In fact, biologists could have figured out a hundred years ago that sperm are weak forward-propulsion units, but it’s hard for men to accept the idea that sperm are best at escaping. The imagery you employ guides you to ask certain questions and to not ask certain others.

Similar cognitive biases arise in other sciences, as can be seen with economists trying to explain everything through a rational agents, and politicians defending its offshoot, the perfect market forces. This bias obscures that which is obvious, and more dangerous, helps create a story, a myth of science, which then is used by our modern civilization to navigate: our current policies are modeled through these myths, and these are informed through our collective ideation of reality – even though it is flawed.

Via Shut up sit down.

Since olive oil is similar to the lipid molecules that make up nerve cells, Jackson and Heimburg started questioning the generally accepted belief that anesthetics block electrical pulses by fitting themselves into pain receptors on cells. That seems next to impossible, they said, because anesthetic molecules come in many shapes and sizes, and it’s difficult to imagine that they all happen to physically fit into all receptors.

People are not happy:

The theory has not been well received. Few are convinced that the inexplicability of anesthetics is reason to dismiss the Hodgkin-Huxley model. One molecular biologist and ion channel expert even refused to comment on record about the theory because he found it too preposterous.

Links to the paper, and the researchers’ websites: Andrew Jackson and Thomas Heimburg.
Thomas Kuhn wrote that our understanding of science changes according to the new and unexplained facts that challenge our world view, generating a crisis, and debunking old theories. This might be happening here: anomalies that generate new knowledge, and bring the old owners of a theory into a crisis: that’s how science advances.

The holographic bound that the entropy (log of number of quantum states) of a system is bounded from above by a quarter of the area of a circumscribing surface measured in Planck areas is widely regarded a desideratum of any fundamental theory, but some exceptions occur. By suitable black hole gedanken experiments I show that the bound follows from the generalized second law for two broad classes of isolated systems: generic weakly gravitating systems composed of many elementary particles, and quiescent, nonrotating strongly gravitating configurations well above Planck mass. These justify an early claim by Susskind.

OK. For a more lay discussion of the subject, let’s all go to the talk itself.
via droll

I have two questions regarding this homogenized synthomeat: What are going to be the filters that prevent accumulation of toxins in that meat? How are the technicians and corporation using this going to ensure the proper quality of this meat, when they all will be working for a minimum investment and a maximized profit?

God, I am sounding like a Luddite, but the points are relevant. Nowadays we spend incredible amounts of energy raising cattle, in the most inhumane and anti-hygienic conditions possible, only to throw a high percentage of that meat as leftovers and spoiled goods. We are all paying for the externalities of such a gigantic and skewed industry: health problems and environmental pollution, bringing you such beauties as high cholesterol, air pollution, endocrine disruption and antibiotic resistance. Now think that again, but complicated by the fact that the meat doesn’t exist anymore within a survival system, ie the cow, but in a tank where all kinds of cheap untested chemicals are going to go, all in the interest of maximizing shareholder value.

Bad idea.

“Dinosaurs are relatively rare and we certainly think of Tyrannosaurus rex as being really rare — although it really isn’t – so people tend not to want to cut holes into the bone or cut them in half,” he said.
“But to study the cellular and molecular structures of these things you have to do that.” The “good stuff,” he said, is on the inside.

The current debate is not whether this tissue can actually provide DNA or broader knowledge on the biology and physiology of dinosaurs. No, it is about the argument postulated by Intelligent Design advocates, interested in twisting science to their own end, and saying that this find proves a younger universe – one created by somebody, some alien with magical powers.
Just in case you ask, there is no blood on those fossils! Only heme, a precursor of hemoglobine.
Anyway, let’s see what can the MontanaU professors find about poor T Rex.