Again the main idea of this write up is to test my recall...
There was an interesting article listing 4 extremophiles. The high temperature tolerant bacteria from the thermal springs of Yellowstone National Park, where used for laboratory DNA amplification which is the cornerstone of our current gene technology. The freezing frog was just a treat, and can freeze for 7 months and reanimate, and further go through a shadow period of nightly freezing was fascinating. I see the connection with freezing transplant organs, but it seems hard to genetically engineer. The water bear are the poster child of mad extremophiles. They have just the most evil looking mouths. Then there was the radiation resistant bacteria, the secret here is their ability to make anti-oxidants.
Dr Normans Swan article was masterful. I like how the information about diagnosis is placed into the situation of a doctor diagnosing the disease. I also really like the A,B,C W and Y strains of the specific variants as at this point your interest is up so you are ready to load it all in short term memory.
The article about the Scientists against Trump, was rather a sad affair be cause Trump has largely won. It really shows the contempt for logic as the oxygen of reason has been sucked out of society.
The article on white dwarfs by Prof Duffy was pure mastery as far as I was concerned. I feel this guy had a list of points to make and crafted the sentences to nail them. I was so impressed. My reflection on this topic is that we are living in a cultural universe, Star Wars etc where there is only sun like stars, and if you talk about anything variant, people become very wary. I think saying that the white dwarfs are diamonds really is an analogy to far away in so many ways.
The article about nanopore technology to electrically read DNA is breath taking. 10,000 base pairs per second, on a single strand no splicing and supercomputers to reinterpret the data is just astounding.
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