After 10 years of careful research, Dassault Systems has recreated the Giza Necropolis as accurately as possible. Working in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which digitized its collection of documents, it has produced a 3D tour of the plateau entering buildings and seeing restored artwork with links to supporting materials.
Try it. It’s interactive. It’s amazing. It’s fun.
And best of all, it’s free.
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Science Friday, Tour Giza Plateau in 3D | Tagged: Science Friday, Tour Giza in 3d | 
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Posted by masonblue
Bet you thought you had enough problems to worry about. Well, here is another one.
Kate Kelland of Reuters reports that scientists discovered a superbug strain of gonorrhea in Japan in 2008 that is resistant to all antibiotics that have been used to treat gonorrhea in the past, especially the cephalosporin antibiotics that are normally the last treatment option.
The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that the disease has spread to other countries, including Australia, France, Norway, Sweden and Britain.
Kelland writes,
Gonorrhea is a bacterial sexually transmitted disease which, if left untreated, can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy, stillbirths, severe eye infections in babies, and infertility in men and women.
It is one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases in the world and is most prevalent in south and southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. In the United States alone, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the number of cases is estimated at around 700,000 a year.
The clever little pathogen has not only mutated to resist antibiotics, it has mutated to cause less severe symptoms. Doctors used to say if it felt like you were passing razor blades when you urinated, you likely had gonorrhea. That is not true anymore and many people afflicted with the disease do not realize they have it, unless they notice a white discharge in their urine.
The WHO regards this as a very serious health threat.
Prevention is the best cure. Always practice safe sex, unless you are in a long term monogamous relationship and you trust your partner
3 Comments | Gonorrhea, Science Friday | Tagged: Gonorrhea Superbug, Science Friday | Permalink
Posted by masonblue
Greetings to all of you. Today I am initiating a new topic for my blog, titled Science Friday. Each Friday, I will pick a new scientific topic or experimental result and introduce it with a link to more information.
Today, I am starting with an article about partial cell DNA duplication and the role it may have played in developing Homo sapiens sapiens.
Yes, I know this is not about law and this is a law blog. Well, guess what? Even lawyers need to know some science and besides, it is interesting for its own sake.
First, a little background.
The nucleus of each cell in our bodies contains a complete copy of the human DNA genome. Prior to dividing to create a new cell, each cell creates another complete copy of the human genome. Mistakes happen occasionally during this process and the error becomes a genetic mutation, if the cell does not correct it.
Mutations are not inherently good or bad. Whether they are good, bad or neutral depends on the environment in which the organism exists. Most of the time they are neutral. Sometimes, however, a mutation creates a competitive advantage or disadvantage for an organism that allows it to prosper or struggle in the existing environment relative to other organisms that belong to the same species. Depending on the environment, successive generations that inherit the advantage may expand in number and end up prevailing over organisms that inherit the disadvantage and gradually die out. Sometimes the environment changes radically and suddenly amplifying the importance of the advantage or disadvantage. We call this process natural selection.
Duplication is one type of error that occurs during genome replication. When that happens, a section of the genome is copied twice instead of just once. The extra copy can change over time gaining mutations or losing parts.
In a paper published today in the peer reviewed scientific journal, Cell, genetic researchers have reported that they have discovered that the human gene SRGAP2 has duplicated itself twice, approximately 3.5 and 2.5 million years ago. This corresponds to the period when the brains of our ancestors began to expand, increasing cognitive ability, and the now extinct hominin Australopithecus declined and disappeared in favor of the genus Homo that led to us, Homo sapiens sapiens.
The more recent duplication was an incomplete duplication. Using mouse DNA in the lab, they replicated the incomplete duplication and discovered that it appeared to speed the migration of brain cells during development making brain organization more efficient.
To read more about this study, go here to read an article in Discovery News by Jennifer Welch, reporting for LiveScience.com on Sunday, May 6th.
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Posted by masonblue
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