five-by-five

that dress: the original brunt of cyber-bullying, Monica Lewinsky, stops off in Norway on her way to present a seminar on the phenomenon

broadcast energy transmitter: researchers are making progress in beaming solar from orbiting cells

strangers have the best candy: annual roundup for oddest book titles

intermission: a loving collection of vintage theatre lobby carpets

pukebox: a subjective playlist of music most vile

afturköllun

The Foreign Ministry has informed the European Union that it will no longer be pursuing its bid of accession into the supranational monetary and trade pact.

The nation of just over three-hundred thousand residents made their bid to join the EU in 2009, just as the people were mounting a revolt, spurned by the global hedonism of speculation in investment markets that ravaged the otherwise sufficient and partaking economy that threatened to a generation without prospects and marginalise Iceland. This announcement, while doubtless a popular one and a decision to be respected by all sides ultimately, did however come from a minister who had tried before to unilaterally derail talks who committed his government without the clearance or consent of parliament. Though there is probably no chance that the minister will be made to eat his words, circumventing democratic processes does seem like rather a big deal, and though the EU remains outwardly chipper, I think it might be doing so through clenched-teeth.

five-by-five

drunk and disorderly: a supercharged tonic wine produced by monks in an abbey in Devonshire is a subject of controversy

rubber banding: some absolutely brilliantly illustrated brochures for the British video game awards

proud as a peacock: new species of spiders discovered in Australia

inked: an interactive exhibition allows people to tell a story with magical conducting ink

chatty-cathy: new fashion doll will forward children’s conversations along to corporate HQ and snitch to their parents

print-lab

Reports are emerging that organic chemists from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have collaborated with engineers to produce their discipline’s own version of the 3D printer, which can transcribe small molecules and building-blocks for study and discovery. An established line of known chemicals can of course be synthesised in laboratories but usually at a great cost and with limited access which makes experimentation and distributed research prohibitively expense.

Most of such facilities are under contract to the pharmaceutical industry and it’s much more profitable for a lab to try to tease out an extension on some proprietary drug, a patent-medicine, that to devote time and effort on, say, an exotic jungle plant’s interesting, intriguing but uncertain anti-microbial properties brought to them by some unknown and uncredentialed scientist. Perhaps now, instead of supplicating and then queueing up—or trying to gather more samples from the field—researchers could just isolate the target compound, its structure and composition, and submit a print request to have batch of the chemical custom-made, which could be dispatched to several test centres or research facilities at one time. Democratising the studies, the important concepts of peer-review and vetting could perhaps become to mean teamwork, discovering novel and safe treatments and other substances (better culinary preservatives, glues, inks, textiles, etc.) more efficiently.