HoodedHawk

Preston has his own site now: PrestonBeckBoswell.com. He wanted a good head start.

This is a repeat comic, but this Sunday’s Doonesbury is hysterical, and soooo true.

A team of paleontologists and zoologists have found the “missing link” fossil, showing the progression from water to land. The researchers report in the April 6, 2006 issue of Nature that they found the 375-million-year-old fossils in the Canadian arctic (in an area once a balmy river delta ). They’ve dubbed the new beast Tiktaalik roseae, which is Inuit for “big freshwater fish”.

So, the standard anti-evolution argument that such “missing links” are not found can be laid to rest. This animal is partway betwwen a fish and early tetrapods. It has lost some of the bones that fuse the head to the shoulders in fish (i.e., it has a neck). And its front “fins” have bone structures similiar to “wrists”.

Some 300-500 million people suffer from malaria every year, and over a million die from it. The most effective drug for treatment, artemisinin, is derived from a species of Chinese wormwood. The process of extracting and purifying artemisinin from this plant is costly, so those that need it most can’t afford a treatment course. Also, the supply is very limited so even if they could afford it, there isn’t enough of the drug to go around.

The April 13, 2006 issue of Nature has a paper by researchers at UC Berkeley reporting they have tweaked yeast into creating artemisinic acid, a precursor of artemisinin. Creating artemisinin from the precursor acid is relatively straight-forward. So, scaling up this process may well result in reducing the cost of the drug by 10-fold, bringing a course of treatment within the reach of those who need it.

The current cost of a course of treatment is US $2.40.

That’s less than the cost of a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

Wednesday night I went to hear Christopher Moore give a talk (and booksigning) at Olsson’s bookstore in Arlington, VA. I’ve only read “Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal” so far, but it was hysterical, so I’ve grabbed “Fluke” (a whale), “The Stupidest Angel“, and his latest, “A Dirty Job“. I recorded his talk – give it a listen; he is a really funny guy and a lively speaker. At right, he’s showing the backside of the page in a local newspaper where the ad for his book, “A Dirty Job” ran. Escort Services. Hilarious!