Computational biologists and ecologists at various leading US Universities have discovered an interesting use for Google’sPageRank, the algorithm that determines which pages are considered most important for displaying search results.  They’ve modified PageRank for modelling fragile ecosystems – in particular, they’re using it to determine which species are most critical, the ones whose extinction will most likely lead to total ecosystem collapse.  From the Wired article:

“While several previous studies have looked at the robustness of food webs to a variety of sequences of species loss, none of them have come up with a way to identify the most devastating sequence of extinctions,” said food web biologist Jennifer Dunne of the Santa Fe Institute, who was not involved in the research. Using a modified version of PageRank, Dunne said, the researchers were able to identify which species extinctions within a food web would lead to biggest chain-reaction of species death.

“If we can find the way of removing species so that the destruction of the ecosystem is the fastest, it means we’re ranking species by their importance,” said ecologist Stefano Allesina of the University of California, Santa Barbara, who co-authored the paper published Friday in PLoS Computational Biology.”

This kind of research can help determine which species need the most protection.  Not only that, but PageRank is attracting interest from other biologists who see it as a promising approach to intricate problems like gene regulation and protein interaction.  [Check out this post's mirror on w0rd.ca!]

IBM has created the first ever direct image of a molecule, using a piece of tech known as an atomic force microscope to image a pentacene molecule in unprecedented detail. Below there are two images; one is a rendered model of the pentacene molecules, the other is the image of the molecule as captured by the atomic force microscope:

Keep reading for my explanation of why this so totally fucking crazy.

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To be fair, this is old news, but I had to mention it because I’ve been reading through the Wheel of Time again and can’t stop thinking about awesome it’ll be to finally have some closure on this series! Any self-respecting Robert Jordan fan is probably already aware that Brandon Sanderson has been picked to finish the series. I’ve read a couple of his books, and I’m pretty happy with the choice. Mr. Sanderson has spent most of his career writing fantasy that doesn’t fit the traditional humble-beginnings-to-greatness mold, so it’ll be interesting to see how he treats a more traditional work like the Wheel of Time.

The big news, however, is that the final book, originally titled A Memory of Light, is so massive that it will be split into three volumes, each approximately the length of the longer books in the series.

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Richard Dawkins tears homeopathy (aka the height of quackery) a new one, as part of his Enemies of Reason series.

I’ve joined ranks with the scoundrels over at w0rd.ca, the newest and awesomest group blog around. Knowing the characters involved, be prepared for interesting original articles, wacky links and videos and an interesting discussion or two.

Check it out! W0rd!