# s-gene: Yoshizumi Ishino, Francisco Mojica (et al) wave: SRSR - CRISPR interference

<< We were stunned, it was like the sun rose in the west rather than the east.>>  Ethan Bier

<< We’re  not about to do anything foolish. >>  Anthony James

Shelly Fanon. Gene Drives Could Wipe Out Insect-Borne Disease — But What’s the Price? Nov 29, 2015.

http://singularityhub.com/2015/11/29/gene-drives-can-eliminate-transmissible-diseases-for-good-but-whats-the-price

Yoshizumi Ishino and Francisco Mojica, in: CRISPR, Clustered regularly-interspaced short palindromic repeats.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR

Eric S. Lander. The Heroes of CRISPR.
Cell. 14 January 2016, Vol.164(1):18–28, doi:10.1016/j.cell.2015.12.041

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867415017055

# p-trade: job cuts vs long-term firm implications

<< Barclays, Pearson and Virgin Media have all announced significant job cuts as part of a growing pressure to cut costs, adding up to more than 6,000 job cuts in total. Firms are increasingly turning to cost-reduction strategies as a coping mechanism for competitive and difficult economic conditions. But while these strategies help to reduce costs in the short-term, these cuts can have much bigger, and fundamentally important implications for the identity of the firm and their long-term competitiveness >>

Shelley Harrington. Job cuts save money but can hurt business in the long-run. January 22, 2016 4.55pm GMT

https://theconversation.com/job-cuts-save-money-but-can-hurt-business-in-the-long-run-53581

<< In today’s business environment, employee downsizing is a widespread strategy aimed at improving firm performance and competitiveness. The literature, however, highlights unequivocal findings that many downsizing initiatives fail to retain critical skills, capabilities, experience and knowledge. Employee downsizing may therefore lead to deteriorating quality, productivity and effectiveness >>

Achim Schmitt, Stefano Borzillo, Gilbert Probst. Don’t let knowledge walk away: Knowledge retention during employee downsizing. Management Learning, February 2012 vol. 43 no. 1 53-74 doi: 10.1177/1350507611411630

http://m.mlq.sagepub.com/content/43/1/53.abstract

# rmx-s-astro: evolving from (serial?) massive crashes

<< A giant impact formed the Moon, and lunar rocks provide insight into that process >>

Alessandro Morbidelli et al., Oxygen isotopic evidence for vigorous mixing during the Moon-forming giant impact. Science  29 Jan 2016: Vol. 351, Issue 6272, pp. 493-496
DOI: 10.1126/science.aad0525

http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aad0525

https://twitter.com/ScienceDaily/status/693086232134332416

# s-astro: The Smith Cloud return

<< The old adage "what goes up must come down" even applies to an immense cloud of hydrogen gas outside our Milky Way galaxy >>

<<  The Smith Cloud is following a ballistic trajectory and will plow back into the Milky Way's disk in about 30 million years. When it does, astronomers believe it will ignite a spectacular burst of star formation, perhaps providing enough gas to make 2 million suns >>

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2016/04

Andrew J. Fox, Nicolas Lehner, et al. On the metallicity and origin of the smith high-velocity cloud. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Volume 816, Number 1.

http://dx.doi.org/10.3847/2041-8205/816/1/L11

# s-ai: ancient "Go" inside

<<  A major breakthrough for artificial intelligence, a computing system developed by Google researchers in Great Britain has beaten a top human player at the game of Go, the ancient Eastern contest of strategy and intuition that has bedeviled AI experts for decades >>

<< The DeepMind system, dubbed AlphaGo, matched its artificial wits against Fan Hui, Europe’s reigning Go champion, and the AI system went undefeated in five games witnessed by an editor from the journal Nature and an arbiter representing the British Go Federation >>

<< It happened faster than I thought >>

Cade Metz. In a huge breakthrough, google’s AI beats a top player at the game of go. Jan 27, 2016.

http://www.wired.com/2016/01/in-a-huge-breakthrough-googles-ai-beats-a-top-player-at-the-game-of-go/

# n-behav: and just hope they don’t trip over

<< the models won’t be smiling. In spite of some hasty claims that happy faces are now de rigeur, a blank expression is a perennial trait of model behaviour >>

<< To be emotionally controlled also suggests elevation above earthly concerns, access to higher knowledge and – in the modern world – an ability to be “unshakeable”. This is even more impressive in what theorist Erving Goffman called “fateful situations” – situations in which you or your dignity and composure are at greater than average risk  >>

<<  and just hope they don’t trip over >>

Vanessa Brown.  Why fashion models don’t smile. January 26, 2016 3.46pm GMT

https://theconversation.com/why-fashion-models-dont-smile-53658

# s-gst-chem: weak long-range van der Waals interactions in self-assembly

<< The researchers found that weak long-range van der Waals (attractive or repulsive forces between molecules or atomic groups that do not arise from interactions due to a covalent bond or electrostatic force) yielded the largest contribution to the molecule-surface interaction >>

A self-assembling molecular nanoswitch
A possible future molecular memory device. January 18, 2016

http://www.kurzweilai.net/a-self-assembling-molecular-nanoswitch

<< We find that on both substrates, the adsorbate-substrate interaction is dominated by attractive van der Waals forces >>

Moritz Müller, Katharina Diller, et al. Interfacial charge rearrangement and intermolecular interactions: Density-functional theory study of free-base porphine adsorbed on Ag(111) and Cu(111). The Journal of Chemical Physics, 2016; 144 (2): 024701 DOI: 10.1063/1.4938259 (open access)

http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jcp/144/2/10.1063/1.4938259