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(JNS.org) Shefa Yamim, an Israeli exploration and mining company, announced that it has discovered rare minerals near Israel’s port city of Haifa.

A report prepared by geologist William Griffin of Australia’s Macquarie University examined the mineral samples of corundum stones sent to him by Shefa Yamim, which found the stones in several sites in the Kishon River. The corundum stones contain a variety of rare minerals, including Moissanite and tistarite.

“Until now, [tistarite] has been found on a single meteorite that came from outer space; this has been the first find in nature in nature of this mineral, whose source is deep inside the Earth,” Shefa Yamim said, Haaretz reported.

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With a growing number of Earth-like exoplanets discovered in recent years, it is becoming increasingly frustrating that we can’t visit them. After all, our knowledge of the planets in our own solar system would be pretty limited if it weren’t for the space probes we’d sent to explore them.

The problem is that even the nearest stars are a very long way away, and enormous engineering efforts will be required to reach them on timescales that are relevant to us. But with research in areas such as nuclear fusion and nanotechnology advancing rapidly, we may not be as far away from constructing small, fast interstellar space probes as we think.

There’s a lot at stake. If we ever found evidence suggesting that life might exist on a planet orbiting a nearby star, we would most likely need to go there to get definitive proof and learn more about its underlying biochemistry and evolutionary history. This would require transporting sophisticated scientific instruments across interstellar space.

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On a mire humerous note:
AI and particularly robots; can easily pick up on people’s patterns/ styles to the point where they can write your speeches and possibly develop your PowerPoint presentations. Procrastinators will no longer have to stress about pulling their slides together, interns will have more availability to work on projects, and politicians will sound like a pro with this robot.

BTW — the robot in this articile was so good at mimicking the politician; that the robot (just the politician) in the speech kept thanking everyone in the chamber after it yielded time back to the speaker. Maybe our politicians will start sending their robots to vote for them in the future.

Computer researchers have created programs that can do the job quite nicely, explains Brian Fung.

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Could we actually start seeing some standards around CRISPR being proposed & implemented around CRISPR?

Bethesda, MD –This SRC will present the very latest developments in this field, with talks by leading international experts working with both prokaryotic and eukaryotic models. This unique blend from the two communities is always much appreciated by attendees of this meeting and one of its main highlights. The topics covered will include events occurring at both the 5’ and 3’ ends of mRNA related to decay, the links between translation, quality control and mRNA stability, and the relationship between RNA degradation and disease. Two full sessions will be devoted to mechanisms of sRNA, CRISPR RNA and miRNA regulation and how they pertain to mRNA stability. The meeting is traditionally of a very manageable size (typically about 120 attendees), providing unrestricted access to students and post-docs for dynamic discussions with more established scientists and potential future employers. Informal Meet the Expert sessions will be held over lunch, with assigned tables to selected speakers.

There will be a total of 9 very broad-ranging sessions over the 4 days, with 36 invited speakers at the top of their fields and two internationally renowned keynote speakers, Chris Lima and Jörg Vogel. Speakers are encouraged to present their most recent and unpublished data. There will be two poster sessions and 2–3 additional speakers per session will be chosen to give oral presentations, based on the submitted abstracts. This promises to be a very interesting and lively meeting in one of Europe’s most beautiful cities. We hope to see you there!

FASEB has announced a total of 36 Science Research Conferences (SRC) in 2016. Registration opens January 7, 2016. For more information about an SRC, view preliminary programs, or find a listing of all our 2016 SRCs, please visit http://www.faseb.org/SRC.

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