Friday is here again and I have been busy enough that there hasn't been a Fragments for a few weeks.  That doesn't mean that I don't have links.  If anything this edition may be the largest yet!

Before we get into the fragments, Monday will begin the "new" Behind the Bench series featuring other young people in science.  First up will be a few people in pharmacy and will expand from there.  So Jeremy Daniel you're up for Monday.

-Artificial organs are nothing new but that field changes everyday it seems. Two new advances in artificial lungs are quite intriguing.  First, scientists have create the first artificial lung that breathes regular air instead of pure oxygen.  Now people on artificial lungs aren't chained to oxygen tanks.  In related news, read this article about "made-to-order" lungs.  Similarly, scientists are making artificial spinal discs out of biological materials, which would be a better alternative than fusing the discs or metal/plastic discs that degrade and are subject to attack by the host's immune system.

-A few weeks ago I caught a article about the Large Hardon Collider and how close it is to finding the elusive Higgs Boson particle. That would be a major step forward for physics and chemistry (for those of you unfamiliar with the Higgs Boson here's the wiki article to catch you up).

-Work with Microsoft Excel? Check out these cheat sheets. Ctrl Shortcuts, Function Shortcuts, and Misc. Shortcuts. Also, here is your 2011 Excel World Champion.  Yep there is a competition for Excel, Word, and Powerpoint now!

-NC State scientists are experimenting with new memory devices that work like a memristor. They would have the consistency of jell-o and even be implanted into the body!  Creepy.

-In medicine news...another new drug has proven it can prevent HIV infection to a certain extent.  More exciting than that is the prospect of a new therapy that can be used against a broad spectrum of viruses.  Much like antibiotics can kill multiple bacteria, this new therapy attacks a process all viruses have in common. This lack of specificity also may prevent a virus from mutating to avoid destruction.  Lastly, if you ever wondered what I studied as an undergrad student in Industrial Pharmacy, this article describes what's in Viagra. Learning the what, how, and why of these ingredients is a lot of what I studied.

-The Web at 20...take a trip drop memory lane (I'm thinking of you America Online)!

-If you are like any other normal human being, you probably love girl scout cookies.  Well, one box of girl scout cookies could be worth $15 million dollars in graphene.  Don't believe me, check it out!

I think that's enough for now...enjoy your Friday and weekend!

So I looked at my Outlook calendar this morning, like I do every morning, and realized that it is August 11th! Where the heck did the summer go?  BGR moves in this weekend (for the non-Boilermakers out there that is the Boiler Gold Rush or freshman orientation week here at Purdue) and school starts in about two weeks.  Now, I am not particularly worried about school starting, as I am taking one class and teaching one class but I have kind of enjoyed being on campus with less people.  I mean, I have been here during the summer before but this is first summer I have been able to have any kind of social life during the summer.

Anyway, I have a couple quick thoughts today before a pretty beefy Friday Fragments tomorrow...

I saw Rise of the Planet of Apes last weekend and my review is up over at the Stickyshoereview.com.  I really enjoyed the movie, but watching with my family I realized that it may not be for everyone.  I also had the opportunity to go see a friend perform Crackers Comedy Club in Broad Ripple last week.  If you enjoy stand up comedy I recommend going to Crackers on open mic night.  You will laugh with the funny comedians and laugh at the bad ones.

The weather has finally broken into a pleasant streak here in Indiana but that still hasn't prevented one of my biggest pet peevs in the lab...sandals!  Now let me be clear, everyone in my lab always wears proper protection (and sometimes we all look like a sci-fi film because we all wear lab coats, gloves, glasses, everything).  But I consistently see students from other labs (mainly MCMP labs) wearing flip-flips and shorts carrying around petri-dishes, test tubes, and other lab equipment. I remember kids getting kicked out of Ms. Hale's AP Chem class in high school for wearing sandals and yet these people risk injury in order to be fashionable for summer.  So buck up, put on your jeans and tennis shoes like everybody and help me down off this soap box.

Ok that's enough for now.  Last thing, I signed up for twitter (please leave your derogatory comments at home) so look me up @Pharmjack29!

Title: What We Saw: The Events of September 11, 2001, in Words, Pictures, and Video
Author: Joe Klein
Call #: HV6432.7 W427 2011

Title: Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden
Author: Brook Wilensky-Lanford
Call #: BS1237. W55 2011

The Integral Ecology Reading Group will unfold between several blogs and will include a number of people intimately familiar with both Ken Wilber’s theory and environmental studies more generally. Each week a participating blog will review that week’s readings and host discussions.

Intro/Chapter 1 summary has already been posted by Adam Robbert and discussions have started: here 

The schedule

October 10, 2008 lecture by Paul Ehrlich during the 2008 Reunion at Stanford University. Professor Ehrlich discusses the changes in the environmental situation forty years ago and today, telling how humanity took over the planet, and how it is now using its dominance to destroy its own life-support systems. He emphasizes the critical issues facing the world that got relatively no attention in the

The Development of Dialectical Thinking as an Approach to Integration

By Michael Basseches

This article offers a description of dialectical thinking as a psychological phenomenon that reflects adult intellectual development. While relating this psychological phenomenon to the various dialectical philosophical perspectives from which the description is derived, the article conceptualizes

The Mountain Path, or New Evolutionary Landscapes
by Jeremy Johnson

Excerpt: We've fragmented our consciousness. But in a more multi-dimensional vision of human evolution, perhaps to fragment is also to venture towards a new whole.
Evolutionary cycles tend to go through relatively stable periods, followed by chaotic extinctions, from which life bounces back in new complex wholes.
It may be that

The Psychology of Spiritualityby Dr. Stephen Diamond

Christmas is once more upon us, celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. Chanukkah too has started, celebrating a miraculous event occurring centuries before Christ (who, as a Jew, presumably celebrated Chanukkah) was born. Both--despite their commercialism--are prominent religious holidays in the Judeo-Christian tradition. So perhaps this is an