Month: March 2014

Synthetic yeast chromosome

Scientists have synthesized an entire yeast chromosome, the first artificial chromosome for the kingdom of life that includes humans, plants, and fungi. Yeast with the artificial chromosome appeared to be just as happy as their “natural” counterparts, reports the team. The methods developed to create the designer genomic structure could help synthetic biologists better use the single-celled fungi as biological factories for chemicals like biofuels and drugs.

can’t wait for the new yeast strains for brewing.

Destroy party schools

party schools provide easy majors for affluent students that don’t interfere with their partying. they have connections to get jobs without good credentials.

the university essentially facilitates a party pathway through college, which works reasonably well for students who come from very privileged backgrounds. The facilitatory methods include: reasonably scrupulous enforcement of alcohol bans in the dorms (thus enhancing the capacity of the fraternities to monopolize control of illegal drinking and, incidentally, forcing women to drink in environments where they are more vulnerable to sexual assault); providing easy majors which affluent students can take which won’t interfere with their partying, and which will lead to jobs for them, because they have connections in the media or the leisure industries that will enable them to get jobs without good credentials; and assigning students to dorms based on choice

Living materials

These “living materials” combine the advantages of live cells — which respond to their environment, produce complex biological molecules, and span multiple length scales — with the benefits of nonliving materials, which add functions such as conducting electricity or emitting light.

India does software right, sometimes

federal IT projects can work remarkably well (if you’re india)

One of the most important positive developments of our time – both underpublicized and underappreciated — is our growing ability to send and receive money securely across space. It’s not just Paypal or Bitcoin in the West, as the truly significant gains from payment systems are coming in the developing world. In particular, the efforts of the Indian government to set up a biometrically-based payments system are improving the lives of many millions and may go down as one of the most impressive achievements of contemporary times.

Bible translation is hard

Many bible thumper crusades are due to mistranslations. When they talk about ‘sexual immorality’ they are really translating πορνεία which means forced prostitution. Translation is also risky:

In 1631, Barker pounded out another poorly edited King James Bible. Unfortunately for him, it would prove to be his last. Smack dab in the middle of the 10 Commandments (Exodus 20:14) — one of the Bible’s most integral passages — the publisher omitted one crucial word: “not.”