Isotropic Tumbrils

• The night photos and time-lapse movies that NASA shares are incredible.  They provoke questions: Just how thick is that thin, green/yellow atmospheric line separating Earth from space?  Why is it that colour?  The atmosphere reaches ~100 kilometres above the surface of the earth.  The colours aren’t reflected light or pollution — rather, they’re light generated from the components in the atmosphere itself — a chemiluminescent process called “airglow” or “night glow.”  What puzzles me: What are those strings of wavy lines shown in this photo?  (Click it for a larger version.)  Yes, highways, I suppose, but why wavy?  Why so nearly parallel?  Bear in mind the scale of this image.  In full daylight, perhaps the cause would be clearer.
• More from astronaut Don Pettit, this is an International Space Station Star trail composite.  He says: “My star trail images are made by taking a time exposure of about 10 to 15 minutes.  However, with modern digital cameras, 30 seconds is about the longest exposure possible, due to electronic detector noise effectively snowing out the image.  To achieve the longer exposures I do what many amateur astronomers do.  I take multiple 30-second exposures, then ‘stack’ them using imaging software, thus producing the longer exposure.”
• As its 6 June 2012 transit begins Venus is crossing the edge of the sun in this stunning view from the Hinode spacecraft.  The timing of limb crossings during the rare transits was used historically to triangulate the distance to Venus and determine a value for the earth-sun distance called the astronomical unit.  The thin ring of light seen surrounding the planet’s dark silhouette is sunlight refracted by Venus’ thick atmosphere.

• Recently recorded in infrared by the orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope, superposed in false-colour on an existing image taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in optical light, the Sombrero Galaxy, also known as M104, spans about 50,000 light years and lies 28 million light years away in the direction of the constellation Virgo.
• What causes these odd rings in Supernova 1987A? 25 years ago, in 1987, the brightest supernova in recent history was seen in the Large Magellanic Cloud.  At the centre of the above picture is an object central to the remains of the violent stellar explosion.  Surrounding the centre are curious outer rings appearing as a flattened figure 8.  Their origin is a mystery.
• How did spiral galaxy ESO 510-13 get bent out of shape?  The causes of spiral warps are still being investigated, but some warps are thought to result from interactions — even collisions — between galaxies.  This galaxy is 150 million light years away and about 100,000 light years across.

• Where’s the other star?  At the centre of this supernova remnant should be the companion star to the star that blew up.  Identifying this star is important for understanding just how Type Ia supernovas detonate, which in turn could lead to a better understanding of why the brightness of such explosions is predictable, which in turn is key to calibrating the entire nature of our universe.  The trouble?  Even a careful inspection of the centre of SNR 0509-67.5 finds no star at all.
• A pre-planetary nebula is an astronomical object formed in a short-lived gap between its rapid evolution from late giant branch phase to planetary nebula phase.  This remarkable picture from the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the Hubble Space Telescope shows one of the most perfect geometrical forms created in space. It captures the formation of an unusual pre-planetary nebula, known as IRAS 23166+1655, around the star LL Pegasi in the constellation Pegasus (the Winged Horse).  The material forming the spiral is moving outwards at a speed of about 50,000 kilometres per hour and, by combining this speed with the distance between layers, astronomers calculate the shells are each separated from each other by about 800 years.
• Will our sun look like this one day?  The Helix Nebula is one of brightest and closest examples of a planetary nebula, a gas cloud created at the end of the life of a sun-like star.  The Helix Nebula, given a technical designation NGC 7293, lies about 700 light-years away towards the constellation of the Water Bearer (Aquarius); it spans about 2.5 light-years.  A close-up of the inner edge of the Helix Nebula reveals a complex of gas knots of unknown origin.

