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"'Living pigments' is a metaphorical device to refer to the fact that the pigments of the original paint have been replaced by pigmented micro-organisms,"
My question: were the fungi actually the paints used - the painters knew fungi would colonize and provide long-lasting colour?
"Decades after launching a $50 mlllion composting business, Paul Sellew is still in startup mode."Go figure. A world-class composting company right in Waltham.
Waste Management, one of the largest in the country, betting big on Harvest Power's power composting tech. Composting still has legs and folks can still stand to make big buck with it. [And did I mention composting is indeed a practical use of microbes?]
Yep. 2011 will be about serendipity and discover.
"Shouldn’t your table scraps be helping to produce clean energy? Harvest Power Inc., a Waltham company, may announce a project in Massachusetts to build a plant that turns food waste and yard trimmings into both compost and natural gas equivalents, using a bacteria-assisted process called anaerobic digestion. The company has had discussions with Lexington and other towns, but CEO Paul Sellew will only say that news about a facility in the Northeast could come in the second quarter. Harvest has more than 150 employees."
Life blog
Molecularist = a person who creates, modifies, and hacks molecules and then makes them do wondrous things.
05 January 2011
links for 2011-01-04
01 January 2011
links for 2010-12-31
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A post I did on "copying" bugs for personal use.
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"To me, humans have always been practical microbiologists: we probably settled down to farm barley for beer, one of the oldest pieces of writing is a recipe for beer, and it’s not surprising that early biochemists studied enzymes in the fermentation process."
25 December 2010
links for 2010-12-24
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"The federal income tax, a senator from New York said a century ago, might mean the end of “our distinctively American experiment of individual freedom.” Social Security was actually a plan “to Sovietize America,” a previous head of the Chamber of Commerce said in 1935. The minimum wage and mandated overtime pay were steps “in the direction of Communism, Bolshevism, fascism and Nazism,” the National Association of Manufacturers charged in 1938."
24 December 2010
links for 2010-12-23
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Microbes to modulate immune system in gut. So looking forward to this post-Pasteurian world.
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via @mrgunn
22 December 2010
links for 2010-12-21
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"The Genspace grand opening isn’t about the past two years, it’s about the future. Let’s bring back the romance between the sciences and the public. I am proud to be a founding member of the first community biotech laboratory in NYC."
18 December 2010
links for 2010-12-17
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"You ever have a situation where you’re going, ‘Man, I hope he doesn’t look over here.’ And he looks at me and calls me over, and it was just a sick feeling. He goes, ‘You need to call Daphane.’ And I knew right then something was bad.’’
Wow. What a story.
17 December 2010
links for 2010-12-16
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"Macmillan hopes to partner with scientists to turn software into commercial products."
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"A new kind of scientific information company. The digital age has created new opportunities for the way we do scientific research - from how we manage our labs and analyse data, to how we link information and make funding decisions. We’re here to help you make the most of those possibilities."
[via Nature]
15 December 2010
links for 2010-12-14
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"My point isn’t that Google, Netflix, Amazon, Yelp or any of the others are doomed. But I do think there’s an opportunity brewing for entrepreneurs, websites and companies to add editorial components to the algo-crowd paradigm."
Or what I have said for a while: machine, crowd, and librarians.
14 December 2010
links for 2010-12-13
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"Days after an announcement that a strain of bacteria can apparently use arsenic in place of phosphorous to build its DNA and other biomolecules — an ability unknown in any other organism — some scientists are questioning the finding and taking issue with how it was communicated to non-specialists."
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“Social media can’t belong to one person; it needs to be part of everyone’s job,” Preston said. “It has to be integrated into the existing editorial process and production process. I’m convinced that’s the only way we’re going to crack the engagement nut.”
Spot. On. [via @alexdc]
13 December 2010
links for 2010-12-12
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"It'll be interesting to see how it all progresses culturally and legally as cloud services continue to take off, and new ways of computing - mobile, tablets, web apps, etc. - push the status quo again and again."
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"Since then, however, feeds have started to fade in importance. Google introduced it's Reader, and everyone who were real news junkies moved to using that. Everyone else either uses Facebook or Twitter. In fact, if you're a new news site or blog, it's pretty much required have a Twitter and FB account to push out your changes nowadays."
10 December 2010
links for 2010-12-09
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In the past year I've seen a ton of great tools for invtravital imaging - imaging molecules and cells in live organisms. Very cool.
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"As Facebook, Twitter and other technologies become more pervasive, more hospitals are hiring staff members dedicated solely to social media -- and getting physicians to use these tools."
08 December 2010
04 December 2010
links for 2010-12-03
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"Jumo will be successful because the nonprofit world needs one place where the public can connect with multiple nonprofits without leaving one Web page."
