Damon Linker at theweek.com laments yet another new atheist manifesto, this time by British “philosopher” Grayling with his forthcoming book “The God Argument”.  Damon is looking for me it seems, the title of his article asking:  Where are the honest atheists?

 

Damon’s article hits on many big names to get attention and fill volume; the gist is:

 

An analysis of data from the Framingham Offspring Study, which follows children of participants in the original Framingham Heart Study, may have answered a question that has been asked by doctors and smokers alike; do the health effects of any weight gained after quitting outweigh the known cardiovascular benefits of smoking cessation?  

HeLa cells, named after Henrietta Lacks, whose cells, which were cultured by George Otto Gey to create an immortal cell line for medical research, are the world's most commonly used human cell lines and have served as a standard for understanding many fundamental biological processes.

In a new study published today, scientists announce they have successfully sequenced the genome of a HeLa cell line and their high-resolution genomic reference reveals the striking differences between the HeLa genome and that of normal human cells. 

A study has documented detailed records of dinosaur egg fossils in the Coll de Nargó archaeological site in Lleida, Spain and found there are four. Up until now, only one type of dinosaur egg had been documented in the region. 

The archaeological site in Coll de Nargó is home to different types of geological formations, including the Areniscas de Arén Formation and the Tremp Formation, which have provided a rich and varied yield of dinosaur fossils through the entire Pyrenees region.

Mohs surgery, developed in 1938 by Dr. Frederic E. Mohs, is the most effective technique for removing basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma. It is a fairly common outpatient procedure. 

But in a sensitive area, like in a patient with deep skin cancer and located on the nostril, the  tricky part is reconstructing the nostril so that it doesn't lift up or droop down. It's an important cosmetic issue, but it's also critical for breathing.

As network carriers debate the next Ethernet standard, and whether transmission speeds of 400 gigabit per second or 1 terabit per second should be the norm, engineers are working on new ways to squeeze next-generation performance out of current-generation systems. 

A team from AT&T has devised a new technique that enables tuning of the modulation spectral efficiency and allows 400 Gb/s signals to be sent over today's 100 gigahertz-grid optical networks over ultra-long distances.

Spectral efficiency is the information rate that can be transmitted over a given bandwidth, and measures how efficiently the available frequency spectrum is utilized.

Unlike a cryptic phrase, a cryptic species in biology is outwardly indistinguishable - until you look inside their genes.

Two University of Michigan marine biologists have identified three cryptic species of tiny clams, long believed to be members of the same species, which have been hiding in plain view along the rocky shores of southern Australia for millions of years.

The scientists conducted a genetic analysis after collecting thousands of the crevice-dwelling, rice grain-sized clams from hundreds of miles of southern Australia coastline over the past decade. 

The bacterial foodborne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes is the causative agent of listeriosis, a debilitating disease linked with about 2,500 illnesses and more than 500 deaths in the U.S.A. each year. A characteristic feature of L. monocytogenes is its ability to grow at cold temperatures and even in the presence of high concentrations of salt - traditional food preservation techniques which arrest the growth of most other pathogens.

The bacterium protects itself from such stresses by twisting into a protective corkscrew type shape in an effort to reduce its exposure to the stress—in the same way a human might wrap up tight—hugging the core to reduce the effects of the cold. 

Carlo Rubbia discussed the prospects of constructing a muon collider to produce large amounts of Higgs bosons and study their properties in detail, crucially measuring the natural width of the particle, and testing couplings to a precision that LHC can't arrive at, to verify whether the particle is the Standard Model Higgs or if there are anomalies. The talk is discussed in detail in this report.

Here I just recall a question I asked Rubbia after the talk:

A culture that digs up dead female corpses to bury with single deceased men has unsurprisingly embraced probiotics. Starting in the 1990s,  the fast-growing yogurt, supplement, pharma and feed sectors are expected to reach $5 billion despite any benefit. 

 There are several hundred kinds of nutritional foods and ingredients containing probiotics currently sold in the Chinese market, such as fermented milk (yogurt), fermented cheese or cream, fermented soy milk, probiotics supplement and pharma products.