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.

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.

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.

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.

One of the things I enjoyed most about my time at Yale was the history of the place. I was pleasantly surprised to discover the famous scientists that worked there, including Lederberg, Tatum, Altman, Palade, Gilman etc.  It gave me a sense of being part of a long tradition, part of something important.