Science, Culture and Integral Yoga

Biophilosophy for the 21st Century by Eugene Thacker (C Theory)

Rich — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 08:51:38 -0800

Thacker's brilliant essay on biophilosophy is an attempt to go beyond simple dichotomies such as the one/ the many, mind/matter, nature/culture, human/machine to conceive of life as not simply the center of self-organization but also as constituting its peripheries.

"Today a similar process is happening with studies in self-organization and emergence. The question has changed, but its form of the problem is the same: 'how do simple local actions produce complex global patterns?' The effects of self-organization can be analyzed forever (e.g. 'ant colony optimization') and they can be applied to computer science (e.g. CG in film, telecommunications routing). But a central mysticism is produced at its core, for if there is no external, controlling factor (environment, genes, blueprints) then how can there be control at all? Again, 'life itself' the ineffable, the absent center. In this sense life follows the laws of thought: it is self-identical (whatever is living continues to be so until it ceases to be living), non-contradictory (something cannot both be living and non-living), and either is or is not (something either is or is not living, there is no grey zone to life). It is in this sense that 'life' and 'thought' find their common meeting point.

Clearly inspired by Deleuze, Thacker contrasts biophilosophy to the discipline called the philosophy of biology:

"Whereas the philosophy of biology (especially in the 20th century) is increasingly concerned with reducing life to number (from mechanism to genetics), biophilosophy sees a different kind of number, one that runs through life (a combinatoric, proliferating number, the number of graphs, groups, and sets). Whereas the philosophy of biology renews mechanism in order to purge itself of all vitalism ('vitalism' is one of the curse words of biology...), biophilosophy renews vitalism in order to purge it of all theology (and in this sense number is vitalistic).

Proust was a Neuroscientist: N.Y. Times Review

Rich — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 22:34:17 -0700

Since the subject of memory, interpretation and the possibility of the truth telling of history has been raised it seems like good time for a supporting reference both from the arts and sciences

Not only this but Lehrer's book, which I just finished is also heartening in that it opens a possibility of a 4th culture.

If C.P. Snow in 1959 proposed a 3rd culture enjoining the arts and sciences to date this 3rd culture has been dominated by scientist examining the arts with causality still being reduced to physical processes.

Third cultural writings are considered those by such authors as Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, Oliver Sacks, V.S. Ramachandran, Steve Weinberg, Mitchio Kaku. E.O. Wilson et al. Although certainly thought provocative and entertaining the works of the above authors fail to achieve a harmonizing of artistic and scientific cultures because they ultimately privilege science. Lehrer who is equally skilled in science attempts to rebalance the situation in which the Arts are equally as important to the narration of what we call reality.

Proust’s goal in “Remembrance of Things Past” is to anatomize memory. His literary examinations teach him that smell and taste are the most intense of remembered sensations. “When from a long distant past nothing subsists,” he writes, “after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone ... bear unflinchingly ... the vast structure of recollection.” Fast forward some 90 years to 2002, when Rachel Herz, a psychologist at Brown, shows that smell and taste are indeed uniquely potent evokers of memory. This power, she speculates, lies in the direct connection the gustatory and olfactory nerves have to the hippocampus, which Lehrer calls “the center of the brain’s long-term memory.

Present Bodies: Gene, Organism, Environment: Richard Lewinton lecture (U Tube)

Rich — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:56:59 -0700

The standard metaphors used to describe DNA and development are examined, including the claim that DNA "makes" protein, that DNA is "self-replicating" and the organisms "adapt" to their environments. In this lecture by distinguished evolutionary geneticist Richard Lewontin, he explains that DNA is manufactured by the cell machinery, that proteins are folded by rules that are not related to DNA sequence and that organisms, rather than adapting to their environment, are actively engaging in constructing their own environments, so that organisms and environments co-evolve...

Future Bodies: Human Animal Hybrid Embryo ok'd in U.K. (Washington Post)

Rich — Mon, 19 May 2008 21:32:33 -0700

human/cow embryonic stem cells
Photo courtesy University of Wisconsin Board of Regents

Although some have concerns about the crossing of human and ape species, the possible creation of a hybrid Hanuman or other entities previously thought to belong only to myth :

"In April 2005, the National Academies -- chartered by Congress to advise the nation on matters of science -- released a report affirming that scientists should be allowed to create such entities if the experiments were approved by special review boards. The advisers came down against the creation of human-monkey or human-ape embryos, as well as experiments in which a human-like brain might develop in a non-human animal" wp.

The UK has just approved research for the crossing the boarders of human bovine species limits to harvest stem cells:

"The bill would allow scientists to continue injecting human DNA into cows' eggs that have had virtually all their genetic material removed, as well as other hybrid embryo processes for stem cell research. Scientists say the embryos would not be allowed to develop for more than 14 days. "wp

In England apparently there has been a long reasoned debate on the issue, one has to wonder however what is going on with embryo research in emerging nations where the market for experimentation may be seen in only the context of its exchange value. Whatever the case it appears our future bodies will in some way or other cohabit, or draw upon a physical (subtle physical) world shared with other species

What follows is a report from the Washington Post on recent events in England along with some further context of chimeras from the Center on Bioethics and Public Policy. rc...

Inter-species hybrids and chimera are entities created from the mixing of two or more different species. Hybrids are organisms whose genetic make up has been created by mixing the genes of two or more species; typically the gametes of two species are fused to create a single zygote. Chimera are organisms consisting of two or more different populations of genetically distinct cells; for example two fertilised eggs or early embryos may be fused together and develop as a single organism....

