Christine Dell'Amore - Synthetic DNA Created, Evolves on Its Own

Step aside, DNA—new synthetic compounds called XNAs can also store and copy genetic information, a new study says. And, in a "big advancement," these artificial compounds can also be made to evolve in the lab, according to study co-author John Chaputof the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University. (See "Evolution vs. Intelligent Design: 6 Bones of Contention.")

Nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA are composed of four bases—A, G, C, and T. Attached to the bases are sugars and phosphates. First, researchers made XNA building blocks to six different genetic systems by replacing the natural sugar component of DNA with one of six different polymers, synthetic chemical compounds.

The team—led by Vitor Pinheiro of the U.K.'s Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology—then evolved enzymes, called polymerases, that can make XNA from DNA, and others that can change XNA back into DNA.

This copying and translating ability allowed for genetic sequences to be copied and passed down again and again—artificial heredity. Last, the team determined that HNA, one of the six XNA polymers, could respond to selective pressure in a test tube.

Read More:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/04/120419-xna-synthetic-dna-evolution-genetics-life-science/#

Free Your (Eco)Mind

Gradually it's dawned on me: We humans are creatures of the mind. We perceive the world according to our core, often unacknowledged, assumptions. They determine, literally, what we can see and what we cannot. Nothing so wrong with that, perhaps—except that, in this crucial do-or-die moment, we're stuck with a mental map that is life-destroying.

And the premise of this map is lack—not enough of anything, from energy to food to parking spots; not enough goods and not enough goodness. In such a world, we come to believe, it's compete or die. The popular British writer Philip Pullman says, "we evolved to suit a way of life which is acquisitive, territorial, and combative" and that "we have to overcome millions of years of evolution" to make the changes we need to avoid global catastrophe.

If I believed that, I'd feel utterly hopeless. How can we align with the needs of the natural world if we first have to change basic human nature? Fortunately, we don't have to. A new way of seeing that is opening up to us can form a more life-serving mental map. I call it "eco-mind"—looking at the world through the lens of ecology. This worldview recognizes that we, no less than any other organism, live in relation to everything else. As the visionary German physicist Hans-Peter Dürr puts it, "There are no parts, only participants."

Read More:

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/9-strategies-to-end-corporate-rule/free-your-eco-mind?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+yes/most-recent-articles+%28Most+Recent+Articles+and+Blogs+-+YES!+

Amanda L. Chan - State Life Expectancy: Report Details Gains And Losses In Life Expectancy Around The Country

A new study is giving a glimpse at who's living the longest around the country, and the rate at which life expectancies are improving or declining county by county.

Women's life expectancies are improving at a slower rate than men's across the country, according to the research from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

"It's tragic that in a country as wealthy as the United States and with all the medical expertise we have that so many girls will live shorter lives than their mothers," study researcher Dr. Ali Mokdad, head of the IHME county research team, said in a statement. Between 1989 and 2009, the researchers found that men's life expectancy increased by an average of 4.6 years. But women's life expectancy only increased by an average of 2.7 years.

Now, in 2009, men's average life expectancy is 81.6 years and the women's average life expectancy is 86, according to the study. The researchers also found that, for women, the divide between the counties with the highest life expectancies and those with lowest life expectancies is growing. In 1989, the gap used to be 8.7 years. But in 2009, the gap was 11.7 years -- 85.8 years on average for women in Collier county in Florida, and 74.1 years on average for women in McDowell county, West Virginia.

The gap between the longest and shortest life expectancies for men was 15.5 years in the study, but the researchers reported that the gap hasn't even grown by a year between 1989 and 2009. In Marin, Calif., the men's average life expectancy is 81.6, and in Quitman and Tunica, Miss., the average life expectancy for men is 66.1.

Read More:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/22/state-life-expectancy-county_n_1441666.html

Europe’s sets course for perpetual recession

Another evening of Purchasing Manager Index (PMI) data from the Eurozone. As readers may be aware my major macro theme on Europe under current policies has been the same for quite some time now:

Periphery nations weakening, France in the middle, Germany outperforming, but the whole ship slowly sinking.