• The “Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies” is a treaty that forms the basis of international space law.  It was opened for signature in the US, the UK, and the Soviet Union on 27 January 1967 and entered into force on 10 October 1967.  Forty-four years later, 100 countries are parties to the Treaty, while another 26 have signed it but not completed ratification.  Among its principles, it bars parties to the Treaty from placing nuclear weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction in Earth-orbit, installing them on the moon or any other celestial body, or to otherwise station them in outer space.  It exclusively limits the use of the moon and other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes and prohibits their use for testing weapons of any kind, conducting military manœuvers, or establishing military bases, installations, and fortifications.  Exploration of outer space shall be done to benefit all countries and shall be free for exploration and use by all.  The treaty explicitly forbids any government from claiming a celestial resource such as the moon or a planet because “they’re the common heritage of mankind.”  However, if a State launches a space object, it retains jurisdiction and control over it and is also liable for any damages it causes; furthermore, States must avoid contaminating space and celestial bodies.
• The case for withdrawing from the 1967 Outer Space Treaty: Born out of anxiety about the Cold War and excitement about the Space Age, the agreement is a tribute to the ability of diplomats to draft international law that is simultaneously effective but bad.  Successful in preventing states from claiming sovereign territory in outer space, the treaty also hobbled space exploration and development.  Today, human activity in outer space is confined to low-earth orbit; unmanned space exploration of the solar system proceeds at a leisurely pace.  The Space Age sputtered to a crawl and the 1967 Outer Space Treaty deserves a large measure of the blame.  Fear gave it birth: ever-present fear of nuclear war between the US and Soviet Union, fear that either superpower would achieve a decisive military technological advantage over the other in outer space, the fear that competition for the best “real estate” on celestial bodies might itself result in a war between superpowers, fear that superpowers might cooperate in a duopoly over all of outer space.  That space exploration and development had much to offer humanity was largely a rhetorical, rather than a practical, imperative in drafting the agreement.  Eliminating the possibility of reaping rewards from a desired activity discourages that desired activity.  When the Outer Space Treaty eliminated the possibility that States could claim territory on the final frontier, it also extinguished an important motivation to engage in exploration and development.  Beyond low-earth orbit, outer space remains a wilderness that benefits no one except astronomers and stargazing lovers.  Yet, ostensibly, the policy purpose of the agreement was to encourage exploration and development in a manner benefitting humanity as a whole.  As such, the Treaty fails.  And must it cover everything in the universe beyond Earth?  The radial distance from one edge of the universe to the other is 180 billion light-years.  Representatives of any extraterrestrial civilisation that humanity might encounter in the future may find our species’ mid-20th century arrogation of legal authority over the entirety of the universe to be an expression of cultural immaturity.

• Maldives is a country located in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the island of Sri Lanka.  Malé (shown here) is the capital.  The central island is mostly Muslim and heavily urbanised, with the built-up area taking up essentially the entire landmass.  Its population is about 103,700 (about 1/3 of the whole country).  Maldives is known for white sandy beaches, blue water, coral reefs, and palms, but most islands are less than 1 metre (3 feet) above sea level.  Some scientists have estimated that temperature increases on Earth could raise sea levels by around 2 feet (60 centimetres) within 100 years — this would put most of Maldives underwater.  Their official language is Dhivehi.  Maldives was under control of Britain for almost 80 years, until 1965.

• The Bailiwick of Jersey is part of the British Channel Islands (Crown Dependencies), but isn’t part of the United Kingdom.  The Écréhous (or Les Écréhous, or Êcrého) are a group of islands and rocks situated 6 miles northeast of Jersey, 8 miles from France.  They form part of the Bailiwick of Jersey and are administratively part of the Parish of St Martin.  The most significant islets in the group are:
  • Maîtr'Île (The Mistress Island, largest at 300 metres long) — only 2 dwellings, along with ruined fishermans’ cottages and the foundations of a 13th Century priory (inside which stands a small menhir).
  • La Marmotchiéthe (La Marmotière in gallicized form) — the one official building is a Customs House.  This is the island shown in the photo.
  • Lé Bliantch'Île (The White Island, La Blanche Île in gallicized form) — connected to Marmotière by a causeway at high tide (off to the right in the photo).

Other islands still exist, but are submerged at high tide.  There are no permanent residents on the islands as there is no fresh water.  Due to erosion, islands are much smaller today than historically.

• Bandos Island, also a part of Maldives.  It contains a resort consisting of 225 exotic furnished villas reachable from the airport by speedboat.  Maldives has over 1,000 islands, most formed by undersea volcanic eruptions.

Bolivia is named for Simon Bolívar, liberator of much of South America.  Bolivia is poor, mountainous and landlocked; more than 60% of the inhabitants are natives, mostly Quechua or Aymara.  Many are subsistence farmers on the Altiplano.  La Paz (1.5 million inhabitants) sits amid snowy peaks near Lake Titicaca, whose water helps warm the air.  Otherwise, as the world’s highest capital at 3,600 metres (11,800 feet), it wouldn’t quite be livable.  In another part of Boliva, Salar de Uyuni is estimated to contain 10 billion tons of salt with a surface of more than 4,000 square miles (10,580 square kilometres).  Apart from freezing night temperatures and fierce desert sun, visitors must endure a grueling journey on unpaved roads to reach the Salar, which lies about 185 miles (300 kilometres) south of La Paz, near the Chilean border.  The area has lakes coloured red by bacteria, white by minerals and green by arsenic; it has geysers, bubbling mud pools, and is filled with pink flamingos resisting the wind at a 4,000-metre altitude.  Oh, and it has a majority of the world’s lithium.