Future Bodies: Evolution & Progress

Rich — Sat, 03 May 2008 13:44:42 -0700

(courtesy Google Images)

This paper seeks a long overdue critical exploration of Sri Aurobindo's evolutionary vision and how it might inform contemporary discourse on globalization and those regimes of techno-science whose productions propel its advance. That such a critical inquiry is overdue is regrettable because we live at a time in which we are undergoing what is perhaps our most rapid period of change in human history. We live in an era in which the dislocation of our physical, life and mental worlds seems to result from the pull of three strange attractors accelerating at different speeds.

Gazing out from the edge of digital culture in North America to do a critically inquiry into the future is problematic because our perspectives are already conjoined to the gaze of a culture entrained in exponential change. But what would constitute a future view? An epistemology of the Other? A discourse on the never quite? The future is that distant coordinate which is only know through its proximity to our present. So what does the present teach?

In America we are travelling so rapidly that from here we do not hear the voices of indentured knowledge workers standing in lines of up to mile, amidst the smoke and decay of south India, to compete with the multitudes of Heidegger's “standing reserve” for their conditions of economic bondages; of eight to twelve partitioned hours a day spent facilitating the global flow of virtual capital. Although the gaze from here may sense the desiring nature of the machine it lacks an epistemology for coping with its assemblages and a methodology for resisting its discipline.....

Biology as Ideology by Richard Lewontin (review and link to lecture)

Rich — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 10:18:43 -0700

In the six short chapters contained in Biology as Ideology, Richard Lewontin, a renowned geneticist, sets about clarifying the relationship between genes, society and genetics. In particular, he scrutinizes the dominance acquired by genetic determinism as a mechanism of causation.

Biology as Ideology once earned the title ‘most subversive book’ of 1993. How is it that this book, indeed any science book, could earn such a title? The chief reason is that Lewontin recognizes what few scientists do, that the respectability attained by biological, and particularly genetic, determinism is not simply an error of scientific judgment. It is instead an example of the tendency for interactions between scientists and those with power to be mutually accommodating. ... - rc

The Game of Life (review) : New Scientist

Rich — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 20:00:47 -0700
If complexity metaphors can be problematic when applied to social phenomena because they often reduce historic inequalities of socio-economic status to mere patterns of self-organization, metaphors of increasing complexity can be misused when combined with socially constructed ideas of progress. Stephen Jay Gould at least thought as much and this review of The Game of Life outlines some of the problems with equating increasing complexity with directional progress rc ...

Human DNA, the Ultimate Spot for Secret Messages (Are Some There Now?)

ronjon — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 02:00:00 -0800
...a team of Japanese geneticists...announced that they had taught relativity to a bacterium, sort of.

Using the same code that computer keyboards use, the Japanese group, led by Masaru Tomita of Keio University, wrote four copies of Albert Einstein’s famous formula, E=mc2, along with “1905,” the date that the young Einstein derived it, into the bacterium’s genome, the 4.2-million-long string of A’s, G’s, T’s and C’s that determine everything the little bug is and everything it’s ever going to be.

The point was not to celebrate Einstein. The feat, they said in a paper published in the journal Biotechnology Progress, was a demonstration of DNA as the ultimate information storage material, able to withstand floods, terrorism, time and the changing fashions in technology, not to mention the ability to be imprinted with little unobtrusive trademark labels — little “Made by Monsanto” tags, say. ...

New Mode of Cell Communication Discovered: Sub-atomic Protons!

ronjon — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 02:00:00 -0800
University of Utah researchers have discovered a surprisingly tiny new messenger in worms: protons. The find raises the possibility that the subatomic particle plays the same role in humans, the researchers say. ...

Hitching a Ride on the Infinite Subway (Dr. Stan Grof's 'holotropic' research)

ronjon — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 14:35:50 -0800
Here's another excerpt from Michael Talbot's fascinating book The Holographic Universe. I continue to recommend this book.
...Other experiences included the accessing of racial and collective memories. Individuals of Slavic origin experienced what it was like to participate in the conquests of Genghis Khan's Mongolian hordes, to dance in trance with the Kalahari bushmen, to undergo the initiation rites of the Australian aborigines, and to die as sacrificial victims of the Aztecs. And again the descriptions frequently contained obscure historical facts and a degree of knowledge that was often completely at odds with the patient's education, race, and previous exposure to the subject. For instance, one uneducated patient gave a richly detailed account of the techniques involved in the Egyptian practice of embalming and mummification, including the form and meaning of various amulets and sepulchral boxes, a list of the materials used in the fixing of the mummy cloth, the size and shape of the mummy bandages, and other esoteric facets of Egyptian funeral services. Other individuals tuned into the cultures of the Far East and not only gave impressive descriptions of what it was like to have a Japanese, Chinese, or Tibetan psyche, but also related various Taoist or Buddhist teachings.

In fact, there did not seem to be any limit to what Grof's LSD subjects could tap into. They seemed capable of knowing what it was like to be every animal, and even plant, on the tree of evolution. They could experience what it was like to be a blood cell, an atom, a thermonuclear process inside the sun, the consciousness of the entire planet, and even the consciousness of the entire cosmos. More than that, they displayed the ability to transcend space and time, and occasionally they related uncannily accurate precognitive information. In an even stranger vein they sometimes encountered nonhuman intelligences during their cerebral travels, discarnate beings, spirit guides from "higher planes of consciousness," and other suprahuman entities...

Perhaps Grof's most remarkable discovery is that the same phenomena reported by individuals who have taken LSD can also be experienced without resorting to drugs of any kind...The Grofs call their technique holotropic therapy and use only rapid and controlled breathing, evocative music, and massage and body work, to induce altered states of consciousness. To date, thousands of individuals have attended their workshops and report experiences that are every bit as spectacular and emotionally profound as those described by subjects of Grof's previous work on LSD...

A Dangerous Mix

rakesh — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 17:24:12 -0800
You're taking a couple of prescription medications and you develop a cold -- so you head to the nearest pharmacy to get something for your headache, cough and stuffy nose.

