SOME INTERESTING efforts to support troops with science.

AVERTING DISASTERS: Some ideas on how to fix FEMA.

YEAH, LIGHT BLOGGING. I’m on a family trip and have no internet — getting one bar on a 1xrtt connection that craps out if a sparrow flies between me and the cell tower. So it’s mostly just been the posts I scheduled before I left. Back to normal later tomorrow.

SOME OF LAST WEEK’S COOL gadgets and technology.

FASTER, PLEASE: Healing The Heart With Bone-Marrow Cells: “Injecting the hearts of angina sufferers with cells extracted from their own bone marrow can reverse the condition and relieve its symptoms, a new study suggests. The Dutch cardiologists behind the placebo-controlled study say that the results may lead to radical new treatments for patients for whom surgery and medication bring little or no relief from this painful and debilitating condition, which results from narrowed arteries that cannot supply enough blood to the heart during exercise. All 50 subjects involved in the study were resistant to existing treatments. Three months after being given the injections, patients’ hearts were less starved of blood, and they were able to exercise more, researchers report in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.”

I THINK IT’S BECAUSE THE ENVIRONMENT HAS BECOME HOSTILE: Trying to account for the “lost men” on campus. I don’t think that efforts to “disrupt hegemonic masculinity” will do much to address the problem; I suspect, in fact, that the mentality revealed in this story is the problem.

I had some thoughts on this subject a while back, here.

UPDATE: Reader Andrew Berman writes:

I suggest that college administrators look to two organizations which have a spectacular track record in creating wonderful men: The United States Military and the Boy Scouts. The main difference between these organizations and most colleges is that they don’t treat men as imperfect women.

Good point.

BEWARE THE DREADED Shatnerquake.

AUTOPHAGY AND cellular senescence.

HOW TO FIND BUGS in giant software programs.

IN THE MAIL: From Edward Willett, Marseguro.

COOL: Rotating Space Elevator Propels Its Own Load. “The idea of the space elevator just got a little crazier. While the ‘traditional’ concept involved using rocket propulsion or laser light pressure to propel loads up a cable anchored to Earth, a new study shows that a rotating space elevator could do away with engines or laser light pressure application completely. Instead, the unique double rotating motion of looped strings could provide a mechanism for objects to slide up the elevator cable into outer space. The space elevator could launch satellites and spacecraft with humans, and even be used to host space stations and research posts.”

NOMINATIONS ARE NOW OPEN for the Foresight Institute Nanotechnology Prizes.

ERIC SCHEIE: Sometimes I wonder whether “getting the government out of our bedrooms” (supposedly accomplished by Lawrence v. Texas) wasn’t just a ruse so people could imagine they were more free.

PLUGGING MICROORGANISMS into the energy grid. “Microscopic organisms from bacteria and cyanobacteria, to fungi and microalgae, are biological factories that are proving to be efficient sources of inexpensive, environmentally friendly biofuels that can serve as alternatives to oil, according to research presented at the 109th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.”

BUY MORE, SAVE MORE: A Blu-Ray sale.

EDWARD TENNER ON GOVERNMENT EFFORTS TO FORCE TECHNOLOGY: “The problem of any legal mandate is that it is often impossible to say in advance what researchers are capable of. This is sometimes discovered only under great pressure.”

“JUNK” DNA: Not actually junk. “Now researchers from Princeton University and Indiana University who have been studying the genome of a pond organism have found that junk DNA may not be so junky after all. They have discovered that DNA sequences from regions of what had been viewed as the ‘dispensable genome’ are actually performing functions that are central for the organism. They have concluded that the genes spur an almost acrobatic rearrangement of the entire genome that is necessary for the organism to grow.”

STOCK PERFORMANCE: Energy vs. Financials.

A 60 MPH UNMANNED TANK.

RECIPE: The Panther’s Paw cocktail.

HINDSIGHT ISN’T ALWAYS 20/20:

But what do you say about a book that approvingly quotes the wisdom of Bernard Madoff, published the same month he was arrested for running the biggest Ponzi scheme in history?

How can you not wince at his decision to include the opening statement of Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd at hearings looking at the “mortgage market turmoil,” after Dodd became involved in his own turmoil, allegedly helping Countrywide Financial – one of the biggest subprime culprits of them all – after the company allegedly provided him with below-market mortgages on his property?

Nobody’s perfect.

PIRATES AND THE LAW: A RETROSPECTIVE. “Most important in bringing pirates to their end was a series of early 18th-century legal changes that made it possible to effectively prosecute pirates.”

PETER ROBINSON: The protest of a patriot.

A CONVENTION OF Obama Administration auto-industry advisers?

HOME-BREWED BIODIESEL: Careful about the fires!