How to write awesome conclusions

A friend of mine Jerome Loreau sent me an article:

R. Breslow "Evidence for the Likely Origin of Homochirality in Amino Acids, Sugars, and Nucleosides on Prebiotic Earth", Published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

This part of conclusions is just awesome:

"...An implication from this work is that elsewhere in the universe there could be life forms based on D-amino acids and L-sugars, depending on the chirality of circular polarized light in that sector of the universe or whatever other process operated to favor the L-α-methyl amino acids in the meteorites that have landed on Earth. Such life forms could well be advanced versions of dinosaurs, if mammals did not have the good fortune to have the dinosaurs wiped out by an asteroidal collision, as on Earth. We would be better off not meeting them."

Take care,

Misha

UPD. The article was temporarily retracted for alleged duplication (self-plagiarism)

8-year old kids publish an article

That's so-o-o sweet: Blackawton et al. "Blackawton bees", Biol. Lett. (2010).

via1, via2


Lev Landau was used to count the age of a scientist from the year he published the first article. Landau himself published his first one at the age of 18, so these kids have at least 10 years of a head start.


Take care,

Misha

That's all about the blood, the sweat, the tears

Yesterday Amy Bishop, a Harvard PhD and a faculty member of University of Alabama in Huntsville unfolded a shooting in the biology department over there. Three faculty members were killed and many more were injured as a result of her shooting spree.

The most possible reason is that Dr. Amy Bishop was denied tenure at the University of Alabama at Huntsville last year.

Humans are not so far from monkeys in drinking

Links for 19.10.2008

Useful:

• Springer Online Reference Works - online encyclopedia of math
• Advanced physics forums

Interesting:

• Why LaTeX is like Latin - by Paul Goldberg. "LaTeX, like Latin, does not prevent one from writing down a statement that is incorrect. ... But it does help to prevent vagueness."
• Essay: Fifty Years of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics in Physical Review Letters - by Serge Haroche.
• The complete work of Charles Darwin online
• Old scientists never clean out their refrigerators - the story of the Miller-Urey experiment
• Website of Michio Kaku, and his opinion about the last Nobel Prize.

Blogs:

• How you can save the world - an interesting blog, written by many well-known contributors, string theorist Michio Kaku among them.

Funny:

• Iran minister admits holding fake Oxford degree
  
• 'Punch drunk' pony rescued from swimming pool
  

The Most Alien-Looking Place on Earth

An article about a unique island, with a lot of pictures...

Imagine waking up on the Socotra Island and taking a good look around you (let's say your buddies pulled a prank on you and delivered you there, and lets also assume that you don't have any hangover from abuse of any substances). After a yelp of disbelief, you'd be inclined to think you were transported to another planet - or traveled to another era of Earth's history.

The second would be closer to the truth for this island, which is part of a group of 4 islands, has been geographically isolated from mainland Africa for the last 6 or 7 million years. Like the Galapagos Islands, this island is teeming with 700 endemic species of flora and fauna, a full 1/3 of which are found nowhere else on Earth.

Astrobiology rap

not so cool as the one about LHC, but anyway



via Dynamics of cats.