The Library of Congress Makes 25 Million Records From Its Catalog Free to Download

Image by Carol Highsmith, via Wikimedia Commons

A quick fyi: According to Fortune, The Library of Congress announced that it “will make 25 million records from its catalog available for the public to download.” They add:

Prior to this, the records—which include books and serials, music and manuscripts, and maps and visual materials spanning from 1968 to 2014—have only been accessible through a paid subscription. These files will be available for free download on [the Library of Congress site] and are also available on data.gov.

This move helps free up the library’s digital assets, allowing social scientists, data analysts, developers, statisticians and everyone else to work with the data “to enhance learning and the formation of new knowledge.” The huge data sets will be available here.

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via Fortune

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Bill Wurtz' video presents history of the world in 20 minutes

Bill Wurtz is the guy who made a fantastically entertaining video history of Japan last year. In this video, he's taken on the slightly more ambitious task of presenting the history of the universe, beginning before the formation of matter and quickly focusing on a rapid fire lesson in world history. A+ work!

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The Klencke Atlas is a massive 350-year old bound book that has graced the entrance of the British Library maps room. Now it’s being digitized with the latest technology, and the process is remarkable.

In Soupy Leaves Home, writer Cecil Castellucci and artist Jose Pimienta expand the borders of young adult graphic novels, telling a moving, inspiring tale of Depression-era hobos, identity, gender, suspicion, solidarity, and the complicated business of being true to yourself while living up to your obligations to others.

Vintage Geek offers a list of miscconceptions people have about pulp-era science fiction, whose legacy has warped in the public imagination moreso even than Captain James T. Kirk’s. [via MeFi] “Pulp-Era Science Fiction was about optimistic futures.” “Pulp scifi often featured muscular, large-chinned, womanizing main characters.” “Pulp Era Scifi were mainly action/adventure stories with good […]

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Scientists have eliminated HIV in mice using CRISPR

An important breakthrough has been made in the eradication of AIDs. Scientists have found they can successfully snip out the HIV virus from mouse cells using CRISPR/Cas9 technology.

Right now patients with the deadly virus must use a toxic concoction of anti-retroviral medications to suppress the virus from replicating. However, CRISPR/Cas9 can be programmed to chop out any genetic code in the body with scissor-like precision, including all HIV-1 DNA within the body. And if you cut out the DNA, you stop the virus from being able to make copies of itself.

First published in the journal Molecular Therapy, the team is the first to show HIV can be completely annihilated from the body using CRISPR. And with impressive effect. After just one treatment, scientists were able to show the technique had successfully removed all traces of the infection within mouse organs and tissue.

 

However, it’s not a permanent solution and it’s still early days for the crew — the study merely builds on a previous proof-of-concept study they conducted last year and the technique has only been used on mice so far. But, should the scientists be able to replicate their findings, the technique could move to human trials in the future.

“The next stage would be to repeat the study in primates, a more suitable animal model where HIV infection induces disease, in order to further demonstrate elimination of HIV-1 DNA in latently infected T cells and other sanctuary sites for HIV-1, including brain cells,” said co-author of the study Dr. Khalili in a statement. “Our eventual goal is a clinical trial in human patients.”

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