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Friday, March 25, 2005 |
Jamais on the T. rex Tissue issue (see also below):
Even those whose contact with paleontology was limited to toy dinosaurs as children know that fossilization means the gradual replacement of organic material by minerals, and that over millions of years, all that's left is rock in the shape of bone. If scientists are lucky, conventional paleontological wisdom goes, they might get an imprint of skin or feather left in the mud and then hardened. Nobody would ever imagine that soft tissues would ever survive the fossilization process.
Time to rewrite the biology texts. Dr. Mary Schweitzer of North Carolina State University and Montana State University has managed to extract blood vessels and fibrous tissues (good pictures here) from the interior of a fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex femur found in 2003. The bone had to be broken in two in order to be lifted from its resting place, and researchers noticed that the interior of the fossil wasn't quite as solid as the exterior. Schweitzer used a mild acid to dissolve the mineral components, leaving organic material which was stretchy and pliant, with well-defined blood vessels and cell structures. Schweitzer went on to duplicate the process with three more dinosaur specimens, two more T. rex and a hadrosaur.
The research as it stands demonstrates a close structural resemblance at the microscopic level between the dinosaur tissues and large birds such as ostrich -- hardly a surprise to those of us who have continued to follow paleontology well past the toy dinosaur phase, but a welcome confirmation of current theory. Given the obvious Jurassic Park jokes, paleontologists are being very cautious about any notion that DNA could be extracted from the tissues, but do suggest that proteins could be identified. 65 million year old proteins would be a tremendous boon to our understanding of evolutionary biology.
[WorldChanging: Another World Is Here]
10:04:52 PM 
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The new Johnny Appleseed: Ronald McDonald. Trying to overcome its junk food image, McDonald's is buying more apples than any other U.S. restaurant chain. This could fundamentally change the apple industry -- and not necessarily for the better. [Salon.com]
10:02:37 PM
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Anonymity and the Internet.
From Slate:
Anonymice on Anonymity Wendy.Seltzer.org ("Musings of a techie lawyer") deflates the New York Times' breathless Saturday (March 19) piece about the menace posed by anonymous access to Wi-Fi networks ("Growth of Wireless Internet Opens New Path for Thieves" by Seth Schiesel). Wi-Fi pirates around the nation are using unsecured hotspots to issue anonymous death threats, download child pornography, and commit credit card fraud, Schiesel writes. Then he plays the terrorist card.
But unsecured wireless networks are nonetheless being looked at by the authorities as a potential tool for furtive activities of many sorts, including terrorism. Two federal law enforcement officials said on condition of anonymity that while they were not aware of specific cases, they believed that sophisticated terrorists might also be starting to exploit unsecured Wi-Fi connections.
Never mind the pod of qualifiers swimming through in those two sentences -- "being looked at"; "potential tool"; "not aware of specific cases"; "might" -- look at the sourcing. "Two federal law enforcement officials said on condition of anonymity. ..." Seltzer points out the deep-dish irony of the Times citing anonymous sources about the imagined threats posed by anonymous Wi-Fi networks. Anonymous sources of unsubstantiated information, good. Anonymous Wi-Fi networks, bad.
This is the post from wendy.seltzer.org:
The New York Times runs an article in which law enforcement officials lament, somewhat breathlessly, that open wifi connections can be used, anonymously, by wrongdoers. The piece omits any mention of the benefits of these open wireless connections -- no-hassle connectivity anywhere the "default" community network is operating, and anonymous browsing and publication for those doing good, too.
Without a hint of irony, however:
Two federal law enforcement officials said on condition of anonymity that while they were not aware of specific cases, they believed that sophisticated terrorists might also be starting to exploit unsecured Wi-Fi connections.
Yes, even law enforcement needs anonymity sometimes.
Open WiFi networks are a good thing. Yes, they allow bad guys to do bad things. But so do automobiles, telephones, and just about everything else you can think of. I like it when I find an open wireless network that I can use. I like it when my friends keep their home wireless network open so I can use it.
Scare stories like the New York Times one don't help any. [Schneier on Security]
9:34:41 PM
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TV explodes on Amazon.
TV explodes on Amazon
: From PaidContent's digital jobs list, Amazon is doing more in video:
: Amazon.com is looking for a Content Acquisition Manager (CAM) for our forthcoming Digital Video Store. The CAM's job will be to find and license content from content owners near and far.
Via BuzzMachine [unmediated]
9:25:30 PM
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Honeybee Network.
Another great find from the Doors of Perception conference in Delhi: the Honey Bee Network, here in India. It is a network of people designed to find hackers and inventors from the countryside, the sort of people who don’t have two pennies to rub together but invent a coconut-tree-climbing machine so they can work better, or a man who had never been to formal school but heard on the news that government researchers were spending millions to built a mobile robot, and built his own to (supposedly) perform the same tasks. Another memorable example was a shock absorbing bicycle which has a gear which translates the impact of hitting a bump into turning the wheels, speeding you up instead of just inconveniencing you. (And with the roads around here, that could be quite an advantage--or send you headlong into disaster, I’m not sure which...)
The network works to connect these innovators to other people in other villages who can use their ideas, as well as companies that might license their inventions to provide them an income from their creativity.
The network includes or is affiliated with several groups: www.nifindia.org, sristi.org, gian.org, scai.org.in, and indiainnovates.com.
[WorldChanging: Another World Is Here]
7:06:05 AM
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From the hard-to-believe, everything-you-know-is-wrong category, new word on dinosaurs: soft tissue can survive.
Researchers Recover T. Rex Tissue. A broken Tyrannosaurus thighbone gives scientists a rare glimpse into the prehistoric lizard's cellular makeup. Can isolating dinosaur DNA à la Jurassic Park be far behind? [Wired News]
Dinosaur Find Takes Scientists Beyond Bones. A 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex has apparently yielded soft tissues, including blood vessels and possibly cells lining them. By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD. [NYT > Science]
7:04:47 AM
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Take Your Porn on the Road. Is PSPcasting the killer app for mobile porn? The creator of a program that converts several digital video formats for viewing on the PlayStation Portable is too modest to say. Commentary by Regina Lynn. [Wired News]
7:00:54 AM
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