Chang Space

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap120525.html

Scorpius in Red and Blue

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/WOprvfO2rpU/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=501223

</p>

Clik heer 2 add a funneh capshun!

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/w-K5A1n_Qgk/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=501045

</p>

I iz a corndog.

wait wat kinda corn r u?

Cyoot puppehs and funneh goggies: I Has a Hotdog has ‘em all!

http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=14095

I've had some scary moments with my two pups, and I'm lucky to have insurance for them. Even so, the bills mount so quickly. But you'll pay anything, because you just want them to be okay again.

Originally posted by harnessphoto at Signal Boost: Project Save Annabelle

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/rq0atF6qARA/best-of-the-week-may-18+may-25-2012

ENGLISH AND BAD ENGLISH | A gorgeous matte painting from The Fifth Element by artist Wayne Haag. See more of his incredible work here.</em>

More »

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/uKoAOcKC510/in-the-1980s-jurassic-park-was-built-by-prisoners-in-cuba

Years before the phrase "clever girl" even entered the pop cultural lexicon, the Cuban government conscripted inmates to build over 200 weirdo concrete dinosaur sculptures at the Baconao Park outside of Santiago de Cuba. More »

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/H3ZQUStyJa4/hear-orbiting-astronauts-geek-out-over-a-basic-experiment

Every day we get more evidence that astronauts are giant nerds. Today you can listen to them ooh and ahh over a basic cornstarch and water experiment, and discuss how it might lead to their destruction at the hands of robot overlords. More »

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/vAeX-ew1I9o/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=501065

</p>

nobody findz meh here.

Cats awr espeshully gud hiders. Nawt so much gud reeders.

Love LOLcats? Who doesn’t?! There are so many more over here!

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/NfD-79Bsc3Y/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=500985

</p>

May I have your attention…
I have been informed by the TSA that someone is smuggling nip on this flight.
It is a crime not to share.

Don’t be mean; BE MEME! Animal Memes is just a click away!

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/S89Wukdo3MY/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=501359

</p>

ok, i’m going to take a nap now you can use your arm later

MOAR funny memes and things at Memebase!

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/xJTXJlVprco/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=501354

</p>

The mysteries of the animal kindgom explained, at last.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/XFBzLTy-TL4/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=501333

</p>

I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE I’M GOING

Cyoot puppehs and funneh goggies: I Has a Hotdog has ‘em all!

Last weekend, when I wasn’t schmoozing with friends at SFWA’s Nebula Awards weekend, I was off at the nearby Artomatic, an arts installation I’d heard about in years past but had never managed to attend. Since the last Artomatic was in 2009, and who knew when I’d ever be spending a couple of nights just a few blocks away from one, I knew I had to sneak over.

What is Artomatic? It’s 1,300 artists taking over an 11-story building that’s soon to be demolished, and surprisingly, amid the tens of thousands of works of art, plenty of science fiction, fantasy, and horror turned up. In an effort to get those who come here to read about those sorts of things to drop by—Artomatic runs through June 23—I thought I’d share a fraction of the art of the fantastic that I spotted.

(To my great horror and regret, after I got home, I discovered that I’d misplaced some of the artists’ names, so in the event you do head on over to Artomatic and see some of the paintings I’ve included below without attribution, could you please let me know the names of the creators. Artists need all the publicity they can get!)

Dana Ellyn

This next painting was titled “Darth VayDeer,” and with a name like that, you’d think I could easily Google the artist, but alas, no.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Originally published at Scott Edelman. You can comment here or there.

Today is my grandma's 80th birthday. We're having a big party for her on Sunday--where by "we" I actually mean my folks are doing all the work--but today is the official date. I don't mostly put birthdays on here because I don't want it to seem like a statement if I miss one. But 80, 80 is a big, round number. Eighty is a thing.

