! News - Flower-Power Could Help Clear Land mines

abaddon wrote:
] so which is it, global warming, or global cooling...they need
] to make up their minds so I know which sort of clothes to
] buy...
]
] --Abaddon

well, as the article says, a general warming trend, which we're seeing, can do things like turn off the gulf stream, which feeds heat (in the form of tropical water) to northern europe. If that happened it would create a localized cooling effect up there, while most everyone would continue to get warmer.

RE: Britain is likely to be plunged into an ice age

] President Bush beckoned the nation "forward into the
] universe" on Wednesday, outlining a costly new effort to
] return Americans to the moon as early as 2015 and use it
] as a waystation to Mars and beyond.

i'm really interested in what people think about this... progressive commitment or poltical opportunism? I tend to take the latter view, personally, though i have trouble being *too* unhappy with anything that funds basic science.

second question, will such a proposal even *begin* to get through congress? i think it's unlikely, which solidifies my belief that it's a political move, so W can say "I *wanted* to fund science... but that mean 'ol congress wouldn't let me!"

a more relevant question, to me is : is the moon even a useful place for a permanent base? are there useful raw materials there? feasible means of energy generation? is using it as a launch venue sensible given its substantial (though admittedly less than earth's) gravity well?

Guys like Robert Zubrin (who is, admittedly, zealous, sometimes to the point of unreasonable) makes good arguments that the moon is pretty pointless, and there's not a lot of reason to put people there, other than nationalism, pride, and other forms of self-fellatio. Could we make more progress by devoting those resources (or even a fraction of them) towards other projects, like a space elevator (and the attendant advances in nanoscience that would be widely beneficial)?

Given how limited the budgets usually are for basic science, it's important to make sure we spend the money we do get on the most promising projects, not planetwide publicity stunts.

ABCNEWS.com : Bush Outlines Plan for 2015 Moon Landing

neat

ScienceDaily News Release: Scientists Find New Way To Store Hydrogen Fuel

] Never has a spacecraft been built so quickly, on so
] little money, and been sent on such a long journey
] fraught with so many dangers.

nice overview of the work Beagle 2 has ahead of it...

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Beagle probe faces its big challenge

] Essentially, the smaller a machine is, the greater the
] chance that it will run backwards. It could be extremely
] difficult to control.
]
] The researchers said: "This result has profound
] consequences for any chemical or physical process that
] occurs over short times and in small regions."

well, that would make things tougher, yes...

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Beads of doubt

A new tool that blocks disease-causing genes, RNA interference, could lead the way for the next wave of blockbuster drugs in biotechnology

A story Wired is running about a technology that I am about to learn about in my next lab rotation in grad school. The use of RNA to silence genes can be a powerful thing with regard to future therapies - I am very excited about learning about this technique. - Nano

Next Big Thing in Biotech: RNAi

] A new species of baleen whale has been discovered. The
] stunning find, made after researchers studied the body
] shape and genetics of a few leviathan skeletons gathering
] dust for the last 25 years in a Japanese museum, brings
] the total number of known species in the main genus of
] baleen whale to eight.

Japanese discover new whale species