TOR

Today, Tor.com has posted the complete story "Divided by Infinity" by Robert Charles Wilson. This remains probably the best science fiction story ever using the Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum physics (though it doesn't call it that explicitly), and also the creepiest: In the year after Lorraine's death I contemplated suicide six times. Contemplated it seriously, I mean: six times sat with the fat bottle of Clonazepam within reaching distance, six times failed to reach for it, betrayed by some instinct for life or disgusted by my own weakness. I can't say I wish I had succeeded,…

Last time I told you about how the view of cancer switched from the perspective of metabolism to oncogenes. Today we'll see how recent developments have placed the spotlight back on metabolic pathways. I'll begin this tale with a quote from a review written by Andrew M Arshama and Thomas P Neufeld: The TOR (target of rapamycin) signaling pathway has been the subject of a 30-year-long reverse engineering project, beginning in the 1970s when the macrocyclic lactone antifungal compound rapamycin was purified from soil bacteria found on the Pacific island of Rapa Nui, famous for its moai (giant…