Andrew Glester reviews Apollo 11: the Inside Story by David Whitehouse.
Race to lunar space
Posted in space
Evolution is one of nature’s most impressive forces, allowing organisms to adapt to changing environments to survive. By harnessing and guiding that process scientists have managed to manipulate micro-organisms into producing useful new drugs and materials, but it’s still a time-consuming process. Now, researchers at the University of North Carolina (UNC) have developed a new tool that speeds up the process in mammalian cells, creating new therapeutics in a matter of days.
In great news, five women have been appointed as the heads of the eight engineering departments at MIT.
Suffocating under the surface.
🔎 Learn more about the challenges our oceans face: https://wef.ch/2k1Z7r5
In July 2017, social media users shared videos and images of burning trees and melting streetlights — the purported results of a record-breaking heatwave in…
An interesting article on how tsunamis caused by comets wiped out civilization in what is now the southeastern U.S. twice, in 539 and again in 1014. The bit about ammonia in the atmosphere also reminded me of the Norse prophecy about Thor wrestling with the Midgard Serpent, accompanied by poison in the air that kills many. I wonder how many strange things were witnessed by our ancestors for which they left us records that we are simply unable to understand.
Two massive comet or asteroid strikes in the past 1500 years altered Eastern North America’s history. The one in 539 AD devastated the South Atlantic Coast and permanently changed its geography. It left the South Atlantic Coastal Plain almost uninhabited. Hundreds of Uchee and Muskogean communities were wiped off the face of the earth. For obvious reasons, survivors headed north to the mountains.
Over a decade ago, I attended a conference in Macon, GA on the Swift Creek Culture. An anthropology professor matter-of-factly mentioned that all the Swift Creek Culture villages in the South Atlantic Coastal Plain were abandoned around 550 AD. About the same time, a large town with mounds on the Etowah River in Northwest Georgia began a rapid decline.
Think of DNA and chances are the double helix structure comes to mind, but that’s only one piece of the puzzle. Another major part is mitochondrial DNA, and in plants that’s even more important – and so complex that scientists haven’t yet been able to edit the genes in there. Now a team of Japanese researchers has managed to do just that, which could help improve the genetic diversity of crops.