Shatner Does Palin... Again

For this of you who missed the first poetry reading the second is even better in my humble opinion. The fact that it involves Sarah Palin Tweets is even more appropriate.

From Seed to Sentinel

By Kristopher Hite

Imagine stepping onto a vast green field. A closer look and you notice circular patches of white grass speckle the landscape. If you know what you are looking at these biological signals might save your life as you proceed. TNT leaching from buried landmines activate plants with an engineered ability to "degreen" in the presence of specific molecules. Though these sentinals have yet to be deployed on the battlefield it is not hard to imagine a technique like this being used to save lives. A clear example of synthetic biology at work this technology was developed by June Medford at Colorado State University.

By fully controlling an entire signal transduction pathway in plant cells synthetic biology allows scientists to use predictable on/off signals like plant pigment to do positive work for humanity. Plant-based reconnaissance technology is one of many foreseeable applications for controlled synthetic gene networks. June Medford along with other thinkers like Craig Venter and George Church work at the forefront of this emerging chapter of biotechnology. We are all watching to learn the next twist in this story.


Antunes, M., Ha, S., Tewari-Singh, N., Morey, K., Trofka, A., Kugrens, P., Deyholos, M., & Medford, J. (2006). A synthetic de-greening gene circuit provides a reporting system that is remotely detectable and has a re-set capacity Plant Biotechnology Journal, 4 (6), 605-622 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7652.2006.00205.x

Tased and Confused

A 72 year old woman! Really? REALLY?

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Intermediate Fossils

In keeping with his current trend towards accentuating the positive Richard Dawkins clearly lays out the logic of evolution while explaining how the whale's morphology changed over millions of generations. This is probably the most clear-cut example of evolution on display in the fossil record but certainly not the only one.

When I was a teenager I visited my sister who was working for the US geological survey in Washington, DC. It was the first time I'd been the Smithsonian museum of natural history. Though I rushed through to see as many exhibits as possible I paused in the "Ocean Hall" underneath a suspended skeleton of a modern whale. It was standing here that I had the evolutionary epiphany. As I stared up at the tiny hip bones suspended by metal museum cables painted back like invisible stage hands I realized that these were vestiges of long gone hind legs. Every whale living on earth has these bones suspended in cartilage doing nothing but reminding the curious about their storied ancestry.

By the power of the web anyone can now go and stand where I stood as a teenager and contemplate the reasons for those museum cables. In fact you can now virtually peruse the whole museum complete with online information kiosks!

Obama Continues Bush's Homeland Spyinng Operations

Amy Goodman reports on activists in Olympia, Washington who discovered one of their own was actually a spy for the US military! This infiltration is in direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.

There is a key difference between this instance and the scene from Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 where a peace group in Fresno, California was infiltrated by the local Sheriff's office. According to the law the incident described by Moore seems to be legal albeit troubling whereas this recent incident in Olympia VIOLATES FEDREAL LAW! The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits members of the Army, Air Force, and State National Guard forces (when such are called into federal service) from exercising nominally state law enforcement, police, or peace officer powers that maintain "law and order" on non-federal property.

Read Amy's entire column here at TRUTHDIG.

Do not get me wrong, I still like what Obama is doing for this country overall but this kind of thing must stop NOW.

Seeing is Believing

By Kristopher Hite

And in science this can be the biggest barrier to moving forward. If we can't show an event happening how do we know it is happening at all? Since the 1950's a large gap between what we can see under microscopes and what we can see when we crystallize things (i.e. DNA) has existed. The gap has historically been in the range of tens to hundreds of nanometers leaving many macromolecular events taking place inside every living cell on earth in a black box; inaccessible to the human eye and therefore inaccessible to our full understanding. Though some very complex assemblages of proteins and DNA have been successfully crystallized to superb atomic resolution (below 2-3 ångströms) there are innumerable molecules within the cell that have not. These are the myriad molecules that interact in dynamic ways with portions of their structure constantly moving and changing. They have been dubbed "intrinsically disordered proteins."

When biochemists and molecular biologists study these proteins they currently have no good way to visualize them in action. There are however a few ways to look at them. Either take them out of their cellular context, purify them to homogeneity, and pack them into a crystal in order to fire X-rays at them to see where all the atoms sit in a lattice, or freeze them and scan them with an electron beam or force probe. These techniques inherently kill any molecular freedom these little cellular components have to wiggle about and do that voodoo that they do. With the advent of scanning electron microscopy (which produced the image of pollen grains above) and transmission electron microscopy the blind spot in the realm of teeny tiny science has shrunk but the experimental conditions do not allow native observations.

Looking at objects with regular old light waves is impossible at these tiny scales because of Abbe's diffraction limit. The reason very small things can not be seen with a regular optical system is that the wavelength of light is longer than the details in need of being resolved.

Researchers have recently found a way around this. By constructing extremely small lenses they can overcome the diffraction limit. What's more these lenses are self-assembling adding to their intrigue allowing imagination to run wild with speculation of future application. Unlike conventional geometrical optical lenses these lenses bow the light's trajectory in a curved manner. This results in an unprecedented near-field magnification that defies the diffraction limit! In short we may be close to peering into a black box that has never been opened before.


In my field of chromatin associated proteins this technique may allow us to literally watch the elusive histone tails as they interact with binding partners on a single molecule scale. We might someday watch the linker histone as it takes a chromatin array and folds it into the accordion-like 30 nanometer fiber. We might be able to say once and for all whether or not there is an operable "histone code" that dictates transcriptional accessibility and if so how exactly it works.


Begin listening to the following Nature podcast at 6 minutes and 14 seconds in to get the scoop from the primary researchers.

Lee, J., Hong, B., Kim, W., Min, S., Kim, Y., Jouravlev, M., Bose, R., Kim, K., Hwang, I., Kaufman, L., Wong, C., Kim, P., & Kim, K. (2009). Near-field focusing and magnification through self-assembled nanoscale spherical lenses Nature, 460 (7254), 498-501 DOI: 10.1038/nature08173

Amsterdam Embroiled in Anarchy?

So says the liars at FOX news. Luckily we have citizen journalists to give us a view from the streets (and canals). The sad part is that your average US Midwesterner sees FOX news is the infallible giver of truth and will probably not have the opportunity to see for themselves how they are deceived. Can not wait for blogs to tear down FOX someday. I envision Bill O'Reilly still ranting in a dilapidated concrete building in New York city as the camera crew finally leaves him to "do it live" all by himself.

Meeting for Matter

This evening a meeting was held for the volunteers that run the Matter bookstore in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Todd Simmons Matter mastermind.



Margo!

Why Should We Buy Local?

Some local business owners in Denver, Colorado tell us.



Thanks to Beth Kopp who is doing a wonderful job bringing my favorite local book store into the light of the internet world. I'm going to Todd Simmon's Yurt-home tonight for a BBQ. Will put up some pictures later. Todd founded Matter bookstore in Fort Collins Colorado in the early 00's. I began volunteering here a few weeks ago as I have been an adoring patron for nearly 4 years. Little did I know that the bookstore and its sidekick Wolverine Farm Publishing are a joint non-profit 501(3)c organization that is volunteer run and outreach minded. Read more about their joint mission here.

Steven Chu with Jon Stewart

The mark of a true statesman is a grasp of knowledge outside his area of expertise. Our Energy Guru Steven Chu makes his mark in the arena of pop culture. Reminded me of Christie's pet project.