Grandma is my last grandparent standing. I mean, I have Grandpa Lyzenga, but I married into him when I was full grown rather than having memories of walking with him when I was tiny; and as much as I will sometimes introduce Aunt Ellen and Uncle Phil as my Lingen grandparents, and as much as they are doing their darnedest, they are in fact a really really special great-aunt and -uncle, which is its own thing and not to be denigrated.

But Grandma has enough personality for four grandparents all by herself. (So, I know firsthand or hear quite vividly, did each of my other grandparents in their own ways. Lack of personality: not an issue in this family.) Grandma is an Energizer bunny. I wrote in her birthday card that she embodies the adage about blooming where one is planted, and I really think that's true. She does well with new people and new situations. She just dusts herself off and tries again, whatever she needs to try again, and I have never once heard of a situation she couldn't eventually make that work in. Never once. Her persistence inspires me. I hope it lasts long past 80.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/25/galaxy-tab-2-7-0-notes/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=18694

You’ll recall that when I lost my Mac and bought the emergency netbook, I also picked up a Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 inch tablet, on the rationale that, damn it, I was grumpy and I wanted a toy. This is not an excellent reason to buy a piece of electronic equipment, I am the first to note. That said, I’d had my eye on this particular tablet for a bit, so it wasn’t entirely impulsive. I’ve lived with it now for a week and I’m ready to mention what I like and don’t like about it.

First, a general note: I like it. We have an iPad here in the Scalzi household (it’s primarily Krissy’s) and while it’s surely a nice piece of equipment, I’m not in love with its size. A ten-inch tablet is too large for my tastes; unless you’re Shaquille O’Neal, it’s not something you can carry around or use in a single hand, and in other respects it’s also unwieldy. I understand the boffins at Apple have decreed that the iPad is the perfect size for a tablet and that if we have a problem with that there’s something wrong with us, not them. But screw them, they’re just wrong. In my case, a 7-inch tablet is just about perfectly sized: Large enough to give you enough space to see a lot of things, but small enough to operate with one hand. It’s paperback book-sized, basically, and there’s a reason paperbacks are the size they are: Because they make ergonomic sense for humans.

I am using my tablet primarily as a reading appliance, and to that respect it’s been pretty great. Both the Kindle and Nook apps look good and perform well on it, and the screen is a high enough resolution (1024×600) that I can read books without eyestrain (and, because its an LCD screen, I can read it without a nightlight). I’m also trying the Next Issue app, which works like a Netflix for magazines, and it’s for me at least a nice way to cruise through various magazines without them cluttering up my house.

Web browsing is fine — text is small in portrait mode (one needs to pinch zoom) and perfectly readable in landscape. One thing I do like that is that things don’t automatically default to mobile versions of Web sites. I also like that I can access my own site’s backend via the browser, so I can go in and moderate comments more completely than I can do on my phone. The Android 4.0 system means all the Google toys work in a fairly optimized manner, which is especially useful with GMail, which I use. The keyboard in portrait mode is easy to operate with two thumbs.

Although I don’t use it much for video, it handles video just fine; I ran a bit of Serenity on it via Netflix and didn’t have any problems. Haven’t played any games on it so far, but that’s not why I got it, so even if it were to choke on that I wouldn’t care much. The camera is definitely meh, but it’s another function that I did not buy the tablet for, so that’s fine.

Things not to like: It only comes with 8GB of resident memory and half of that’s devoted to apps that I didn’t pick and probably won’t use but come with the thing anyway. This is mitigated by the MicroSD slot and the fact that I just got a 32GB card in that format for $20 (and that it comes with a deal with Dropbox for something like 50GB of space for a year, which does not suck). The power button and the volume rocker button are close enough to each other that I’m always pressing the wrong button. This is annoying. The screen is occasionally less than perfect with touch response (particularly with small type websites), and gets smeary real fast. It’s slightly weird to think the 4.5-inch screen on my phone has a higher resolution than this 7-inch screen.

