An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything.: mundens

mundens

An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything.

Nov 18, 2007 02:53

Wow. All in one brief burst of space time.

An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything
From November's New Scientist :GARRETT LISI is an unlikely individual to be staking a claim for a theory of everything. He has no university affiliation and spends most of the year surfing in Hawaii. In winter, he heads to the mountains near Lake Tahoe, California, to teach snowboarding. Until recently, physics was not much more than a hobby.
But reportedly his recent paper An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything(PDF) is getting a lot of attention form some leading physicists. I suspect that it's because of the elegance of the structure. Admittedly, my phyiscs isn't up to understanding the details, but like everyone else I can look at the pretty pictures!

Cancer Smac-down
A synthetic molecule causes some cancer's to commit suicide (from Science Daily) :
A protein called Smac, which is a shortened version of "second mitochondria-derived activator of apoptosis," is a part of the cell's programmed cell death machinery. When that machinery is switched on, Smac is released from the mitochondria and triggers the pathway that kills damaged or abnormal cells.

Cancer cells, however, can survive Smac's death signal by switching off the apoptotic machinery. To see if they could get around this problem, Wang and other researchers have developed small-molecule mimetics of Smac that can enter the cell and trigger apoptosis. These mimetic molecules do their damage without the need for the Smac signal from the mitochondria.

My Cockroach Army will Rule the World! Robot Chicken!
Researchers studying swarm behaviour have taken over cockroach swarms using robots and plan to create a robot chicken (shakes head) ....
When 16 cockroaches were placed in the arena, they naturally gravitated toward the darker disc, following what the researchers believe is an internal calculation of the amount of light and the number of other roaches, finding comfort in company.

Dr. Halloy then replaced four of the cockroaches with four robots equipped with sensors to measure light and the proximity of other robots...

When the four robotic roaches were reprogrammed to prefer the lighter disc, however, the real roaches followed them about 60 percent of the time, in essence deferring their own judgment as the preference grew more popular....

The scientists plan to extend their research to higher animals. The next creation: a robotic chicken, which will look a little like a ball on tank treads with loudspeakers.

Short ones :

Put that all together and the Singularity seems to be approaching like a freight train. Now all we have to do is survive long enough for the technology to take us there and avoid being squashed like bugs on the windshield when it does!

Thanks to my colleague C and \. for this round up!

science