Scientists have discovered more about what keeps young healthy bones strong–which may point the way to therapies to keep old, brittle bones from breaking and repair bones that do break. Did I mention I have a birthday this week? Not that my bones are fragile, yet, but there’s something about the tick of the birthday …
The collapse of a giant ice shelf in Antarctica has revealed an ecosystem of clams and bacteria we never knew existed, in freezing cold and darkness half a mile beneath the sea. Life may be fragile in the form of an individual organism, but, boy, it’s tough and adaptable in the aggregate, isn’t it?
Orson Scott Card finally gets around to reading–and reviewing–the Robert A. Heinlein classic Star Beast, which has apparently been reissued. I loved Star Beast (along with everything else Heinlein wrote in his “juvenile” period) when I was a kid. And Card agrees with me, which is always nice. My favorite Heinleins of the period? Tunnel …
I’ve been quiet here for a couple of days, but I have been blogging! I think I’ve finally brought The Willetts on Wine up to date. Check it out if you’re interested in fermented grape juice.
New research indicates that aging, at least in mice, is triggered by the buildup of mutated DNA in cells’ mitochondria. This may give us a target for true anti-aging drugs. Did I mention my 46th birthday is coming up? Faster, please!
You won’t if we’re using one of these.
This has got to be the worst example of paint-by-numbers newswriting I’ve seen in, if not forever, at least a good long while–since, maybe, journalism school? “It began like any other morning on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, that was, until a wall came tumbling down onto Broadway.” A total waste of pixels (online version) or …
Scientists are working to create a virtual world in which computer-generated individual agents will, they hope, build a society from scratch–maybe even create their own language. They’re just missing one bet, as far as I can see: they should put the whole thing on TV. Instead of just a reality show, it would be a …
By which the discoverer means, a planet with more than one sun: in this case, three. It’s the size of Jupiter and orbits its main sun, a star much like our own, in just three and a half days, which means its very, very close, which means…well, in short, you thought Tatooine looke inhospitable, you …
If that’s not a headline that would have made no sense at all just a few years ago, I don’t know what one would be. Technovelgy.com has the goods. Everyone repeat after me: “Hey hey, ho ho, those dead-tree books have got to go. Hey hey, ho ho, those dead-tree books have got to go…”
Check out the fascinating research currently underway in the burgeoning (but extremely relaxed) field of fatigued feline functionality. (Via Transterrestrial Musings.)
Be this wreckage that of Blackbeard’s Queen Anne’s Revenge? ‘Tis looking most promising, most promising indeed.