Not so fast, experts advise. Mixing medications can be dangerous-- even deadly, a fact highlighted by the death in November of popular R&B singer Gerald Levert. An autopsy determined that Levert, 40 -- who reportedly had been suffering from a shoulder problem, pneumonia and the effects of surgery in 2005 to repair a severed Achilles tendon -- died of accidental acute intoxication caused by a mixture of the pain medications Darvocet, Percocet and Vicodin, the anxiety medicine Xanax and two over-the-counter antihistamines.

A report this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that deaths from accidental drug interactions rose 68 percent between 1999 and 2004, continuing a steady climb since the early 1990s. Unintentional drug poisonings accounted for nearly 20,000 deaths in 2004, said the CDC, making the problem now the second-leading cause of accidental death in the United States, after automobile accidents. "Prescription drugs, especially prescription painkillers, are driving the prolonged increase," the report stated. ...

Blue Brain Project Moves Onto Whole Brain, Really?

ronjon — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 14:40:11 -0800
"An ambitious project to create an accurate computer model of the brain has reached an impressive milestone," writes today's Technology Review. "Scientists in Switzerland working with IBM researchers have shown that their computer simulation of the neocortical column, arguably the most complex part of a mammal's brain, appears (emphasis added) to behave like its biological counterpart. By demonstrating that their simulation is realistic, the researchers say, these results suggest that an entire mammal brain could be completely modeled within three years, and a human brain within the next decade..."

The article goes onto to share the response of Christof Koch from Caltech who calls the 10 year target of modeling the human brain "ridiculous." Despite the fantastic progress to date I agree with Christof on this. ...

What I'm optimistic about (and not), by Ray Kurzweil

ronjon — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 19:34:01 -0800
Optimism exists on a continuum in between confidence and hope. Let me take these in order.

I am confident that the acceleration and expanding purview of information technology will solve within twenty years the problems that now preoccupy us. -- Consider energy. We are awash in energy (10,000 times more than required to meet all our needs falls on Earth) but we are not very good at capturing it. That will change with the full nanotechnology-based assembly of macro objects at the nano scale, controlled by massively parallel information processes, which will be feasible within twenty years. Even though our energy needs are projected to triple within that time, we'll capture that .0003 of the sunlight needed to meet our energy needs with no use of fossil fuels, using extremely inexpensive, highly efficient, lightweight, nano-engineered solar panels, and we'll store the energy in highly distributed (and therefore safe) nanotechnology-based fuel cells. Solar power is now providing 1 part in 1,000 of our needs, but that percentage is doubling every two years, which means multiplying by 1,000 in twenty years.

Almost all the discussions I've seen about energy and its consequences (such as global warming) fail to consider the ability of future nanotechnology-based solutions to solve this problem. This development will be motivated not just by concern for the environment but also by the $2 trillion we spend annually on energy. This is already a major area of venture funding.

Consider health. As of just recently, we have the tools to reprogram biology. This is also at an early stage but is progressing through the same exponential growth of information technology, which we see in every aspect of biological progress. The amount of genetic data we have sequenced has doubled every year, and the price per base pair has come down commensurately. The first genome cost a billion dollars. The National Institutes of Health is now starting a project to collect a million genomes at $1,000 apiece. We can turn genes off with RNA interference, add new genes (to adults) with new reliable forms of gene therapy, and turn on and off proteins and enzymes at critical stages of disease progression. We are gaining the means to model, simulate, and reprogram disease and aging processes as information processes. In ten years, these technologies will be 1,000 times more powerful than they are today, and it will be a very different world, in terms of our ability to turn off disease and aging. ...

Eco Machines: Biomimicry in wastewater treatment

ronjon — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 13:46:15 -0800
I can vouch for John Todd's research. I knew him back in the 70's and was impressed then with the quality of his work. His "Eco Machines" are the outcome of 30 years of research and trial and error experimentation. ~ ronjon

Social responsibility, sustainability, and 'natural capitalism' are becoming new models for governments and corporations in the 21st century...

The ECO Machine - a wastewater treatment system that naturally treats sewage and industrial waste to re-use quality. An important consideration as fresh water becomes one of the most important commodities in the new millennium...ECO Machines bring advanced wastewater treatment technology, and unsurpassed aesthetic, economic, and environmental advantages to companies, communities, and resorts both at home and internationally.

ECO Machines accelerate nature's own water purification process. Unlike chemical-based systems, ECO Machines incorporate helpful bacteria, fungi, plants, snails, clams, and fish that thrive by breaking down and digesting organic pollutants, pollutants that normally deprive the water of oxygen. This clean, simple approach efficiently transforms high-strength industrial wastewater and sewage into water clean enough to be recycled for reuse. ...

Evidence for human symbolic thought dated at approx. 165,000 years B.C.

ronjon — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:24:26 -0700
...Researchers excavating a cave on the southern coast of South Africa discovered a bowl's worth of edible shellfish dating back to about 165,000 years ago, when Africa was colder and drier—pushing back the earliest known seafood meal by 40,000 years.

The team found small stone blades and reddish rocks tossed in with the shells; the rocks were marked in a way that suggests they were ground into powder used to make paint, possibly to adorn the face or body to symbolize status or membership in a group... -- "We've shown pretty strongly that people [were] working with pigments [164,000 years ago], which is a pretty good indicator of symbolic thought," Marean says. ...

The Speeding Star Mira: A Johnny Appleseed of the Cosmos?

ronjon — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 18:23:57 -0700
A new ultraviolet mosaic from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows a speeding star that is leaving an enormous trail of "seeds" for new solar systems. The star, named Mira (pronounced my-rah) after the latin word for "wonderful," is shedding material that will be recycled into new stars, planets and possibly even life as it hurls through our galaxy.

