Posted by Catfish as Tech, enviornment, science, survival
Craig Venter (aka Darth Venter), a controversial DNA researcher who headed up Celera Genomics, which became famous for running a parallel version of the Human Genome Project in 1999 (mapping his own genome sequence), is in the news again. declaring, “I am creating artificial life.” Venter has been working on creating synthetic chromosomes and is expected to officially announce to the world that he has synthetically created a new life form. Venter’s team of about 20 Scientists has chemically sewn together a chromosome that is 381 genes long and contains 580,000 base pairs of genetic code. This DNA sequence is based upon the real life sequence of the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium. The new new life form will not be wholly synthetic however. The DNA will be synthetic, but it will be injected into a pre-existing bacteria cell, effectively creating a new species.
The implications of this are mind boggling huge. This technology can be used on to create better drugs and cure disease, to creating biological weapons of untold horrors. People will have to consider long and hard just what it means for life to actually be created in a test tube. Technology like this could also be applied in conjunction with several “planetary engineering” ideas proposed to help aid certain environmental problems, such as global warming or oil spills. This technology could also effect the manner in which the human species evolves as now instead of just reading the code, we will be authors of our own genetic text. Big questions indeed.
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Posted by Catfish as enviornment, humor, science, survival
Growing up I lived near an artillery testing base and if you hiked far enough up into the mountains you would come upon a fence with a sign warning that the fence was electrified. My friends and I used to joke about getting one of our less well liked friends to take a leak on the fence. Well, now it seems scientists have come up with a way to create electricity using urine. There’s no more need to whiz on the electric fence to make sparks. Researchers at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology created the battery as a disposable power source for medical test kits. It is relatively small, reportedly about the size of a library card. The battery was made by soaking cotton in a solution of copper chloride, which was then wedged between strips of magnesium and copper. The whole unit was then laminated in plastic. All that’s needed after that is a drop of urine on a strip (much like a pregnancy test or diabetic test strip) which is inserted into an slit in the plastic coating of the battery, causing a chemical reaction to to take place that produces about 1.5 volts of power. This is the same amount of a standard AA battery running for 90 minutes. Something else to take note of: compared to standard battery types, the potential for biodegradable batteries is a much more attainable goal. Perhaps we shouldn’t be so focussed on living green, maybe the best color for us is really yellow? Urine luck planet Earth!
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Posted by Catfish as Tech, enviornment, sexuality
Here’s the (link) . Note the last sentence in the article…”A seal was seen in the canal in 2003.”. If people in Brooklyn don’t want to own up to being the source of the STDs in the waterway, then they better all agree to blame it on Seal.
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