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A look at time…
On Running, Freedom, and the Boston Bombing -
Running is a straightforward act, but the symbolism around it is strangely mixed. On the one hand, it is intimately connected to danger and fear; running is the “flight” half of our fight-or-flight instinct. We run away from threats; we run to save our skin. And yet running is also an enduring metaphor for freedom. We run to freedom, and we run to demonstrate our freedom.
As both a marathoner and former Bostonian, my heart aches for a broken peace.
How a Doctor’s Five-Minute, $15 iPhone Hack Could Affect 600 Million Lives
Despite ubiquitous assurances that “There’s an app for that,” one thing not included in the “that” is the detection of soil-transmitted helminths in human beings. (Helminths are the scientific name for hookworms and their nasty little friends.) Hookworm is a particular problem in developing nations without access to proper medical screening facilities, and Dr. Isaac Bogoch, a Canadian internal medicine specialist, figured out a clever way to tackle that with an extraordinarily simple smartphone hack.
The rise of open access and the true cost of science publishing
The Strange Beauty of Airports Photographed From Above
Photos by Jeffrey Milstein
A 'Big Data' Freeway for Scientists -
A “Big Data freeway system” for future science projects in fields including genomic sequencing, climate science and physics is to be announced by the University of California at San Diego this week. The new network is part of a move toward an era when networks will move trillions of bits per second.
Francis Crick’s letter to his 12-year-old son Michael announcing the discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure 60 years ago this week. More at The New York Times.
“Dear Michael,
Jim Watson and I have probably made a most important discovery. We have built a model for the structure of de-oxy-ribose-nucleic-acid (read it carefully) called D.N.A. You may remember that the genes of the chromosomes – which carry the hereditary factors – are made up of protein and D.N.A. Our structure is very beautiful…
Now we believe that the D.N.A. is a code. That is, the order of the bases (the letters) makes one gene different from another gene (just as one page of print is different from another)…
In other words we think we have found the basic copying mechanism by which life comes from life. You can understand that we are very excited. Read this carefully so that you understand it. When you come home we will show you the model.
Lots of love, Daddy.”
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Waltham, MA