Many drugs, and most drugs that are directed at cognitive processes (e.g. anti-depressants, hallucinogenics) target receptors. Receptors are proteins involved in the way cells in the body signal to each other. The following is a review of one particular type of receptor called the 5-HT2A receptor, and it’s role in mediating the effects of LSD. What is a receptor? Our body is made up of...
Fortune’s Light is the 15th numbered TNG novel, written by the now well established Star Trek author Michael Friedman. Riker gets a message regarding an old friend who it seems has stolen a politically-significant artefact from the planet Imprima. The minor plot thread sees Data running a holodeck program of an underdog Alaskan baseball team. We get to learn more of Riker’s past in...
The central dogma of biology says that DNA encodes RNA which encodes proteins In the beginning, you were a single cell made up from a fused sperm and egg. This cell had 23 pairs of chromosomes which together made up all your DNA – chromosomes are what DNA looks like when it’s tightly wrapped. DNA is a long code made up of four nucleotides that form a four-letter alphabet – ACGT...
Editorial notes: Shai was always fascinated with cartoon characters and, at least as his written coverage is concerned, mostly with Superman. Between March 2011 and December 2014, Shai writes nine articles dedicated to this superhero and in November 2014 he starts a blog dedicated to reviewing Superman novels. Superman came first, anyone else came later. It all started with...
Another Howard Weinstein novel, and number fourteen The Next Generation novel. As with Weinstein’s previous TNG novel, the story concerns a planet undergoing political turmoil resulting from environmental problems. In brief: Polluting-aliens need help from eco-aliens whom they exiled a couple of centuries back. Political mish-mash and hand waving is needed from the Enterprise to negotiate...
World of Warcraft (WoW) has the population and GDP of a small country, and yet for all that, it’s just another niche community. Some two billion people all around the globe have access to the internet, and while they may have a few inducible portals in common – google, facebook, Wikipedia – there are countless virtual spaces that are known to most only by name or reputation, if...
The Ancient Greeks who presaged our philosophies, political systems, and arts emerged in a land that had already been settled by mankind for tens of thousands of years. Despite what some of them believed the Greeks were not been born out of the Earth, but rather from the ashes of earlier societies. In Greece’s prehistory – the time before writing – entire societies, including...
Gibson and hipster consumerism in Zero History Successful as he’s been, William Gibson has always been something of a misfit. Gibson is best known for his first novel and cyberpunk classic Neuromancer. But the extent to which Gibson is a cyberpunk author is debatable. Sometimes it feels like the intersection between Gibson and cyberpunk is incidental. There’s no doubt that Gibson has...
The mythology and history shared by many of Alastair Reynolds’ books has been called the Revelation Space Universe (RSU). The world gets its name from the first book to feature it, namely Revelation Space. RSU and space opera: Reynolds writes space opera, which to me means stories that contrast the heroic individuality of the protagonist against the enormity of space. That “enormity...
Plutarch was a priest, magistrate, ambassador, and essayist born in Chaeronea in Greece around 46CE (d. 120CE). The Greek states had already been part of the Roman Empire for two centuries by the time of his birth, and it is no surprise that at some point Plutarch became a citizen of Rome, changing his name to Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus. Plutarch (or Lucy, as I’m sure his friends called...
