Pawan Kalyan Meets Chiranjeevi Ram Charan To Team up With Krish For SPY Thriller

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Parent Teacher Conference Sign Up

Just a friendly reminder to sign up for your childs parent-teacher conferences.  They are coming up soon.  I checked recently and see that 3-4 parents have signed up.  Thanks!  It would be nice to have everyone signed up for a time by next Tuesday.

Directions on how to sign up for your childs conferences were sent home last week.  If you need assistance, please call the office and Linda will be glad to help you.  You can also shoot me an email and I can help out as well.

Thanks and cant wait to see each of you at conferences.

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Pay Up Sucker All That Speeds Not Gonna Buy Itself

In yesterdays post we took a trip back in time, all the way to the very dawn of the chain-driven symmetrical-wheeled bicycle:


Clearly weve come a long way in the last century and a quarter.  I mean sure, they mostly had the whole bicycle thing figured out back then, but just imagine what a miserable experience cycling was without crucial innovations such as wheel counterbalance weights:


You know that lurching, heaving, out-of-control feeling you experience once you get your bike up to speed?  Of course you dont.  Nevertheless, you should add the unpredictable ride quality of improperly-balanced wheels to your list of imaginary stuff you cant feel, like the "beefiness" of your bottom bracket or the "carbon layup" of your plastic frame.  Oh, also, without wheel counterbalances, you could be losing up to one (1) watt of power at 30mph:

Silca claims that upgrading a pair of wheels with the SpeedBalance kit will save just over one watt at 30mph — slightly more savings than upgrading that same wheelset to ceramic bearings, the company claims.

This is ironic, because its a scientific fact that the sorts of Freds who pay $36 for wheel counterbalance weights are wholly incapable of sustaining speeds anywhere close to 30mph unless theyre traveling downhill.*

*[WARNING: Do not attempt to ride your bicycle downhill without using wheel counterbalance weights.  Attempting to do so will result in speed wobble and death.]

By the way, can you imagine how insanely fast youd be on a bike equipped with both a SpeedBalance kit and ceramic bearings?**

**[WARNING: Do not attempt to ride a bicycle equipped with both a SpeedBalance kit and ceramic bearings.  Attempting to do so could turn your bicycle into a perpetual motion machine that continues to accelerate infinitely until you disappear into a black hole and emerge in another dimension.]

And if youre not convinced, just watch this video, where he spins a bikes wheel while its on a stand:


I stopped watching at "tungsten slugs," but as far as Im concerned the real takeaway here is that carbon wheels are fucking stupid.

If you really think about it though, the SpeedBalance kit is nothing short of genius, because while its absurdly expensive for what it is (and what it is is nothing), Freds will still think its a bargain because, you know, its only $36.  Thats less than $40!!!  How could you not buy it?  Thats why Im pleased to announce the launch of my new wheel consultancy service.

Yes, for a mere $150 (thats per wheel) Ill perform a full balancing.  Will it make any kind of difference to you out there on the road?  Well, no, but when I put your bike on the stand youll marvel at how the valve stems dont wind up at the bottom, which is exactly the sort of detail that screams "performance" to your fellow Freds when youre prepping your bike in the parking lot before the Fondo.  Of course, that fee doesnt include the price of the weights, which of course I sell at a considerable mark-up.  I also dont perform wheel truing, or flat repair, or hub overhauls, or really anything at all that requires any sort of expertise or that will make an actual difference to the function and performance of your wheels and bicycle.  (For that, youll have to go to something called a "bike shop," which is like a website with a front door.)

Not only that, but for an additional $50 per wheel Ill custom-curate your tire pressure based on your preferred terrain and body mass index.  (Please note this service is subject to a $75 per wheel gravel upcharge.  Please supply 500 grams of the gravel youll be riding for expert analysis.)

I figure I can get away with this for a few years, at which point the wheel companies will get wise to the whole thing and start selling pre-balanced and pre-inflated wheelsets with proprietary valves, so when you need to air them up or change your pressure for a specific event you have to send them back to the factory.

