Jack July RSS

I'm Jack. I like to write about science in general and particularly molecular biology and neuroscience, the cellular basis of learning and memory, russian and southern lit, racial issues, and the state of the union in Portland, Oregon. Harass me for my worldviews: moralwintertiger@gmail.com

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Nov
23rd
Mon
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Jack Burden, the protagonist in R.P. Warren’s All the King’s Men, calls himself a ‘student of history’, believing that the present and the future are not simply products or consequences of the past, but are in fact the past transformed.  All of the past for Jack Burden therefore lives, its continuity never hidden but still unseen.Stalin, himself a student of history, maintained an obsessive grip on the present through the manipulation of the past.  Here, Stalin appears in a photo with and then without Nikolai Yezhov (also known as ‘Blackberry’), the one time head of the NKVD and a cult of personality during the Great Purge.  During Yezhov’s rule of the NKVD, he ruthlessly prosecuted its former head, Yagoda, fabricating evidence against him and others which led to the execution of thousands of party officials.  Yezhov then himself fell by the same means, his power usurped, his own motives scrutinized and twisted until he crumbled, eventually confessing to crimes which warranted death.  Following his fall and execution, Yezhov was removed from Soviet history, not simply renounced but disappeared, leaving not a blemish but a vacuum.

Jack Burden, the protagonist in R.P. Warren’s All the King’s Men, calls himself a ‘student of history’, believing that the present and the future are not simply products or consequences of the past, but are in fact the past transformed.  All of the past for Jack Burden therefore lives, its continuity never hidden but still unseen.

Stalin, himself a student of history, maintained an obsessive grip on the present through the manipulation of the past.  Here, Stalin appears in a photo with and then without Nikolai Yezhov (also known as ‘Blackberry’), the one time head of the NKVD and a cult of personality during the Great Purge.  During Yezhov’s rule of the NKVD, he ruthlessly prosecuted its former head, Yagoda, fabricating evidence against him and others which led to the execution of thousands of party officials.  Yezhov then himself fell by the same means, his power usurped, his own motives scrutinized and twisted until he crumbled, eventually confessing to crimes which warranted death.  Following his fall and execution, Yezhov was removed from Soviet history, not simply renounced but disappeared, leaving not a blemish but a vacuum.

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Nov
4th
Wed
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Ån Anecdote: The Terrific Storm of the 12th of July Last:

During the terrific storm of the 12th of July last, a labourer’s cottage was struck by lightning at Leagrave, near here. The lightning descended, according to an eye-witness’s report, like a “spout of fire,” and struck and descended the chimney, which it destroyed. In the room below there was an old shepherd, an invalid woman, a child and a shepherd’s dog. The shepherd was sitting in a chair leaning on a stick, a kettle was boiling on the fire, and the door was open. The lightning entered the room simultaneously by the chimney and an adjoining window. The window was utterly destroyed, and the kettle was thrown from the fire across the room, the stick on which the shepherd was leaning was torn from his hand and also thrown across the room, the lightning entered a cupboard containing glass and crockery and destroyed every article, and plaster was torn from the walls. The man and woman remained unhurt, but the child was thrown down and its knees stiffened. The dog was struck perfectly stiff, “like a log of wood,” and was considered dead. The room seemed full of fire, water, and sulphur, and the occupants said the smell of sulphur was so strong that they would certainly have been suffocated had it not been for the open door. After the storm had abated, the dog, with all its limbs stiff, was laid in a barn, where it very slowly and partially recovered. It long remained both deaf and blind, and was entirely dependent upon smell for its recognition of persons and things.

-An 1889 account in Nature-

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Oct
17th
Sat
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Diatoms and algae, from this pictorial.  Also my first glimpse of the diatom party.

Diatoms and algae, from this pictorial.  Also my first glimpse of the diatom party.

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Oct
5th
Mon
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3.5 billion-year-old stromatolites composed of fossilized cyanobacteria in Glacier National Park. From the wikipedia page on abiogenesis, the arisal of life on earth from inanimate matter.  At 4.5 billion years old, the Earth plenty of time to think things over before the animalcule party arrived. It has been shown that simulating the conditions of the early earth allows for the spontaneous synthesis of certain molecules necessary for life, though such spontaneous generation has not been demonstrated for other molecules (or for other planets). To prove the feasibility of biological self-assembly from non-biological precursors, several groups aim to synthesize entire proto-cells, hypothetical precursors to self-replicating bacteria, for example.  Some of the problems encountered involve the generation of lipids for membranes, the self-nucleation of enclosed vesicles to delineate a distinct internal chemical environment, and the passage of nucleic acids through membranes and into the protocellular space, where they can act as information storage molecules, or, as in the case of ribozymes, can catalyze chemical reactions.  Harvard’s Jack Szostak, who won the Nobel Prize today for unrelated work, leads this field and has some excellent simulations of nucleic acid passage and lipid growth here.

