A new paper in the journal Nature outlines how researchers were able to use somatic cell nuclear transfer to create new embryonic stem cells:

The achievement, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, is significant because such patient-specific cells potentially can be transplanted to replace damaged cells in people with diabetes and other diseases without rejection by the immune system.

A rational person would think this would be welcomed by the usual suspects. No human embryos would have to be used. But alas, the usual suspects are idiots — they consider diverting a few embryos from the medical waste incinerator for research to be killing children — and will probably consider this cloning. And everyone brainless wingnut peon knows we have to keep the world safe from manimals and evil clones!

The old saying goes, I didn’t leave the Republican Party, it left me. Nowhere is this more acute than in science. Denial of reality is so endemic in today’s Teaparty GOP that simply recognizing the fact of evolution or the readings of super accurate thermometers managed by NASA climate scientists has become political suicide. Some in the GOP are reportedly, finally, trying to push back:

Former South Carolina GOP Rep. Bob Inglis, who lost his primary race last year in part because of his acknowledgment of the problem of climate change, is now giving speeches and lectures across the country about the need for conservatives to acknowledge the problem of climate change and work on solutions. He warns that the Republican Party will be branded “anti-science” if it doesn’t. He is bringing his message to conservative strongholds such as Federalist clubs and conferences of the Conservative Political Action Conference.

The effort is duly noted, good luck, but the fact is the Republican Party has been branded antiscience for a long time and for a very good reason: they are anti-science. [Read more…]

Writing at the Guardian, Karl Giberson reviews the pernicious effects of the religious right on science, history, politics, and on his own development growing up in the midst of it:

Unfortunately, millions of evangelicals – and this would include much of the political base being courted by the GOP presidential candidates as well as the candidates themselves – are trapped in an alternative “parallel culture” with its own standards of truth. [A]ll have media empires that spread their particular version of the gospel. Millions of dollars every year support the production of books, DVDs, radio shows, school curricula, and other educational materials. Very few evangelicals grow up without hearing some trusted authority – perhaps even with a PhD – tell them that the age of the Earth is an “open question”. Or that scientists are questioning evolution. Or that gays are getting spiritual help and becoming straight. Or that secular historians are taking religion out of US history.

The flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz scared the living shit out of me and my big sister when we were nine years-old. We would run and hide when that part came on, and that was with my mom or dad sitting right there telling us it was all make-believe and nothing to worry about. Imagine you were told by sources you trust from an even earlier age that there is a real war between good and evil, where a particular party or ideology or field of study is in cahoots with the scariest real-life, highly intelligent monsters you can possibly envision, that these monsters have supernatural powers, including the ability to brainwash or torture you and everyone you care about for eternity, and that the entire fucking world was going to end any day. That would really scare a kid, and probably scar an adult for life.

The Occupy Wall Street movement which originated in the Big Apple has spread to other large US cities. Protestors are using the Internet and social media to create momentum similar to the Arab Spring movements now remaking the Middle East and North Africa. This week some of them even made themselves up as zombies shown above and marched around with arms outstretched moaning for money instead of the traditional fresh brains. That was nice touch! Occupy has even spring up in my comfy little progressive hometown of Austin:

We stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters who Occupy Wall Street and occupy around the world. We are dedicated to non-violently reclaiming control of our government from the financial interests that have corrupted them.

One of the local Austin protests goes from 3 PM to 10 PM this Thursday, Oct 6 at Austin City Hall. I don’t know if I can make that or not, it’s a work day for me and I’m trying to recover from a fairly severe injury. But I’d love to hear how it goes and maybe look at some pics of it if anyone happens by. Check about any search engine using Occupy ____ to see if your metro area has one planned too.

A comprehensive map made by the Cassini-Solstice mission examining Saturn’s tiny, icy moon Enceladus has netted a surprising result. The little world is coated in super fine ice crystal estimated to be hundred of meters deep in some places:

This powder would likely make pe­r­fect ski­ing ma­te­ri­al, ac­cord­ing to Paul Schenk of the Lu­nar and Plan­e­tary In­sti­tute in Hous­ton, Tex­as. He pre­sented find­ings by his re­search team Oct. 3 at the 2011 joint meet­ing of the Amer­i­can As­tro­nom­i­cal So­ci­ety’s Di­vi­sion for Plan­e­tary Sci­ences and the Eu­ro­pe­an Plan­e­tary Sci­ence Con­gress in Nantes, France.