However, to be blunt, these criticisms for me are blunted by the fact that a) I paid $240 bucks for the thing, which is not a lot, all things considered, b) the tablets closest to it in capability/design — the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire — have similar or lesser specs and are crimped by design in order to keep you in their respective ecosystems. With regards to a), I was not expecting genuinely top-flight specs for what I paid, and what I got for the price is more than satisfactory. With regards to b), why pay for crimped tools when you can get them uncrimped for essentially the same price?

So, for the price and for what I use the thing for, the Galaxy Tab 2 pretty much hits my needs dead on. If you’re looking for a solid, basic tablet in a smaller form factor and for not a whole lot of cash (relatively speaking), it’s worth giving a look.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/advancednano/~3/2KUGe3zoduA/key-gene-found-responsible-for-chronic.html

Researchers at NYU School of Medicine have, for the first time, identified a single gene that simultaneously controls inflammation, accelerated aging and cancer.

“This was certainly an unexpected finding,” said principal investigator Robert J. Schneider, PhD, the Albert Sabin Professor of Molecular Pathogenesis, associate director for translational research and co-director of the Breast Cancer Program at NYU Langone Medical Center. “It is rather uncommon for one gene to have two very different and very significant functions that tie together control of aging and inflammation. The two, if not regulated properly, can eventually lead to cancer development. It’s an exciting scientific find.”

For decades, the scientific community has known that inflammation, accelerated aging and cancer are somehow intertwined, but the connection between them has remained largely a mystery, Dr. Schneider said. What was known, due in part to past studies by Schneider and his team, was that a gene called AUF1 controls inflammation by turning off the inflammatory response to stop the onset of septic shock. But this finding, while significant, did not explain a connection to accelerated aging and cancer.

When the researchers deleted the AUF1 gene, accelerated aging occurred, so they continued to focus their research efforts on the gene. Now, more than a decade in the making, the mystery surrounding the connection between inflammation, advanced aging and cancer is finally being unraveled.

The current study reveals that AUF1, a family of four related genes, not only controls the inflammatory response, but also maintains the integrity of chromosomes by activating the enzyme telomerase to repair the ends of chromosomes, thereby simultaneously reducing inflammation, preventing rapid aging and the development of cancer, Dr. Schneider explained.

Molecular Cell - mRNA Decay Factor AUF1 Maintains Normal Aging, Telomere Maintenance, and Suppression of Senescence by Activation of Telomerase Transcription

Read more »

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/advancednano/~3/dCh3h1lZJpk/darpa-invests-35-million-in-techshop.html

Venture Beat - A fundamental tenet of the modern maker movement is that everyone wants to build something. Especially the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Today DARPA took a break from funding next-generation weapons systems, advanced hypersonic aircraft, and frickin’ laser beams to put $3.5 million into TechShop, the paradise for “inventors, makers, hackers, tinkerers, artists … and anyone else who wants to be able to make things that they dream up but don’t have the tools, space or skills.” TechShop currently operates 5 locations around the US, giving members access to a vast array of tools, building space, and lessons.

In authentic military tradition, the project has a funky acronym: iFAB. The Instant Foundry Adaptive through Bits partnership between TechShop, DARPA, and the Department of Veteran Affairs is intended to “create a foundry to rapidly design and reconfigure manufacturing capabilities to support the fabrication of a wide array of military vehicles.”

DARPA - part of the Adaptive Vehicle Make (AVM) portfolio, is called Instant Foundry Adaptive through Bits (iFAB). iFAB seeks to create a foundry to rapidly design and reconfigure manufacturing capabilities to support the fabrication of a wide array of military vehicles.

Now, thanks to a new collaboration between DARPA, the Department of Veterans Affairs and TechShop, a test-bed will exist to examine new methods and various approaches to creating an effective iFAB. At the same time, the facilities provide a space for innovators to access industrial tools, training and equipment needed to pursue their own ‘make’ ideas without the need for affiliation with a large manufacturer.

Read more »

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/advancednano/~3/beT7kkCs5Os/interview-elon-musk-of-spacex-talks.html

New Scientist had an interview with Elon Musk of Spacex discussing the reusable rocket work.

