John Young @jsy1001@qoto.org

The dangers of “mirror life” 🦠🪩

Many molecules are chiral & come in left or right-handed versions 👈👉

All DNA & RNA in life on Earth uses right-handed molecules 🧬; all proteins use left-handed ones 🥚

In principle, you could make artificial bacteria using the opposite handness molecules 🧑‍🔬

But that would be a dangerously stupid thing to do, as those bacteria could cause havoc, evading the immune systems of humans, animals, & plants 🙀

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/dec/12/unprecedented-risk-to-life-on-earth-scientists-call-for-halt-on-mirror-life-microbe-research

Possibly controversial opinion: I've always hated the phrase “science communicator”. We don’t have “history communicators”, there is always a more fundamental base expertise: science, performance, teaching, writing - and it devalues science teachers, who have done this job with huge skill for years.

Disposable Python environments for ad-hoc analyses

https://ericmjl.github.io/blog/2024/11/8/disposable-environments-for-ad-hoc-analyses/

Discussions: https://discu.eu/q/https://ericmjl.github.io/blog/2024/11/8/disposable-environments-for-ad-hoc-analyses/

#programming #python

#ClimateDiary An Eastbourne friend just told us about how he went to hear Simon Reeve at the Congress theatre on Friday. He showed us this image he had taken from Reeve’s talk: “this amount of ice melts every HOUR. You could hear a pin drop in the audience. When you see it like that it really brings it home.”

Well done Simon Reeve for talking about climate change in the Eastbourne Congress theatre (not a climate activist crowd, more the opposite) - and for using an image that works.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell transformed astronomy #OTD in 1967 when she made the first observation of a pulsar.

She and advisor Antony Hewish initially dubbed the object LGM-1 (“Little Green Men”) for its regular signal, but soon identified it as a rotating, magnetized neutron star.

#astronomy #pulsars #neutronstars #JocelynBellBurnell

Merc and Boffin show an "Unequivocal detection of the tidal deformation of a red giant in a binary system via interferometry" with reconstruction from PIONIER fringes - their Roche-lobe filling model fits better than a symmetric model. An amazing result! 🔭🪐 #astrodon https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.14621

I'm not too sure about that, Duolingo.

#physics

Africa is BIG

"To all my writer friends that use MS Word - Microsoft has turned their Al bits and bots on to automatically go through anything done via Word. Here's how to turn it off. File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Privacy Options > Privacy Settings > Connected Experiences"

On the Mac I found it under Word/Excel/Etc > Preferences > Privacy, and near the bottom was the checkbox for "Turn on optional connected experiences" which of course was on by default.

#office365 #AI #microsoft

This is an experiment. Please boost.

http://mastoddosnt.ddns.net/

Here's the idea: This post is going first to my followers, then, if they boost it, to other people. This domain has been registered for only this experiment. I should see in my web server's logs when mastodon instances start crawling the site for info. Then maybe also some curious humans.

I just want to play with my monitoring a bit :)

This is a really good ad.

I have started working on an #emacs transient menu for the UV #python package manager.
https://github.com/pizzatorque/uv-menu
I am wondering what might be core features that are a must have and with which built in emacs modes I may integrate it with (e.g. project.el).

Well, this sounds brilliant and it's coming tomorrow (Thursday 7th): a new podcast series called Sixteen Sunsets. It's all about the history of the space shuttle, and it's made by the fabulous team who made 13 Minutes to the Moon (f you haven't listened to that, do!).

https://sixteensunsets.com/

For the #emacs nerds out there, I don't know if your workflow is anything like mine, but I typically have half a dozen buffers I am switching between, but when I type "C-x b" I blank out on the name of the buffer, meanwhile, opening the buffer list offers a wall of text with a lot of visual clutter.

Enter: "shortcuts-mode". This is a minor mode that adds a sticky top bar that gives you 1-keystroke access to the last 10 buffers you used. I can't live without it. Now on MELPA!

Earlier this week, the Academy for the Mathematical Sciences published a report, "Quantifying the UK economic contribution of the mathematical sciences in 2023.” The report demonstrates the huge contributions that maths makes to the economy & wider society, including:
- £495 billion to the UK economy in 2023
- About 20% of the total UK gross value added
- Around 13% of the UK workforce (4.2 million people) are working in jobs that use math.

I was very pleased to see the publication of this report because, whilst I study maths for the love of curiosity driven research, it is important that the substantial contribution that we make to the economy and wider society are recognised and celebrated.

https://www.acadmathsci.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/AcadMathSci-22Oct2024-Economic-Contribution-MathSci.pdf

Baby bison! Back in January on Rare Earth, we covered a herd of bison in Kent who were brought in to help the forest, and their herd has just grown by two. They might be the first wild bison born in the UK for centuries

https://news.sky.com/story/two-bison-calves-born-in-kent-to-rangers-absolute-astonishment-13234950

Our Rare Earth on rewilding: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001vbsp

"20 years later, real-time #Linux makes it to the kernel"

😎 💪

https://www.zdnet.com/article/20-years-later-real-time-linux-makes-it-to-the-kernel-really/

Pretty incredible to be in a place where "golden hour" lasts for a couple weeks...

Just finished Everything is Predictable by Tom Chivers, and it's great. If you've heard of Bayes theorem or p-hacking but couldn't really say why they matter, this is the book for you. Also I just noticed it's shortlisted for the Royal Society book prize - very well deserved

Chrome #emacs looks neat. Anyone using it? https://github.com/KarimAziev/chrome-emacs