But of course even the most perfectly-balanced and expertly-inflated wheelset wont yield optimum performance if you dont use it with the right equipment--especially on gravel, that magical road surface which has led the industry to a whole new world of marketing opportunity:


Sure, by now you already have the gravel-specific frame, and the gravel-specific wheels, and the even the gravel-specific shorts.  (Yep, thats a thing now.)  But do you also have a gravel-specific suspension fork?


Watching the fork track over fine grit and gravel reveals just how much work the fork is doing — it feels like you’ve triple-wrapped your bars. The effect of this on longer rides is that hand fatigue is greatly reduced.

Oh, really?  It feels like triple-wrapping your bars?  Well heres a crazy idea:

Why not just skip the goofy fork and triple-wrap your bars???

There, I just saved you $790, not to mention looking like an idiot.  Seriously, with that stupid thing on your bike even recumbent riders would be pointing and laughing.

So now youve got the balanced wheels and the bouncy fork, but dont close your wallet just yet because theres still some untapped performance out there!  Indeed, I was amazed to learn recently from a friend that Shimano is now offering a proprietary shoe-and-sock combo:


S-Phyre Socks

To round out the footwear package, the S-Phyre RC9 and XC9 shoes are sold with color-matched socks. Shimano studied the shoe-sock interface (yes, it sounds a little crazy to us too!) to create a system that it says helps promote efficient pedaling through optimal ankle angles. An ankle guide is woven into the socks to ensure efficient pedaling rotation through the 360-degree pedal rotation and the socks have an anti-slip heel for better power transfer. We presume the socks are compatible with other types of shoes but not recommended for sandals.

Yeah, thats right Freds, it turns out youve been hemorrhaging watts at the ankles and heels.

Of course, for the ultimate in weight savings and power transfer, you should skip the footwear altogether and surgically attach the cleat right to your foot:


Im going to start training right now to become the worlds finest Fred farrier.

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Patent Battle over Modified Meganucleases Heats Up

Meganucleases are endodeoxyribonucleases characterized by a large recognition site (double-stranded DNA sequences of 12 to 40 base pairs); as a result this site generally occurs only once in any given genome. For example, the 18-base pair sequence recognized by the I-SceI meganuclease would on average require a genome twenty times the size of the human genome to be found once by chance. Meganucleases are therefore considered to be the most specific naturally occurring restriction enzymes.

The high specificity of meganucleases gives them a high degree of precision and much lower cell toxicity than other naturally occurring restriction enzymes; they were identified in the 1990s as particularly promising tools for genome engineering.

However, the meganuclease-induced genetic recombinations that could be performed were limited by the repertoire of meganucleases available. Despite the existence of hundreds of meganucleases in nature, and the fact that each one is able to tolerate minor variations in its recognition site, the probability of finding a meganuclease able to cut a given gene at the desired location is extremely slim. Several research laboratories therefore soon began trying to engineer new meganucleases targeting the desired recognition sites.

Cellectis and Precision Biosciences are two competing biotechnology companies, both seeking to commercialize engineered meganucleases for use in genetic engineering.

On March 1, 2011, Cellectis sued Precision Biosciences in the District Court of Delaware for allegedly infringing US patent number 7,897,372, directed to "I-CreI Meganuclease Variants with Modified Specificity.” That case is presently proceeding with discovery, and trial is set for February 2013.

On September 20, 2011, the US patent office issued US patent number 8,021,867, which is directed towards "Rationally-Designed Meganucleases with Altered Sequence Specificity and DNA-Binding Affinity." The named assignee on the patent is Duke University, but according to Celectis the patent is actually owned by Precision.

On September 30, 2011, Cellectis filed another lawsuit against Precision Biosciences, again in the District Court of Delaware, and this time it is a declaratory judgment action seeking a declaration that the Duke/Precision patent is invalid and not infringed by Cellectis.

In the complaint, Cellectis does not allege that it has explicitly been threatened with a lawsuit by Precision. Instead, it argues that declaratory judgment is appropriate because: both patents-in-suit concern the same field of technology, i.e., "modified" or "altered" I-CreI meganucleases; the Cellectis patent is prior art to the precision patent, the parties in both cases are the same, and the discovery in both cases likely would substantially overlap.

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