• Reddit, via Fark- A very comprehensive breakdown of the last few days, as well as definitions of many new terms you will be seeing and the roles of key figures.
• Voting turnouts of more than 100% were recorded in at least 30 Iranian towns.
• A list of English language news sources in regards to the Iranian election and aftermath as compiled by an Iranian political blogger, Cyrus Farivar.
• Andrew Sullivan is posting very regularly with articles, videos, and first hand accounts- including this news report from the BBC, one of only a few that are making out of the country, and a list of choice tweets from within Iran. The list updates sporadically, so keep it open in one of your tabs.
• Speaking of twitter- it is being used as a primary source for news from within Iran, as most journalists are trapped or being shipped out. It has become such a resource that the US State Department requested Twitter to delay it's scheduled maintenance. Here is a list of English tweets from within Iran- sorted by city.
• Show support for democracy in Iran add green overlay to your Twitter avatar with one click. (Please note that this change is permanent until you change your avatar back).
• Clay Shirky spoke at TED earlier in the year about how easy-to-use social networks like twitter and facebook have changed the nature of news and the media. Given the circumstances, the folks at TED decided to fast track the talk to the web along with an interview with Shirky about what's happening in Iran.
• New legislation has been proposed in Iran that could make blogging a crime punishable by death.
• Nico Pitney is liveblogging via the Huffington Post. Regular updates with relevant articles, videos, and links to first-hand accounts translated from Farsi and Persian.
• Pirate Bay is now The Persian Bay, and has gone green to show support. A lot of people are hoping that Google will do the same soon.
• A great article from the New York Times containing links to videos, photos, and a flickr feed.
• Boston Big Picture has photos from the first few days of unrest.
• A twitpic of today's incredible march.
• The most widely distributed photo of a pro-Ahmadinejad rally appears to have been clone-tool enhanced.

#iranelection cyberwar guide for beginners

The purpose of this guide is to help you participate constructively in the Iranian election protests through twitter.

1. Do NOT publicise proxy IP’s over twitter, and especially not using the #iranelection hashtag. Security forces are monitoring this hashtag, and the moment they identify a proxy IP they will block it in Iran. If you are creating new proxies for the Iranian bloggers, DM them to @stopAhmadi or @iran09 and they will distributed them discretely to bloggers in Iran.

2. Hashtags, the only two legitimate hashtags being used by bloggers in Iran are #iranelection and #gr88, other hashtag ideas run the risk of diluting the conversation.

3. Keep you bull$hit filter up! Security forces are now setting up twitter accounts to spread disinformation by posing as Iranian protesters. Please don’t retweet impetuosly, try to confirm information with reliable sources before retweeting. The legitimate sources are not hard to find and follow.

4. Help cover the bloggers: change your twitter settings so that your location is TEHRAN and your time zone is GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location and timezone searches. If we all become ‘Iranians’ it becomes much harder to find them.

5. Don’t blow their cover! If you discover a genuine source, please don’t publicise their name or location on a website. These bloggers are in REAL danger. Spread the word discretely through your own networks but don’t signpost them to the security forces. People are dying there, for real, please keep that in mind.

6. Denial of Service attacks. If you don’t know what you are doing, stay out of this game. Only target those sites the legitimate Iranian bloggers are designating. Be aware that these attacks can have detrimental effects to the network the protesters are relying on. Keep monitoring their traffic to note when you should turn the taps on or off.

7. Do spread the (legitimate) word, it works! When the bloggers asked for twitter maintenance to be postponed using the #nomaintenance tag, it had the desired effect. As long as we spread good information, provide moral support to the protesters, and take our lead from the legitimate bloggers, we can make a constructive contribution.

Please remember that this is about the future of the Iranian people, while it might be exciting to get caught up in the flow of participating in a new meme, do not lose sight of what this is really about.

Hybrid hearts could solve transplant shortage

"It's amazing, absolutely beautiful," says Doris Taylor, describing the latest addition to an array of tiny thumping hearts that sit in her lab, hooked up to an artificial blood supply. The rat hearts beat just as if there were inside a live animal, but even more remarkable is how each one has been made: by coating the stripped-down "scaffolding" of one rat's heart with tissue grown from another rat's stem cells.

The idea is fairly simple: take an organ from a human donor or animal, and use a mild detergent to strip away flesh, cells and DNA so that all is left is the inner "scaffold" of collagen, an "immunologically inert" protein. Add stem cells from the relevant patient to this naked shell of an organ and they will differentiate into all the cells the organ needs to function without inducing an immune response after transplant, or any new infections.

Although Taylor only added stem cells to the hearts, these cells differentiated into many different cells, in all the correct places, which is the best part of using decellularised scaffolds. The stem cells transformed into endothelial cells in the ventricles and atria, for example, and into vascular and smooth-muscle cells in the spaces for blood vessels, just as in a natural heart. Taylor thinks this happened because she pumped blood and nutrients through the organ, producing pressure in each zone which helps to determine how cells differentiate there.

