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 Biocompare, so engineers have been looking for ways of stopping liquefaction. The solution: bacteria. Using common soil bacteria with nutriants and oxygen, scientists have lab-tested bacterial metabolism to create calcite from sand.

An abstract talks about how the combination of a milk protein, Lactoferrin and pennicillin G on pennicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.