Molecularist

"This finding points to an easily administered and inexpensive approach where commensal bacteria are engineered to communicate with invasive species and potentially prevent human disease." Engineered probiotics – also protecting? Cool.

"These large windstorms are proving to be important to our understanding of how the Amazon works, in terms of carbon storage, biodiversity, and other factors,"

We keep forgetting that the planet is like a living breathing organism. So much of what we do is skewed by what we see and our habit of seeing the world in a temporal transect – that the stasis we see now is as it always was or will be. But the homeostatic mechanisms of the world do not mean that all stays static, but that there are huge fluctuations possible that in the end fall back to baseline, but temporarily can be quite different. This discovery that huge swaths of trees can be felled in a storm make the amazon look less like a static area, but a mass of life with varying degrees of change over time.

Brilliant.

Ah, the good old days, when we had a certain enemy we could negotiate with and fight. 🙂

"The practice of medicine is more than just the application of scientific knowledge. It is also an art and to achieve success doctors and other health workers must be attentive to the personal beliefs, cultural standards, societal and religious norms, emotional states, and educational backgrounds of those they are trying to help."

"The device would mimic a standard license plate when the vehicle is in motion but would switch to digital ads or other messages when it is stopped for more than four seconds, whether in traffic or at a red light. The license plate number would remain visible at all times in some section of the screen. "

"Pintley is a new kind of beer website—one that only recommends beer you're sure to love. Unlike other beer sites, Pintley doesn't just know beer; it also knows you. Pintley learns from your ratings and tasting notes to understand exactly what pleases your palate the most, so you can be your own beer expert. Personalized beer recommendations, tasting notes, and a vibrant community are just a click away."

"To formalize this idea, I designed a speculative definition of life named the “Cellularity Scale” which shows how five different living properties accumulate at each subsequent stage." [by @jamesking]

"We ask filmmakers to share their cinematic visions of a future biotech society. "

"In a lab at the American University of Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates, Ginger Krieg Dosier, an assistant architecture professor, sprouts building blocks from sand, common bacteria, calcium chloride, and urea (yes, the stuff in your pee)."
Caveat: “The results show that working with natural processes is not necessarily equivalent to sustainable practices!” "

"The good PhD programs are the ones that let you explore and change your mind and let you work in any lab that will take you. The good labs are the ones that let you explore and define your own path, support you through thick and thin while still allowing you to establish your own scientific independence. The good new fields are the ones that grow from collaborations between people with new ideas and different backgrounds."

"As the first film about synthetic biology, Synbiosafe is a great introduction and hopefully the start to something bigger. Indeed, the filmmakers are now sponsoring a film festival for new films about synthetic biology called Bio:Fiction, with awards for best short fiction, best documentary, and best animation."

One more thing I missed by being too too slow. At least I've gone through this year marking things I need to remember for next year and can (slowly) put into motion.

"It is possible to do everything in washable, reusable glass test tubes with reagents made from scratch, but kits with disposable tubes and pre-mixed chemicals can save hours a day, time that adds up when you're a grad student."

"By defining arbitrary standards early on in our understanding of how these genetic elements work in their rich biological contexts, and early in our ability to engineer novel functions, we lose sight of much of the complexity of biology and get stuck in what could become difficult and useless technological cycles."

I particularly liked this seminar because it was about a trend that challenges old notions of Statism. The 20th Century was the rise of the State (and nationalism and so forth). But I see the early 21st Century, with the dissolution of the Cold War empires, further break down of States into their representative cultures, the rise of potential City-States, the focus away from over-lording nations to smaller communities. Does this spell the end of the State? Gilman points out that deviant globalization is a challenge to notions of Statism (most pointedly said at around 1h03m of his talk). My thought, would "Failed States" be "Failed" if we didn't expect a "State"? Can we have a world where there is no State?

"The term natural theology as used by Gifford means theology supported by science and not dependent on the miraculous."

A while back I listened to the In Our Time episode on the Gifford Lectures. The description of Gifford's theology ("awe") certainly reminds me of Magical Nihilism.

"No external power is needed: the lift lock functions by gravity alone using the counterweight principle."

I saw this on TV and have been thinking about it since. It's a great example of electricity-free machines that do amazing things. I like examples that remind us of a time before electricity, because I think we've become lazy and can only think of electronic and digital computer-based machines these days.