Competition among firms can have many positive outcomes, including decreased prices and improved quality.  Yet competition can have a darker side when firms can gain competitive advantage through illicit and corrupt activities.  Competition can lead organisations to provide illicit quality that satisfies customer demand but violates laws and regulations.  This outcome is particularly likely when price competition is restricted.  28 million vehicle emissions tests from more than 11,000 facilities show that increased competition is associated with greater inspection leniency, a form of illicit quality that customers value but is illegal and socially costly.  Firms with greater numbers of local competitors pass customers at considerably higher rates and are more likely to lose customers they fail to pass, suggesting that the alternatives that competition provides to customers intensify pressure to illegally provide leniency.  New firms may use illicit quality as an entry strategy.  Therefore, firms seeking to enforce legal and ethical conduct among managers and employees must be especially vigilant when operating in highly competitive markets, markets which may encourage competitors to cross legal boundaries in ways that threaten the profits of legally compliant firms.  Firms may benefit from privately monitoring their competitors’ behaviour to ensure that rivals do not maintain a competitive advantage through illicit actions.  While competition may yield lower prices and better choice for customers, it may also bring increased social costs. — Michael Toffel, associate professor, Technology and Operations Management, Harvard Business School.  Via Andrew Sullivan.

If you give in to “just this once,” based on a marginal-cost analysis, you’ll regret where you end up.  It’s easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time.  The boundary — your personal moral line — is powerful because you don’t cross it; if you’ve justified doing it once, there’s nothing to stop you doing it again.  Decide what you stand for.  And then stand for it all the time. — Clayton M Christensen, Kim B Clark Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

• Unmanned planes (drones), remotely-controlled from the Nevada desert thousands of miles away, have become an almost everyday sight in the skies above the arid lands of northern Pakistan.  Frequent attacks by these drones (operated by the US, nominally an ally) were the focus of a “Jirga” – a traditional tribal meeting attended by both Imran Khan, his ex-wife, Jemima, and a 16-year-old Pakistani named Tariq Aziz.  The drones had started flying, infrequently at first, over the northern mountains almost 8 years ago. Initially, they hovered while streaming video back to operators (US agents working for the CIA, gathering information about al Qaeda members allegedly hiding in the cut-off lands).  But the drones have now become an almost constant, deadly presence, flying in packs, sometimes as many as half dozen, circling villages for hours, hovering over roads, before firing their Hellfire missiles.  As many as 3,000 people have been killed, though this is hardly reported in the Western press.  Jemima had agreed to finance a project aimed at getting digital cameras into the area to record drone-caused damage and death in a campaign to prove that innocents were dying.  Tariq was eager to take part.  “He was an amateur photographer,” she recalls.  In Oman, working on another project, she received an email telling her Tariq Aziz, the teenager so eager to help with her camera project, was dead, another drone casualty.  Like many teens in remote parts of the globe, though he wasn’t legally old enough to drive, he often ran errands in the family car.  Around noon, he was fetching his aunt after a wedding.  His 12-year-old cousin, Waheed Rehman, was along.  Drones had been on patrol for hours.  A few hundred yards from his aunt’s house, one suddenly honed in and struck the car Aziz was driving and the two boys died instantly.  President Obama’s chief counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan, stated last year: “For the past year there hasn’t been a single collateral death; this is due to the exceptional proficiency and precision of the capabilities we’ve developed.”  ABC News quotes an anonymous official as saying this car was targeted because “two people inside were militants.”  Says Shahzad Akbar, a Pakistani lawyer who works with families of drone victims: “Tariq told me he had a computer at home — he could download the pictures of drone strikes from all those cameras and said he’d email them to me.”  His family is adamant he was no terrorist.  His uncle says he spent his time playing on the computer his father (a driver in the United Arab Emirates) had bought him.  No drone attacks ever get investigated.  No apologies ever get offered, and no compensation ever is provided.  But it’s inconceivable that mistakes get made because, by DEFINITION, anyone killed by a drone is a terrorist.  (Simple.  Cheap.  Effective.)  But I do have a couple of concerns.  Since cameras had been distributed, where are the photos?  Did no one take pictures?  Could there have been more than two people in the car?  Was the car known to belong to a suspected terrorist?  That said, I personally see no justification for killing juveniles.  Surely the US could find a better way.
• If you’ve heard a number for how much the US spends on the military, it’s probably in the neighbourhood of $530 billion.  That’s the Pentagon’s base budget for fiscal 2013, but that doesn’t include war funding, which in recent years has been well over $100 billion.  With US troops withdrawn from Iraq and troop levels falling in Afghanistan, you might think that war funding would be plummeting as well.  In fact, it’ll drop to a mere $88 billion in fiscal 2013.  (But, by way of comparison, the federal government will spend only $64 billion on education.)  Maintaining the nuclear weapons arsenal, nuclear waste disposal, Homeland Security, international security assistance, peacekeeping, caring for veterans, veterans benefits, Department of Defense employee benefits, and a miscellaneous account called “defense-related activities” aren’t included, nor interest paid on money borrowed to fund past military operations, nor the portions of NASA dedicated to national security.  Parts of intelligence funding are classified, so it’s unknown if some of that should be included.  If the US national security budget were its own economy, it would be the 19th largest in the world, roughly the size of Australia’s.  Meanwhile, the country with the next largest military budget, China, spends around $136 billion on military funding.  So-called “national security” accounts for one quarter of every dollar the federal government is projected to spend in 2013.  It keeps many employed.
• After a US airstrike mistakenly killed at least 15 Afghans in 2010, the Army officer investigating the accident was surprised to discover that an American civilian had played a central role: she analysed the video feeds from a Predator drone keeping watch from above.  This contractor even oversaw other analysts at the Air Force Special Operations Command at Hurlburt Field in Florida.  The drone was tracking suspected insurgents near a small unit of US soldiers in the rugged hills of central Afghanistan.  Based partly on her analysis, an Army captain ordered an airstrike on a convoy — that turned out to be carrying innocent men, women and children.  That analyst worked for SAIC Incorporated, a publicly-traded, Virginia-based corporation with a multiyear, $49-million contract to help the Air Force analyse drone video and other intelligence from Afghanistan.  Relying on private contractors has brought corporations that operate for profit into some of America’s most sensitive military and intelligence operations.  Morever, using civilians makes some in the military uneasy (perhaps justifiably because allowing nonmilitary personnel to communicate targeting information directly to pilots may violate international laws of war).  And civilians aren’t subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which subjects military personnel to prosecution for war crimes, or for violations of rules-of-engagement on when to use force.  But realistically, it takes more people to operate unmanned aircraft than it does to fly traditional warplanes that have a pilot and crew.  Without civilian contractors, US drone operations would grind to a halt.  About 168 people are needed to keep a single Predator aloft for 24 hours, according to the Air Force.  (The larger Global Hawk surveillance drone requires 300 people.)  In contrast, an F-16 fighter aircraft needs fewer than 100 people per mission.  Drone pilots get 44 hours of cockpit training before being sent to a squadron to be certified and allowed to command missions.  That compares with a minimum of 200 hours’ training for pilots flying traditional warplanes.  “There have been a lot of times when someone has called out something that was later found to be a mistaken assessment,” the civilian analyst told the chief investigator.  That’s the danger of “real time” analysis, she added.

