Calming England’s motor city: Visiting London the other week, we suddenly noticed how clean it looked and how safe was the traffic. The Guardian thinks traffic calming is here to stay, as this piece about Birmingham, our second city makes clear
Phage gets DNA makeover one base at a time explains Nature Briefing. Regular readers of our blog will realise our admiration for any advance in understanding bacteriophages, as it must assist our long term interest in treating microbial antibiotic resistance
Researchers have created more than 44,000 variants of the well-studied bacteriophage virus ΦX174 to determine the effects of mutations at nearly every single one of its DNA letters and amino acids. Most mutations were detrimental to the virus’s survival, but a handful boosted its fitness, often for reasons that were unclear. Cutting-edge AI models trained to identify harmful mutations struggled to predict the consequences of each change, which underscores the need for more high-quality experimental data to power these models, the team says.
Nature | 5 min read
Reference: bioRxiv preprint (not peer reviewed)
Denying reality Despite the heat this summer, despite the evidence of science, some people still seem to deny the seriousness of Climate Change-and some even its reality. Here is a survey of their latest efforts: but we suspect their efforts will grow increasingly futile, as you will see if you read the following snippet
Northern Ireland: already halfway to clean energy. In the year to June 2026 53% of that region’s energy came from renewables, improving on a trend that was already well set. Here’s the BBC
Renewable energy in NI reaches record level – BBC News
Falklands Futility / Malvinas Mamarracho Both sides claim there are vast fields of oil close to these wretched islands But the idea of Britain and Argentina fighting another pointless war over them is absurd. Why go to all that trouble over a resource which will be redundant in ten years’ time? We reserve the same contempt for each party’s pretentions to Sovereignty: for the islands’ ownership seems to be entirely in the gift of the President of the United States anyway. But if you must learn more, Sky News will give you an in on the whole sorry mess
Quote of the week
“The future has many names. For the weak, it is the impossible; for the fearful, the unknown; for the brave, opportunity.”
Victor Hugo
#traffic calming #ULEZ #Birmingham #bacteriophage #cliamte change #global warming #renewable energy #Falkland Islands #Malvinas #Argentina
Learning, Science and Society 