Mira appears as a small white dot in the bulb-shaped structure at right, and is moving from left to right in this view. The shed material can be seen in light blue. The dots in the picture are stars and distant galaxies. The large blue dot at left is a star that is closer to us than Mira.

The Galaxy Evolution Explorer discovered Mira's strange comet-like tail during part of its routine survey of the entire sky at ultraviolet wavelengths. When astronomers first saw the picture, they were shocked because Mira has been studied for over 400 years yet nothing like this has ever been documented before. ...

Bio-dynamised water from Auroville to hit Indian market

ronjon — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 11:17:50 -0700
Bio-dynamised water, believed to cure various ailments including diabetes and heart problems, is set to hit Indian markets with a research centre at Auroville township near here commercially launching the equipment to produce it.

Aqua Dyn, the centre that has developed commercially viable equipment to carry out the "bio-dynamising" technique developed in France in the early 20th century, has been selling the processed water within the township for the past five years...

"Bio-dynamised water helps remove toxins from the body and has proven properties to heal diseases, including arthritis, diabetes, skin cancer and heart ailments," he said. ...

Scientists revive life frozen in Antarctic for millions of years

ronjon — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 10:00:23 -0700
Scientists have recovered microorganisms from ancient Antarctic ice and coaxed it back to life in the lab, according to a study published today. -- The glacial ice acted as a "gene Popsicle," preserving DNA that hasn't circulated in the gene pool for up to 8 million years.

If warming melts the glaciers, the DNA could fuel a new wave of bacterial evolution, the researchers reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The findings also challenge the long-held notion that life couldn't possibly exist in Antarctic glaciers. ...

Jumbo Squid Invade California Coast

ronjon — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 10:00:00 -0700

...over the last few years, millions of jumbo squid—often called red devils, or Humboldt squid—have taken up permanent residence off the coasts of California in the Northern Hemisphere and Chile in the Southern. Sightings have been reported as far north as Alaska, where wolves gnaw on the washed-up carcasses.

Humans may indeed be causing the boom in jumbo squid but by a separate mechanism, according to Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) scientist Bruce Robison, lead author of the PNAS paper. “We think one of the main drivers behind the population expansion is the overfishing of tuna,” he says. The decrease in tuna leaves more food for squid, which typically share the same diet, and also saves juvenile squid—a favorite meal of large tuna—from predation. Unfortunately for fishermen, jumbo squid—which eat 1-2 pounds and grow up to a full inch per day—are now tearing into stocks of valuable hake, rockfish, and anchovies. ...

Is the Universe alive?

ronjon — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 12:00:00 -0700
Although somewhat dated (1996-98), this series of articles from the 'New Scientist,' provides a good background for a scientific explanation [Linde and Smolin's evolutionary "multiverse" theory] of the profound mystery of how life began on Earth, given the apparently enormous statistical odds against our universe itself being life-fertile. In fact, our Universe seems to be perfectly "fine-tuned" to foster life.

...This problem of fine-tuning is generally regarded as the biggest difficulty with inflation. It is essentially an example of the Goldilocks effect: why is inflation, like so many other properties of the Universe, "just right" to allow our Universe to exist. But the fine-tuning problem can be resolved by taking on board the idea that the Universe itself is alive and has evolved. A key feature of the argument is that the birth of the Universe-an outburst from a singularity-is essentially a mirror image of the collapse of a massive object into a black hole, which is an implosion towards a singularity. ...

[A] Flaw in creationists' argument, by Paul Davies

ronjon — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 12:51:07 -0700
Thanks to RY Deshpande for referencing this article.
_________________
Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth — the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. The issue concerns the very laws of nature themselves. For 40 years, physicists and cosmologists have been quietly collecting examples of all too convenient “coincidences” and special features in the underlying laws of the universe that seem to be necessary in order for life, and hence conscious beings, to exist. Change any one of them and the result would be lethal.

To see the problem, imagine playing God with the cosmos. Before you is a designer machine that lets you tinker with the basics of physics. Twiddle this knob and you make all electrons a bit lighter, twiddle that one and you make gravity a bit stronger, and so on. It happens that you need to set 30-something knobs to fully describe the world about us. The point is that some of those metaphorical knobs must be tuned precisely, or the universe would be sterile.

Example: neutrons are just a tad heavier than protons. If it were the other way around, atoms could not exist, because all the protons in the universe would have decayed into neutrons shortly after the big bang. No protons, then no atomic nucleuses, and no atoms. No atoms, no chemistry, no life. Like Baby Bear’s porridge in the story of Goldilocks, the universe seems to be just right for life. So what’s going on? ...

Echinacea Helps You Avoid And Recover From Colds Say Scientists

ronjon — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 13:00:43 -0700
US researchers who reviewed over a dozen studies on the effect of echinacea have concluded that the popular herbal remedy reduces a person's chance of catching a cold by 58 per cent. And they found that it also cuts the duration of a cold by an average of 1.4 days. ...

Using a method that calculates the Odds Ratio of incidence of the common cold in the pooled participants, the researchers found that echinacea decreased the odds by 58 per cent (the statistically significant odds ratio was 0.42 with a 95 per cent confidence interval ranging from 0.25 to 0.71). -- They also found by using a random effects statistical model that the effect of echinacea was to reduce the duration of a cold by 1.4 days (the statistically significant weighted mean difference was -1.44 with a 95 per cent confidence interval ranging from -2.24 to -0.64).

Only one of the studies they reviewed looked at a echinacea in combination with vitamin C. This reported a reduction in cold incidence of 86 per cent for the combined dose. Because there was only one study in this category the authors felt they were not able to say with confidence whether the two supplements were better than echinacea alone at fighting off colds. ...

