From Fox News, Glycine has been found on comet Wild 2. Carbon 13 was used as an indicator of extraterrestrial origin.

From Biology News Net, a look at the fossil relative of the New Zealand’s lesser short-tailed bat shows that walking isn’t due to a dearth of predators and competition. Interesting fact the male lesser short-tailed bats have singing contests.

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From Science daily, a new strain of Geobactor, the darling of electricity producers, has been discovered. Using selective pressure, a team from University of Massachusetts Amherst has evolved a strain that forms a thinner biofilm.

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From the New York Times, a cool finding about a microlayer of microbes at the oceans’ surface. These microbes form an oily biofilm which maybe involved with gas exchange in the ocean.

So it’s just not that Obama is acting like Bush on certain things, it a bit more personal. What happens when you find out that people you admire are bat-shit fucking crazy? So I’m reading about a celebrity “atheist” who seems to me to hate science. Especially the branch of science that I love the most, my little buddies the microbes.

Obviously I disappointed that someone doesn’t live up to my standards. So now I feel like a little kid that whining that there’s no Santa. Because after all, that’s life, where you have to deal with crazy Aunt Tilda in the attic.

From BBC News, A look at the embryonic development of turtles, mice and chickens show that the ribs of the turtle migrate upward to form the turtle’s shell.

From the NASA Spitzer news page, A look at the chemicals around smaller and cooler stars than the sun show that they do not have hydrogen cyanide, but acetylene. The speculation is that ultraviolet light is involved in the creation of HCN. Also small stars have extreme magnetic bursts that can be disruptive for life. So the implications for life on planets around these stars seems to be less likely than sun-like stars.

From Universe today, a look at banded iron formations, show the decrease of nickel in seawater over time. It is speculated that methanogens, which are known to need nickle, became less abundant and lead to the rise of oxygen producers and more complex life.

From Nat Geo, the caterpillar of the Isabella moth, when infested with parasitic fly larva will eat more leaves containing alkaloids.

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So apparently my alma mater is hosting a conference on Human Enhancement & Nanotechnology Conference. From the good people of http://www.nanoethics.org/. It’s free and open to the public, so I’ll have to see if I can attend.