The Order of the Spork

Scientists have used animal cells to create an artificial form of meat without the need for the rearing and slaughtering of livestock. The product, known as "in vitro meat", is made from thousands of stem cells which multiply to produce strips of muscle tissue without ever leaving the lab. Dutch scientists experimenting with pig cells say it could be just six months before the first test tube sausage is produced, and within a year lab-grown burgers could be created using similar techniques with cows.

A quiet revolution has been going on in the medical profession and the field of personal health in the last two years, spearheaded by smartphones and tablets, that will change forever the way we obtain and process medical information. Called mHealth (Mobile Health), this industry phenomenon encompasses a wide range of applications - from self-treatment apps on sub-$100 Android phones in Kenya, through texting reminders for the immunization schedule of newborn babies in India, up to testing yourself for STDs with a smartphone kit, or your doctor panning and zooming radiology scans on the go.

Human colon stem cells have been identified and grown in a petri dish in the lab for the first time. This achievement, made by researchers of the Colorectal Cancer Lab at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) and published in Nature Medicine, is a crucial advance towards regenerative medicine. Throughout life, stem cells of the colon regenerate the inner layer of our large intestine in a weekly basis. For decades scientists had evidences of the existence of these cells yet their identity remained elusive. Scientists led by the ICREA Professor and researcher at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) Eduard Batlle discovered the precise location of the stem cells in the human colon and worked out a method that allows their isolation and in vitro expansion, that is their propagation in lab-plates (petri dishes).

Here Shirky started talking about the importance of managing collaboration effectively. Large collaborative projects aren't, in fact, large collaborative projects according to Shirky. They're small collaborative projects with tight groups, that integrate very large amounts of small participatory effort. To put it another way, projects like Wikipedia and the Linux kernel may have thousands of contributors - but it's a small core of contributors who do the bulk of the work and integrate the work from others who only contribute a small amount. It's also important, says Shirky, that people cannot join the project too easily. Even given the presumption that all the participants have goodwill towards the project, he says that it shouldn't be too easy to change every aspect of a project. Some parts of the system should be easy to change, some parts should be hard.

"Hybrids, diesels and electrics cost more than their gasoline-engine counterparts, but you may be able to save money over the long-term with better fuel economy. Compare the five-year ownership cost of green vehicles and their conventional equivalents (or any vehicle in the second drop-down menu) to see if you'll save money buying a green car. Then, since the vehicles you're comparing may take regular, premium or diesel fuel, input the price of fuel for each vehicle (our five-year calculations add 3.5% to fuel costs every year for inflation). Skip this step for electric vehicles - the fuel cost will be automatically calculated using average utility rates. Then, select the average number of miles you drive every year, and click the Submit button to see the results."

"A new study by MIT scientists pinpoints areas of the brain used exclusively for language (PDF), providing a partial answer to a longstanding debate in cognitive science. According to the study, there are parts of our brain dedicated to language and only language. After having their subjects perform the initial language task, which they call a 'functional localizer,' they had each one do a subset of seven other experiments: one on exact arithmetic, two on working memory, three on cognitive control, and one on music; since these are the functions 'most commonly argued to share neural machinery with language.' The authors say the results don't imply that every cognitive function has its own dedicated piece of cortex; after all, we're able to learn new skills, so there must be some parts of the brain that are both high-level and functionally flexible."

An infographic from boston.com that shows where the US' debt has come from by presidential era and who holds the debt as of today.   

The 9/11 Television News Archive is a library of news coverage of the events of 9/11/2001 and their aftermath as presented by U.S. and international broadcasters. A resource for scholars, journalists, and the public, it presents one week of news broadcasts for study, research and analysis. Television is our pre-eminent medium of information, entertainment and persuasion, but until now it has not been a medium of record. This Archive attempts to address this gap by making TV news coverage of this critical week in September 2001 available to those studying these events and their treatment in the media. Explore 3,000 hours of international TV News from 20 channels over 7 days, and select analysis by scholars.

This site provides several tools and how-tos for creating RSS feeds from Twitter now that Twitter has eliminated the ability to do it directly from the site. 

Exemplifies the emergence of a networked world.  

Why sharing is the inevitable next stage of the information revolution -- and how it's going to change everything from entertainment to Walmart.

Explore object designs by choosing those you like. Evolution produces objects in the next generation that are variants of those you choose, similar to how animals are bred and naturally evolve (more). Either further evolve an object below or start evolving from scratch.