Headlines

John Denver is big here in Beijing. My planned work in a cafe is being interrupted by songs about leaving on jet planes and the like. I'm braced and ready for 'take me home, country roads' which blast the buses, the ring tones and my gym at all possible inopportune moments.

Anyway, I wanted to link to a few articles which have caught my eye today.

Firstly the fascinating news that the infamous researcher, Hwang Woo-suk, from South Korea whose claims of human cloning experiments turned out to be fraudulent may just have stumbled upon something even more important - Human parthenogenesis, the development of an embryo without using a sperm for fertilisation. The BBC news article can be found here and I'd love to learn more from those who know more about this subject.

Secondly an article about an interesting method of teaching physics from the US. This seems to have the emphasis shifted from remembering facts and formulae (not something which should be dismissed, but certainly not the most important aspect of learning the subject) to a deeper understanding of the laws of physics. In this method the student is lead to discover the rules by themselves. Sounds pretty sensible to me. Again, the actual details are sketchy and I'd be interested to learn more about this. (Original link from God Plays Dice).

Finally for now the news that a new clean energy bill has just been passed by the house of representatives in the US. One aspect of the bill is reduce subsidies for oil companies. The figures seem impressive, but I don't know what the percentages are. It also has a long way to go to become law but at least these issues are being raised in the US.

...And to the tones of Hotel California played in a pitiful saxophone cover I must get back to my topology.

(Photos to follow when my camera arrives back from a friend to whom it has briefly been lent)