Wikilinks everywhere: a web extension/library/bookmarklet that eagerly or lazily resolves [[wikilinks]] in any web property within a user-chosen context, e.g. an Agora or other distributed knowledge graph.
deathau (GitHub)A Firefox and Google Chrome extension to clip websites and download them into a readable markdown file. - deathau/markdownload
I had MarkDownload installed in Chrome before and had used it a bit. Spent some time tonight and did some custom configuration in the settings to make it easier to save web pages directly to my Obsidian commonplace book. This can be an interesting method for quickly saving and linking lots of data, though it also means saving a lot more than may be strictly necessary, particularly at scale. I’m still not giving up on my Hypothes.is methods though.
Once configured for Obsidian, MarkDownload can be a very powerful tool.
Launched in fall 2020, the Hard Histories at Hopkins Project examines the role that racism and discrimination have played at Johns Hopkins. Blending research, teaching, public engagement and the creative arts, Hard Histories aims to engage our broadest communities—at Johns Hopkins and in Baltimore—in a frank and informed exploration of how racism has been produced and permitted to persist as part of our structure and our practice.
Some great articles hiding here. Glad that Johns Hopkins is doing some research into it’s own history.
CODED BIAS explores the fallout of MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini’s discovery that facial recognition does not see dark-skinned faces accurately, and her journey to push for the first-ever legislation in the U.S. to govern against bias in the algorithms that impact us all.
This looks like an interesting documentary.
20 Across: Worth a rave review, in show biz
Find where and how your images are used online. Pixsy's reverse image search technology lets you take control. Recover compensation for unauthorized use.
The potential for self-replication makes RNA an attractive candidate as a primordial catalysis in the origin of life. Catalysis may have occurred in some kind of compartment, possibly a fatty acid vesicle. However, RNA catalysis generally requires high levels of magnesium, which are incompatible with fatty acid vesicle integrity. Adamala and Szostak (p. [1098][1]) screened magnesium chelators and found that several—including citrate, isocitrate, and oxalate—could maintain the membrane stability of fatty acid vesicles in the presence of Mg2+. Citrate also allowed Mg2+-dependent RNA synthesis within protocell-like vesicles, while at the same time protecting RNA from Mg2+-catalyzed degradation. Efforts to recreate a prebiotically plausible protocell, in which RNA replication occurs within a fatty acid vesicle, have been stalled by the destabilizing effect of Mg2+ on fatty acid membranes. Here we report that the presence of citrate protects fatty acid membranes from the disruptive effects of high Mg2+ ion concentrations while allowing RNA copying to proceed, while also protecting single-stranded RNA from Mg2+-catalyzed degradation. This combination of properties has allowed us to demonstrate the chemical copying of RNA templates inside fatty acid vesicles, which in turn allows for an increase in copying efficiency by bathing the vesicles in a continuously refreshed solution of activated nucleotides. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1241888
Edited by Eörs Szathmáry
Volume 381, Pages 1-60 (21 September 2015)
With his chemoton theory theoretical biologist and chemical engineer Tibor Gánti was one of the most outstanding intellects behind systems chemistry a…
What is life and how could it originate? This question lies at the core of understanding the cell as the smallest living unit. Although we are witnessing a golden era of the life sciences, we are ironically still far from giving a convincing answer to this question. In this short article, I argue why synthetic biology in conjunction with the quantitative sciences may provide us with new concepts and tools to address it.
Gánti׳s chemoton model of the minimal chemical organization of living systems and life criteria for the living state and a living world are characteri…
The self-reproduction of supramolecular assemblies based on the synthesis and self-assembly of building blocks is a critical step towards the construction of chemical systems with autonomous, adaptive, and propagation properties. In this report, we demonstrate that giant vesicles can grow and produce daughter vesicles by synthesizing and incorporating phospholipids in situ from ad-hoc precursors. Our model involves acyl chain elongation via copper(I)-catalyzed azide-alkyne [3 + 2] cycloaddition reaction and the ensuing production of synthetic phospholipids to induce budding and division. In addition, the growth and budding of giant vesicles were compatible with the encapsulation and transfer of macromolecules as large as lambda phage DNA to the buds. This chemical system provides a useful model towards the implementation of cell-like compartments capable of propagation and transport of biological materials.
The transition from independent molecular entities to cellular structures with integrated behaviors was a crucial aspect of the origin of life. We show that simple physical principles can mediate a coordinated interaction between genome and compartment boundary, independent of any genomic functions beyond self-replication. RNA, encapsulated in fatty acid vesicles, exerts an osmotic pressure on the vesicle membrane that drives the uptake of additional membrane components, leading to membrane growth at the expense of relaxed vesicles, which shrink. Thus, more efficient RNA replication could cause faster cell growth, leading to the emergence of Darwinian evolution at the cellular level.
The clay montmorillonite is known to catalyze the polymerization of RNA from activated ribonucleotides. Here we report that montmorillonite accelerates the spontaneous conversion of fatty acid micelles into vesicles. Clay particles often become encapsulated in these vesicles, thus providing a pathway for the prebiotic encapsulation of catalytically active surfaces within membrane vesicles. In addition, RNA adsorbed to clay can be encapsulated within vesicles. Once formed, such vesicles can grow by incorporating fatty acid supplied as micelles and can divide without dilution of their contents by extrusion through small pores. These processes mediate vesicle replication through cycles of growth and division. The formation, growth, and division of the earliest cells may have occurred in response to similar interactions with mineral particles and inputs of material and energy.
