HøLUG HO

Malaysia confirmed it will mount an expedition hunting 3m-tall furry black jungle giants known locally as Hantu Jarang Gigi, meaning “ghosts with widely-spaced teeth”. So El Reg says the BBC said.

From MuseumOfHoaxes.Com

offsite image

may disappear

The Scientist Online includes a report on creating new life-forms by developing artificial cells. Is This Life? covers efforts to create “a growing, dividing, living organism of totally synthetic origins” by Jack Szostak, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School.

According to the report, “such an entity must meet 12 requirements for life including:

• having membrane enclosures (1)
• that can capture energy (2),
• maintain ion gradients (3),
• encapsulate macromolecules (4), and
• divide (5).
• Macromolecules must be able to grow by polymerization (6),
• evolve in a way that speeds growth (7), and
• store information (8). Add to that information store the ability to mutate (9)
• and to direct growth of catalytic polymers, and you have 10.
• finally, the cell must contain genes and enzymes that can be replicated (11),
• and they must be shared among daughter cells (12).

The report is supposed to include a Flash video of attempts at the last two outstanding steps. But it seems to have gone AWOL.

As consolation, PBS Nova’s report Artificial Life, created October 2005, includes Quicktime, RealVideo and Windows Media of a 15-minute segment on AL. And, supposedly, still, Biochemist David Deamer of the University of California, Santa Cruz will answer questions, there, online, about “efforts to make artificial life and what that might tell us about early life on Earth”. Deamer participated in the The-Scientist report this post was originally about.

A suitably apropos post and groovy graphic, to do a digg with and launch this HøLUG HO, the HøChiMinh (City) Linux/Liberty/Leisure User Group (HøLUG) Høme Orifice (HO):

INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF TIME

ISTime

A private philosophical institution for Time nature discovery, located in the village site of Barajevo, 37 km south of Belgrade. Founder: Dr Velimir Abramovic

Btw, Dr Abramovic might want to check out the time of his domain registration’s expiry, 27-May-2006 09:50:06 UTC, according to whois.pir.org.