Lost Whales Delta And Dawn Home Free?

ronjon — Wed, 30 May 2007 17:52:19 -0700
...Basically at each bridge along the river they seemed to hesitate, which makes you wonder how they past them going up. But that's another story, I guess. So, when the flotilla didn't work, the rescuers decided to employ a flotilla with noise. If the whales were bothered by the traffic noise at bridges (which they sort of guessed they were) then maybe making noise under water would move them back down river. All of this served to move them a little then the whales would stop where they wanted and swim in circles when they wanted. Scientists more than once saying "the whales will do what the whales want to do." Really?

Then on Sunday, they took off and swam about miles down river and toward the San Francisco Bay. By Monday things were looking good and by Tuesday they were in the bay speeding toward the Golden Gate Bridge and their freedom. -- By this time, the giant gash on the back of the mother looked like it was getting better. The scientists had been able to give both animals a shot of antibiotics. They tried to put a tracking device on the mother to follow them out to the open sea.

By nightfall Tuesday the two had slowed and were circling off Tiburon, a coastal town just three miles away from the Golden Gate Bridge. ...

The BP-Berkeley Energy BioScience Institute

ronjon — Tue, 29 May 2007 15:00:00 -0700
The ‘climate change sceptics' refer to a very small band of critics that are generally not scientists engaging in serious scientific debates, but concentrate their efforts in targeting the media. They have received significant funding from coal and oil companies including ExxonMobil, and are connected to public relations firms that have set up industry-funded lobby groups to “reposition global warming as theory (not fact)”, as stated in a leaked memo.

On February 1, 2007, the University of California at Berkeley (UCB) administration announced an agreement between a consortium led by UC B and BP (or British Petroleum before rebranding) to fund an Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) for biofuels and ‘synthetic biology' research to the tune of $500 million over the next ten years ...

Cancer Risks from Mobile Phone Microwaves Confirmed

ronjon — Mon, 28 May 2007 15:36:40 -0700
...Evidence linking weak electromagnetic radiation (EMR) to leukaemia and other cancers has been fast accumulating in recent years... Such ‘non-thermal' effects of EMR – due to levels well below that sufficient to bring about any heating - have been observed even before World War II...

During the cold war period, a four-fold excess of cancer cases was diagnosed among the staff of the American Embassy in Moscow that had been secretly irradiated with microwaves at well below the threshold set in current guidelines. The US State Department study on this episode was described in a paper published in 1997. This was among the earliest evidence for non-thermal effects of microwaves, and many studies are now confirming the high cancer risks of people exposed to microwaves from mobile phone base stations and transmitters around the world. Microwaves are no different from EMRs in the lower frequency range in that respect; except that microwaves may be even more potent in promoting cancer and other illnesses ...

China suspends new maglev train project due to EM radiation health concerns

ronjon — Mon, 28 May 2007 11:37:01 -0700
BEIJING (AFX) - China has suspended the planned construction of a high-speed magnetic levitation train linking the eastern cities of Shanghai and Hangzhou due to health concerns, the official Xinhua news agency has reported.

Citing unnamed Shanghai officials, Xinhua said the project has been suspended following petitions from residents living along the proposed route worried about possible health problems from the maglev's high powered magnets.

A question of whether the project can eventually recover the more than 40 bln yuan invested in it also casts a shadow over its feasibility, Xinhua said. -- It's now 'hard to say' if the train will be built at all, Xinhua quoted Wang Qingyun, the official in charge of transportation at the National Development and Reform Commission, as saying. ...

Fish virus hits Great Lakes

ronjon — Sat, 26 May 2007 15:53:34 -0700
A highly contagious and deadly disease that has plagued fish in the Great Lakes for at least two years is ravaging that lake system and has spread to fish in other freshwater lakes and rivers in the region, prompting officials to issue emergency rules and strengthen existing regulations to slow its march. -- The virus, viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus (VHSV), is not native to the Great Lakes region, so it's hard to predict how damaging it will be to the area's fish, said Rod Getchell, who studies fish diseases at Cornell University's aquatic animal health program. "It's [infecting] naïve hosts, and it's a pathogen that's in a new environment,' he told The Scientist. "That's the scary part. We don't know what kind of effect it's going to have on populations.'

Many fish species die soon after being infected with VHSV, but the disease seems particularly virulent in the Great Lakes, where it has killed several hundred tons of fish over the past two years in Ohio, New York, and Michigan, according to USDA statistics. -- The virus has already spread to the Saint Lawrence River, and managers fear that the disease could make its way into the Mississippi River drainage system. ...

Life in the Undergrowth: A New View of Earth's Invertebrates

ronjon — Wed, 23 May 2007 19:36:58 -0700
Amazing! Astounding! Utterly cool. Hi-tech photography makes this the best David Attenborough nature series ever. The subject is earth's invertebrates, or in other words, the creepy crawly things that fill the woods, bushes and undergrowth. Insects, spiders and their kin. The diversity of these beings is vast, and their bizarre stories untold. Attenborough and the BBC spend a lot of money and time traipsing around the world using really cool infrared cameras to see at night, or pinhole cameras to see up close, or ultra-fast cameras to catch wings flapping. The view they capture of these unnoticed critters is absolutely stunning. They invert the usual view of bugs by filming them from their level or below. It turns out that when you can place your camera so that you literally look up to an ant while seeing it in its environment, then you look up to it with new respect. The bugs seem more like the animals they really are. When all their hairs, scales, and whiskers are visible, their true animal nature can be seen. ...

'Whisperer' bid to save lost whales

ronjon — Thu, 17 May 2007 19:06:39 -0700
MARINE biologists in California will tomorrow resume efforts to herd a pair of injured humpback whales back to the Pacific Ocean after they strayed down the San Joaquin river delta to the city of Sacramento, almost 100 miles inland. Initial attempts to persuade them to swim back the way they came have so far proved unsuccessful.

