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Feb 15, 2009 | 5
CHICAGO—There is a moment in Steven Spielberg's E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial in which scientists realize that E.T. in fact has DNA, like Earth-based life forms. But that DNA is unlike any that scientists have thus far—it being 1982, of course—found in any Earthbound organism: It has six, instead of the usual four, bases in its alphabet.
Had E.T. been made today, a scientific consultant may have had to give a nod to a lab in Gainesville, Fla., where DNA with six nucleotides exists in a beaker.
"We have an artificial chemical system that is capable of Darwinian evolution," biochemist Steven A. Benner, of the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville, said at a session here at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's (AAAS) annual meeting this morning.
Feb 14, 2009 | 47
CHICAGO—Fresh from adding a Grammy to his mantle Sunday, former vice president Al Gore told scientists gathered here for the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to push administration officials and the general public for solutions to climate change.
"Scientists can no longer in good conscience accept this division between the work you do and the civilization in which you live," Gore said.
"Keep your day jobs, but get involved in the debate," he added.
In about a 45-minute speech, Gore reviewed the evidence for global warming, showing a set a slides that has evolved since An Inconvenient Truth. (A few of our Twitter followers—yes, we live—Twittered Gore's talk, so you can see the blow-by-blow here--pointed out that he had presented a lot of the slides at the recent TED conference.)
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This challenge provides an opportunity for Solvers to build a web-based or mobile “app” to explore data relationships in scholarly conte
Deadline: Aug 31 2013
Reward: $100,000 USD
The Geoffrey Beene Foundation Alzheimer’s Initiative (GBFAI) is launching the 2013 Geoffrey Beene Global NeuroDiscovery Challenge whose
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