What kind of technology do you really want to advance, given the freedom you have to do it your own way?

EM: The really big advance, the fundamental breakthrough that's needed, is a fully reusable rocket system. There was an attempt at that with the space shuttle but it failed. The space shuttle was only ever going to be partially reusable as the main tank - the primary flight structure to which the orbiter and booster were attached was discarded on every mission. And the parts that were reused were so difficult to reuse that the shuttle ended up costing four times more to run than an expendable rocket of equivalent payload capacity. The space shuttle was often used as an example of why you shouldn't even attempt to make something reusable. But one failed experiment does not invalidate the greater goal. If that was the case we'd never have had the light bulb.

NS: Can you outline the economics?

EM: The fuel, oxidiser and pressurant on a Falcon 9 rocket accounts for about 0.3 per cent of the cost of the mission, about $200,000. But each mission costs $60 million because we have to make a new rocket every time.

Any reusable rocket would only last for a certain number of launches and would still have some maintenance costs. If a reusable rocket could last 200 launches then it would depreciate by $300,000 per launch and if there was $500,000 per launch in maintenance and service, then fuel + depreciation + maintenance would be $1 million. The reusable rocket would be 60 times cheaper than a single use rocket.

Read more »

http://www.disinfo.com/2012/05/los-angeles-hidden-original-subway-system/

http://www.disinfo.com/?p=75521

Gelatobaby’s Alyssa Walker went on an unmissable clandestine urban exploration tour — through the abandoned subway system nestled below L.A., revealing an uninhabited sub-city filled with strange sights:

Behold the Subway Terminal Building, hidden in plain sight in the middle of downtown LA, where at one point during the 1940′s over 65,000 riders were shuffling down into the depths of Los Angeles to board a train which traveled beneath the busy streets. We found ourselves in a vast, pillared space that, even with the tracks and trains removed, felt very much like a subway station. We did reach the end, where there was, of course, graffiti. After being used as a fallout shelter, the tunnel was sealed in the 1960s.

http://www.disinfo.com/2012/05/how-psychedelic-drugs-can-help-patients-face-death-2/

http://www.disinfo.com/?p=75516

How use of psychedelic drugs can ease the difficulty of facing the most harrowing stage of life. The New York Times points towards a more enlightened future:

The power of psychedelics to mitigate mortality’s sting is not just the obsession of one lone researcher. Dr. John Halpern, head of the Laboratory for Integrative Psychiatry at McLean Hospital in Belmont Mass., a psychiatric training hospital for Harvard Medical School, used MDMA — also known as ecstasy — in an effort to ease end-of-life anxieties in two patients with Stage 4 cancer.

Grob’s setup — the eyeshades, the objects, the mystical music, the floral aromas and flowing fabrics — was drawn from the work of Stanislav Grof, a psychiatrist born in Prague and a father of the study of psychedelic medicine for the dying. In the mid-’60s — before words like “acid” and “bong” and “Deadhead” transformed the American landscape, at a time when psychedelics were not illegal because most people didn’t know what they were and thus had no urge to ingest them — Grof began giving the drug to cancer patients at the Spring Grove State Hospital near Baltimore and documenting their effects.

Grof kept careful notes of his many psychedelic sessions, and in his various papers and books derived from those sessions, he described cancer patients clenched with fear who, under the influence of LSD or DPT, experienced relief from the terror of dying — and not just during their psychedelic sessions but for weeks and months afterward.

http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=14094

I just heard that FREAKANGELS won Favourite Webcomic for the second time at this year’s Eagle Awards.