Don’t Fall out of the Bottom Nor Poke out of the Top — Nor Slot Yourself Just in the Middle, Either

• What happens when the caregiver(s) work long hours or at multiple jobs and don’t have enough left at the end of the day?  Thin parenting and too many hours in front of tv are being blamed for a “disturbing” rise in the number of children lacking the basic skills they need when they start school.  Some struggle to name colours or to correctly identity common foods — and they make basic grammatical errors.  Some even have to be taught basic hand-eye co-ordination and how to turn left and right.  Sedentary home lives are often to blame, with time spent with tv and video games instead of playing outside.  But with individual attention from an articulate adult every day, pupils progress quickly.  There are complex reasons why children have language difficulties — one common reason is because they don’t have literacy experiences such as book reading or extended conversations at home.  At the age of 5, a child should be able to construct a reasonably complex sentence, and have a certain level of vocabulary.  Today, this is often lacking.
• Ifield Community College (a high school) in southern England, called police to remove a student, Jamie Gagliardi, 18, star pupil (predicted to be an A-grade student), who was so “obsessed” with revising that he refused to leave the library, thus causing a “nuisance.”  He said, “I’ve been punished for wanting to do well.  I’m hard-working and dedicated, and this could have an impact on my future.”  Apparently the school had invited students to study in the library, then specifically told Jamie he could study there, then told him they had decided against students studying in the library after he showed up.  Jamie became angry and interrupted meetings and classes to tell the people inside that he was mad and why.  “I want to study law at the University of Reading so I have to get really good grades.  It’s a contradictory message.”  The school decided to suspend him for the following day.  When he arrived at school, he was asked to leave.  He refused, and instead set about revising for his forthcoming psychology exam.  Unable to move him, the school dialled 999 for help.  Jamie said: “I can’t work at home because I don’t have a computer.  They massively over-reacted and I want parents who are thinking of sending their kids here to know.  I represent the [people in] class missing out on lessons.”  Marilyn Evans, director of administration, said: “Jamie is a very smart boy and we wish him success with his results.”
• Her story was all too familiar: After graduating with honours from a middling law school, she was unable to find a real legal job, and was reduced to a series of temporary, low-paying positions that didn’t allow her to even begin to pay off educational debts — that 3 years after graduation had ballooned to nearly a quarter of a million dollars.  Approximately ½ of the 45,000 people who’ll graduate this year from accredited law schools will never find jobs as lawyers.  (Over the next decade, estimates say only 21,000 new jobs for lawyers will become available annually.)  Most who do find jobs will start at $30,000-$60,000 per year.  People currently in law school will graduate with an average of $150,000 in educational debt — with an average interest rate of 7.5%.  That debt accrues almost $1,000/month in interest alone.  These loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.  In short, half of law graduates won’t have a legal career; most won’t make enough money to pay back their educational loans — they’ll have to rely on spouses or extended family — or else go into the federal government’s new Income-Based Repayment programme, which will keep them in debt servitude for 25 (soon to be reduced to 20) years, during which time their loan balance will grow, making it almost impossible for them to qualify for mortgages and other forms of consumer debt (or to emigrate).  That debt — which for many could have grown to more than $1 million — will be discharged after 20 years.  Many students now pay far more for their degrees than those degrees will be worth to them.  This is unsustainable.  Via Wickersham’s Conscience.