Among whaling experts joining the rescue effort was Bernie Krause, a so-called “whale whisperer” who lowered loudspeakers into the water and played recorded whale noises. -- Krause’s recordings had played a key role in the 1985 rescue of a humpback whale nicknamed Humphrey, who had followed a similar route up the Sacramento delta. Krause, an electronic audio specialist who helped develop the Moog synthesizer, managed to lure Humphrey back down the river using sounds he had recorded off the Alaska coast. Last week he was less successful as the two whales reached a dead end in the channel. They have since been swimming in a deepwater basin used by ships for turning around. ...

Newly-completed possum genome gives perspective on mammals

ronjon — Thu, 10 May 2007 13:44:04 -0700
South America's own short-tailed opossum, or Monodelphis domestica as it's known in scientific circles. Because of its small size and ability to breed in captivity, the animal has become the lab rat of those who pursue biological studies of marsupials. As a result, it was the first marsupial to have its genome sequenced. The genome is already available online, and an analysis appears in the latest issue of Nature.

A marsupial genome provides some important perspective for humans, which fall into the group of placental mammals, or eutherians. Prior to the Monodelphis genome, the only mammals sequenced were all placentals. The most closely related species with a genome done that could serve as an outgroup for evolutionary comparisons was the chicken; we haven't shared a common ancestor with birds for about 310 million years, only 50 million years or so after fish started crawling out of the water. Marsupials shared a common ancestor with mammals only 180 million years ago, making them a much better point of comparison for understanding placental genomes, including the human genome.

Monodelphis has a large genome, about 0.3 Gigabases larger than the human genome. It's distributed among only eight chromosomes, though, with the smallest of them being larger than the biggest human chromosome. With the new information and five eutherian genomes available, the researchers were able to piece together what the chromosomes of the last ancestor of this branch of the mammals likely looked like. ...

Pathogens Causing HoneyBee Deaths?

ronjon — Tue, 01 May 2007 21:26:30 -0700
... a team of scientists recently identified a virus and a parasite that might be the cause of the recent and sudden collapse of honeybee colonies throughout the United States and Europe. The team, from Edgewood Chemical Biological Center and University of California San Francisco, used a new technology, the Integrated Virus Detection System (IVDS), which was designed for military use to rapidly screen samples for pathogens. This technology revealed the presence of a viral and a parasitic pathogen that may be contributing to the honeybee loss.

During the previous year, bee keepers and other experts have observed tremendous declines in honeybee populations -- often entire colonies disappear suddenly and without warning, a situation referred to as "collapse" so scientists refer this phenomenon as "Colony Collapse Disorder" or CCD. Thus far, approximately 50 percent of bee hives have collapsed in this manner. As a result, experts fear that this loss of honeybees will have an enormous horticultural and economic impact around the world, leaving important food crops such as fruits, vegetables, and almonds unpollinated, so they are working hard to find the cause of this mysterious syndrome, and this cutting-edge technology might have provided them with an answer. ...

Is China Slowly Poisoning the World?

ronjon — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 15:35:09 -0700
...So then what exactly is causing the recent spate of pet illnesses and deaths? As a scientist I must initially conclude that there is not enough data to come to a firm conclusion. However, that does not mean that we cannot make well educated assumptions. Because melamine is not particularly toxic and is not known to cause kidney failure, it is logical to assume that there are other contaminants in pet food in addition to the melamine.

Obviously, Chinese farmers, chemical producers, and food additive distributors have no compunction against putting harmful or even toxic compounds into products that are to be consumed by either animals or humans. China has a history recently of putting business interests far ahead of human interests. Manufacturers in China have few restrictions on how they operate and whether or not they are permitted to pollute the air and water. Cancer rates have soared in many parts of China that have become industrialized. It has been noted by Western journalists that the smog is so thick in some Chinese cities in that you can stare at the sun without worry because it looks like a dim orange ball in the sky.

Another assumption that we can make based on what is known about toxicology is that it is not uncommon for two mildly toxic compounds to have a cumulative effect that is far more toxic than either compound alone. As such, it seems quite likely that other chemical contaminants originating in China, which have not yet been identified, are also present in Chinese food products. Melamine would almost certainly put a strain on the kidneys because it contains a great deal of nitrogen, and one of the major functions of the kidneys is to clear excess nitrogen from the body in the form of urea (present at high levels in the urine). If Chinese farmers and food product distributors have been putting other toxic compounds into their products for similar, nefarious reasons as they have been using melamine, then it seems quite possible that two or more mildly toxic compounds are having a synergistic effect in causing kidney damage, and eventually failure. ...

The Missing News of the Missing Methane

ronjon — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 20:43:05 -0700
You may perhaps recall a lot of attention paid to methane from plants back in January 2006. A team of scientists (mostly from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics) reported in Nature that they had found evidence that plants release huge amounts of the gas--perhaps accounting for ten to thirty percent of all the methane found in the atmosphere. ...

Fast-forward eighteen months. A group of Dutch researchers put the Max Planck team's conclusions to the test by tracing radioactive carbon isotopes through plants. Their conclusion: "There is no evidence for substantial aerobic methane emission by terrestrial plants." ...

What is happening to the bees? (NYT)

ronjon — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 04:32:20 -0700
More than a quarter of the country’s 2.4 million bee colonies have been lost — tens of billions of bees, according to an estimate from the Apiary Inspectors of America, a national group that tracks beekeeping. So far, no one can say what is causing the bees to become disoriented and fail to return to their hives.

As with any great mystery, a number of theories have been posed, and many seem to researchers to be more science fiction than science. People have blamed genetically modified crops, cellular phone towers and high-voltage transmission lines for the disappearances. ...

