Sbagliando s'impera

Biologist Lynn Margulis died on November 22nd. She stood out from her colleagues in that she would have extended evolutionary studies nearly four billion years back in time. Her major work was in cell evolution, in which the great event was the appearance of the eukaryotic, or nucleated, cell — the cell upon which all larger life-forms are based. Nearly forty-five years ago, she argued for its symbiotic origin: that it arose by associations of different kinds of bacteria. Her ideas were generally either ignored or ridiculed when she first proposed them; symbiosis in cell evolution is now considered one of the great scientific breakthroughs. (John Brockman)

Edge : Gaia is a tough bitch

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Neil Gaiman’s enthusiasm for audiobooks is no secret. The best-selling author has narrated many of his own titles, including “The Graveyard Book,” which won the Audiobook of the Year award (from the Audio Publishers Association) in 2009. He’s even narrated books by other authors on occasion.

Recently, Gaiman kicked his advocacy up a notch by agreeing to hand-select and produce a line of audiobooks in partnership with the audio download retailer Audible.com. Neil Gaiman Presents released its first five titles last month; they include the novel “Land of Laughs” by Jonathan Carroll and “You Must Go and Win” by musician-turned-essayist Aline Simone. Future releases will include books by the early 20th-century American author James Branch Cabell (the target of a once-notorious censorship suit for writing an “offensive, lewd, lascivious and indecent book”) and “Dimension of Miracles” by Robert Sheckley, a work Gaiman likens to “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” and which will be narrated by television personality John Hodgman.

Neil Gaiman’s audiobook record label – Neil Gaiman – Salon.com

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Finalmente, tra qualche tempo, noi supermiopi (una vita di disagi e di complessi di inferiorità) avremo un qualche vantaggio su voi normodotati.

Terminator-Style Contact Lens Closer to Reality : Discovery News

“Some day maybe we’ll have full-fledged streaming in your contact lenses,” said Babak Amir Parviz, an associate professor of electrical engineering at the University of Washington who co-authored a paper describing the computerized new contact lens in the latest issue of the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering.

Institute of Physics