But chemical, as well as mechanical, cues seem to have guided differentiation. Taylor has evidence that growth factors and peptides remained anchored to the scaffold even after the flesh was washed off. These chemicals likely signalled to the stem cells, indicating how many should migrate to which areas and what to change into in each zone. "Our mantra is to give nature the tools and get out of the way," she says.

The idea to team stem cells with contact lenses came from an observation that stem cells from the cornea stick to contact lenses. To obtain the stem cells, Dr Watson took less than a millimeter of tissue from the side of each patients' cornea. Working with colleagues at POWH and UNSW, he cultured stem cells from the tissue in extended wear contact lenses.

Within 10 to 14 days the stem cells began to attach to the cornea, replenishing damaged cells. Satisfied that the stem cells were doing their job, Dr Watson removed the lenses and the patients have been seeing with new eyes for the last 18 months.

Illustration by Roy Husada

Vancouver Opera announces OPERABOT, an animation contest for our Golden Anniversary Season. Animators are challenged to create animated shorts of one of the four productions of the Golden Anniversary Season.

The contest is found here: http://www.youtube.com/group/vancouveropera

Anyone 18+ can enter and submit a 4 min or less short that tells the story of one of the four operas of the Golden Anniversary Season. Upload them to our YouTube contest group. Everyone is encouraged to vote for their favorites!

“With the long-running success of our manga series by Roy Husada, we thought this was the logical next step,” said General Director Jim Wright. “We can’t wait to see what people come up with!”

Four winners — chosen by the public and a panel of judges from Vancouver-area animation studios Pixar, EA, Rainmaker, Bardel, and Rival Schools - will win a host of prizes including animation hardware, gaming packages, and digital cameras.

The contest runs June 1, 2009 to Nov 1, 2009 and is open to all residents of the US and Canada. Official rules can be found at www.vancouveropera.ca Everyone who enters will receive tickets to the opera so everyone is a winner!

The contest was inspired by the active animation industry in Vancouver and a similar contest run by Chicago Opera Theater in 2008.

Vancouver Opera is a leader in social media initiative, including the Operalive.ca multimedia site, “Blogger Night At the Opera”, “Operaninja” a live backstage Twitterer, and “Operagator” an opera news aggregator. A leader in Web 2.0 initiatives including an active blog, facebook, flickr, Twitter and YouTube channel, Vancouver Opera is committed to reaching the next generation of opera lovers using the media of the times. Vancouver Opera is also a leader in using pop visual arts as a medium for opera, including a long running Opera Manga series by Roy Husada and Fiona Meng, and commissioning of award-winning visual artists like Edel Rodriguez and Michael Abraham to create original artwork for VO season productions.

Vancouver Opera’s extensive network of Web 2.0 and social media sites as well as official contest rules can be found on our homepage at http://www.vancouveropera.ca.

Of these fearsome beasts, which strikes the most terror into the heart of men?

So we get to set early and Reel EFX are overseeing the first segment of the show (Fire vs. Ice) One kid on a snow maker and the other on a flame thrower doing the whole "Woo-Hoo Awesome!" thing. But the kid on the flamethrower keeps complaining that "Oh...It's HOT, It's HOT... And we're all thinking "Kid....you're 16 and you're getting to set off a flamethrower. No one bitches when you get to set off a flamethrower. Ever. It's a fundamental principle. There are 5 billion flamethrowerless children in the world who would trade spots with you this very second. Have some respect...."

Astronauts discover a long stretch of damage on the space shuttle Atlantis.

The shuttle appears to be in good overall shape, but the survey did uncover a 53cm (21in) line of chips on the vehicle’s right side. The line of chips uncovered by the inspection are in thick tiles that make up the protective heat shield on Atlantis’ starboard side. The damage is located where the right wing joins the shuttle’s fuselage. Nasa said the chips could be related to a debris event detected by the wing’s leading edge sensors 104-106 seconds into the lift-off.

This report leads to one of those surprising and uncomfortable truths about humanity’s current space travel skills:

If something goes wrong on this mission, Atlantis’ crew will not be able to shelter on the International Space Station (ISS). The station orbits at around 350km (220 miles) above Earth, while Hubble occupies an orbit about 560km (350 miles) up.

The Shuttle can’t fly there. It can’t shed 130 miles of altitude, establish a new orbit on a radically different inclination and maneuver to ISS. Because our things that fly in space still aren’t really spaceships as we’ve been brought up to think of them. In fact, the Endeavour’s on the launchpad now, ready to launch an unprecedented rescue mission if it’s determined that the Atlantis may not survive re-entry.

"Whatever beauty or poetry is to be found in my little book is owing to your interest in and encouragement of all my efforts from the first to the last; and if ever I do anything to be proud of, my greatest happiness will be that I can thank you for that, as I may do for all the good there is in me; and I shall be content to write if it gives you pleasure."

"These are the times, my friends. And these are the days. Where the world becomes malleable, palpable. When novelty and genius are within our reach. We are cautioned against being passionate about these things by tales of progress turned to greed and of technology turning on us. And yet, the golden light is just right, the clocks are synchronizing, the stars are in alignment.

This is what we celebrate tonight. We celebrate these transient times, with these transient artists." - c. lantz