By Irma Arkus

It is important to remind ourselves that recent deterioration of labour rights and working conditions does not only entail low skilled jobs, but those of higher skilled workers as well. I present to you the case of Becky McClain, a Pfizer molecular biologist, who has been battling her employer over disclosure of exposure to dangerous, cancer-causing chemicals.

Safe working environment is not only desired by workers in distant lands of seemingly infinite cheap labour – lack of safe working conditions will also affect YOU, and your friends and family.

BACKGROUND OF BECKY MCCLAIN:

Becky McClain is a 23-year career molecular biologist who has worked on cutting edge technologies in mouse embryonic stem cell, vaccine development, molecular genetics, neurobiology and developmental biology research within both academia and private industry.

In 2002-2004 she incurred biological exposures at Pfizer, Groton, CT from a biological hood and co-worker using a Lentivirus on her lab bench next to her desk. As a result of requesting the Lentivirus exposure records through OSHA she was terminated and filed a lawsuit in 2006. On April 1, 2010 she won her federal lawsuit against Pfizer, Inc. for whistleblower and freedom of speech claims. Pfizer still refuses to give her the Lentivirus exposure records.

The speech was given in New Britain, CT at the AFSCME Council 4 union office advocating worker rights to their biological exposure records for directed healthcare and public health and safety issues to be addressed to prevent work-related illness, to provide a safe work environment, and to protect the public’s health and safety.

Marketing is everything. Whereas Gene Ray and his TIME CUBE theory has been heavily ridiculed since the early days of the web, Rob Bryanton’s 10 dimension story is actually selling books and seeding hippy pseudoscience cults.

I always considered string theory to be too above my head for me even to fathom it, so I always avoided exploring it – I was saving it for later when I was old and had time to learn tensor calculus and stuff. When someone told me there was a video that makes sense of 10 dimensions and string theory in an easy to understand manner, I was all over it. I have to admit that I got suckered in by Bryanton’s slick animations and smooth narration. There was a moment where I was getting excited because I thought that mainstream physics condoned the notion of time travel and alternate realities. “Woah, I totally understand string theory,” I thought to myself. Then I did a cursory wikipedia search of string theory and 10 dimensions. At that point I realized that Bryanton’s imagination has nothing to do with reality or any educated theory whatsoever and that I was a sucker for believing him.

Normally I wouldn’t be angry – Bryanton’s 10 dimensions is a cool sci-fi concept that unifies time travel, alternate realities and alternate universes. But when you consider that he’s literally selling his imaginary world as truth to eager believers who don’t know any better, then this man is a unremitting charlatan.

Anyways. My main point: marketing makes all the difference. First we’ll have Rob Bryanton’s nice, polished bullshit:

10 DIMENSIONS

See. That was nice. Sort of cool. I’d buy that for a dollar if I didn’t know any better. And people are paying many dollars to buy his books.

Now Gene Ray’s Time Cube as a reference:

TIME CUBE

When you’re selling hot air it’s all in the technique.

Introducing “Insane Clown Posse,” a US-based band from Detroit (these days better known as hell), that started in 1984 and made its mark with 1995 Riddle Box which pushed the band to prominence up to such an extent that Disney purchased their contract only to relinquish it for the sake of rebuilding its “family values” public image.

by Irma Arkus

US Argonne National Laboratory has released an announcement that their scientists, Jeff Greeley, Stefan Vajda and Larry Curtiss, have recreated the propylene oxide molecule, used just about anywhere, from production of plastics to brake fluid.

Using silver nanoclusters, creation of propylene in a laboratory setting, has resulted in familiar chemical minus the environmentally toxic pollutants, a commonly found by-product of the current process in propylene production.

“While the process does not eliminate ALL of environmental hazardous substances, it does cut down on most of them,” Argonne’s media liaison Brock Cooper explains.

Bearing in mind that production of silver nanoclusters itself is relatively intricate, the possibilities of creating man-made materials such as propylene without the usage of currently utilized raw resources would be an expensive and tedious process, but it does give hope for production of these when faced with scarcity, as well as in unconventional settings and locations.

by Irma Arkus

Do you know what is the largest civilization on Earth?

First, let me first assure you, it is not human, but rather a recently discovered ant colony.

What was touted as a first confirmed “supercolony” were related ants living in colonies that spanned miles across North and South America, Europe and even parts of Asia. Scientists determined that the ants are part of a larger body because they “recognized” members from different colonies as relatives, rather than engage in war-like response reserved for those who were considered other.

But now, the scientists say that it is not only nickel particles that once assembled start to behave like a rather predatory organism. The supercolonies too behave in these patterns, resembling a living biological organism.

When conducting an analysis of some 168 species of ants at University of Florida, it has been found that while members maintain a certain “individuality” as a collective group, a colony, they tend to organize themselves in such a way to suggest a “superorganism.”