Scientists Extract Proteins from 68-Mil.-Year-Old T-rex

ronjon — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 11:00:00 -0700
This is one chicken I wouldn't like to meet in a dark alley! - ron
________________________
Scientists have managed to extract proteins of collagen 1 from the bones of a 68-million-years-old Tyrannosaurus rex fossil. It was previously thought the protein in bones had a shelf life of around a million years. By comparison, DNA "survives" less than 100,000 years.

The collagen protein was discovered in a thighbone unearthed four years ago under 20 yards of rock on a cliff in the Hell Creek Formation, which spans the Wyoming, Montana and the Dakotas in the northwestern U.S. Reporting in two papers in the new issue of Science, the team of researchers announced that a chemical analysis of the T. rex peptides suggests the king of the lizards is most similar to a present-day chicken. ...

Sociable Darwinism: Evolution for Everyone (NYT Book Review)

ronjon — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 15:06:09 -0700
The conflict between being well behaved, being good, not gulping down more than your share, and being selfish enough to get your fair share, “is eternal and encompasses virtually all species on earth,” [the author] writes, and it likely occurs on any other planet that supports life, too, “because it is predicted at such a fundamental level by evolutionary theory.” How do higher patterns of cooperative behavior emerge from aggregates of small, selfish units? With carrots, sticks and ceaseless surveillance. In the human body, for example, nascent tumor cells arise on a shockingly regular basis, each determined to replicate without bound; again and again, immune cells attack the malignancies, destroying the outlaw cells and themselves in the process. The larger body survives to breed, and hence spawn a legacy far sturdier than any tumor mass could manage. ...

Does evolution select for faster evolvers?

ronjon — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 09:25:03 -0700
It's a mystery why the speed and complexity of evolution appear to increase with time. For example, the fossil record indicates that single-celled life first appeared about 3.5 billion years ago, and it then took about 2.5 billion more years for multi-cellular life to evolve. That leaves just a billion years or so for the evolution of the diverse menagerie of plants, mammals, insects, birds and other species that populate the earth.

New studies by Rice University scientists suggest a possible answer; the speed of evolution has increased over time because bacteria and viruses constantly exchange transposable chunks of DNA between species, thus making it possible for life forms to evolve faster than they would if they relied only on sexual selection or random genetic mutations. ...

Cheap, 'safe' drug kills most cancers

ronjon — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 20:11:54 -0700
It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their "immortality". The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.

It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.

Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and his colleagues tested DCA on human cells cultured outside the body and found that it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells, but not healthy cells. Tumours in rats deliberately infected with human cancer also shrank drastically when they were fed DCA-laced water for several weeks. ...

A New Timetable for Mammal Evolution

ronjon — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 11:17:40 -0700
After a monster meteor crashed into Earth some 65 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs and the vast majority of all other life on the planet, it took millions of years for the pace of evolution to pick up and the ancestors of modern animal species to begin diversifying rapidly and radiating throughout the world.

The timing of species development after the crash has long been a mystery to scientists, with many believing that the Great Extinction allowed an immediate speedup in evolution's pace.

But an international research team, creating a "supertree" to chronicle the evolution of nearly all the 4,500 species of mammals alive today, has concluded that the meteor disaster was followed only by a brief interval of evolution and extinction. It took tens of millions of years after that for all the mammalian species -- and probably the birds, too -- to begin their full-paced evolutionary advance, they say. ...

ISEC: The International society for Ecology & Culture

ronjon — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 11:47:52 -0700
I got to know the remarkable Helena Norberg-Hodge, the Founder of ISEC, back in the 70's, when she was setting up the Ladakh Project, for which she shared the 1986 Right Livelihood Award, otherwise known as the 'Alternative Nobel Prize.' –- Her selfless, Buddhist commitment to protecting the indigenous peoples of the Tibetan high plateau from Western commercial development deeply impressed me. I'll always remember her inspiring photos of the unique and glowing faces of the Ladakh people who hadn't yet been exposed to Western culture. Knowing Helena, I can unreservedly attest to the quality and integrity of ISEC. ... ~ ron

Forty Initiatives that are changing our world (Resurgence Mag.)

ronjon — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 11:12:56 -0700
This informative list of annotated links compiled by Resurgence Magazine includes interesting initiatives in the areas of Activism, Agricultural Development, Ecology, Economics, Education & Community, the Internet, Political & Corporate, Publishing, and Scientific Principles. The few I’ve had a chance to check out so far look like they’re indeed doing important work; e.g., ISEC (the International society for Ecology & Culture), which I’ll post more info about in my next article. — Recommended.

'In Our Own Image: Humanity's Quest for Divinity via Technology,' by Debashis Chowdhury

ronjon — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 13:43:28 -0700
This looks like an interesting book. ~ ron

Once in a few billion years, the conditions are right for life to transcend itself into a higher level of existence. Having spent more than a billion years in the form of single walled bacteria-like (Prokaryotic) cells, a happy set of circumstances happened about 1.5 Billion years ago that gave rise to Eukaryotic cells with a well defined cell nucleus. Those were heady times, and the Eukaryotic cells then went on to create all multi-cellular creatures, including plants and animals including humans. The experience of what it meant to live life changed completely!...

The exciting times are back again! In this very century, mankind will invent the technologies that will give us capabilities we have thus far associated only with Divinity. What is lacking now is a level of wisdom, and unity of purpose amongst us humans. If we can develop this transcendental wisdom, and inculcate a joint sense of identity and purpose as humanity, ours is the opportunity to transform our collective existence into a vastly more powerful presence. ...