While more than 9 in 10 Americans would vote for a presidential candidate who is black, a woman, Catholic, Hispanic, or Jewish, significantly smaller percentages would vote for one who is an atheist (54%) or Muslim (58%).  Americans’ willingness to vote for a Mormon (80%) or gay/lesbian (68%) candidate falls between these two extremes.  Gallup also finds wide differences in support for various presidential candidates by age.  At least 7 in 10 young adults (those under age 30) would vote for a presidential candidate of any background.  However, fewer than half of senior citizens would vote for a candidate who is gay, an atheist, or a Muslim.

• A new idea is nothing more than a combination of two existing ones.  But one must start with a pantry of interesting ingredients.  A boat design company can’t fill its cupboard with nothing but boat designs if it wants to advance the craft.  It needs a pinch of medieval stonemasonry, an acquaintance with Freudian psychiatry, a detailed knowledge of the weaponry of Doctor Who, or other esoteric bits in order to facilitate pulling something interesting from the oven.  But these diverse influences take work.  Daily, we listen to the same music, eat at the same restaurants, read the same blogs.  Regularly, we should break a habit or two because new influences lead to new ideas.  Online, the digital world tries to offer up stuff you already like — “curation” is everywhere, but especially online, bringing with it the death of happenstance.  But if I dig past the first page of results Google delivers, I’ll see things 99% of internet users don’t bother to.  A content curator (which this site aspires to be) finds, groups, organises and shares the best and most relevant content on specific issues.  Rohit Bhargava has developed a Content Curation Manifesto in which he states: In the near future, experts predict that content on the web will double every 72 hours.  The detached analysis of an algorithm will no longer be enough to find what we seek.  To satisfy people’s hunger for great content on any topic imaginable, there will need to be a new category of individual working online, someone whose job it is not to create more content, but to make sense of all the content that others are creating, to find the best and most relevant content and bring it forward.  The people who choose to take on this role will be known as Content Curators.  The future of the social web will be driven by these Content Curators, who take it upon themselves to collect and share the best content online for others to consume.  They take on the role of citizen editors, publishing highly valuable compilations of content created by others.  In time, these curators will bring more utility and order to the social web.  In doing so, they’ll help to add a voice and point of view to organisations and companies that can connect them with their customers — creating an entirely new dialogue based on valued content rather than merely brand-created marketing messages.  Via ILoveSEO.  (Bear in mind, we’re not quite there yet.)
• Author, entrepreneur, visionary, lawyer, and peace activist Paul Marie Ghislain Otlet in the 1930s may have been decades ahead of his time when he suggested combining a telephone connection with a tv screen.  While many have difficulty remembering the world without the internet, it was nothing more than imagination in 1934, when Otlet described what would become the information superhighway.  A Belgian scientist regarded as the father of information science (a field he called “documentation”), Otlet was on to something when he published his Traité de documentation.  He devised a plan to combine tv with the phone to send and spread information from published works.  He referenced what would become the computer when he wrote: “The workspace is no longer cluttered with books.  In their place, a screen and telephone are within reach.  The page to be read in order to answer a question asked by telephone appears on the screen.”  He suggested a divided computer screen could show multiple pages at once (sort of like a few browser tabs).  He predicted that someday media would convey feel, taste, and smell as well; an ideal information-conveyance system would handle all of what he called “sense-perception documents.”  He included notions of hyperlinks, search engines, remote access, and social networks.  Otlet thought books were an inadequate way to store information because the arrangement of facts within them was the author’s arbitrary decision, making individual facts difficult to locate.  A better storage system would be cards containing individual “chunks” that could allow “all manipulations of classification and continuous interfiling.”  Needed in addition was “a very detailed synoptic outline of knowledge” that could allow classification of these chunks of data.  He began a collection of index cards meant to catalog known facts that he called the “Repertoire Bibliographique Universel” (RBU).  By the end of 1895 it had grown to 400,000 entries; later it reached 15 million entries, all stored in custom-designed cabinets and indexed according to his Universal Decimal Classification.  The collection grew to include files (letters, reports, newspaper articles, et cetera) and images contained in separate rooms (and the index cards cataloged these as well).  In 1896, Otlet set up a fee-based service to answer questions by mail, sending requesters copies of relevant index cards for each query (an analogue search engine).  By 1912, his service responded to over 1,500 queries a year.  Users were warned ahead of time if it was thought that their query was likely to produce more than 50 results.  Otlet envisioned a copy of the RBU in each major city around the world, but his attempts were hampered by difficulties in copying and transporting the card sets.  Otlet died in 1944; by then his ideas had begun to seem “grandiose, unfocused and passe.”  However, today, his collection is housed in an archive and museum of its own in Mons, Belgium and he is widely honoured.