3.5 billion-year-old stromatolites composed of fossilized cyanobacteria in Glacier National Park.

From the wikipedia page on abiogenesis, the arisal of life on earth from inanimate matter.  At 4.5 billion years old, the Earth plenty of time to think things over before the animalcule party arrived.

It has been shown that simulating the conditions of the early earth allows for the spontaneous synthesis of certain molecules necessary for life, though such spontaneous generation has not been demonstrated for other molecules (or for other planets). To prove the feasibility of biological self-assembly from non-biological precursors, several groups aim to synthesize entire proto-cells, hypothetical precursors to self-replicating bacteria, for example.  Some of the problems encountered involve the generation of lipids for membranes, the self-nucleation of enclosed vesicles to delineate a distinct internal chemical environment, and the passage of nucleic acids through membranes and into the protocellular space, where they can act as information storage molecules, or, as in the case of ribozymes, can catalyze chemical reactions.  Harvard’s Jack Szostak, who won the Nobel Prize today for unrelated work, leads this field and has some excellent simulations of nucleic acid passage and lipid growth here.

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Sep
22nd
Tue
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noosphere: Susanna Hertrich: Reality Checking Device (via Information Is Beautiful) Note that the biggest hazard (and the biggest outrage) of all, the shark attack, is absent.  Coincidence?  Another example of the people with the data making sure that YOU, the swimmer, don’t have it.  Fact: One third of all recreational swims end in disaster.

noosphere:

Susanna Hertrich: Reality Checking Device

(via Information Is Beautiful)

Note that the biggest hazard (and the biggest outrage) of all, the shark attack, is absent.  Coincidence?  Another example of the people with the data making sure that YOU, the swimmer, don’t have it.  Fact: One third of all recreational swims end in disaster.

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Sep
21st
Mon
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As a tumor grows and develops, new blood vessels form within it, robbing its host of nutrients and feeding back into itself an enhanced ability to continue pillaging.  Destroying the network of blood vessels supplying tumors is a theoretically plausible way to fight cancer, although it hasn’t had much success yet. Visualizing this destruction—and the efficacy of the drugs which execute it, has until now been nearly impossible. Using a complicated network of software, microscopy, and a brilliant harnessing of the Doppler Effect created by the movement of blood cells within vessels, Harvard researchers have now pushed the depth of visualization of tumor angiogenesis to 2 millimeters, a practical light year in this type of work.  Above, the vascularization of the mouse brain, from last week’s Nature Medicine.

As a tumor grows and develops, new blood vessels form within it, robbing its host of nutrients and feeding back into itself an enhanced ability to continue pillaging.  Destroying the network of blood vessels supplying tumors is a theoretically plausible way to fight cancer, although it hasn’t had much success yet. Visualizing this destruction—and the efficacy of the drugs which execute it, has until now been nearly impossible.

Using a complicated network of software, microscopy, and a brilliant harnessing of the Doppler Effect created by the movement of blood cells within vessels, Harvard researchers have now pushed the depth of visualization of tumor angiogenesis to 2 millimeters, a practical light year in this type of work.  Above, the vascularization of the mouse brain, from last week’s Nature Medicine.

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Sep
16th
Wed
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Dalton, a squirrel monkey, enjoys fruit following gene therapy which corrected his color blindness.  Dalton, who was treated at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, plans to become a test pilot for the Royal Air Force.

Dalton, a squirrel monkey, enjoys fruit following gene therapy which corrected his color blindness.  Dalton, who was treated at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, plans to become a test pilot for the Royal Air Force.

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Sep
2nd
Wed
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Brainscapes, Vivian Budnick From PLoS biology, an illustration of membrane shedding during the growth of the synapse.

Brainscapes, Vivian Budnick

From PLoS biology, an illustration of membrane shedding during the growth of the synapse.

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Aug
21st
Fri
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GPOY Shoulder By ‘Melvin’, x-ray technician

GPOY Shoulder

By ‘Melvin’, x-ray technician

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Aug
19th
Wed
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New installment of good-looking science.  Recent good-looking science: A B C D (Bipolar cells of the mouse retina.  From today’s Nature.)

New installment of good-looking science.  Recent good-looking science: A B C D

(Bipolar cells of the mouse retina.  From today’s Nature.)

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