Opinions of a Wandering Waif

The same bacteria that make your sweaty socks smell are responsible for some 1.7 million hospital-associated infections in the US alone. An Israeli antibacterial fabric may offer a solution.

soulabstracts:

Ten new possible species could change everything about the way we think about deep-sea life in the Atlantic Ocean.

Most of the creatures are so strange, it is hard to know which direction they swim or where their mouths are.

The images were captured by researchers from the University of Aberdeen during more than 300 hours of diving with a remotely operated vehicle between 2,300 feet and 12,000 feet deep along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the largest mountain range on Earth, which runs down the center of the Atlantic Ocean between Europe and Africa on the east and the Americas on the west.

crookedindifference:

NASA images, made easily searchable and zoomable.

Google maps controls, Right click for options like full screen.

Milky Way Galaxy (Spitzer): 396032x24752 (9.8 gigapixels)

Mirror: http://bmgoau.cwahi.net/spitzer.html

Mirror: http://bmgoau.nfshost.com/milkyway_spitzer_zoom/spitzer.html

Details: http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2008-11/ssc2008-11a.shtml

Gothic Strip (like the hubble ultra deep field but much much bigger, each point of light is a galaxy):

Mirror: http://home.exetel.com.au/bmgoau/space/008_1561b2.html

Mirror: http://www.bmgoau.byethost6.com/008_1561b2.html

Orion Nebula:

Mirror: http://home.exetel.com.au/bmgoau/space/008_1211.html

Carina Nebula [pictured above]:

Mirror: http://home.exetel.com.au/bmgoau/space/008_1506.html

Mirror: http://bmgoau.byethost31.com/008_1506.html

All Hubble Images Sorted by Resolution:

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/entire/hires/true/

Excellent Video Narrated by Morgan Freeman:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxXf7AJZ73A

Click through to view them all.

unburyingthelead:

Dr Venter likened the advance to making new software for the cell.

The researchers copied an existing bacterial genome. They sequenced its genetic code and then used “synthesis machines” to chemically construct a copy.

Dr Venter told BBC News: “We’ve now been able to take our synthetic chromosome and transplant it into a recipient cell - a different organism.

“As soon as this new software goes into the cell, the cell reads [it] and converts into the species specified in that genetic code.”

The new bacteria replicated over a billion times, producing copies that contained and were controlled by the constructed, synthetic DNA.

“This is the first time any synthetic DNA has been in complete control of a cell,” said Dr Venter.

ihatethismess:

therecipe:

crackedvessel:

Size Comparisons for VY Canis Majoris, the largest star in the known universe

wilwheaton:

I sure hope this is true, and not some kind of malfunction:

It left Earth 33 years ago, now it’s claimed the Voyager 2 spacecraft may have been hijacked by aliens after sending back data messages NASA scientists can’t decode.

NASA installed a 12-inch disk containing music and greetings in 55 languages in case intelligent extraterrestrial life ever found it.

But now the spacecraft is sending back what sounds like an answer: Signals in an unknown data format!

brooklynmutt:

3 Billion Year-Old Baby

An image made by the Spitzer Space Telescope shows a young black hole about 13 billion light-years away from Earth.

time

Via Wired. The GOP is selling fear, predominantly, certainly not new ideas, so this makes sense.

Deep-seated political differences aren’t simply moral and intellectual: They’re also biological.

In reflex tests of 46 political partisans, psychologists found that conservatives were more likely than liberals to be shocked by sudden threats.

Accompanying the physiological differences were deep differences on hot-button political issues: military expansion, the Iraq war, gun control, capital punishment, the Patriot act, warrantless searches, foreign aid, abortion rights, gay marriage, premarital sex and pornography.

“People are experiencing the world, experiencing threat, differently,” said University of Nebraska political scientist John Hibbing. “We have very different physiological orientations.”

The study, published today in Science, has not yet been duplicated, but adds a potentially troubling piece to the puzzle of biology, behavior and politics.

Earlier studies have linked reflexive responses to threats — which for testing purposes take the form of loud noises and graphic images — with existing states of heightened anxiety.

Though the Science study’s authors cautioned against an overly broad interpretation of their findings, the results suggest that fear leads to political conservatism.