December 5, 2011 – 8:33 pm
Did you know that iguanas (and not only them) have three eyes ? the feature is called Parietal eye, it is highly advantageous to spot the shadow of a predator coming from above, and it’s not unique to iguanas, but it can be found in frogs, lizards, sharks and other reptiles and fishes. In the [...]
August 20, 2011 – 3:23 pm
This is a rather peculiar use of paramecia: by directing their preferential swimming movement by means of an applied electric field (a property called galvanotaxis) we can use them as player characters in videogames. I don’t expect this to become common gaming, though.
February 25, 2011 – 12:45 am
Nothing says relax better than a peaceful evening in front of a steamy cup of chamomile. Since thousands of years, humanity uses it as a natural remedy for a large amount of ailments, most notably hypertension, sleeplessness and to ease a flu-dominated night, like in my case recently. Moved by curiosity, I took some time [...]
December 4, 2010 – 1:54 am
As you probably heard in the news, two days ago everyone was ablaze for a mysterious announcement from NASA. Speculation started on how the new discovery would “impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.” Someone found a habitable planet? Found a message with Seti@HOME? Discovered the primordial soup composition? The buzz resonated and amplified at [...]
The kind folks behind StackOverflow, a free Question/Answers website for programming questions, recently decided to open new Q/A websites for many additional interesting topics, from wine tasting and cooking to mathematics. The fundamental requisite for such new sites to be opened is a rather strict community review and development of a critical mass of contributors [...]
As you probably heard in the news, Craig Venter, the American biologist best known for starting up Celera Genomics and sequencing the human genome, achieved another big success. He created a fully working new bacterium, programming its DNA from scratch. Like a computer having hardware and software, a bacterium has a set of components that [...]
Rule changed: revolutionized the treatment of cancer Cisplatin, formula [PtCl2(NH3)2] is a very simple compound of the precious metal platinum. It revolutionized the treatment of some types of cancer, in some cases with almost total chance of success, and it can be considered to full extent the “penicillin for (only some, unfortunately) cancer treatment”.
March 19, 2010 – 10:53 am
Occasionally, I have to write using a pen. I’ve never had a beautiful calligraphy (by the way, a tautology, since calligraphy already comes from the Greek for “beautiful writing”) but I realized that with time my skills became worse and worse. The reason, I feel, is that my brain wants a higher throughput of concepts [...]
January 19, 2010 – 12:24 pm
Some time ago I had Fugu, or puffer fish, a highly poisonous fish with no known antidote. Here is a picture to document the fact Well, it could just be me in front of something that looks like fish, and I’m not going to eat it anyway, but trust me, I had it. Yes, I [...]
November 25, 2009 – 3:39 am
A groundbreaking paper “Generation of long RNA chains in water” from Costanzo, Pino, Ciciriello and Di Mauro on Journal of Biological Chemistry proposes conditions for the obtainment of complex RNA chains from cyclic nucleotides. The proposed conditions are typical for the pre-biotic Earth: hot springs and puddles with water at moderate temperature (40 to 90 [...]