Anna Petterson, as is now traditional, is looking after it and pouring alcohol on it.

http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=14091

• UbuWeb Sound – Daphne Oram
  @ubuweb: Daphne Oram Audio Archive – Electronic Music for Radio, TV, Cinema, Ads, Dance. Rec. 1959-77 [MP3]: http://t.co/BvZKJwZ7 http://twitter.com/ubuweb/status/206049306040471554
  (tags:ifttt twitter editmytaglaterwarren! )
• Matthew Weiner, Vince Gilligan, and David Milch Interview – GQ June 2012: Movies + TV: GQ
  "The creators of Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Deadwood are this generation's auteurs. Brett Martin sits them down to discuss the future of television"
  (tags:writing tv )

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/iNxJ71flmGc/my-vision-of-game-of-thrones-bran-stark-atop-winterfell

Last week, io9 featured a post about the making of my Eddard Stark artwork for George R.R. Martin's 2012 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar. This week, let's have a look at the process behind my Bran Stark artwork. More »

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/L8u2N7bV9L0/the-supernovae-that-burn-at-the-center-and-the-edges-of-everything

From Earth, the Pinwheel Galaxy looks to us like just a pinprick of light in the Big Dipper. But it's an enormous galaxy that's twice the size of our own. And in this new image of the galaxy from NASA, you can see that the Pinwheel is bursting with supernovae — the purple regions in this image highlight areas of extreme heat, where stars are exploding. What's interesting is that these gigantic explosions are happening both in the center and at the extreme edges of the galaxy's arms. More »

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/ZnhMt91g5JI/exposure-therapy-can-make-this-picture-less-scary-++-by-altering-your-brain

Exposure therapy is the practice of exposing people to things they fear in small doses, and it has helped vast numbers of people get over their phobias. But why? Now, a new study has shown that as little as a single session with a tarantula permanently alters the way an arachnophobe's brain works. More »

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/xKXZXIFZIL0/all-the-secrets-of-becoming-a-victorian-magician

What's amazing about the complete scan of 1882's brilliant, batty, bizarre How to Become a Magician over at the Public Domain Review isn't just the fact that it tells you how to make ice in a "red-hot vessel" (you'll need a platinum cup and "sulphuric" acid). Rather, it's that this book has that weird Victorian moralism that doesn't quite fit into the world of illusions. More »

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/_F1787xpdTY/if-you-are-elderly-and-poor-prison-is-better-than-a-retirement-home

If you are in old age, with no family and little money, your options are slim if you need living assistance. More »

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/B37ZBGlT70U/these-are-the-oldest-musical-instruments-ever-discovered

Some of the world's first musicians may have been flautists. Archaeologists reanalyzing artifacts from a cave in southern Germany have determined that two prehistoric flutes — one fashioned from bird bone, the other mammoth ivory — are somewhere between 42,000 and 43,000 years old. If the researchers are right, these primitive instruments predate the previous record holder (also a flute) by thousands of years. More »

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/zLHHRO9F5q8/awake-does-the-prisoners-ending-sort-of

The ending of Awake was always going to be kind of unsatisfying. The show was cut short after just one season and there were huge metaphysical questions as well as an Evil Conspiracy up in the air. So it's probably for the best that the show's creators opted for the Full Mindfuck ending, as opposed to trying to create actual closure. Here's what we got out of it. More »

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/TEkob7D4xoo/the-all+out-supernatural-cheese-rampage-weve-all-been-waiting-for

The first trailer for The Apparition looks so relentlessly cheesetastic, we can hardly stand it. This movie has everything: feckless scientific researchers who set out to prove that you can summon supernatural entities with the power of the mind, a monster that is sort of like a virus and sort of like a ghost, and a silly rule: "As soon as you believe in it, you die." More »

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/9Xnv4agDntE/an-incredible-anatomical-drawing-of-the-hulks-skull-and-musculature

Over at Scientific American, amazing science artist Glendon Mellow has posted my current favorite picture in the entire universe: An anatomy drawing he did a few years ago of Hulk's skull, based on the skulls of actual early hominids. (Click to enlarge — we've also got the text below.) More »

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/ZSp7l5YMcwg/spacex-success-the-era-of-private-space-flight-has-officially-begun

