Ancient sites spotted from space

Jason Ur said he had found about 9,000 potential new sites in north-eastern Syria.

Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researcher told BBC News: “With these computer science techniques, however, we can immediately come up with an enormous map which is methodologically very interesting, but which also shows the staggering amount of human occupation over the last 7,000 or 8,000 years. >continue<

Nanofiber Made Of Protein As Cure Of Alzheimer’s

eaglenewseveningedition:

…promises to greatly improve drug delivery methods for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, different types of cancer, and heart disorders…aid in the regeneration of the bone, cartilage, and human tissue… nanoscale threads for use as circuits in computer chips by first creating the nanofibers will be possible… >continue<

Fascinating convergences and synchronies, blurring realms of biology, medicine, and computing. If only our politics could move to keep up.

Project Icarus: Laying the Plans for Interstellar Travel

wildcat2030 via Scoop.it - Knowmads, Infocology of the future:

Andreas Tziolas is drafting a blueprint for a mission to a nearby star. Here, he discusses how we’ll get there — and why we try. We humans have known for a very long time that going to the stars will be difficult, if not impossible. The motto of NASA, Per Aspera Ad Astra, a latin phrase meaning “through hardship to the stars,” comes down to us all the way from Seneca the Younger, a contemporary of Nero. Even today…when we strain to capture the difficulty of a task, or the enormity of an achievement, “reach for the stars” is the first and most natural phrase that comes to mind. …With today’s best propulsion technology, chemical rockets, it would take between 50 and a 100 millennia to reach Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun. The ideas we have about how to expedite such a journey are just that: ideas. They belong to the realm of speculation. Nonetheless, they are beginning to take on an empirical glow. To be sure, the bundle of technologies that could conceivably send a spacecraft to another star won’t be here within the decade, or even within several, but neither are those technologies mere magical realism — indeed, planning for their development has begun in earnest… >continue @ theatlantic.com<

Death by denial: The campaigners who continue to deny HIV causes Aids

As each of their followers dies, those who campaign against HIV treatments simply move on to the next level of denial

Brian Deer, Guardian »

According to Peter Duesberg, the scientist who fathered this philosophy, about 6% of deaths in the over 50s are from pneumonia…it was on 1 March 1987 that, in a 22-page paper, he set out his case that HIV is harmless.

“It is concluded,” he declared in the journal Cancer Research, “that Aids virus is not sufficient to cause Aids and that there is no evidence, besides its presence in a latent form, that it is necessary for Aids.”

Thus was born the “Duesberg hypothesis”, which his critics say has led to sickness and death far beyond white, middle-class eccentrics. By some reckonings, in South Africa alone the denialist convictions of former president Thabo Mbeki led to more than 300,000 premature fatalities and 35,000 preventable infant infections.

In fact, Aids denialism predates the Duesberg hypothesis. It was born in the first months of the epidemic. Even in 1981, when I wrote my first report, there were what I then called “two competing hypotheses”… >continue<

Entire genome of extinct human decoded from fossil

“The genome is of very high quality”, says Matthias Meyer, who developed the techniques that made this technical feat possible. “We cover all non-repetitive DNA sequences in the Denisovan genome so many times that it has fewer errors than most genomes from present-day humans that have been determined to date”.  >continue<

Novel photosynthetic process called 'Biosolar Breakthrough'

Science Daily »

To produce the energy, the scientists harnessed the power of a key component of photosynthesis known as photosystem-I (PSI) from blue-green algae. This complex was then bioengineered to specifically interact with a semi-conductor so that, when illuminated, the process of photosynthesis produced electricity. Because of the engineered properties, the system self-assembles and is much easier to re-create than his earlier work. In fact, the approach is simple enough that it can be replicated in most labs…

…This green solar cell is a marriage of non-biological and biological materials. It consists of small tubes made of zinc oxide — this is the non-biological material. These tiny tubes are bioengineered to attract PSI particles and quickly become coated with them — that’s the biological part. Done correctly, the two materials intimately intermingle on the metal oxide interface, which when illuminated by sunlight, excites PSI to produce an electron which “jumps” into the zinc oxide semiconductor, producing an electric current.  >continue<

Citizen Philosophers

Teaching Justice in Brazil
Carlos Fraenkel »

In 1971 the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985 eliminated philosophy from high schools. Teachers, professors in departments of education, and political activists championed its return, while most academic philosophers were either indifferent or suspicious. The dictatorship seems to have understood philosophy’s potential to create engaged citizens…

The official rationale for the 2008 law is that philosophy “is necessary for the exercise of citizenship.” The law—the world’s largest-scale attempt to bring philosophy into the public sphere—thus represents an experiment in democracy. Among teachers at least, many share Ribeiro’s hope that philosophy will provide a path to greater civic participation and equality. Can it do even more? Can it teach students to question and challenge the foundations of society itself?   >continue<