Sunspots 766

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Christianity: The prayer of Senate chaplain Barry Black, at an invocation during the recent Senate impeachment meetings.

Environment: The Trump administration plans to weaken protections for migratory birds.


Health: The Centers for Disease Control has published statistics on the leading causes of death.

Politics: A Fox News host, who says he's a big fan of Mike Pompeo, criticized the Secretary of State for his behavior, in an interview with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly. "Don't be such a baby" said the Fox host. An NPR reporter has been banned from taking a trip with Pompeo. There's a post from NPR, indicating what that organization felt about this, and how President Trump reacted.

Christianity Today discusses the Trump peace plan for Israel, and gives reactions of Christian Arab leaders.

Relevant reports that Jerry Falwell, and the governor of West Virginia, have urged some Virginia counties to secede from that state, and join West Virginia. Really.

A web page showing what city, in each state, has declined the most on population, recently, with explanations in some cases.

Science: Gizmodo reports that scientists have implanted manmade devices into jellyfish, and thereby sped up their swimming speed.


The graphic used in these posts is from NASA, hence, it is free to use like this.

Thanks for looking!

Sunspots 444

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:
Computing: How to make your browsing experience safer, from Gizmo's Freeware.
Science: Jellyfish are becoming much more common in the oceans, and are hurting tourism (and tourists), among other things, according to CNN.
The BBC says that an Indian spacecraft is doing well. It's supposed to head for Mars.
Science News, and other outlets, report that the danger from meteor strikes may be considerably larger than we had thought.
The L.A. Times reports on a very strange asteroid.
(and politics) Wired thinks that the US government needs to do some radical re-thinking to keep up with the way microbes are mutating, and getting harder, almost impossible to treat.



Image source (public domain)

The best science of 2012, from Nature

One can make a good argument that Nature is the most important science periodical in the world. Among the articles published in it was the famous less than two-page article by James Watson and Francis Crick, announcing the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. That article includes this priority establishing sentence: "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material."

Nature has done us a service, by selecting from the developments in 2012. The journal has published several items, as follows:

The most scientifically interesting photos of 2012, including the crystal structure of caffeine, the smallest reptile ever known, and others.

Reports, in Nature, of work reported in other periodicals, but interesting, including:

A study indicating that birds line their nests with cigarette butts as a means of repelling parasites.

The construction of a jellyfish-like entity from rat muscle cells, complete with a video of the entity swimming.

The discovery of some unusual sponges in the Mediterranean, with a video.

A study, indicating that dark matter actually exists. See here for the Wikipedia's article on the subject.

How it has proved possible to communicate with people in a vegetative state.

Articles in Nature, itself, on interesting subjects, such as:

What we have learned from 50 years of studying people with the two halves of their brains separated. (Lots!)

There's a lot more. Thanks for reading. Read Nature!