SpaceX has done it. At 12:02 p.m. EDT, the company's Dragon capsule became the first commercial spacecraft in history to be captured and berthed to the International Space Station, and the first U.S. spacecraft to visit the ISS since the Space Shuttle Atlantis last July. More »

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/_VsznUuCjJI/movie-science-that-fails

I'm at WisCon this week, so we got special guest host Veronica Belmont from Tekzilla to co-host We Come from the Future! We look at the top movie tropes that get a F in science. Plus, in this week's Esther Gets Experimental we show you how to create plasma using a humble grape and your microwave. And can you help solve the mystery of the forgotten movies and books from our latest Lost Media cases? All this and more on our show this week! More »

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/ZlVfAIXdGwE/10-fictional-sidekicks-who-should-team-up-with-real+life-public-figures

We can all think of characters that we'd like as sidekicks. But sometimes things aren't all about us, personally. There are people out there who just plain need those sidekicks more. (And some need to have those sidekicks inflicted on them more.) Here are ten fictional sidekicks that we want to pair up with ten actual people. More »

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/full/~3/qnGekvRqkTQ/what-if-the-x+men-were-a-disney-cartoon

If Disney ever decided to animate Marvel Comics' mutant roster, the final product might just look like these character designs by Matthew Humphreys. Bonus points for mohawk Storm, and I can appreciate how he utilized Psylocke's blindingly purple 1980s armor. Hat tip to Mogo! More »

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/W96VwDbMV8A/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=501338

</p>

DECENT MOVIE BUT IT WASN’T RIBBITTING

It’s not just kittehs that love captions! ALL THE ANIMALS DO! Check out Animal Capshunz for MOAR!

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/FF7Lndp-N-s/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=501328

</p>

HEY I JUST MET YOU, AND THIS IS CRAZY BUT I’M YOUR KITTEN SO PET ME MAYBE?

Love LOLcats? Who doesn’t?! There are so many more over here!

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/eKqfY3qLG9o/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=501342

</p>

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/M-ma1t2zqio/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=501020

</p>

It’s so nice when two different animals can get together to make each other look even better.

Life’s too short to avoid the *SPLORT*! Visit Daily Squee for your daily cuteness!

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ICanHasCheezburger/~3/u-wUZENF3ow/

http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=501002

</p>

Turns out that penguin chicks are great cuddlers. True fact.

Trillian found this darling house spider and her eggs in one of the cabinets working hard to guard our food! She is part of our army. I did a few macro shots of her egg basket too -- looks like we're about to have 50 babies!!! Cigars for everyone!

She's about the size of a lentil, her eggs might be the size of pinheads.

( behind this cut to avoid the freaking out of the people who would freak out if there was a spider in front of this cut )

Thanks to whafford for being the voice activated light stand.

Add me: [LiveJournal] [Facebook] [Twitter] [Google+] [Tumblr]
[Roller Derby Portraits]

Scenes from the Avengers movie were shot here. I have re-edited all photos from this set and added new ones, enjoy!



For more pictures from this set on Westinghouse Electric, click here - Flickr, 100 photos.

Follow me on Twitter and "Like" my page on Facebook!

SFWA is looking to convene a Norton jury for the 2013 award.

The Norton Award is presented to young adult or middle grade science fiction and fantasy novels. The membership at large votes to place several works on the ballot which the Norton jury can augment with additional selections.

Interested volunteers should contact the office of the vice president at vp@sfwa.org.

Please include your name and email address as well as a sentence or two about the following:

1) Your experience (if any) as a reader or writer of young adult and/or middle grade fiction.

2) Your interest in serving as a juror for this award.

Volunteer applications should be sent by Friday, June 8.

Volunteers must be active SFWA members. Feel free to repost.

Mirrored from SFWA | Comment at SFWA

http://floggingbabel.blogspot.com/2012/05/aelita-day-three-with-reward-results.html

The Aelita Awards ceremony was held today.  Up above are the big three.  From left to right:  The Ivan Yefremov Memorial Award, the Vitaly Bugrov Memorial Award, and the Aelita itself.

