Plate XIX from the first volume of Pettigrewâs Design in Nature (1908), illustrating the resemblance between spiral shell formations and bony portions of the inner ear
âCuttlefish can remember what they ate, where, and when, and use this to guide their feeding decisions in the future,” said co-author Alexandra Schnell of the University of Cambridge, who conducted the experiments at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. “Whatâs surprising is that they donât lose this ability with age, despite showing other signs of aging like loss of muscle function and appetite.”
the “spiralist“, perhaps the most fascinating historical-scientific-insightful thing I’ve read this year
Pettigrew confessed himself totally spellbound by the mystery of Natureâs most ubiquitous, liquid, and quixotic form â the spiral. Pettigrewâs newspaper model showed that the heartâs double helical structure â now known as the helical ventricular myocardial band (HVMB) â was essentially a triple-twisted MĂśbius strip. In both arenas of animal physiology, Pettigrew found a spectacular resonance: movement at once precedes and follows structure, the direction of movement in living things being in every instance determined by the composition and configuration of kinetic spiral parts. This resonance seemed to reach right down to the atomic level. Unlike the closed system of the heart, the spiraling lines of atoms and molecules were arranged so that matter could be added in any amount, in unlimited directions. An open flow of energy and form was the basis for growth and progression in all creatures.
Slow and steady results in archaeology: the “lost city of Luxor” (3400 years ago …)
Doctors are baffled by the rare disease and have concluded that he is the only person in the US to have the suction capability. Not only is he able to stick objects to his skin, but his wounds heal faster, he gets sick less and ages slower than the average person.
A giant mecha atomic robot, from over half a century ago (built to service a fleet of atomic aircraft that never came to pass!)
27 feet tall. 77 tons. Lead, steel, and glass armor almost two feet thick. A 500 horsepower supercharger engine. Able to withstand 3,000 times more radiation than a human. Mighty claws able to tear, rend, and shred steel with 85,000 pounds of forceâŚyet nimble enough to balance an egg on a spoon.
One of the questions often asked about the IBM PC is why we chose the Ctrl-Alt-Del reset sequence. We proposed Ctrl-Alt-Del as a warm-boot sequence to provide some of the capability of a reset switch. It is difficult to activate by mistake, since the keys are widely separated. By storing a special character in a particular memory location, the warm boot would bypass the memory-test portion of the power-on self test (POST), taking less time than turning the machine off and back on.
Torches work best on the move, as their flames need motion to stay lit and produce a lot of smoke. Though torches cast a wide glow, they burn for an average of just 41 minutes, the team found. That suggests several torches would have been needed to travel through caves. Concave stone lamps filled with animal fat, on the other hand, are smokeless and can offer more than an hour of focused, candlelike light. That would have made it easy to stay in one spot for a while. And while fireplaces produce a lot of light, they can also produce a lot of smoke. That type of light source is best suited for large spaces that get plenty of airflow, the researchers say.
⌠created a life-like proto-cell energized by chemical potential, which is capable of translating external signals into shape changes in dependence on its own self-organized morphology. With this, the team has revealed how the collective dynamics of nanometer-sized macromolecules self-organize into micrometer patterns that affect the cellular perception of shape-changing extracellular cues in our own cells.
ââThe most hyped technology in 1995 was Intelligent Agentsâ
ââI think of the Gartner Hype Cycle as a Heroâs Journey for technologies. And just like the heroâs journey, the Hype Cycle is a compelling narrative structure.â
Missed big trends like âx86 virtualizationâ and âOpen Sourceâ (!!) and NoSQL
Andrew Sullivan on the âturn against liberalismâ (as an old Obama fan, I find myself agreeing ⌠and as someone who also lived in New York around the same time (the Bloomberg era), I find myself agreeing with this take on Eric Adams)
So how do you use a database on a static file hoster? Firstly, SQLite (written in C) is compiled to WebAssembly. SQLite can be compiled with emscripten without any modifications, and the sql.jslibrary is a thin JS wrapper around the wasm code.
Japanese scientists have induced the jellyfish to repeat this transformation at least 10 times in a rowâallowing a polyp to grow into a tentacled adult medusa, before subjecting it to stress (for example, a needle prick), and watching the process begin all over again. In this way, a single jellyfishâhypothetically at leastâmight be induced to live forever, cycling endlessly from young to old and back again.
The immortal jellyfish has something that humans have sought for centuries: the answer to eternal life. But to them, it is nothing. Workaday. Simple creatures, they may not even know they have this prize. Certainly, what with their rejuvenation coming during periods of pain or suffocation, they will not enjoy it. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: âOne has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.â Iâm sure that jellyfish would, if they could, agree.
