An online game called Foldit provides a clue to the AIDS puzzle.
By using a game developed by researchers at the University of Washington, players were able to come up with a viable structure for a protein that is crucial to the early development of AIDS. Foldit allows users to assemble potential proteins out of different molecular building blocks, and video game players ended up accomplishing what scientists could not.
Compare sizes of everything, from the absolutely minute to the incomprehensibly huge. This is pretty rad.
From New Scientist’s CultureLab, an interview about smell with Molly Birnbaum, author of Season to Taste. As a certain philosopher once sang, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.
Towards the beginning of my experience I could smell this one smell all the time. The only way I could make sense of it was that this smell was coming from within me, that it was probably my brain.
If you’re still mystified by this summer’s riots in England, you’re not alone: try on this article from the New Scientist (again), which attempts to go a little further than the simplistic descriptions that have been offered so far.
Throughout history, one of the first casualties of riots has always been scientific understanding.
Check out these totally kickass coins, currently being minted in Canada. Don’t expect to get them back in the change from your latte, though, those bad boys are gonna cost you $25 or so.
Wondering what’s up with those crazy kids with their iPods and jeggings? National Geographic examines the teenage brain.
As we move through adolescence, the brain undergoes extensive remodeling, resembling a network and wiring upgrade.
And in music news, Arcade Fire snagged Canada’s prestigious Polaris Prize on Monday night for last summer’s album The Suburbs. Hardly a surprise after their Grammy win earlier this year, but congrats all the same.
“Just so you guys know, all this stuff makes us profoundly awkward — for real,” said [guitarist Richard Reed ]Parry.
The Polaris Prize is awarded by Canadian music critics, broadcasters and bloggers every year to a record of any genre.
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