Still mostly biology this month though the most visible bit of news is space stuff.
This being NASA’s announcement that its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has discovered liquid water on the planet’s surface. The water involved is highly briny, which helps keep it liquid at low temperatures, and even so it only flows seasonally when it’s not too cold. Plus, of course, we’ve long known that water already exists on Mars in the form of ice and ancient water deep beneath the surface. Still it’s a significant milestone that will reinvigorate the search for life on the red planet. I suspect that this will also cause NASA to be much more careful about contaminating Mars with microbial life from Earth.
But the most significant finding over the past month is probably this paper about a new species of the homo genus found in Africa. Now dubbed homo naledi, they are represented by fossils found of at least 15 distinct individuals in South Africa. The discovery was originally made in 2013 but it has taken until now to fully study the fossils and the researchers’ conclusion is that the unique morphology of the specimens warrant classifying them as belonging to a hitherto unknown and now extinct specifies of humanity. Early reporting of this paper excitedly emphasized that they may had culture as the fossils were all found together is what is thought to be a burial site. This is a shock given that this should date from long before any form of civilization. But I’m dubious about this since it’s also possible that it was just a convenient place to dispose of trash.
Moving on to more sci-fi stuff, DARPA announced the development of neural technologies that allow patients to experience sensation from prosthetic limbs. This is rather crude at the moment as the connection is formed with electrode arrays on the patient’s and sensory motor cortex to torque sensors on an artificial hand, allowing the patient to both feel and control the individual fingers of the hand. Basically it amounts to a proof that cybernetic limbs that can transmit a sense of touch are possible.
Finally, this Naturearticle talks about how a genomics firm in China is now offering gene-edited pigs for sale to the public as pets. These pigs have been modified to disable one of two copies of the growth hormone receptor genes that they possess, so that instead of their normal weight of around 35 to 50 kilograms, they will grow only to about 15 kilograms. The company also claims that in the near future, they will offer versions that can be modified to have different coat colors and patterns. But as the article notes, pigs’ size are not the only reason why they are not generally raised as household pets and owners who expect to be able to house train them will end up being disappointed.
This is the second film we’ve watched by Wim Wenders and while it also stars Bruno Ganz, it really couldn’t be more different from The American Friend. It was made a decade after the other film but actually looks and feels much older partly because most of the scenes are shot in black and white and partly due to its style and subject matter.
That this was directed by Richard Linklater is probably reason enough to watch it, but it’s also one of those high-school coming-of-age movies that went on to become a cult favorite. As one of Linklater’s earliest movies, it’s apparently the first one to have any recognizable stars in it even if most of them were unknowns when they appeared here. Watch out in particular for a very young and slightly chubby Ben Affleck in a supporting role.
Black Coal, Thin Ice is an unusual and evocative title. Unfortunately it also has nothing to do with the film’s Chinese title which translates literally as Daylight Fireworks, a phrase that is relevant in the story in at least a couple of instances but is less poetic in English. The discrepancy is notable enough that director Diao Yinan addressed it but I’m not sure that his explanation makes much sense. At least this choice suggests that he has a good sense of aesthetics, as the film itself aptly proves.
For the benefit of everyone who isn’t an expert on insects, let me just say that this film has nothing to with dukes or the region of Burgundy. Instead, the title of this film refers to a specific species of butterfly. Since this never gets said in the movie itself, I had to go and look it up. What this film is about is the sadomasochistic relationship between two women with insects, butterflies and moths in particular, being a recurrent theme.
Sometime this year CIMB Securities started sending me a Daily Trading Ideas report every day by email. They’ve been touting it as investment advice that is immediately actionable. Now, CIMB’s analysts’ reports have a rather poor reputation and are often the subject of mockery on the LYN investment forum, mainly because of their extremely optimistic price targets assigned to stocks. But it’s hard to objectively assess how wrong they are since in theory it is perfectly possible for stock prices to deviate from what they ought to be worth even across extended time frames.
Technical analysis is a different matter. I may not know much about the subject and I certainly don’t know how to do it, but I do know that its supposed to predict market movements in the very short term based completely on momentum factors that are not directly connected to stock fundamentals. This means that it should be possible to assess the accuracy and usefulness of their stock tips. To be safe, I collected price information for their stock picks for the Malaysian market only for 21 days following the publication of each report beginning in around July 2015.
I haven’t mentioned this before but the reason why I’ve taken to adding the date of release behind each of the movies that I write about is that the same titles are used often enough that confusion is a real issue, and that is without even going into the question of remakes. As such this Russian film that was released last year has nothing to do with the American documentary that I wrote about not too long ago despite sharing the same title though the Biblical allusion in both cases are obvious.
