Sunday, October 31st, 2010
JOSHUA HOLLAND, - AlterNet
Stephan: Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet. He is the author of The 15 Biggest Lies About the Economy (and Everything else the Right Doesn't Want You to Know About Taxes, Jobs and Corporate America).
Election 2010 is being fought on a wave of campaign dollars unleashed on the American people by the Supreme Court in its Citizens United v. FEC decision. The court, led by a majority of staunch right-wingers, struck down limits on third-party ‘electioneering
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Sunday, October 31st, 2010
ANDREW POLLACK, - The New York Times
Stephan: This is a very interesting reversal of a decades old policy and one might ask why is it happening? It would be lovely to say that the Justice Department suddenly saw the truth that genes are a result of nature, and no one should own a species. I rather suspect, however, that what lies behind this historic shift is the realization that with much of American genetic research influenced if not outright governed by religious dogma, America is falling behind. That being true we could soon find ourselves subordinate to other countries with more sensible policies that patented first, leaving us playing catch up.
The new position was declared in a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Department of Justice late Friday in a case involving two human genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer.
‘We acknowledge that this conclusion is contrary to the longstanding practice of the Patent and Trademark Office, as well as the practice of the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies that have in the past sought and obtained patents for isolated genomic DNA,
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Sunday, October 31st, 2010
NATALIE ARMSTRONG, - Reuters
Stephan:
TORONTO — Call it a DNA digital Dewey Decimal System for all life on Earth.
Every species, from extinct to thriving, is set to get its own DNA barcode in an attempt to better track the ones that are endangered, as well as those being shipped across international borders as food or consumer products.
Researchers hope handheld mobile devices will be able to one day read these digital strips of rainbow-colored barcodes — much like supermarket scanners — to identify different species by testing tissue samples on site and comparing them with a digital database.
The International Barcode of Life Project (iBOL), which says it is the world’s first reference library of DNA barcodes and the world’s largest biodiversity genomics project, is being built by scientists using fragments of DNA to create a database of all life forms.
‘What we’re trying to do is to create this global library of DNA barcodes — snippets, little chunks of DNA — that permit us to identify species,’ Alex Smith, assistant professor of molecular ecology at the University of Guelph’s Biodiversity Institute of Ontario, about 90 km (56 miles) west of Toronto.
So far DNA barcoding has helped identify the type of birds that forced last year’s emergency […]
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Sunday, October 31st, 2010
NANCY ATKINSON, - The Christian Science Monitor/Universe Today
Stephan:
Just like being stuck inside and not being able to see what the outside of your house looks like, we’re trapped inside the Milky Way galaxy and aren’t able to see its complete structure. Most of us have this vision of a circular, spiral galaxy with gracefully curving spiral arms. Nope, says a group of astronomers from Brazil. The Milky Way might be square. Not like a box, but, in places, the spiral arms are straight rather than curved, giving the Milky Way a distinctly square look. And our solar system sits right on one the straightest parts of an outer arm.
It really IS hip to be square.
The map of the Milky Way has been redrawn several times since the first attempts in the 1950’s using radio telescopes to trace out the spiral arms of our home galaxy. However, the concept of our galaxy having square-ish arms is not so farfetched: we know of the Pinwheel Galaxy, above, that has areas of straight and squared off arms, and a 2008 study using the Very Long Baseline Array found that instead of […]
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Saturday, October 30th, 2010
Stephan:
A system which could one day allow scientists to record people’s dream has been developed.
In a remarkable breakthrough which would allow researchers a unique insight into the human mind, a dream recorder that could interpret electronic data is planned.
Experiments in which volunteers had electrodes surgically implanted into their brains has so far allowed the scientists to ‘read’ their minds, said Dr Moran Cerf.
He said: ‘We would like to read people’s dreams. It would be wonderful to read people’s minds when they cannot communicate, such as people in comas.’
Woman sleeping
Breakthrough: The experiment has led scientists to believe they could one day record and interpret people’s dreams
In tests on 12 epilepsy patients, electrodes recorded the activity of neurons in the part of the brain called the medial temporal lobe, which plays a role in memory retention.
With practice, the volunteers were able to control the appearance of ‘hybrid’ images consisting of one picture superimposed on another.
On cue they could quickly make a particular image, such as Marilyn Monroe or former US president George Bush, ‘fade in’ or ‘fade out’.
During the tests, patients worked out their own strategies for conjuring up the right images.
Some simply thought of the picture, while others repeated […]
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