Free Astronomy Magazine – May-June 2023 Issue Available For Reading And Download

Above: Domaine du Météore ("Meteor Domain" Winery) in the department (a term used here to define a governmental region) of Hérault in the south of France, the bucolic post-aftermath of what is believed to be one of a number of impact craters in the region. Photo by Frank Brenker, Goethe University Frankfurt.

The most recent issue of Free Astronomy Magazine (May-June 2023) is available for your reading and downloading pleasure at www.astropublishing.com (and facebook).

This issue features a tale of astronomical history (and maybe resolution with recent scientific work) that you can experience for yourself beyond simply taking the photons in (a rarity in astronomy). Discussing what is quite arguably an impact crater put to excellent, excellent use in France, one take-away from this cover story about Le Clot Crater is the reminder of how weather and plate tectonics work to slowly but surely reshape Earth's surface (check out the moon in binoculars for the alternative). This discovery of a more recent impact and its current use are both nice catches (both by the Earth and by the scientists who recognized the oddity of the topography and geology of the area).

Besides the usual excellent original work by our leader Michele Ferrara, this issue is a clear indicator (at least, to the tastes of Michele in selecting content to feature and present) of the way in which the James Webb Space Telescope has made a massive impression (no pun intended) on the work other organizations are writing up and highlighting for public consumption. Much, much more featuring to follow (how does one keep track of all this stuff?!).

Browser-readable version (and PDF download): www.astropublishing.com/3FAM2023/

A NanoEngineer-1 Note (DNA Conversion Site, Recent Article, Related Links)

Above: A six-stranded triple-crossover (TX) DNA Junction. See Ned Seeman's ACS interview for more background.

Having just mentioned it in the context of making publication-quality pretty pictures, another brief note thanks to a citation request on the NanoEngineer Development/User Group (groups.google.com/group/nanoengineer-dev).

There's a website hosted at bionano.physics.illinois.edu for the conversion of NE-1 DNA mmp files to all-atom pdb ("Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Custom DNA Nanostructures Created by NanoEngineer-1") and NE-1's FNANO08 proceedings article ("NanoEngineer-1 – A CAD-based molecular modeling program for structural DNA nanotechnology") was included (with thanks to its use by German Barcenas) in the recent International Journal Of Molecular Sciences article "Molecular Dynamic Studies of Dye–Dye and Dye–DNA Interactions Governing Excitonic Coupling in Squaraine Aggregates Templated by DNA Holliday Junctions."

The bionano site is a dramatic improvement from the NAMOT + sed'ing I worked up many years ago while getting something DNA-related stood up.

As a still-not-irregular user myself, I can appreciate the small hurdles needed to keep the program upright in modern OSs (or the need to just run VirtualBox and be done with it) – therefore noting both Bryan Bishop's dev page (worth the visit to github for the preserved gallery alone!) and Bruce Allen's Molecular Dynamics Studio effort and sourceforge-available download.