And the winners were . . .

The Aelita Award, for great contribution for the development of Russian science fiction and fantasy went to Russian-born Israeli writer Pavel Amnuel. 


The Ivan Yefremov Memorial Award, for great contribution to critical studies, went to Andre Sinitsin.

 The Vitaly Bugrov Memorial Award, for great contribution in the creation of story collections and nonfiction, went to Sergey Chekmaev.


The Order of the Knights of Science Fiction and Fantasy, for great contribution to the development of fandom, went to the staff of the website "Russian Fantastika."

Europe-Asia, for writers who reflect Ekaterinburg and the Urals in their work, went to Vladimir Molotilov.


The Order of Kindness and Light, for writers who promote in their work ideas of humaneness, kindness, and a positive attitude toward humanity, went to . . . oh drat, I cannot read my handwriting.  I'll find out in the morning, correct this post, and add the information in tomorrow's post.

The winner of the short story contest was Kira Kalilinina.

The winner of the story in 100 minutes contest, a competition that was held yesterday in only an hour and forty minutes, was Julia Furzikova.

And finally, the Master of Sci-Fi and Fantasy Award, given to a foreign writer who, well, you know, went to (cough) me.

And now it's midnight here in Ekaterinburg and I have to get up early tomorrow.  So I'll post more then.  Good night, all.

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/013973.html

Fox, CBS, and NBC have sued DISH Networks over its "Auto Hopper" feature, which allows viewers to auto-skip commercials in programs they record.

What's wonderful isn't that the TV networks are claiming that skipping commercials is "copyright infringement." I mean, that's insane, but no, there's more. The networks are also claiming that if you record a bunch of shows intending to skip the commercials...and then, the next day, you watch the commercials anyway...you're guilty of "copyright infringement" anyway, because you intended to skip the commercials back when you recorded the shows. They're arguing that this supposed "infringement" (which is, of course, not actually infringement) inheres in the intent.

It goes without saying that the word "copyright" is here being used in ways that would be utterly unrecognizable to the people who originally devised the concept. Beyond that, this is Because-We-Say-So legal reasoning of the purest, most flamboyant kind.

The problem isn't that these loopy arguments are going to win in this particular case. The problem is that the entertainment conglomerates have the resources to keep doing this kind of thing nearly forever, endlessly wearing away at the legal system and at our notions of what's just and unjust.

Pretty much the same way the energy conglomerates have nearly unlimited resources to keep propping up the notion that there's a "controversy" over whether we're undergoing anthropogenic global climate change.

The problem is that in order to spur economic development, we created a class of human organizations that are sociopathic. Our army of killer robots has made it clear: they work for themselves, not for us, and they will break the world.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/advancednano/~3/BXe2laWqKTc/euclideon-continues-to-make-progess.html

Euclideon is an Australian company that claims to have developed a new technology for rendering 3-d graphics. This technology, which Euclideon calls atomistic rendering, can render images in extremely high detail. Euclideon has recently released a demo that shows the extremely detailed objects which the engine is capable of rendering in real time. The technology of unlimited detail has been controversial within the gaming community, and Euclideon has received some criticism for among other things not showing an animation using atomistic rendering. In an interview with Sander Olson for Next Big Future, Euclideon founder and CEO Bruce Dell discusses the potential of this technology for both gaming and non-gaming applications, the next products that Euclideon will release, and the fundamental advantages of atoms over polygons.


Bruce Dell

Question: How did you initially start working on ways to improve 3-d graphics?

Euclideon invented a new way to run unlimited amounts of point cloud data in real time. Normally 3d graphics are made out of flat shapes called polygons. Point cloud data is where you make everything out of little atoms. Other systems have been made that can run 3D objects made from atoms, but our system is many times faster and can run atom based graphics in unlimited quantities, We have been using 64 atoms per cubic millimeter so our graphics are of a much higher detail than most people are used to.

