5 Intriguing Things
1. Growing new eyes.
"The Laboratory for Organogenesis and Neurogenesis is growing tissues and organs using an altogether different approach, which doesn’t use scaffolds. Remarkably, they have found that embryonic stem cells can organise themselves into highly complex three-dimensional structures when guided in the right direction. Using a specially developed technique, the team has already coaxed embryonic stem cells to become partial pituitary glands and even bits of brains. Their greatest achievement to date is growing partial embryonic eyes, complete with retinal tissue containing light-sensitive cells, in the hope of developing a new stem cell-based treatment for various diseases that cause blindness." (mosaicscience.com)
2. The Science Fiction Poetry Association.
"The Science Fiction Poetry Association was founded in 1978 to bring together poets and readers interested in science-fiction poetry. What is sf poetry? Everybody has a unique definition. To be sure, it is poetry (we'll leave that definition to you), but it's poetry with some element of speculation—usually science fiction, fantasy, or horror, though some include surrealism, some straight science." (sfpoetry.com)
3. Measuring blood sugar with lasers.
"A team from Princeton University has developed the new technique, which measures blood sugar by directing an IR quantum cascade laser at a person’s palm. The laser light is partially absorbed by sugar molecules in the patient’s body; the amount of absorption is used to measure the level of blood sugar. The light’s target is not the blood, the researchers said, but dermal interstitial fluid, which has a strong correlation to blood sugar. The researchers employed mid-infrared laser light because it is harmless and largely unaffected by other chemicals in the body." (photonics.com)
4. Social quarantine and Ebola survivors.
"Even though Korkor said he has been cleared of Ebola, he says that people avoid him. ‘Now, everywhere in my neighborhood, all the looks bore into me like I’m the plague,” he said. FrontPageAfrica reporter who trailed the Phebe doctor on Cuttington campus Monday observed that people left places when he showed up while friends, students and loved ones avoided his handshake or eat with him [...] 'Thanks to God, I am cured. But now I have a new disease: the stigmatization that I am a victim of,' Korkor was quoted by a local radio station in Gbarnga. 'This disease (the stigma) is worse than the fever.'" (globalvoicesonline.org)
5. There are surprisingly developed plans for the rollout of unmanned cargo aircraft (UCA).
"One controller on the ground can control 10 to 30 UCA. This means huge savings in crew salary costs (a single long-range aircraft may require eight to twelve crews). There are no stopover crew costs. It is possible to assign dedicated controllers to handle all UCA take-offs and landings at specific airports, like pilots do for ships entering harbours. The knowledge of local circumstances of these controllers can increase safety and efficiency." (platformuca.org)
Book 3. Objectivity, by Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison. A history of objectivity through the images in scientific atlases, this is a heavyweight book. Bruno Latour: "This splendid book will be for many years the ultimate compendium on the joint history of objectivity and visualization." Recommended by Helenmary Sheridan.
Today's 1957 American English Language Tip
cleanly. Cleanly applied to habit & tendency to cleanliness rather than to the actual state. 'A cleanly person may be for the actual moment dirty, but will as soon as possible make himself clean' (OED). Hence cleanliness, the quality of being cleanly; cleanness, the quality or state of being clean.
The Light's Target