Dream Farm 2 - Story So Far: Its conceptual underpinnings and update with a potential site in mind

ronjon — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 18:47:40 -0700
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho: "Many people have asked what exactly is Dream Farm 2. There are several answers. First of all, Dream Farm 2 is a model of an integrated, ‘zero-emission’, ‘zero-waste’ highly productive farm that maximises the use of renewable energies and turns ‘wastes’ into food and energy resources, thereby completely obviating the need for fossil fuels. It is our answer to the energy crisis and climate change, and more. It is a microcosm of a different way of being and becoming in the world, and in that respect, nothing short of a social revolution.

In a way, I have dedicated the past 20 years to developing the idea, and trying to live up to it. -- The challenge now is to make Dream Farm 2 a reality, to put flesh on the bare bones of the diagram, so we can start building the best when the site is agreed. Watch this space. ..."

Quantum Jazz: “The meaning of life, the universe and everything,” by Dr. Mae-Wan Ho

ronjon — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 18:24:45 -0700
Quantum jazz is the music of the organism dancing life into being, from the top of her head to her toes and fingertips, every single cell, molecule and atom taking part in a remarkable ensemble that spins and sways to rhythms from pico (10-12) seconds to minutes, hours, a day, a month, a year and longer, emitting light and sound waves from atomic dimensions of nanometres up to metres, spanning a musical range of 70 octaves (for that is the range of living activities). And each and every player, the tinniest molecule not withstanding, is improvising spontaneously and freely, yet keeping in tune and in step with the whole.

There is no conductor, no choreographer, the organism is creating and recreating herself afresh with each passing moment. Quantum coherent action is effortless action, effortless creation, the Taoist ideal of art and poetry, of life itself...

It’s about the physics of organisms in place of the physics of dead matter in mainstream biology and the world at large. It is why we are stuck in debates about the hazards of mobile phones and genetic engineering, or the benefits of complimentary medicine. There is nothing in mainstream biology that deals with wholeness or coherence, nothing that tells you how, because the whole body is interconnected, even very weak electromagnetic fields could be harmful or, if appropriately applied, beneficial. And because we fail to see nature as an interconnected whole, life appears entirely as a struggle for survival of the fittest, one against all and all against nature. We wage wars and exploit our planet to death. ...

'The Real Bioinformatics Revolution,' by Dr. Mae-Wan Ho

ronjon — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 18:09:30 -0700
The idea of molecules communicating and exchanging energy by electromagnetic resonance fits in with accumulating evidence that cells and organisms are liquid crystalline, that all the molecules, including especially the 70 percent or water, are aligned and working coherently together [9, 12]. There is little or no free diffusion in such a system, as Fröhlich [14, 15] had pointed out earlier, and before that, cell physiologist Gilbert Ling [24, 25] ( Strong Medicine for Cell Biology , SiS 24) and biochemist/historian of Chinese science, Joseph Needham [26]. Instead, energy transfer - by molecular resonance or coherent excitations – probably has to occur through large distances, activating entire populations of similar molecules that are in different parts of the cell or different parts of the body, so long-range coordinating of function can happen instantaneously...

What is clearly emerging is the predominant electronic nature of the living matrix and living activities, which will require a complete rewrite of biochemistry and cell biology, if not also physiology and medicine. ...

Immense ice deposits found at south pole of Mars

ronjon — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 18:05:22 -0700
A spacecraft orbiting Mars has scanned huge deposits of water ice at its south pole so plentiful they would blanket the planet in 36 feet of water if they were liquid, scientists said on Thursday.

The scientists used a joint NASA-Italian Space Agency radar instrument on the European Space Agency Mars Express spacecraft to gauge the thickness and volume of ice deposits at the Martian south pole covering an area larger than Texas.

The deposits, up to 2.3 miles thick, are under a polar cap of white frozen carbon dioxide and water, and appear to be composed of at least 90 percent frozen water, with dust mixed in, according to findings published in the journal Science. ...

Everything You Know About AIDS is Wrong

ronjon — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 14:36:22 -0800
...Oster argues that health is an investment. If you’re expecting to live a good, long time, you might be more inclined to make health investments than if you expect to die soon. If your life expectancy is only 40-50 years due to environmental factors, you might be more willing to take this 3% risk than a gay man in America who otherwise expects to live almost 80 years.

To test this effect, Oster looked at sexual behavior rates in countries that had high, low and medium levels of malaria. In countries with low malaria, there’s a very strong correlation between prevalence of AIDS and change in behavior - in countries with high malaria, there’s no correlation, or in fact, an opposite effect. There’s a similar correlation with maternal health and child mortality. This suggests that if you want to combat AIDS, you also need to deal with malaria, internal air quality and maternal health. ...

"Born On A Blue Day: A Memoir" - Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant

ronjon — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 03:33:42 -0800
Daniel Tammet is a high-functioning autistic savant. He can calculate huge sums in his head in seconds and instantaneously recognise prime numbers, but he finds emotions difficult to understand and has trouble telling left from right. One of fewer than fifty such people living worldwide, Daniel is unique in his ability to articulate his savant experience.

Daniel can also learn to speak a language fluently from scratch in a week. In the documentary "Brainman," he is challenged to learn a difficult new language - Icelandic - from scratch in just seven days, and then does a succesful interview in Reykjavik entirely in Icelandic. ...

Chimps observed making spears, using them to hunt small mammals for food

ronjon — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 01:16:34 -0800
WASHINGTON — Chimpanzees living on the West African savanna have been observed fashioning spears from sticks and using them to hunt small mammals — the first routine production of deadly weapons observed in animals other than humans.

The chimps were repeatedly seen using their hands and teeth to tear the side branches off long straight sticks and peeling back the bark and sharpening one end of the sticks with their teeth, the researchers report in Thursday's online issue of the journal Current Biology. Then, grasping the weapon in a "power grip," they jabbed into tree-branch hollows where bush babies — small monkey-like mammals — sleep during the day. ...