A year later, Obama’s appointment of Collins seemed an inspired choice. The President had found not only a man who reflected his own view of the harmony between science and faith but an evangelical Christian who hoped that the government’s expansion of embryonic-stem-cell research might bring the culture war over science to a quiet end. On August 23rd, however, Judge Royce C. Lamberth, of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, halted federal spending for embryonic-stem-cell research, putting hundreds of research projects in limbo and plunging the N.I.H. back into a newly contentious national debate.

The news about Alzheimer’s is dismal. A new Eli Lilly drug to treat Alzheimer’s has failed big-time. After investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the drug, Semagacestat, the company announced it made patients worse.

[...]

I have discovered a large contingent of Alzheimer’s researchers who are extremely positive about prevention and not counting on an elusive drug to stymie the growing Alzheimer’s epidemic of aging baby boomers. Investigators Gregory Cole and Sally Frautschy at UCLA’s Center for Alzheimer’s Research and Gary W.Arendash, PhD, at the Florida Alzheimer’s Research Center, for example, are all focusing on prevention. There is a plethora of upbeat dialogue in the scientific community that does not grab headlines because it’s not about big money and a magic cure. It’s primarily about what people can do to change their own trajectory toward Alzheimer’s.

PowerBook G4 (15-inch Double-Layer SD), MacBook (all models), MacBook Pro (all models), MacBook Pro (17-inch) (all models) and MacBook Air

The battery calibration for the PowerBook G4 (15-inch Double-Layer SD) and any model of MacBook or MacBook Pro has been updated because of a new battery released with this computer. With these computers, follow these steps to calibrate your battery:

1. Plug in the power adapter and fully charge your PowerBook’s battery until the light ring or LED on the power adapter plug changes to green and the onscreen meter in the menu bar indicates that the battery is fully charged.
2. Allow the battery to rest in the fully charged state for at least two hours. You may use your computer during this time as long as the adapter is plugged in.
3. Disconnect the power adapter while the computer still on and start running the computer off battery power. You may use your computer during this time. When your battery gets low, the low battery warning dialog appears on the screen.
4. At this point, save your work. Continue to use your computer; when the battery gets very low, the computer will automatically go to sleep.
5. Turn off the computer or allow it to sleep for five hours or more.
6. Connect the power adapter and leave it connected until the battery is fully charged again.

Tip: When the battery reaches “empty”, the computer is forced into sleep mode. The battery actually keeps back a reserve beyond “empty”, to maintain the computer in sleep for a period of time. Once the battery is truly exhausted, the computer is forced to shut down. At this point, with the safe sleep function introduced in the PowerBook G4 (15-inch Double-Layer SD) computers, the computer’s memory contents have been saved to the hard drive. When power is restored, the computer returns itself to its pre-sleep state using the safe sleep image on the hard drive.

Unlike U.S. News and World Report and similar guides, this one asks not what colleges can do for you, but what colleges are doing for the country. Are they educating low-income students, or just catering to the affluent? Are they improving the quality of their teaching, or ducking accountability for it? Are they trying to become more productive—and if so, why is average tuition rising faster than health care costs? Every year we lavish billions of tax dollars and other public benefits on institutions of higher learning. This guide asks: Are we getting the most for our money?

The UCs and U-M are top of the class.

The new Michigan CMB department web site, which I designed, is now live. I think it turned out pretty well!

It’s happening all over, in all sorts of families, not just young people moving back home but also young people taking longer to reach adulthood overall. It’s a development that predates the current economic doldrums, and no one knows yet what the impact will be — on the prospects of the young men and women; on the parents on whom so many of them depend; on society, built on the expectation of an orderly progression in which kids finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and eventually retire to live on pensions supported by the next crop of kids who finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and on and on.

So what’s the time frame?

One Department of Transportation report said high-speed rail lines in portions of California may not be completed until 2026.

California has already spent millions on this project with no apparent progress. However, I am a big fan of the high-speed rail systems in Europe and hopefully this can be achieved some day here in the US.

Business schools need to focus on bootstrapping, not only raising money from VCs.

However, I feel that the course I took at Michigan’s Ross School of Business did an excellent job of emphasizing this point.

Jobs are growing. Factory workers are anticipating their first healthy profit-sharing checks in years. Sales are rebounding, with the Commerce Department reporting Friday that automobiles were a bright spot in July’s mostly disappointing retail sales.

And yet a third of the city is scheduled to be bull-dosed. Recovery is decades away, if not impossible.

The city council member of the suburb of Birmingham is running for mayor, and you know what they say about Alabama politics: Roll Tide, Roll to victory at the polls. (I don’t know. They probably say that.)

Months after the Deepwater Horizon oil leak began, a 22-mile-long, 1.2-mile-wide and 650-foot-high plume of microscopic oil compounds floated 3,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico near the well, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science.

“The take-home is that it’s important to watch your waist as well as your weight,” said Eric J. Jacobs, an epidemiologist with the American Cancer Society in Atlanta. “Even if your weight is normal for your height, if your waist size is increasing, if you’re moving to a bigger pant size, that’s a warning sign that it’s time to start eating better and exercising more.”

The liquid glass, which is safe and completely inert, forms an invisible, flexible coating on the surface of an object and repels dirt and grime. More importantly, it is believed to prevent the build-up of hospital-acquired infections such as the superbug Staphylococcus aureus, which is resistant to many antibiotics.

CORNING, N.Y. – An ultra-strong glass that has been looking for a purpose since its invention in 1962 is poised to become a multibillion-dollar bonanza for Corning Inc.

I have the Vader Classics but these are probably my favorite of the lot.

The new album from Underworld coming out in September. Double gatefold vinyl is available for pre-order on Amazon.

The genetic markers can be used to predict ‘exceptional longevity’ with 77% accuracy. And they may hold the secrets for treating or preventing many age-related diseases.