Tobacco plant virus may yield HIV drug

The production of griffithsin, a promising HIV-prevention drug, has been too expensive to warrant its widespread use. Researchers have recently injected a griffithsin-producing gene from red algae into the tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) and infected a TMV-susceptible species of tobacco plant with the virus. After infection, griffithsin can be extracted from the wilted leaves in larger amounts than through previous methods.

While it will most certainly be made into a cream, “[a] cigarette containing griffithsin hasn’t been discounted either,” said one of the researchers. Maybe one way for cigarette companies to change their image is to get us addicted to smoke containing antibodies to all the most deadly diseases. Cigarette packs would keep the Surgeon General’s warning:

Quitting Smoking Now Greatly Reduces Serious Risks to Your Health.

but they’d also carry a Surgeon General’s encouragement sticker:

Smoking Now Greatly Reduces Serious Risks to Your Health.

Selfish drivers and disciplined production

Traffic engineers in Korea have challenged convention by reducing the traffic capacity along a section of Seoul’s road network in order to increase the efficiency of the system as a whole. Somehow it worked. Researchers from the Sante Fe Institute recently concluded that a large number of network options countervails a large network capacity.

The “price of anarchy” is a measure of the inefficiency caused by selfish drivers. Analyzing a commute from Harvard Square to Boston Common, the researchers found that the price can be high—selfish drivers typically waste 30 percent more time than they would under “socially optimal” conditions.

The solution hinges on Braess’s paradox, Gastner says. “Because selfish drivers optimize a wrong function, they can be led to a better solution if you remove some of the network links,” he explains. Why? In part because closing roads makes it more difficult for individual drivers to choose the best (and most selfish) route. In the Boston example, Gastner’s team found that six possible road closures, including parts of Charles and Main streets, would reduce the delay under the selfish-driving scenario. (The street closures would not slow drivers if they were behaving unselfishly.)

It reminded me of something Brian Eno said in a recent interview about his role as a producer:

“But what I do can work for any artist. In modern recording one of the biggest problems is that you’re in a world of endless possibilities. So I try to close down possibilities early on. I limit choices. I confine people to a small area of manoeuvre. There’s a reason that guitar players invariably produce more interesting music than synthesizer players: you can go through the options on a guitar in about a minute, after that you have to start making aesthetic and stylistic decisions. This computer can contain a thousand synths, each with a thousand sounds. I try to provide constraints for people.”

Related: See bookmarks tagged counterintuitive by myself and others on delicious.

Islands of LA (ILA)

Since 2007 Ari Kletzky has been claiming Los Angeles traffic islands in the name of the community.

This year ILA has hosted daylong activities at intersections that stitch together the criss-crossing neighborhoods of Los Angeles, organizing concerts, tetherball games, picnics, birthday parties and public discussions. They aim to redefine expectations of what an island can be used for (mainly that it can be used for a lot more than traffic signals, poor landscaping and trash). They ask, Why don’t we all meet up in public spaces that are free and open, instead of at expensive bars and restaurants? Why do we hang out on beaches and in parks during the day but not at night?” “Is it legal to assemble on a traffic island?”

They’ve only recently had a run-in with the law, which they documented on the project’s blog.

Recreation at highway speeds

More than 100 years ago, [the] Hudson River made the sport of ice yachting famous. Now, as the river freezes less frequently, a small but dedicated group of enthusiasts sail to keep history alive.

This collection of photographs from the Times’ Nathaniel Brooks also includes some plans for building your own ice yacht, excerpted from an article in the September 1881 issue of Scribners Monthly.

Unlike the folks who reenact Gettsyburg each July, the ice yachting reenactors feel the same emotions—the fear of crashing at highway speeds, for one—as their historical counterparts. It’s easy to replicate the same uniforms and equipment, impossible to simulate the same fear.

What was the last major war involving the United States that still elicits serious reenactment? World War II? Vietnam?

One-hundred and fifty years from now, will middle-aged men gather outside Fallujah in antique humvees? Will War on Terror buffs waterboard one another in suburban basements? (Are they already?) And if they do, will military reenactment have finally found a way to simulate the same fear as felt by historical participants?

What happens when we recreate war at highway speeds?

Maps of flow, not just infrastructure

BBC to put every publicly owned oil painting in the UK online
[via rodcorp]
The BBC is going to put all 200,000 publicly-owned oil paintings in the UK online.

A partnership with the Public Catalogue Foundation charity will see all the UK’s publicly owned oil paintings – 80% of which are not on public display – placed on the internet by 2012.

Mapping a connected world
[via migurski]

To understand how the world really works, we need maps, not just of infrastructure, but of flow. We need maps not just of the internet and shipping lanes, but maps that help us understand who and what we pay attention to, how we get information, what we know and what we don’t know.

A partnership with the Public Catalogue Foundation charity will see all the UK’s publicly owned oil paintings – 80% of which are not on public display – placed on the internet by 2012.

A Newspaper? On a PC? That’s Crazy Talk
[via nautical2k]
A post from the New York Times’ Bits blog links to this video from 1981:

Bird strikes, pneumatic tubes, failed states & tweeting MPs

Don’t blame Mother Nature for the crash

[via nautical2k]
In the wake of the US Airways crash-landing on the Hudson, author Bruce Barcott offers one explanation for the increasing rate of airplane–bird strikes:

“We traded the meadowlark for more houses and big-box stores. The gaining species are terrifically adapted to the human landscape. Turkey vultures dine on roadkill. Gulls and pigeons eat our garbage. To a Canada goose, every golf course is a grassy smorgasbord.”

Pneumatic post in Paris

[via cityofsound]
“Introduced to combat the shortcomings of the telegraphic network in Paris, the subterranean Poste Pneumatique (Pneumatic Post) moved written telegraph messages from 1866 until 1984.”

The new ecology of war: An interview with Mike Davis

[via bfunk]
“When one talks about ‘failed states’ one often means ‘failed cities’, such as Gaza, Sadr City or the slums of Port-au-Prince.” — Mike Davis

Tweetminster—Members of Parliament who tweet

[via rodcorp]
A forward-thinking and well-designed public service website promoting increased transparency and more direct communication between elected officials and their constituents.

Cars parked illegally in bike lanes in Washington D.C.

[via cityofsound]
Another public service website, with a searchable map and listings of the top offenders by license plate. Other cities are available.