Back in the fall of 2018 I came across one of those overexcited pieces about personalized medicine and gene editing tha are out there. This one came from an unexpected source, an author who is a “PhD Scientist in Medical Science (Blood and Vasculature” (from Rick Gierczak’s LinkedIn profile). It starts our promisingly enough although I’m beginning to dread the use of the word ‘precise’  where medicine is concerned, (from a September 17, 2018 posting…

Continue reading

[downloaded from https://artscisalon.com/re-generating-creating-interpreting-tuesday-april-30-530-pm-ocadu/] This image is intriguing as it’s being used to illustrate an ArtSci Salon April 30, 2019 event about biotechnology (from the Re – [Generating, Creating, Interpreting] event webpage), Re – [Generating, Creating, Interpreting]Conversations about LifeWe live in strange times. We mourn for the countless lives we are losing to extinction, famine, severe weather and disease; we celebrate the possibility that science may assist us in preserving what we have and in regenerating…

Continue reading

Why isn’t the S.NET abbreviation SSNET? That’s what it should be, given the organization’s full name: Society for the Study of New and Emerging Technologies. S.NET smacks of a compromise or consensus decision of some kind. Also, the ‘New’ in its name was ‘Nanoscience’ at one time (see my Oct. 22, 2013 posting). Now onto 2019 and the conference, which, for the first time ever, is being held in Latin America. Here’s more from a…

Continue reading

Dedicated to foundational theoretical physics, the Perimeter Institute (PI) has an active outreach programme. In their latest ‘newsletter’ (received via email on September 19, 2018) highlights poetry written by scientists, (from the ’12 poignant poems’ webpage), It can be said that science and poetry share the common purpose of revealing profound truths about the universe and our place in it. Physicist Paul Dirac, a known curmudgeon, would have dismissed that idea as hogwash. “The aim…

Continue reading

Cosmetics would not have been my first thought on reading the title for the paper (“Rates of cavity filling by liquids”) produced  by scientists from Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST). A September 17, 2018 news item on Nanowerk announces the research, A research team, affiliated with Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) has examined the rates of liquid penetration on rough or patterned surfaces, especially those with pores or cavities.…

Continue reading

I wasn’t expecting to go down a rabbit hole when I received an April 18, 2019 email announcement from Vancouver’s Curiosity Collider about an upcoming April 26, 2019 event but why not join me on the trip? From the April 18, 2019 Curiosity Collider email, Join astrophysicist / writer Elizabeth Tasker & young adult (YA) novelist Ria Voros as they share how discoveries of new worlds help tell stories of family Curiosity Collider is co-hosting…

Continue reading

A Sept. 5, 2018  news item on ScienceDaily introduces the work, Rice University [Texas, US] researchers are probing the physical limits of excited electronic states called plasmons by studying them in organic molecules with fewer than 50 atoms. A Sept. 4, 2018 Rice University news release (also on EurekAlert published on Sept. 5, 2018), which originated the news item, explains what plasmons are and why this research is being undertaken, Plasmons are oscillations in the…

Continue reading

This is very fresh news. One of these chairs has not yet been listed (at the time of this writing) as a member of the institute that he will be leading. Here’s the big picture news from an April 17, 2019 University of British Columbia (UBC) news release, Note: Links have been removed, Two internationally recognized researchers join the University of British Columbia as Canada Excellence Research Chairs, bringing international talent in the fields of…

Continue reading

I got the notice for this special issue of NanoEthics (After the hype is before the hype) in my email this morning (April 16, 2019). Not being familiar with the journal I did a little searching. NanoEthics (a Springer journal): Studies of New and Emerging TechnologiesEditor-in-Chief: Christopher CoenenISSN: 1871-4757 (print version)ISSN: 1871-4765 (electronic version) Journal no. 11569 …Provides a needed forum for informed discussion of ethical and social concerns related to nanotechnology Counterbalances fragmented, opinionated…

Continue reading

I’ve never heard of a snout weevil before but it seems to be a marvelous creature, Caption: Left: A photograph of the ‘rainbow’ weevil, with the rainbow-colored spots on its thorax and elytra (wing casings). Right: A microscope image of the rim of a single rainbow spot, showing the different colors of individual scales. Credit: Dr Bodo D Wilts From a Sept. 11, 2018 news item on Nanowerk, Researchers from Yale [University]-NUS College and the…

Continue reading