“Working with human colorectal cancer cells, a [university research team]…has found the potential culprit among a network of enzymes that relay signals inside cells to regulate such functions as cell growth, cancer development and programmed cell death. The work suggests that drugs designed to disable the enzyme, known as TOPK, could have anti-cancer benefits…“Colorectal [cancer] is the second leading cause of cancer mortality, and the molecular pathways [by which it develops] remain incompletely understood…In this study, we provided evidence showing that TOPK promotes transformation [of normal cells to cancerous ones] in colorectal carcinoma.”

The story begins with the frequent observation by researchers that members of this enzyme network are overactive in the cells of several human cancers…” Full Slice

“…When his team opened the cores they saw ceramic fragments that reflected human activity but there was no immediate cause for excitement.
Then, more and more rock fragments, ceramic shards from Middle and Upper Egypt, a lot of organic matter plant matter and heavy minerals were found. Radiocarbon dating showed all the items to be from around 1000 B.C…”Alexandria did not just grow out from a barren desert, but was built atop an active town…”There are signs of a flourishing settlement going back to Pharaonic times, but it’s too early to say anything about it,”…” Full Slice - Just the pointy tip of the iceberg I would suggest so we need to keep looking underwater everywhere

Days ago (”a couple,” broadly speaking) I mentioned that I’d try to hypelessly interpret a recent report.

Our Heroes surgically implanted multiple electrodes in monkey brains and muscles in carefully chosen areas. They recorded from the electrodes while a monkey operated a lever, moving it and gripping it more or less tightly (there was a juice reward when the monkey positioned the cursor correctly and squeezed just right). Using a simple linear model, they predicted muscle activity (and thus lever activity) based on brain activity. When they removed the lever, the model was able to make the cursor behave correctly from just the monkey’s thoughts, in real time. After replacing the screen with an actual manipulator arm, the monkeys were able to mind-control it as well.

There’s been plenty of news about bionic arms recently (which you can ogle for yourself) - this report is simply an incremental step on the road to non-invasive, direct brain control (that is, without brain surgery, or wiring the arm into pectoral muscles for the control signal) of prosthetics, or even waldoes or other teleoperational gear.

“When it comes to producing earth-friendly solar energy, pink may be the new green…Scientists here have developed new dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) that get their pink color from a mixture of red dye and white metal oxide powder in materials that capture light.

Currently, the best of these new pink materials convert light to electricity with only half the efficiency of commercially-available silicon-based solar cells — but they do so at only one quarter of the cost…This is the first time that researchers have made a DSSC from anything other than a simple oxide…” Full Slice

“Recent increases in the rates of biological invasion and spread of infectious diseases have been linked to the continued expansion of the worldwide airline transportation network…Throughout recent history, the geographical isolation between plants and animals has been gradually eroded by the deliberate or accidental transport of organisms caused by human travel, tourism or trade. Today, the rate at which species are moving between different biogeographic regions is unprecedented…” Full Slice

“Around the world, extreme climatic conditions are forcing farmers to rethink current cropping system strategies. To maximize crop production in the face of variable temperatures and precipitation, scientists say farmers may want to adopt a system in which crop sequencing decisions are based upon weather patterns and management goals each year. However, before making the change to a more adaptable cropping systems strategy, researchers say it’s important to understand how short-term crop sequencing decisions affect key agronomic and environmental attributes…” Full Slice

“…Two research teams…have now made an important breakthrough by discovering an entirely new mitochondrial factor, MTERF3. This new factor inhibits the expression of mtDNA and can thus slow down the cell’s energy production.

The discovery…may in future lead to completely new ways of treating various diseases. Impaired mitochondrial function gives rise to a cellular energy crisis and probably plays an important role in a number of common diseases such as diabetes, heart failure and Parkinson’s disease, as well as in normal ageing.” Full Slice

“A rare, timely conjunction of ground-based instrumentation and a dozen satellites has helped scientists better understand how electrons in space can turn into ‘killers’…‘Killer’ electrons are highly energetic, negatively charged particles found in near-Earth space. They can critically, and even permanently, damage satellites in orbit, including telecommunication satellites, and pose a hazard to astronauts.