• From "Synthetic Biology Explained": For 40 years, cutting and pasting genes in the lab has been called genetic engineering, but it’s been more discovery and manipulation, with precious little engineering.  There’s a frustrating lack of standardised components to work with.  The goal is to collect, refine, and repackage genes.  Engineers treat DNA more like a programming language — instead of 1’s and 0’s, there’s A, T, G, C.  Engineers want to use DNA to make simple lego-like components inspired by, but not found in, nature — in essence, software that builds its own hardware.  This field is called synthetic biology.  Now, you can select the gene you want from a database and order it over the internet.  The DNA sequence may be copied from nature, but the DNA itself is made by machine — it’s synthetic.  The raw material for synthesizing DNA is sugar.  US$25 worth of sugar would give you enough to make a copy of every human genome on the planet.  It works like an industrial inkjet printer — in go your sequences and out comes DNA, at a cost of less than US$.40 per base pair and getting cheaper.  It’s then freeze-dried and shipped to your door.  [I read once that sperm didn’t need to be alive to fertilise an egg.  Synthetic DNA must be something like dead sperm.]  A catalogue currently available lists over 5.000 standard components (called “biobricks”) as available.  University students build new and more-complex biobricks all the time.  String them together and run them inside the intestinal bacteria E coli and you convert it to a tool.  Make it turn colours in the presence of an environmental toxin.  Or flash in response to red light.  Biochemist Craig Venter has replaced naturally-occurring DNA with synthetic DNA of a related naturally-occurring species in a test of how programmable a bacterial cell can be (important to know when planning biological factories to make vaccines, medicines, food and fuel).  Says Drew Endy, synthetic biologist at Stanford, “Testing of understanding by building is the shortest path to demonstrating what you know and what you don’t.”  Our knowledge of cellular function is now constantly being expanded and tested.
• Good news for older fathers: your children and even your grandchildren may get a health benefit because of your advanced age.  Telomeres are the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes.  Longer telomeres appear to correlate with better health and longer lives.  Each time a cell reproduces, this shortens the telomeres — a built-in governor on a life’s maximum length.  Oddly, the older a man is when he becomes a father, the longer the telomeres of his children tend to be.  This advantage even extends to his grandchildren.  [Females aren’t mentioned, so perhaps it’s unknown if increased age of the mother has a similar positive effect.]  Carol Greider of Johns Hopkins University, who shared a Nobel Prize in 2009 for telomere research, cautions that, since older fathers also tend to pass on more potentially harmful genetic mutations, it’s “not at all clear” whether advanced paternal age gives an overall health benefit to children.  One analysis of 2,000 people confirmed the idea that the older a dad is when his child is born, the longer the child’s telomeres tend to be.  This holds true throughout the age range of the fathers (15-43 at the time their sons or daughters were born).  Researchers then extended that another generation: The older your father’s father was when your father was born, the longer your telomeres tend to be.  (The analysis included 234 grandchildren.)  A separate analysis found no significant effect from the mother’s father.  Older fathers also seem to have more children with autism.  (Oddly, one study concluded that this effect is even stronger when the older man’s wife is much younger than he is.)
• Chromosomes come in pairs; one copy is inherited from your mother and the other from your father.  Right now, standard techniques blend genetic data from the two chromosomes to yield a single sequence.  An alternative is to physically separate chromosomes before genomic analysis.  Pipe cells into a microfluidic chip; when one is found preparing to divide (a stage at which chromosomes are easier to manipulate), trap it in a chamber until it bursts its membrane.  The chromosomes will spill out, each ending in a smaller chamber by itself, where it can undergo normal analysis.  This technology makes it easier to identify variations between chromosomes, and could have a huge impact on fundamental genomic research and personalised medicine.  Ways are being sought to automate this chromosome separation.

