It’s possible there’s a more dramatic development in the field of contemporary gene-editing but it’s indisputable that CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) -cas9 (CRISPR-associated 9 [protein]) ranks very highly indeed. The technique, first discovered (or developed) in 2012, has brought recognition in the form of the 2020 Nobel Prize for Chemistry to CRISPR’s two discoverers, Emanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna. An October 7, 2020 news item on phys.org announces the news, The Nobel…

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An August 6, 2020 RMIT University (Australia) press release (also on EurekAlert but published August 5, 2020) by Gosia Kaszubska announces a coating that makes windows ‘smart’, A simple method for making clear coatings that can block heat and conduct electricity could radically cut the cost of energy-saving smart windows and heat-repelling glass [electrochromic windows?].The spray-on coatings developed by researchers at RMIT are ultra-thin, cost-effective and rival the performance of current industry standards for transparent…

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First, there was a dress that reflected your emotions. Now, apparently, there’s a dress that reflects your thoughts. Frankly, I don’t understand why anyone would want clothing that performed either function. However, I’m sure there’s an extrovert out there who’s equally puzzled abut my take on this matter. Emotion-reading dress Before getting to this latest piece of wearable technology, the mind-reading dress, you might find this emotional sensing dress not only interesting but eerily similar,…

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I love structural colo(u) and the first such story here was this February 7, 2013 posting, which is where you’ll find the image below, AGELESS BRILLIANCE: Although the pigment-derived leaf color of this decades-old specimen of the African perennial Pollia condensata has faded, the fruit still maintains its intense metallic-blue iridescence.COURTESY OF P.J. RUDALL [downloaded from http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/34200/title/Color-from-Structure/] Those berries are stunning especially when you realize they are part of a long-dead Pollia plant. Scientist, Rox…

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According to an August 4, 2020 news item on ScienceDaily the ‘Ice-phobic’ properties of moths’ eyes have inspired a new technology, Researchers have been working for decades on improving the anti-icing performance of functional surfaces. Ice accumulation on aircraft wings, for instance, can reduce lifting force, block moving parts and cause disastrous problems.Research in the journal AIP [American Institute of Physics] Advances, from AIP Publishing, investigates a unique nanostructure, modeled on moth eyes, that has…

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Thanks to Bob Yirka’s September 30, 2020 article for phys.org there’s an announcement about D-Wave Systems’ latest quantum computer and an explanation of how D-Wave’s quantum computer differs from other quantum computers. Here’s the explanation (Note: Links have been removed), …Over the past several years, several companies have dedicated resources to the development of a true quantum computer that can tackle problems conventional computers cannot handle. Progress on developing such computers has been slow, however,…

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I love mysteries and am quite interested in the nature of reality (you, too?) and that gives us something in common with a couple of Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI; Canada) researchers. From The Quantum Physicist as Causal Detective event page on the insidetheperimeter.ca website (notice received via email), In their live webcast from Perimeter on October 7 [2020], Robert Spekkens and Elie Wolfe will shed light on the exciting possibilities brought about by…

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A July 30, 2020 news item on ScienceDaily announces news about more accurate health monitoring with electronics applied directly to your skin, A team of researchers led by Cunjiang Yu, Bill D. Cook Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Houston, has developed a new form of electronics known as “drawn-on-skin electronics,” allowing multifunctional sensors and circuits to be drawn on the skin with an ink pen.The advance, the researchers report in Nature…

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Have you wondered about Zoom video conferencing and all that data being made available? Perhaps questioned ethical issues in addition to those associated with data security? Is so and you’d like to come up with a creative intervention that delves beyond encryption issues, there’s Zoom Obscura (on the creativeinformatics.org website), CI [Creative Informatics] researchers Pip Thornton, Chris Elsden and Chris Speed were recently awarded funding from the Human Data Interaction Network (HDI +) Ethics &…

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Left: color image after the 1950s treatment. The ears of the Eyckian Lamb were revealed after removal of the 16th-century overpaint obscuring the background. Right: color image after the 2019 treatment that removed all of the 16th century overpaint, revealing the face of the Eyckian Lamb. The dotted lines indicate the outline of the head before removal of 16th-century overpaint. Fascinating, yes? More than one person has noticed that the ‘new’ lamb is “disturbingly human-like.”…

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