I am a Folding@home user. So the news from Sony that the PS III will have an icon on the network menu is exciting. Now even more science will be spread out over more computing power.

So Rogers AR maybe the new Dover. Parents there seem to want “critical thinking” about evolution. But I doubt that any critical thinking about “creation science” will be allowed.

Cool shit in OZ. The South Australia Museum will be displaying fossils from the Ediacaran period. These PreCambrian fossils are some of the oldest animal fossils.

And finally, some help for the RNA World hypothesis. The discovery of a RNA enzyme that acts like RNA polymerase(meaning that it can join pieces of RNA together) is big news. Abstract

A couple of items:

From Reuters.com, in China the fossil ear bones of a mammal have been found. It fills the gap between the earliest mammals and modern mammals. And proves the theory that the mammal ear bones came from its ancesteral reptile’s jaw.

From the National Geographic, hybridization many be more common in animals than previously thought. The recent finding of a grizzly bear and polar bear hybred, may be the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.

From MLive.com, this looks at how the local libraries handle their collections. I’m a voracious reader when I have the time, so knowing how my library gets rid of its older books is interesting.

From the Christian Science Monitor, a study looking at soil respiration, finds that with increased temperatures, mushrooms, roots and other soil organisms will not released as much of CO2 as previously thought. The only thing wrong (and I’m nit-picking) is that the author said that mushrooms are the “tiniest terrestrial inhabitants.” Mushrooms can be some of the biggest organisms on the planet. Read the rest of this entry »

From Sciencedaily, if you know anything about life’s progression(for a lack of a better way of saying it) bacteria came first. Then multi-cellular organisms. So that the rest of life’s diversity evolved in about 1 billion years(in a ~3.8 billion year span for the whole of life).

Bacteria shares DNA through the use of plasmids. Some viruses use can use reverse transcriptase to integrate into the DNA of its host to make new copies of itself. It is believed that this transfer of DNA can speed the rate of evolution.

The iconic Hubble image the is probably the wallpaper on hundreds of million computers is no more. The Eagle Nebula was destroyed by a supernova 6ooo years ago according to the NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Just imagine when humans were building the first villages a supernova was scattering the dust of the Eagle Nebula.

From Physorg, a look at Lake Vostok in Antarctica. I think they maybe doing a metagenome study.

From Biocompare, this study looks at how adding milk to tea reduces the cardiovascular benefits. As an American I usually don’t drink my tea with milk, but apparently the English are big on adding Milk. Intrestingly I was watching Modern Marvels on tea. While drinking tea(an herbal).

This from Physorg.com, is a discovery of a new type of algae. Being akin to red algae, picoplankton was uncovered by biochemical means.