What is a super-organism anyways?

Well, according to the researchers, these superorganisms very much correspond to life, development and behaviour of an individual. Essentially, if one is to undestand the actions of colonies that have captured our imagination for millenia, then perhaps undestanding them as a singular is the key (and this is where I fondly harken back to Greg Bear’s “Slant”)

Once more, the research applies to not only ants, but bees, termites, and wasps. The findings will be offering a new, fresh perspective on how societies evolve and develop, perhaps most importantly, giving us new tools to learn about humans, or…that superhuman organism? ([ufl]

According to the US-based Argonne National Laboratories, these self-assembled magnetic “snakes” very much emulate biological life, and do follow Markovnikov’s rule:

“Nickel particles float peacefully in a liquid medium until a giant snake seems to swim by and snatch several particles up, adding to its own mass. The self-assembled “snakes” act like biological systems, but they are not alive and are driven by a magnetic field. The research may someday offer some insight into the organization of life itself.”

by Irma Arkus

Recent efforts to drill core samples of ancient frozen lakes in Antarctica and Arctic have been controversial to say the least.

Many in scientific circles have been outspoken over the facts that drilling those samples may contaminate precious life that still may exist in the lakes underneath the permafrost. Others have warned that collecting ice samples may even release ancient bacteriae and viruses.

But the value of these samples is undeniable. Not only do they represent an immense amount of information in terms of climate change, but recently, samples have uncovered a remarkable number of viruses which may shed light on evolution of life in general.

Recent study revealed some 10,000 virus species present in the samples from Lake Limnopolar at Antarctic Peninsula.

Furthermore, the viruses are extremophiles, meaning that many of them are still very much alive, prone to surviving in extreme conditions including low grade temperatures, low light, oxygen deprivation and low nutrient factors. [SciAm

The soft spongy properties of its body allow the robot to move and manouver through squeeze spaces.

by Irma Arkus

According to Anthony Aguirre, a collision between our universe and an alien one, decimating everything in its path, may have already happened.

Apparently, “there are tantalizing hints that our universe has already survived such a collision—and bears the scars to prove it.” Not only are initial theories prompting scientists to think differently about our universe, but about the concpet of multiverses as well.

Our universe, for example, is superbly uniform and smooth. Physicists say that the reason for such uniformity is fast expansion at high rate. Andrei Linde and Alex Vilenkin at Tufts University proposed that such expansion does not occur only once, but could potentially reoccur. Every such event would cause a bubbling of yet another space and time bubble, and this continuous bubbling would lead to ongoing creation of multiverses.

But more importantly, these would, however unlikely, run into other bubbles and collide with them.

The question posed then is whether our universe would survive such collision, or whether such an event already occured?

According to Vilenkin, “when you think about it, in an infinite multi­verse, with bubbles being formed all the time, sooner or later a bubble will form near the boundary of our bubble, and we will be hit,” Vilenkin says. “There’s the possibility of a benign collision when the cosmological characteristics of the alien bubble are similar to ours, so that it doesn’t destroy us but recedes away.”

But what are these scars? They are everywhere, physicists posit, and since the idea is relatively novel, they are still uncertain as to what it all means.

Microwave radiation for example, shows variable hot and cold spots, which may imply scars of an earlier collision.

Furthermore, New York University physicsist Thomas Levi, doing work on string theory, has also located a spot in the universe that defies explanations. Except that the explanation of a multiverse, and more specifically, a multiverse collision may lie at the heart of it. [Discover]

by Irma Arkus

Large Hadron Collider, the multi-billion dollar machine that just won’t start up, has been plagued by numerous problems since the moment of announcement that “she’s ready to go captain.”

Last year, we’ve patiently awaited its start, and since then, the damn thing was breaking and facing numerous technical issues.

But a pair of physicists, Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, say that this may not be an accident, but rather that the Higgs boson particle is so dangerous, that the time itself is rippling, trying to stop the collider from starting in a roundabout time-travelling sort of way.

In fact, they’ve written two papers on the subject: “Test of Effect From Future in Large Hadron Collider: a Proposal” and “Search for Future Influence From LHC,” available on arXiv.org.

According to the NYTimes musings: “It must be our prediction that all Higgs producing machines shall have bad luck,” Dr. Nielsen said in an e-mail message. In an unpublished essay, Dr. Nielson said of the theory, “Well, one could even almost say that we have a model for God.” It is their guess, he went on, “that He rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them.”

In other words, the physicists say that god, or rather some angry deity, is putting halt to the CERN collider because it hates the idea of Higgins Boson particle, thus engaging in time travel to halt it from being found.

As farfetched as this may sound, they say that this may explain why US abandoned its plans in 1993 for a similar collider after already investing billions of dollars.

My question though is, if something doesn’t want us to turn the damn thing on, why not stop the project at its inception? Why wait until its built?[NYTimes]