Moon homes might look like this. Photo: CC/Brian Yap
The VTech Moon brick.
Where can I sign-up for my “igloo on the Moon” getaway? — mb
Dwellings in colonies on the moon one day may be built with new, highly durable bricks developed by students from the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech. via Lunar Rock-Like Material May Someday House Moon Colonies.
Several compounds in cannabis are known to kill bacteria. Now Italian scientists believe pot can take on today’s superbugs.
Anti-bacterial cannabinoids might also “provide a more environmentally-friendly alternative to synthetic antibacterial substances now widely used in personal care items, including soaps and cosmetics,” according to an announcement from the American Chemical Society.
The ACS also suggests that marijuana-derived meds can be made without THC, pot’s primary psychoactive substance.
Antibacterial Cannabinoids from Cannabis sativa: A Structure−Activity Study
Marijuana (Cannabis sativa) has long been known to contain antibacterial cannabinoids, whose potential to address antibiotic resistance has not yet been investigated. All five major cannabinoids (cannabidiol (1b), cannabichromene (2), cannabigerol (3b), Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (4b), and cannabinol (5)) showed potent activity against a variety of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains of current clinical relevance.
The Pentagon, as early as this week, will release a gas into the air in Crystal City, Va., to see if its outdoor sampling equipment will be able to detect an airborne chemical or biological attack. — mb
media monarchy: pentagon to test invisible gas on crystal city, virginia
“The Pentagon is scheduled to release an odorless, invisible, and yes, harmless, gases into the city Thursday to test how quickly they spread through buildings, officials said.”
“The test is part of the military’s national security preparation for the capital area,” reports The Examiner.
Chemists discover “genetic telepathy”
Stuck on you. DNA double helices with identical nucleotide sequences draw together, spontaneously.
Bits of identical DNA, separated by water only, will draw together–but only if they are the same, according to chemists at the Imperial College of London.
The ICL chemists do not know how the identical double helices recognize each other. They suggest that the curvature of the helices, being a match, might stress the medium between them in a way that brings them together.
Electrostatic charges might also be responsible for this DNA “telepathy.”
DNA Double Helices Recognize Mutual Sequence Homology in a Protein Free Environment
We have observed spontaneous segregation of the two kinds of DNA within each spherulite, which reveals that nucleotide sequence recognition occurs between double helices separated by water in the absence of proteins, consistent with our earlier theoretical hypothesis. We thus report experimental evidence and discuss possible mechanisms for the recognition of homologous DNAs from a distance.
– Mark Baard