More of this week's miscellanea
Feb. 24th, 2006 01:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zotzSo Livingstone brought the office of mayor into disrepute by hurling abuse at a tabloid reporter? Sounds like perfectly reasonable behaviour to me, I'm afraid.
The dentistry is over for another year. Hopefully. I went to have a filling replaced on Wednesday, which turned out to be a completely painless experience. It was an amalgam job, probably from my teens, so hopefully this one will last until my late fities, by which time I'm sure I'll have no teeth left anyway. Advances in medical technology will doubtless have made it possible for me to grow new teeth to replace them by then - or, more likely, for my friends and family to have a whole replacement Me grown to replace the irritating old git that I've become.
Which reminds me. I was looking at the Onion the other day, and they're featuring a fine story about using technology to increase the impact of science on policy-making. They aren't ignoring the major matters of topical interest, either. I was also (admittedly slightly cynically) amused by the headline Betty Friedan Honored With Second-Class Postage Stamp also.
Anyway, that cloning thing leads nicely onto this article, from Wednesday, about moves to oppose the ALF and their cronies, who are issuing scarcely-veiled threats of violence against researchers, students, builders, and anyone else who has the temerity not to agree with them. There's another article in today's Guardian (there's also a photo of Cave with That 'Tache, but that's a separate story).
As I said in a rather less temperate post a few months ago, I don't agree that animal-based research is either useless or (necessarily) unethical. And as they haven't convinced the country not to kill animals for food - and don't seem to be particularly interested in doing so - I don't see they've any business getting selfrighteous about medical research. I have at least one friend with advanced MS, who'll probably die of it at some point in the indefinite (but not necessarily distant) future. I don't appreciate these people playing games with her life, or with anyone else's.
A lot of people argue that medical research on animals is misleading. The evidence that tends to be supplied for this is generally inaccurate or irrelevant. Nothing (and nobody) is perfect, but the tools we have are used because they've been proven by years of testing.
On a more pleasant topic, Patti Smith will apparently be reading her poetry in Glasgow.
I'm moderately impressed by the Whitby lineup, but as I remarked elsewhere there isn't anyone that I'd drop everything for and run to buy tickets, as I did for (frinstance) the Lorries or ITN. I was thinking, though - if they're after that sort of coup, someone's playing what seems to be her first gig in well over a decade in France soon, and her initials are D D. I wonder if she could be tempted? In fairness, she used to be very expensive to book. Ah well.
Finally, this, although it'll admittedly be of little interest to most of you :
Hamburg, 23.02.2006. Olympus has developed a new family of objectives specifically for Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence Microscopy (TIRFM) which selectively visualises processes and structures of the cell membrane. Researchers can now choose from four different specially designed TIRFM objectives with magnifications between 60x and 150x, and extremely high numerical apertures (NA) - including a world record NA of 1.65.
Yeech! That's outrageous - f/0.6 in photographic terms. TIRF is also known by the far more beautiful name Evanescent-wave microscopy, but for some reason the buggeringly ugly term caught on.
The dentistry is over for another year. Hopefully. I went to have a filling replaced on Wednesday, which turned out to be a completely painless experience. It was an amalgam job, probably from my teens, so hopefully this one will last until my late fities, by which time I'm sure I'll have no teeth left anyway. Advances in medical technology will doubtless have made it possible for me to grow new teeth to replace them by then - or, more likely, for my friends and family to have a whole replacement Me grown to replace the irritating old git that I've become.
Which reminds me. I was looking at the Onion the other day, and they're featuring a fine story about using technology to increase the impact of science on policy-making. They aren't ignoring the major matters of topical interest, either. I was also (admittedly slightly cynically) amused by the headline Betty Friedan Honored With Second-Class Postage Stamp also.
Anyway, that cloning thing leads nicely onto this article, from Wednesday, about moves to oppose the ALF and their cronies, who are issuing scarcely-veiled threats of violence against researchers, students, builders, and anyone else who has the temerity not to agree with them. There's another article in today's Guardian (there's also a photo of Cave with That 'Tache, but that's a separate story).
As I said in a rather less temperate post a few months ago, I don't agree that animal-based research is either useless or (necessarily) unethical. And as they haven't convinced the country not to kill animals for food - and don't seem to be particularly interested in doing so - I don't see they've any business getting selfrighteous about medical research. I have at least one friend with advanced MS, who'll probably die of it at some point in the indefinite (but not necessarily distant) future. I don't appreciate these people playing games with her life, or with anyone else's.
A lot of people argue that medical research on animals is misleading. The evidence that tends to be supplied for this is generally inaccurate or irrelevant. Nothing (and nobody) is perfect, but the tools we have are used because they've been proven by years of testing.
On a more pleasant topic, Patti Smith will apparently be reading her poetry in Glasgow.
I'm moderately impressed by the Whitby lineup, but as I remarked elsewhere there isn't anyone that I'd drop everything for and run to buy tickets, as I did for (frinstance) the Lorries or ITN. I was thinking, though - if they're after that sort of coup, someone's playing what seems to be her first gig in well over a decade in France soon, and her initials are D D. I wonder if she could be tempted? In fairness, she used to be very expensive to book. Ah well.
Finally, this, although it'll admittedly be of little interest to most of you :
Hamburg, 23.02.2006. Olympus has developed a new family of objectives specifically for Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence Microscopy (TIRFM) which selectively visualises processes and structures of the cell membrane. Researchers can now choose from four different specially designed TIRFM objectives with magnifications between 60x and 150x, and extremely high numerical apertures (NA) - including a world record NA of 1.65.
Yeech! That's outrageous - f/0.6 in photographic terms. TIRF is also known by the far more beautiful name Evanescent-wave microscopy, but for some reason the buggeringly ugly term caught on.
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