In 1960, Dr. Frank Drake developed an equation that predicts the number of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy. It's a simple equation -- the number of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy is equal to the product of all the following numbers:

• The total number of stars in the galaxy



• The fraction of stars that have planets orbiting them



• The number of planets orbiting each star that are capable of supporting life



• The fraction of planets capable of supporting life that actually do support life



• The fraction of planets supporting life that support intelligent life

My elementary school art teacher used to discourage the use of rulers, claiming that “there are no straight lines in nature”.  Mr. Dugan, your own cells are here to tell you it’s not true.  Systems of taut fibers and light struts— as straight as the bars and chains of a swingset—are omnipresent in biological forms.

These organic analogs to popsicle sticks and rubber bands often occur in interwoven networks reminiscent of the geodesic domes that Buckminster Fuller promoted in the 1950’s.  Since form follows function, it’s hardly surprising that these natural geodesics offer the same benefits in nature that they do in architecture: high strength, dynamic stability, and material frugality.  

Michael Shermer of Michael Shermer: What Will ET Look Like? has inspired me to write a sci fi. Shermer's ET, whether a bipedal primate or not, is attractive for a theme of oceans and humans -- both representing new experiences. An extraterrestrial, you might agree, is also ideal to ask questions to our hero, as suggested by me, to be played by Michael Shermer.

The extracellular deposits of of the amyloid beta (Aβ) protein are the hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease(AD) brain. These Aβ deposits are result of-

1) increased production of Aβ (anabolism)- High activity and levels of β-secretase (BACE1) and γ-secretase
(presenilins) increase the amyloidogenic processing of Amyloid Precursor Protein (APP), leading to the increased production of Aβ AND/OR

In the first-ever study of food advertisements in UK magazines, researchers found them filled with sugary, salt-filled options often contradicting the health messages the articles were trying to put across.  That means that women sitting down to enjoy some reading with their cup of tea and a chocolate bar may be tempted to an even unhealthier diet. 

Newcastle University researchers collected and compared data on the nutritional content of the foods advertised in 30 most widely-read weekly magazines during November 2007. 

A detailed nutritional analysis of the foods in the adverts found that the products advertised were generally much higher in sugar and salt, and lower in fiber than the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendations.

Peter Doran, Associate Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, wasn't all that happy that his Nature paper(1) was widely used  by detractors of early 2000s global warming theory so he set out recently to find out just how many other earth scientists believe in human-induced climate change.

His research then found that some parts of Antarctica had cooled between 1986 and 2000 so he was lumped in with those disputing global warming, something he did not say.   Doran found out, just as Bill Gray later would when he disputed Al Gore's contention that global warming caused Hurricane Katrina, when you go up against crazy people with an agenda life can get ugly.

NGC 253 is one of the brightest and dustiest spiral galaxies in the sky but we are always learning new things about it.   Astronomers using the Very Large Telescope's (VLT) near-infrared eye called NACO, an adaptive optics instrument, are now saying that the  center of NGC 253 hosts a scaled-up version of Sagittarius A*, the bright radio source that lies at the core of the Milky Way, and which we know harbors a massive black hole.

"We have thus discovered what could be a twin of our Galaxy's Centre," says co-author Almudena Prieto, part of the group of astronomers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (Spain) and lead author of a new paper on the topic, which also disclosed a  group of new young, massive and dusty stellar nurseries there.

A review article published in the European journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics says there is a relationship between depression and bone metabolism.

The study says that the association between psychiatric illness, in particular depression, and osteoporosis has been the subject of a growing body of research yielding various findings, although most identify some effect on bone. In addition to medication-related processes and/or modifiable lifestyle factors associated with mood disturbances, endocrine and immune alteration secondary to depression may play a pathogenetic role in bone metabolism.

Scientists who study how human chemistry can permanently turn off genes have typically focused on small islands of DNA believed to contain most of the chemical alterations involved in those switches. But after an epic tour of so-called DNA methylation sites across the human genome in normal and cancer cells, Johns Hopkins scientists have found that the vast majority of the sites aren’t grouped in those islands at all, but on nearby regions that they’ve named “shores.” 

The Age of Entanglement
by Louisa Gilder
Alfred A. Knopf, 2008

Perhaps there is no greater demonstration of Einstein's brilliance and famous independence than his rejection of the spookiness at the heart of quantum theory. Einstein recognized early that quantum mechanics plays a "risky game with reality", and the stakes are nothing less than our deep beliefs about cause and effect that make up the support beams holding science together as a coherent structure.