Read more »

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/advancednano/~3/HkPehD1KwTY/treating-amyloidosis-could-extend-human.html

Extreme Longevity - Supercentenarians and transthyretin amyloidosis: The next frontier of human life extension (Preventitive Medicine Journal, 3 pages)

Supercentenarians are persons who have lived beyond the age of 110. Currently there are only about 80 such known individuals in the world whose age is verified.

In a newly published review Drs. Stephen Coles and Thomas Young of the UCLA Gerontology Research Group point out what it may be that is killing supercentenarians: amyloidosis.

Amyloidosis is a disease state hallmarked by the deposition of fibers of abnormally clumped masses of transthyretin. The protein transthyretin normally acts to carry thyroid and other hormones. Mutations in the gene make the fibers abnormally sticky and they tend to clump into long fibers which are deposited in multiple organs.

Through early onset amyloidosis leads to disease, it is of interests that supercentanarians all seem to have significant amounts of it. Though not proven it is possible the amyloid is killing them.

These persons have already escaped the typical causes of death however they have lived for so long, the normally innocuous amounts of amyloid that increase with age may actually become toxic to them because they have lived so many years.

Where this line of reasoning gets exciting is that experimental drugs exists which may eliminate amyloid.

These drugs are being studied for young persons with pathological amyloidosis. If they work, what would happen if they were adminstered to persons over age 95? Perhaps it is possible they could become the first drugs to extend human lifespan beyond current theoretical limits.

Is amyloidosis a part of the aging process, or is it merely one more chronic disease that can be treated? Will treating amyloidosis lead to increases in human lifespan? Both first-generation and second-generation drugs, such as Diltiazem, Verapamil, Celastrol, 4-PDA, taurine-conjugated ursodeoxycholic acid, and CHPHC, are under development for the management of the disease (Coelho et
al., 2008; Balch et al., 2008). It seems to us that these questions may lead us to the next frontier in the extension of human lifespan. At the very least, the recognition that amyloidosis is a common and treatable condition in the oldest old should lead supercentenarians to having a better quality of life in the future, a further confirmation of what has been called the “Compression of Morbidity”

Read more »

http://www.disinfo.com/2012/05/matt-ridley-when-ideas-have-sex-video/

http://www.disinfo.com/?p=75502

Matt Ridley at TEDGlobal 2010:

http://www.disinfo.com/2012/05/has-human-evolution-stopped/

http://www.disinfo.com/?p=75498

We’re screwing with our own nature as well as that of many other species and the Earth itself, with unpredictable consequences. Matt Ridley offers his opinion on what that might mean in the Wall Street Journal:

If you write about genetics and evolution, one of the commonest questions you are likely to be asked at public events is whether human evolution has stopped. It is a surprisingly hard question to answer.

I’m tempted to give a flippant response, borrowed from the biologist Richard Dawkins: Since any human trait that increases the number of babies is likely to gain ground through natural selection, we can say with some confidence that incompetence in the use of contraceptives is probably on the rise (though only if those unintended babies themselves thrive enough to breed in turn).

More seriously, infertility treatment is almost certainly leading to an increase in some kinds of infertility. For example, a procedure called “intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection” allows men with immobile sperm to father children. This is an example of the “relaxation” of selection pressures caused by modern medicine. You can now inherit traits that previously prevented human beings from surviving to adulthood, procreating when they got there or caring for children thereafter. So the genetic diversity of the human genome is undoubtedly increasing.

Or it was until recently. Now, thanks to pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, parents can deliberately choose to implant embryos that lack certain deleterious mutations carried in their families, with the result that genes for Tay-Sachs, Huntington’s and other diseases are retreating in frequency. The old and overblown worry of the early eugenicists—that “bad” mutations were progressively accumulating in the species—is beginning to be addressed not by stopping people from breeding, but by allowing them to breed, safe in the knowledge that they won’t pass on painful conditions…

[continues in the Wall Street Journal]