The 500 (or so) different species of bacteria living inside our guts have important influences on everything from our ability to digest certain foods to our emotional well-being and behaviour.  Doses of “friendly” bacteria have already been shown to cure chronic digestive illnesses and it’s likely that they’ll soon be used to treat stress-related psychiatric disorders such as anxiety and depression.  Scientists have examined babies’ gut bacteria and also the bacteria present in dust samples from their homes and found there is a significant overlap.  Babies apparently share their gut bacteria with the environment and vice versa.  In fact, the people living in the same dusty house may also share health and behavioural characteristics.  It seems to be only a matter of time before we’ll be able to intentionally inoculate our homes with custom blends of bacteria in order to redesign our gut flora.  Designer dust will take its place alongside formaldehyde-free furniture polish and low-volatile-organic-compound paint for the responsible homeowner.  Perhaps, given the rising cost of obesity-related diseases combined with the increasing occurrence of allergies, environmental bacteria supplementation will come to be seen as a public health issue, with sanitation crews spraying down pavements and gutters with a fine layer of dried lactobacilli each week.  A city-wide enteric enhancement programme, combining a biotic sensor network and precision bifidobacteria crop-dusting drones can transform the city’s streets, transit network, and shared spaces into a giant, shared digestive supplement.

• Happy Valley, Hong Kong.
• Banyan tree in Vibhavadi Rangsit Road, Lat Yao, Chatuchak, Bangkok.
• At the Morris Arboretum, University of Pennsylvania, to explain how far roots extend and how large their systems can become, roots were painted on the sidewalk beside certain trees, demonstrating that root systems often exceed the size of the tree.

Live lobsters come in a variety of colours, sometimes even more than one.  Usually lobsters feature a blue-green to green-brown colour, but they’ve been found with shells that are yellow, white, orange, blue, brown, and occasionally even red (a 1 in 10 million chance).  But all lobsters turn red if cooked — because heat unbinds a protein which releases astaxanthin, a natural red pigment.  Lobsters moult (shed their shell to grow) so often that it’s nearly impossible to know an exact age, although scientists believe they can live up to 100 years.  However, the average life expectancy is 15 years.  Lobsters can grow to be 3 feet long; they use complicated signals to establish social relationships (much like dolphins), sometimes walking hand-in-hand, old leading young.

• A fisherman caught a perfectly symmetrical, two-toned lobster off the coast of Nova Scotia.  The two colours are brown and orange, for which scientists think a genetic mutation is responsible.  Furthermore, all split-coloured lobsters observed by Bob Bayer of the Lobster Institute in Maine have been hermaphroditic.
• Albino lobsters have been found off the coast of New England.  It’s estimated they occur once in every 100 million lobsters.  To date, all known albino lobsters found have been donated to museums.
• Alan Robinson of Steuben, Maine, hauled up a two-toned lobster near the town of Bar Harbor in 2006 while bringing in his catch.  Half the animal is mottled brown, the other half bright orange — the colour lobsters turn after they’ve been boiled.  Robinson donated his unusual catch to Maine’s Mount Desert Oceanarium.  The shells of American, or Maine, lobsters usually sport a combination of yellow, red, and blue pigments.  But the animals grow symmetrically, with each half of the body developing independently of the other.  In the case of Robinson’s catch, half the lobster’s shell lacked blue pigment.  The aquarium has received only 3 two-toned lobsters in 35 years, they note; the odds of finding one exactly half and half is about 1 in 50 million.

• This partially blue lobster is from Gloucester, Massachusetts.  An estimated 1 in 2 million lobsters are blue and about about 1 in 50 million are 2-tone, but it is unknown how frequently a lobster is found possessing both traits.
• Five rare orange lobsters were unpacked from the same Maine shipment in Boston.  According to marine experts, the chance of finding an orange lobster is 1 in 10 million.
• Here is another half and half lobster, however the albino part of this lobster formed so that it resembles the Phantom of the Opera, with a white mask on one side of his face.  He is colloquially known as Phantom of the Lobster.

• This rare calico lobster could be a 1-in-30 million occurrence according to experts.  He was caught off Winter Harbor, Maine, and discovered by Jasper White’s Summer Shack restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  They named him Calvin and he now lives at the New England Aquarium for the Biomes Marine Biology Center, a science centre in Rhode Island.  It’s the second calico lobster the aquarium has been given — for some reason an unusual number of the calicos were found in 2009.
• A genetic mutation causes a blue lobster to produce an excessive amount of a particular protein.  The protein and a red carotenoid molecule known as astaxanthin combine to form a blue complex known as crustacyanin, making the lobster look blue.
• This lobster is supposed to be blue, but everyone I ask agrees with me that it’s really purple.  This specimen was caught in 2006, on the fishing vessel Rock & Roll docked in Westport, Massachusetts.