Dashboard. Drink.
01 December 2010
links for 2010-11-30
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Sigh. And a short-short I wrote in frustration: http://bit.ly/euhkRw [via @mrgunn]
30 November 2010
links for 2010-11-29
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Cool.
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Hm. Saw a great talk last week about this. Does not compute. I guess it's the difference between the 5-10 years of new biotech and the 2-5 years of investors attention.
28 November 2010
links for 2010-11-27
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"SkyScoutThe Celestron SkyScout is a revolutionary handheld device that uses advanced GPS technology with point and click convenience to identify thousands of stars, planets, constellations and more."
Wicked. I'd use it every night.
23 November 2010
links for 2010-11-22
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"The two brewers claim Infinium is the first new beer created under the German beer purity law, called the Reinheitsgebot, in more than 100 years. (Under the law, only four ingredients -- malt, hops, yeast, and water -- can be used to make beer.)"
22 November 2010
links for 2010-11-21
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Makes me think of P2P social networking. Take back the cloud!
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"The Green Bin Program of Canada’s Niagara Region discovered that SunChips bags take 14 weeks to biodegrade, which is too long; single-layer compostable trash bags take only three to four weeks."
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"The plastic industry lobby’s primary argument against biodegradable and compostable products has simply been – there is no composting infrastructure in the U.S."
They are correct.
20 November 2010
links for 2010-11-19
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Very clever. /via @adambluestein
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"ProFounder gives you the tools you need to raise money from your friends, family and community." Very interesting. /via @karllong
19 November 2010
links for 2010-11-18
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"The resulting plot (see chart) shows that both measures peaked at around US$750,000 in annual funding; at higher funding levels, the median publication number and average impact factor were both discernibly lower."
17 November 2010
links for 2010-11-16
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Graphs and analysis, oh my! State of the industry.
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"Biologists' collaborative data repositories come of age."
16 November 2010
links for 2010-11-15
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I don't know if I'd call it 'controlled'. It's really just regular serendipity. Just more actively looking for it. No?
08 November 2010
links for 2010-11-07
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One more step towards lifecaching. / via @jsteig
05 November 2010
04 November 2010
03 November 2010
Future Media by BERGLONDON - ubicomp.revised
BERG has come out with two more "alternative futures" videos, once again made with Dentsu London and Timo Arnall.
I've been struggling to put into words what I feel and think when I see these visions. I see this as all about ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) or calm computing.
When folks spoke about ubicomp (I remember talking about it back in the 90s) it focused on the computer, the devices, the data, and how it would interface with people. And one theme was that "computing" would recede into the background.
But these videos are much more - much more current with how we use machines and our expectations of how to interact with them and the world. Today, computing and devices are as hum-drum as a newspaper or magazine, no more wondrous than a chair we sit in. All that was ubicomp has finally receded into the mundane.
In Incidental Media (video below) and Media Surfaces: The Journey the focus is on the peripheral (ambient?) "calmness" of information presentation, with a bit of play worked in. Surfaces (printed and digital) become a part of the landscape, much like clouds or smells that provide information should you turn your attention to them.
One key thing that I'd also like to point out is that all this information or activity is modest - it's as smart as a puppy and isn't meant to be a smidgeoun smarter.
What did you think of when you saw these videos?
Video: Incidental Media
And, I got to say I chuckled a few times when I saw some of the names in the videos and that Finnish coaster. Nice touches for those who know. :-)
02 November 2010
links for 2010-11-01
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"Reversing a longstanding policy, the federal government said on Friday that human and other genes should not be eligible for patents because they are part of nature. The new position could have a huge impact on medicine and on the biotechnology industry."
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Brilliant.
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"Increasing amounts of vegetation could be causing up to 60% of a slowing in wind speed across the Northern Hemisphere"
Heh, as we make the world more green, we may be causing wind speed to go down. Other side effects include the increase in wild animals in suburban areas.
"But synthetic DNA standards offer little protection, critics say."
Movers and shakers to meet.
"Ten years ago, two fingers were enough to count the number of sequenced human genomes. Until last year, the fingers on two hands were enough. Today, the rate of such sequencing is escalating so fast it is hard to keep track. Nature attempted nevertheless: we asked more than 90 genomics centres and labs to estimate the number of human genome sequences they have in the works. Although far from comprehensive, the tally indicates that at least 2,700 human genomes will have been completed by the end of this month, and that the total will rise to more than 30,000 by the end of 2011."
31 October 2010
29 October 2010
links for 2010-10-29
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"“People love information,” Arment said. “Right now in our society, we have an obesity epidemic. Because for the first time in history, we have access to food whenever we want, we don’t know how to control ourselves. I think we have the exact same problem with information.”"
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