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Here's a great mini-history of the discovery of artificial sweeteners.

It suggests that these kinds of discoveries actually usually DON'T come from rational scientists saying "well if we mix a substance with property 2 with one of property 3 we'll get a substance with property 23"

Instead they come from some guy spilling some unknown chemicals on his hand then tasting them in his hamburger. Or just: "Test? I
thought you said taste!"

So I'm trying to picture the kind of error that would produce this botox discovery

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,41749,00.html



how the leapord changed it's spots



the real sciam article about genes and protein sequences.



second law of thermodynamics may not applly to DNA reactions

From:



http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?020715fa_fact1



Saris compared the metabolic rates of professional cyclists while they were riding with those of a variety of animal species, and he created a kind of energy index—dividing daily expenditure of energy by resting metabolic rate. This figure turned out to range from one to seven. An active male rates about two on Saris's index and an average professional cyclist four and a half. Almost no species can survive with a number that is greater than five. For example, the effort made by birds foraging for food sometimes kills them, and they scored a little more than five. In fact, only four species are known to have higher rates on Saris's energy index than the professional cyclists in his study: a small Australian possum, a macaroni penguin, a large seabird called a gannet, and one species of marsupial mouse.

This is great news to me. I've always hated the 2nd law of thermodynamics (entropy) in a personal and passionate way.



I'm unwilling to accept the one-way journey of our universe into heat death and find that it flies in the face of all my own perceptions and intuitions (I don't pretend to be scientific in this).



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/2135779.stm