The ice crystals are theorized to build up over millions of years from cryo-geysers. On earth a skier would sink to the bottom of such a powder pile, in fact the powder itself would be converted to firn and hard ice over time by gravity and weathering. But in Enceladus’ weak 0.11 G field and near absolute vacuum the powder can accumulate basically, forever.

The Nobel Prize for physics has been announced and, like the one for Medicine yesterday, it’s a three-way split:

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said American Saul Perlmutter would share the 10 million kronor ($1.5 million) award with U.S.-Australian Brian Schmidt and U.S. scientist Adam Riess “for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe through observations of distant supernovae.”

In other words, Dark Energy. The most revolutionary discovery in cosmology since the Big Bang.

And that’s saying it nicely. Hank Williams Jr., is a fucking idiot is more like it. Apparently this morning on Fox and Friends Williams went full Godwin:

They’re the enemy! Obama! And Biden! Are you kiddin’ me, the Three Stooges!” So there you have it: Obama is both the modern incarnation of Hitler and also Moe, and Joe Biden is double-timing it as Larry and Curly.

Here’s the thing about Godwin: there are times when assholes hide fascist behavior behind it. There are times when comparing someone to Hitler is fully warranted. It’s just that taxing billionaires at the same rate secretaries pay is not one of those times. Requiring insurance companies to cover childrens’ preexisting conditions isn’t exactly on par with cooking millions of men, women and children down to ash in industrial human kilns.

A lot of iconic images come to mind when Hitler is brought up, but harmless slapstick comedy is not one of them. Maybe Williams watched too much Hogan’s Heroes growing up, where Nazi’s were depicted as lovable bunglers, I dunno. But a person cannot be a genocidal monster and an adorable comedic legend at the same time. Williams got booted off of ESPN and imo he absolutely deserved it.

Chile’s Atacoma Desert is rapidly becoming THE place for optical astronomy. The combination of altitude, bone dry conditions, and clear skies make it arguably the best location on earth for telescopes. Now the site also features an array of radio telescopes under construction and some of the first images coming in reveal the inner workings of one of the most interesting galactic scenes in the nearby cosmos:

The new images reveal a flurry of star formation within thick clouds of gas and dust at the Antennae Galaxies’ impact zone, 45 million light-years away. Older star-forming regions appear as a faint orange in the image while the youngest — some 3 to 4 million years old — glow bright yellow.

The Antennae Galaxy is really two spiral galaxies in the midst of a collision lasting hundreds of millions of years. The space between individual stars is so vast that they rarely collide. But the clouds of dust and gas in each galaxy slam into one another at high speeds, sometimes in the neighborhood of a 100 miles a second. Even extremely diffuse matter heats up under those conditions, hot enough to emit microwaves in some cases, and giant shock waves echo back and forth, ringing the galaxies like a bell. In the compactions produced by the passing shock waves globs collapse to form stellar nurseries and a burst of star formation occurs deep inside pockets of dust and gas.

That’s where the Atacoma Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) comes in. Visible starlight from the baby stars can’t penetrate the layer of dust and gas, but invisible light in the lower portion of the spectrum can and that’s ALMA detects. The array is not even half-finished, but already the resolution is uncanny. Not bad for a test run!

The winners are Bruce Beutler and Jules Hoffmann for their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity. Sadly, the third and primary recipient of the prestigious award died just a few days shy of formally receiving it:

Ralph Steinman, a biologist with Rockefeller University, “discovered the immune system’s sentinel dendritic cells and demonstrated that science can fruitfully harness the power of these cells and other components of the immune system to curb infections and other communicable diseases,” the university said in a statement Monday. Steinman died Friday at the age of 68. “He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer four years ago, and his life was extended using a dendritic-cell based immunotherapy of his own design,” the university said.

Immunity, wat many researchers see as the final frontier, is a topic near and dear to me: I suffer from Anklyosing Spondilitis, a condition fairly well controlled with a very expensive drug. Congratulations to all three, and condolences to Dr Steinman’s family.