At one time, J. Craig Venter, Ph.D., was a maverick outsider, determined to beat Big Science to the human genome and at a lot less cost. Now he is the ultimate insider, giving a plenary talk at the most recent American Chemical Society meeting.
Primary Immune Deficiencies (PIDs) can be defined as defects in the immune system.
No, that can’t be enough.
PIDs are defined as inherent defects in the immune system?
Nope. Still not good enough.
PIDs are defined as the susceptibility to rare pathogens?
Not quite.
Recurrent infections?
Nope.
We’ve known about PIDs atleast since the 1950s. We shed a tear at the John Travolta movie “The boy in the plastic bubble” (partly because of the movie but mostly because it had John Travolta). Indeed, Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID) as described in the movie is the most well known of the PIDs. But is that all? Are PIDs simply the abcence of a functioning immune system?
An expedition to the Indonesian island of Sulawesi has led to discovery of a new 'King of Wasps' - 80 years after it was first collected.
Megalara garuda is pitch-black, has an enormous body size, and its males have long, sickle-shaped jaws. It is one the largest known members of the crabronid subfamily Larrinae.
Here is a precautionary principle two-for-one special.
Imagine, if you will, that your computer screen (or iThingie, or DroidDevice) were to suddenly explode, driving a shard of shrapnel deep into your shoulder. Very quickly, your white blood cells would sense the intruder and rush to the site of the insult, hunt down invading bacteria, and just generally do what they do. But if you think about it, these are single cells! How does a single cell sense where to go, and then keep moving in that direction?
The world's biggest squids (accurately named "giant" and "colossal") have the world's biggest eyes, which may seem like a no-brainer until you consider that they are by no means the world's biggest animals. And yet, their eyes are more than twice the size of a blue whale's. Why?
A group of Swedish, American, and Israeli scientists (gotta love that multicultural research!) suggests that big squid need big eyes to see their big predators--sperm whales. Specifically, big eyes are great for spotting the luminous clouds kicked up by sperm whales as they jostle the bioluminescent plankton of the deep.
The Objective
The aim of this paper is to investigate the ways in which humans go about “mastering” a task. Mastery is characterized by comprehensive knowledge or skill in a subject. To be a master or specialist of a task demonstrates dedication, perseverance, and ability, and all these elements are sought after in individuals no matter the field. Thus, understanding how people develop mastery is important for discovering a path for success in any variant of the word.
This paper synthesizes the works of bestselling authors and academics to demonstrate how the mastery process is not just a topic for academic offices, but mainstream as well.
Racing as a Mastery Process
You've heard of Egypt; they were in the news last year for riots and for making Twitter relevant. But dictatorships, oppression of women, sexual discrimination and religious intolerance are apparently not the most important cultural fight they face, in the eyes of ultra-conscious New Yorkers - getting people to smoke less is.
Where would we be without fungi and microbes to break down dead trees and leaf litter in nature? Up to our eyeballs in arborial garbage, that's where.
Christopher Sommerfield, associate professor of oceanography at the University of Delaware, has found a new way to study local waterways: radioactive iodine.
That's bad, right? Maybe not. Radioactive iodine is used in medical treatments and trace amounts are entering waterways via wastewater treatment systems. That means it provides a new way to track where and how substances travel through rivers to the ocean.
