Embryos being removed from cryogenic storage. An advisory group has endorsed the engineering of human eggs, sperm and embryos only to prevent babies from being born with genes known to cause serious diseases and disability.
Credit Universal Images Group
An influential science advisory group formed by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine on Tuesday lent its support to a once-unthinkable proposition: the modification of human embryos to create genetic traits that can be passed down to future generations.
This type of human gene editing has long been seen as an ethical minefield. Researchers fear that the techniques used to prevent genetic diseases might also be used to enhance intelligence, for example, or to create people physically suited to particular tasks, like serving as soldiers.
The advisory group endorsed only alterations designed to prevent babies from acquiring genes known to cause “serious diseases and disability,” and only when there […]
No Comments
Thursday, February 16th, 2017
Ed O'Boyle and Annamarie Mann, - The Gallup Organization
Stephan: Donald Trump was created by the fear fugue that plagues so many in America, and part of that is the changes taking place in the workplace. Here's some data.
“The workplace is changing.”
Leaders hear this declaration all the time. In the past, it carried little weight because change is a constant in the business world.
So, why does it feel different now? Why does “change” feel so pervasive?
Because the changes that are affecting organizations today are coming at a dizzying pace. They’re overlapping and colliding in ways they haven’t before. They’re historic and monumental.
According to Gallup’s State of the American Workplace report, releasing today, these changes are forcing organizations to reconsider how they manage employees in a time when the very essence of how, when and where people work — and the value they place on work — is shifting.
Employees Are Pushing Employers to Forgo Traditional Structures
Forces colliding in the workplace are putting stress on the traditional ways of managing and structuring work. New and emerging technologies are transforming the type of work employees perform, as well as where and how work gets done.
As the nature of teams becomes more complex, organizations need to become more agile and collaborative than before. More people do their […]
1 Comment
Wednesday, February 15th, 2017
Kavya Balaraman, - Scientific American/Climatewire
Stephan: The President and the Republican Congress may not believe in climate change, but kelp, coral, fish, and crabs do, and are already changing to accommodate what is happening, and it may not be good news for humans. Here's the story.
Credit: David Abercrombie Flickr
Coral reefs, kelp forests and other marine ecosystems may be tougher than we give them credit for, a new study suggests.
While countless scientific reports have documented the ravages of climate change on oceanic life, a survey of the researchers who wrote them provides a silver lining: An overwhelming majority noticed examples of sea life withstanding climate change.
“There are instances where sensitive ecosystems have shown remarkable resilience after climatic events. You can think of them as ‘bright spots’: They demonstrate that there are conditions under which ecosystems can persist even with major climate disturbances,” said Jennifer O’Leary, a marine conservation biologist with California Polytechnic State University and leader of the study.
The results of the survey were compiled in a report published in the journal BioScience. In all, 97 researchers were polled; 80 percent of those who had witnessed climatic disturbances also reported noting instances of resilience. A similar survey that looked at expert-recommended papers on ecosystems found examples of resilience in 85 percent of them.
In Western Australia, for instance, a reef […]
1 Comment
Wednesday, February 15th, 2017
Melanie McFarland, - Salon
Stephan: In a society that has only one social value, profit, it is quite logical that television networks and production companies should be looking for Fascist programming to attract Trump supporters. The problem of course is that this kind of programming perpetuates the disinformation memes, and phony threats that become self-perpetuating carriers of the Identitarian world view. This is how America was prepared for Trump.
Credit: Jessica Kourkounis/Chip Somodevilla/Mireia Triguero Roura
Hollywood is currently in the heat of pilot season, the time of year when TV producers and studios lobby broadcast networks for a shot at having their series appear on the 2017-2018 schedule. A number of pilots already have been picked up, meaning some very important industry people have been given the green light to shoot one episode of a potential show — a calling card, if you will.
One would think that quality has something to do with a pilot’s success, and in some cases it does. But the traits networks are looking for change from season to season, and cultural trends can be an even more powerful determinant of whether a pilot leads to a full-fledged series than originality or artistic vision. Thus the top story of recent months,
Donald Trump’s political ascendance, is affecting the current pilot season.
Looking at the collective hand-wringing and soul-searching that took place following the November election, this shouldn’t come as much of a shock. Hollywood sustained a portion of the focus […]
1 Comment
