Wired has this article on “the world’s loneliest species” which was discovered living deep (3km down) in a South African mine. This is the first ecosystem ever discovered that is comprised of only a single species. That makes it “the tidiest package of life found yet” with everything necessary for maintaining life packed into a single genome.

Nice.

Those who thought that only God could create life are in for a nasty surprise. Wired has this article about a team of scientists who are close to creating life from scratch. The scientists are able to build protocells using fatty molecules (for the cell membrane) and inserting bits of nucleic acids containing ’source code’ for replication.

These guys aren’t able to get the cells to replicate properly on their own yet - only certain DNA sequences get replicated. But they are close to creating a new form of life.

Wired has this interesting article showing word clouds of the different speeches at the recent Democratic and Republican conventions. Basically words used most often are largest in word clouds - they make an interesting way of seeing what was spoken about. For instance this is a word cloud for Michelle Obama’s speech about her husband. Predictably the word ‘Barack’ is most common but the words ‘work’, ‘people’ and ‘like’ are common too.

Michelle Obama’s speech at the Democratic convention

Check out the article for the other word clouds, below I have listed the speakers and their most common words. Pretty interesting.

• Hillary Clinton: America, going, Obama
• Joe Biden: Barack, Obama, change, John
• Barack Obama: promise, America, McCain
• John McCain: country, Americans, fight
• George W. Bush: John
• Sarah Palin: America, country, McCain

Wired recently had an article on this Swiss pilot who has spend the last few years developing some rocket wings that he straps to his back. Basically he jumps out of a plane, unfolds the wings and powers up the rockets. He is able to steer pretty well (enough to do barrel rolls), build up some good speeds (over 300kph) and crucially land safely.

Very cool, but I’m sure it’s not as safe as he makes out.

Wired has this photo gallery from a new book called An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar. The photographer gets access to areas not normally open to the public and gets some interesting photos. Two that I liked are shown below.

These are “stainless-steel nuclear waste capsules” in a pool of water. There are almost 2000 capsules at this site in Washington State and the blue light is a kind of radiation.

And this is an “avian quarantine facility” in New York. All imported birds must be kept here for 30 days in order to prevent bird flu from getting into the country.

I’m frequently confronted by people who say something like: “Evolution is just a theory - it’s not fact.” This just proves that the person doesn’t actually understand what a “theory” is - I have already blogged on the issue.

Basically:

• “In science the word theory means an explanation of how the world works that has stood up to repeated, rigorous testing. It’s hardly a term of disparagement.”

Wired has an article on the subject which calls for a change in phrasing:

• For truly solid-gold, well-established science, let’s stop using the word theory entirely. Instead, let’s revive much more venerable language and refer to such knowledge as “law.”
• It performs a neat bit of linguistic jujitsu. If someone says, “I don’t believe in the theory of evolution,” they may sound fairly reasonable. But if someone announces, “I don’t believe in the law of evolution,” they sound insane. It’s tantamount to saying, “I don’t believe in the law of gravity.”

I’ve always felt that the best thing to do is improve people’s understanding. The problem is that getting the message across is really tricky (I blogged about the problem here). This guy reckons that:

• It’s time to realize that we’re simply never going to school enough of the public in the precise scientific meaning of particular words. We’re never going to fully communicate what’s beautiful and noble about scientific caution and rigor. Public discourse is inevitably political, so we need to talk about science in a way that wins the political battle — in no uncertain terms.