Sensing membrane stress with near IR-emissive porphyrins

Sensing membrane stress with near IR-emissive porphyrins

Neha P. Kamat, Zhengzheng Liao, Laurel E. Moses, Jeff Rawson, Michael J. Therien, Ivan J. Dmochowski, and Daniel A. Hammer

PNAS 2011 ; published ahead of print August 15, 2011, doi:10.1073/pnas.1102125108

“Spiritual” atheists explained

“Spiritual” atheists explained, by Sigmund at Jerry Coyne’s WEIT. Where Elaine Ecklund and the John Templeton Foundation are discussed. Great analysis of Ecklund’s efforts to create the illusion of spiritual atheists.

The Logic of Chance: The Nature and Origin of Biological Evolution, by Eugene V. Koonin : free Kindle edition

And if you don’t have a Kindle you can put a Kindle app in your computer, smartphone, iPad or anything running android.

From the Back Cover

An Outline of a Fundamentally New Evolutionary Synthesis Reflecting Key Advances in Genomics, Systems Biology, and Biological Physics

In this ambitious book, Eugene V. Koonin illuminates the gamut of randomness and regularity that is at the heart of life. Pointing the way beyond Modern Synthesis, Koonin brings together new data and concepts in an attempt to achieve a far deeper understanding of the interplay between chance and necessity that drives biological evolution. He explains evolution as a stochastic process based on historical contingency, constrained by requirements for maintaining cell organization and modulated by adaptation. To support his argument, he weaves together multiple conceptual threads: genomic comparisons that illuminate ancestral forms; new insights into pattern, process, and contingency in evolution; advances in the study of gene expression, protein abundance, and other phenotypic molecular characteristics; application of statistical physics to the study of the evolution of genes and genomes; and new perspectives on probability now emerging from modern cosmology.

The Logic of Chance shows why these insights make the twentieth-century scientific consensus about evolution appear outdated and incomplete and outlines a fundamentally new approach: one that is challenging, sometimes controversial, and always firmly rooted in hard science. Coverage includes

• Understanding the forces and patterns of evolution

• Surprising evolutionary reconstructions arising from the comparison of complete genomes
• Is there a tree of life–or a forest?
• How complex eukaryotes arose: tantalizing hints about one of evolutionary biology’s key enigmas
• Biological complexity and entropy: evolutionary lessons from Kolmogorov, Shannon, and Boltzmann
• Robustness, evolvability, and the creative role of noise in evolution
• The Last Universal Common Ancestor, cell origins, and the primordial gene pool
• The key role of viruses and the virus-cell arms race in evolution
• Life’s origin: estimating the probability of “unique events” in the context of modern cosmology

I feel a little bit like PZ Myers saying that:

books that claim to establish a “Fundamentally New Evolutionary Synthesis” put me off a bit.

But more on that once I had read it

Les mondes darwiniens. L’évolution de l’évolution

Dans mon courrier (emphasis mine):

Sous la direction de Thomas Heams, Philippe Huneman, Guillaume Lecointre et Marc Silberstein. Préface de Jean Gayon.

La théorie darwinienne de l’évolution reste le paradigme dominant de la biologie et de la paléontologie. Elle prouve sa fécondité et sa puissance explicative dans de très nombreux domaines. Pourtant, dans cet ouvrage, pas question d’un fétichisme de Darwin, mais d’un examen attentif du domaine de validité épistémologique et expérimental des idées du savant naturaliste. Ainsi, ce livre expose leurs multiples ramifications en sciences de la vie, en sciences humaines et en philosophie. A cette fin, une cinquantaine d’auteurs explorent les grandes notions qui irriguent les sciences de l’évolution, ainsi que de très nombreux chantiers des savoirs biologiques contemporains, puis considèrent les tentatives d’exportation du mode de pensée darwinien à propos de problématiques autrefois hors de son champ d’action (éthique, psychologie, économie, etc.). Les questions du créationnisme et de l’enseignement viennent clore ce volume.

Edition revue et augmentée (1576 pages) d’un ouvrage paru en 2009 et depuis lors épuisé. Un ensemble de liens hypertextuels permet d’accéder à plus de 2300 sites, correspondant à un vaste répertoire de références bibliographiques (soit en tant que ressources gratuites, soit comme points d’accès à un résumé) ou encore de compléments informatifs sur des personnes, des techniques, des théories, etc.