Several theories have been formulated in the past to explain the origin of killer electrons…” Full Slice

If SecureCare, et al, didn’t post so much, you would know that I am trying Getting Off Google. In general I am not impressed by other search engines but I am doing my best to keep it up. However, I have decided that Firefox is a toady for Google. In Firefox help is the following:

Firefox allows you to search for words you select within a web page:

1. Select (highlight) any words in a web page.

2. Right-clickPress Ctrl,
click the mouse button, and choose “Search Web for [your selected words]” from the menu.

Firefox opens a new tab and uses your <b>default search engine</b> to search for your selected words.

My default search engine is Live Search from Microsoft. When I follow the instructions above, the search is always executed using Google.

Google is an evil company which doesn’t need any help from Firefox which is most cases is a very excellent browser.

“Physicists…have induced thousands of atoms trapped by laser beams to swap “spins” with partners simultaneously. The repeated exchanges, like a quantum version of swinging your partner in a square dance but lasting a total of just 10 milliseconds, might someday carry out logic operations in quantum computers, which theoretically could quickly solve certain problems that today’s best supercomputers could not solve in years…” Full Slice

Science News has a good article about a team of researchers at MIT who have seemingly re-created Nikola Tesla’s lost technique for transmitting electricity without wires, which they have dubbed “WiTricity.”

The device that Soljacic and his collaborators put together had a disarming simplicity. On one side of the room, hanging from the ceiling, was a ring-shaped electrical circuit, about half a meter across, plugged into the wall. Hanging adjacent to the circuit, but with no physical connection to it, was a slightly larger copper coil looking like an oversize mattress spring. A few meters away hung a similar system with an ordinary lightbulb attached to the circuit. When the physicists sent power through the first circuit, the bulb lit up.

As expected, some energy was lost on its way to the lightbulb. However, a surprising amount reached its destination, the team reports in the July 6 Science. “The efficiency was 40 percent at the biggest distance we probed [more than 2 meters],” Soljacic says. At shorter distances, the efficiency was much higher.

My aggregator showed me a blurb about inserting chips into brains, and it reminded me that the brain is “just another organ” (in everything it does, including doing the mind). So then I went over to PLOS, and found an open source peer reviewed article about brain-machine interfaces.

I don’t have time to go over any of this with the ol’ comb tonight, but I’ll try to upload a hype-free review in the next couple of days.

“A new model for understanding how autism is acquired has been developed…The researchers analyzed data on autism incidence and found a previously unrecognized pattern. The pattern can be explained by assuming that spontaneous germ-line mutation is a significant cause of the disorder…“what we now know about spontaneous mutations and autism offers an alternative to traditional thinking about genetic disorders as purely heritable from a parent. This has implications for other disorders such as morbid obesity, schizophrenia, and congenital heart disease.”…” Full Slice

“…early evidence indicates that the new gene is functional (as opposed to being nonfunctional “junk” DNA) and is likely to express a protein involved in late stages of sperm cell development (spermatogenesis). This finding is consistent with work of other scientists who are discovering that many of the most recently formed functional genes in any species also are expressed in male testes and appear related to spermatogenesis.

“This is a de novo — ‘out of nowhere’ — gene,”…” Full Slice - Very, very interesting…

Astronomers…have found the largest negatively-charged molecule yet seen in space. The discovery of the third negatively-charged molecule, called an anion, in less than a year and the size of the latest anion will force a drastic revision of theoretical models of interstellar chemistry, the astronomers say.

“This discovery continues to add to the diversity and complexity that is already seen in the chemistry of interstellar space,”… It also adds to the number of paths available for making the complex organic molecules and other large molecular species that may be precursors to life in the giant clouds from which stars and planets are formed,”…” Full Slice