Karst towers are the rocky formations by the Li river in China near Guilin.  They’re an example of land formations caused by rainwater combining with carbon dioxide in the air to become slightly acidic.  The acidic water works its way into any crack, fault or fissure in the limestone and chemically erodes the rock.  Over time, openings caused by the acidic rain widen into passages or caves; initial trickles of water become streams.  Sometimes cave ceilings collapse, forming sinkholes or cenotes.

• Gustave Strauven 1878-1919) was a Belgian architect who died in World War I.  He was into art nouveau and attracted to new technologies, creating more than 30 buildings, all incorporating wrought-iron floral motifs.  Maison Saint-Cyr was Strauven’s most important building, a baroque-flamboyant style made to be Georges de Saint-Cyr’s private residence.

• Top: A mix of hardy ground covers and paving bricks creates a tidy driveway.  Solid brickwork forms tracks that are outlined with tough ground covers (that can safely withstand the occasional misplaced tire).

Bottom: Why use low-cost asphalt when you can have brick?  Wait a minute — this IS asphalt, stamped and coloured to mimic red brick (and costing about half what brick would to install).
 

• This residence was also designed and constructed by Gustave Strauven.  It’s called Maison Van Dijck, and was constructed a couple of years prior to Maison St Cyr.

• This cake was made for a Captain America party.  The baker said, “I had figured out exactly how thick the layers needed to be in order to get all 13 stripes — I think it was ¼ inch.  So I started out slicing them super thin, but I got nervous about how flimsy that first layer was, so I moved the wire up a notch.  (You can see that the bottom white layer is thinner than the rest of them.)  Because of this, I ran out of cake and couldn’t make it to 13.”
• This Queens Jubilee cake was made for a competition.  It supposedly serves 35 people.  (Shouldn’t that be 32 people?)
• Before 1961, the flag of Kuwait, like those of other Gulf states, was red and white with the word “الكويت” in the middle.  The present flag is in Pan-Arab colours, but each colour is also significant in its own right.  Black represents the defeat of the enemy, while red is the colour of blood on the Kuwaiti swords.  White symbolizes purity, and green is for the fertile land.  This cake was made by Mohammed Chocolateria.

• Avital was boarding a 6am Southwest Airlines flight on 5 June from Las Vegas to New York, wearing a cotton black dress, flannel shirt and scarf.  She says she was politely chatting with an airline worker — who then told her cleavage was inappropriate and that she wouldn’t be able to board the flight unless she buttoned up her flannel shirt.  Avital declined to cover up and boarded the plane anyway — cleavage and all.  The flight and Avital apparently made it to New York without incident.  “I didn’t think there was anything that special about the outfit I was wearing.  It had topped 115°F degrees in Las Vegas when I was there, and most people were scantily dressed just to stay cool.  I hadn’t even considered that it would be a big deal,” Avital said.  She added that she “most likely” won’t be flying Southwest again.  “If Southwest wants to impose a dress code, they are entirely within their rights as a private company.  What bothers me is not knowing what might set off an individual employee, who can prevent me from boarding based on his or her personal opinion.  I or other passengers can be shamed or judged without official policy to back it up.”
• Carved book landscapes by Guy Laramee are “dedicated to mysterious forces thanks to which we can traverse ordeals.”  (That sounds a bit too spiritual for me.)  This one is called “Great Wave”.
• Mexican Bar and Grill in Ocean City, Maryland.

Roll over each image to see “before” and “after” views of selected stills from Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows.  Said Mark Breakspear, VFX artist: “Early in the summer of 2011 we headed to the set at Pinewood in the UK.  We were charged with building the digital version and extensions of Collinsport for the scene where Victoria Winters arrives by train and the scene where Barnabus reveals the secret passageway and escorts Elizabeth Collins to the hidden family treasure store.  The hardest thing for the Collinsport shots was believability, because every human being has seen a town, the ocean and general street action, so you don’t have much wriggle room for what looks real.  On a side note, if you ever need to get rid of a body, I’d just cover it in bread and [leave on the beach].  It’ll be gone in 60 seconds.  Never turn your back on a seagull.”

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) was an American poet, novelist and short story writer.  She married fellow poet Ted Hughes in 1956 and they lived together first in the US and then England.  Following a long struggle with depression and a marital separation, Plath committed suicide.  She is now best known for her two published collections: The Colossus and Other Poems and Ariel.  In 1982, she became the first poet to win a Pulitzer Prize posthumously, for her collected poems.  Apparently, she was also something of an artist.  A selection of her 44 ink and pen drawings will be exhibited for the first time 2 November-16 December 2012 at the Mayor Gallery in London.  She once claimed that art was her “deepest source of inspiration” (but apparently not a sufficient source of happiness).