Now that Valentine’s day is rapidly approaching, have you considered presenting a romantic partner with some jewellery made from your spit? A research project at Aalto University, Finland suggests that you could. Oron Catts and Marika Hellman of the university’s Biofilia Lab explain: “First, some water is held in the mouth for a moment and […]
Tag: DNA
The human genome and the immortality of television sets
The ENCODE project (its stated goal is “to identify all functional elements in the human genome sequence“) has attracted much criticism. Dan Graur, a member of the Luxuriant Former Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS), and his colleagues made hearty contributions to that river of criticism: “On the immortality of television sets: ‘function’ in the human genome according to the evolution-free gospel […]
Elvis Mouse Not Dead (never alive)
Rumours that Elvis’s DNA lives-on in a race of genetically engineered mice have been greatly exaggerated. Back in 2012 there were a flurry of mainstream (and sidestream) news items covering Koby Barhad’s project ‘All that I am‘. [Please note that some links below, from Archive.org are slow to load, but given time, they should] At […]
Quasi-ancient tributes to DNA
Here’s quasi-ancient, grainy, degraded video from the 1995 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. The theme that year was DNA. Behold tributes to DNA, first from young Kate Eppers; then from Nobel Laureates Rich Roberts, Dudley Herschbach, Joseph Murray, Sheldon Glashow, and William Lipscomb reading a poem by Stanley Eigen (“DNA and Green Eggs and Ham”)… BONUS: […]
C DNA: C from cats, against criminals
“This is the first time cat DNA has been used in a criminal trial in the UK.” That’s the killer quote from a report by Alan Boyle for MSNBC, under the headline: “Elementary, my dear Fluffy: Cat DNA solves another homicide“ The University of Leicester issued a proud press release, giving background on the case. […]
Zowie: “Wow”, the DNA code, interstellar communications
Many strands of thought weave together in this study: “The ‘Wow! signal’ of the terrestrial genetic code,” Vladimir I. shCherbak, Maxim A. Makukov, arXiv:1303.6739v1, March 27, 2013. (Thanks to investigator Vaughn Tan for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at Kazakh National University and the Fesenkov Astrophysical Institute, both in Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan, […]
A loving, applied mathematical tribute across a generation
L. Mahadevan, who was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in physics for studying how sheets get wrinkled, wrote a loving tribute, a few months ago, to his teacher Joseph Keller [pictured here]. Keller is a two-time Ig Nobel Prize winner. The entire essay appears in SIAM News. Here are snippets: Joe Keller’s contributions to the […]
Scientists speak up: “On the immortality of television sets”
By weird tradition, scientists use dull, obscure language when they criticize other scientists. Six scientists chose to stray outside that tradition. In a new paper, they criticize the people who did “The ENCODE Project: ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements”. They pull few, if any, punches. Thanks to Rolf (“pull no punches”) Zwaan for bringing this to our attention: […]
Raymer untangles string-tangling for you
Dorian Raymer explains, in this video, his Ig Nobel Prize-winning research about how and why bunches of string will inevitably become tangled:
The DNA plush doll project
Jun Axup invites you to help her create a plush equivalent to the blueprints for life: (Thanks to investigator Richard Rae for bringing this to our attention.) BONUS: The unrelated study “DNA chips: promising toys have become powerful tools“