1576 pages, 39 €, ISBN : 978-2-919694-04-4

http://www.materiologiques.com/Les-mondes-darwiniens-L-evolution

to Michael Stahl’ attention ;-)

Myo/Nog cell regulation of BMP signaling in the blastocyst is essential for normal morphogenesis and striated muscle lineage specification

Myo/Nog cell regulation of bone morphogenetic protein signaling in the blastocyst is essential for normal morphogenesis and striated muscle lineage specification

Jacquelyn Gerhart, Victoria L. Scheinfeld, , Tara Milito, , Jessica Pfautz, Christine Neely, Dakota Fisher-Vance, Kelly Sutter, Mitchell Crawford, Karen Knudsen, and Mindy George-Weinstein

Developmental Biology Article in Press, Uncorrected Proof doi: 10.1016/j.ydbio.2011.08.007

---

Entre les deux y’a pas ‘dintermédiaire. Les gènes ne sont pas en mesure d’arrêter quoi que ce oit, ça tourne dans tous les sens d’une façon démentielle. [Source]

---

When Love Comes To Town

one honorable, two less (?)

Dr Wolfgang Wagner have done the honorable thing: step down from his position as Editor-in-Chief ofRemote Sensing, the journal that published “On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance” by Spencer and Braswell, Remote Sens. 2011, 3(8), 1603-161

Since its publication in July, the paper steered a lot of discussion over the interwebs.

From Richard Black‘s nice (short and on focus) overview of the subject at BBC’s Science & Environment section.

The paper, published in July, was swiftly attacked by scientists in the mainstream of climate research.

They also commented on the fact that the paper was not published in a journal that routinely deals with climate change. Remote Sensing’s core topic is methods for monitoring aspects of the Earth from space.

Publishing in “off-topic” journals is generally frowned on in scientific circles, partly because editors may lack the specialist knowledge and contacts needed to run a thorough peer review process.

In essence, Dr Wagner, a professor of remote sensing at Vienna University of Technology, is blaming himself for this failing.

But he also blames the researchers themselves for not referencing all the relevant research in their manuscript.

The characteristics of the case reminds me of another case which was much less commented, as the issue doesn’t concern a sensible subject with the general public. That doesn’t mean that the editors-in-chief of the two journal concerned (#1, #2) bear less responsibility and that their lack of reaction doesn’t give the appearance of incompetence.

But then, there are still people who consider science to be a matter of opinions, it is not .

Lovecraft: Le dernier puritain – Cédric Monget

Lovecraft: Le dernier puritain, étude de Cédric Monget.

L’écrivain américain Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) est principalement connu pour sa mythologie originale et sa tératologie foisonnante. Mais, paradoxalement, l’une et l’autre trouvent leur fondement dans l’athéisme.

Cet athéisme — Lovecraft s’en explique dans ses essais et sa correspondance — se fonde sur un matérialisme rigoureux. Comment expliquer, dans ce cas, qu’un auteur si radicalement matérialiste ait pu créer une oeuvre où l’imagination fantastique le dispute à l’onirisme?

Faut-il voir dans son conservatisme foncier la raison d’une relation ambiguë à la religion de ses pères ? Sans doute cela expliquerait-il qu’il soit, selon ses propres termes, une sorte d’hybride intermédiaire entre le passé et le futur — archaïque dans ses goûts personnels, ses émotions et ses intérêts, mais d’un tel réalisme scientifique qu’il ne peut être qu’athée…

À ces questions, Cédric Monget tente d’apporter des réponses qui, pour être celles d’un passionné, ne cachent rien des ambiguïtés du maître de Providence et éclairent sous un jour nouveau les zones d’ombre d’une pensée riche et complexe.

Proof of principle for transfusion of in vitro generated red blood cells

Proof of principle for transfusion of in vitro generated red blood cells

Marie-Catherine Giarratana, Hélène Rouard, Agnès Dumont, Laurent Kiger, Innocent Safeukui, Pierre-Yves Le Pennec, Sabine François, Germain Trugnan, Thierry Peyrard, Tiffany Marie, Séverine Jolly, Nicolas Hebert, Christelle Mazurier, Nathalie Mario, Laurence Harmand, Hélène Lapillonne, Jean-Yves Devaux, and Luc Douay

Blood – Published online before print September 1, 2011, doi: 10.1182/blood-2011-06-362038