following up the discussion at lunchtime over left and right...

... proof that humanity is good?

Altering local weather?

Nanoparticles disguised as red blood cells could be used to deliver anti-cancer drugs directly to a tumour.

Here, we show that fluorescent proteins4, 5 in cells are a viable gain medium for optical amplification, and report the first successful realization of biological cell lasers based on green fluorescent protein (GFP).

Planetary migration poses a serious challenge to theories of planet formation...When multiple planets stir the disk, our simulations yield the new result that large-scale migration ceases. Thus, growing planets do not migrate through planetesimal disks....Although migration through a gaseous disk is an important issue for the formation of gas giants, we conclude that migration has little impact on the formation of terrestrial planets.

"Plasmon rulers can be used to determine nanoscale distances within chemical or biological species. They are based on the spectral shift of the scattering spectrum when two plasmonic nanoparticles approach one another.... We demonstrated a three-dimensional plasmon ruler that is based on coupled plasmonic oligomers in combination with high-resolution plasmon spectroscopy. This enables retrieval of the complete spatial configuration of complex macromolecular and biological processes as well as their dynamic evolution."

Unexplained annual variations in nuclear decay rates have been reported in recent years by a number of groups. We show that data from these experiments exhibit not only variations in time related to Earth-Sun distance, but also periodicities attributable to solar rotation. Additionally, anomalous decay rates coincident in time with a series of solar flares in December 2006 also point to a solar influence on nuclear decay rates....

I think it could be possible. I need to look into the details. In fact it could probably be done already with the nuclear generators on the Voyager and Pioneer and other nuclear powered probes. That is if the data are precise enough...

Graphene miracles

We show that the occurrence of superconductivity depends on the adatom in analogy with graphite intercalated compounds (GICs). However, most surprisingly, and contrary to the GIC case, Li covered graphene is superconducting at much higher temperature with respect to Ca covered graphene.

We test the theoretical cognitive limit on the number of stable social relationships known as Dunbar's number. We find that users can entertain a maximum of 100-200 stable relationships in support for Dunbar's prediction.

This is really cool...

A group of proteins that act as the body's built-in line of defense against invading bacteria use a molecular trick to induce bacteria to destroy themselves...

Researchers led by Ronald A. DePinho (above), a Harvard Medical School professor of genetics, say their work shows for the first time a dramatic reversal of many aspects of age-related degeneration in mice, a milestone in aging science achieved by engineering mice with a controllable telomerase gene. T