A few weeks ago, when the last batch of final PMI data came out, I also stated:

Actually , to be honest, I am a little more worried about France than that statement suggests. If you have been following my European posts for a while you may remember my warning on the country back in July last year and my repeat of those concerns again in December. In case you haven’t read those posts my basic premise is that France isn’t that much different from some of the periphery nations in terms of its macro economic statistics. As I said:

A quick glance at French fundamentals tells you they are in a similar position as the Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain. High debt in both the public and private sectors, trade imbalance that continues to grow and a current account that has been in the red for years.

To the last night’s data then…

Read More:

http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2012/04/europes-sets-course-for-perpetual-recession/

A DRAMATIC SURPRISE ON A QUIET SQUARE

To launch the high quality TV channel TNT in Belgium we placed a big red push button on an average Flemish square of an average Flemish town. A sign with the text "Push to add drama" invited people to use the button. And then we waited... Discover here what happened or visit http://www.tnt-tv.be for more info. 

TNT. We know drama.

Slavoj Žižek - Occupy Wall Street: What Is To Be Done... Next?

What to do in the aftermath of the Occupy Wall Street movement, when the protests that started far away – in the Middle East, Greece, Spain, UK – reached the center, and are now reinforced and rolling out all around the world? 

In a San Francisco echo of the OWS movement on 16 October 2011, a guy addressed the crowd with an invitation to participate in it as if it were a happening in the hippy style of the 1960s:

"They are asking us what is our program. We have no program. We are here to have a good time."

Such statements display one of the great dangers the protesters are facing: the danger that they will fall in love with themselves, with the nice time they are having in the "occupied" places. Carnivals come cheap – the true test of their worth is what remains the day after, how our normal daily life will be changed. The protesters should fall in love with hard and patient work – they are the beginning, not the end. Their basic message is: the taboo is broken, we do not live in the best possible world; we are allowed, obliged even, to think about alternatives.

Read More:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/apr/24/occupy-wall-street-what-is-to-be-done-next

Belen Fernandez - 10 of Thomas Friedman's Dumbest "Big Ideas"

In conferring the honor of “Wanker of the Decade” on New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman, blogger Duncan Black observed that “truly great wankers possess a kind of glib narcissism, the belief that everything is about them while simultaneously disavowing any responsibility for anything.” The sorry “state of the world is what it is,” Black continued, “in large part because people in positions of great power think this absurd buffoon of man is a Very Serious Person.”

Most readers are presumably familiar with the most prominent theories to have emerged from the brain of Thomas Friedman over the course of his career. To name a few here: 

1. The world is flat.
2. Countries that have McDonald’s do not go to war with each other—except when they do, in which case it is preferable if the outcome of the conflict indicates that Serbs “wanted to stand in line for burgers, much more than they wanted to stand in line for Kosovo.”
3. By pure coincidence, the 2011 Arab uprisings were caused by some of Friedman’s own favorite topics: Barack Obama, Google Earth, Israel, the Beijing Olympics, and Salam Fayyad. (See blogger Sarah Carr’s response, in which she notes the additional revolutionary impetus provided by the 2008 Cheese-Rolling Competition near Gloucester, England.)

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/155120/10_of_thomas_friedman%27s_dumbest_%22big_ideas%22

Kevin Drum - Why Wall Street Hates President Obama

Brad DeLong writes today that the standard bargain between Democrats and Wall Street is simple: we might tax you a little more than Republicans, but in return we'll provide you with "competent economic management in striking contrast to that offered by the ideologically-blinded wingnuts who are the Republicans." And President Obama has done just that. So why do the lords of finance almost unanimously hate his guts these days?

A big part of it, I think, is that Obama was not just supposed to make things better: he was supposed to fix things — to bring things back to "normal"....[But] Obama did not fix things: Wall Street bankers today are a lot poorer than they were in mid-2007. And the Wall Street bankers think that Obama disses them. And the Wall Street bankers know that Obama wants to tax them.

I'm not sure I buy this. My sense is that Wall Street financiers, whatever their other blinders, take a pretty intellectual approach to the macroeconomy, and they know that the economy is doing about as well as they could have hoped back in 2008. The stock market is up, corporate profits are up, and bonuses have rebounded. From a purely self-interested financial point of view, I don't think very many of them are really dissatisfied with the Obama/Geithner/Bernanke regime.

Read More:

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/04/why-wall-street-hates-president-obama

Groups to World Bank: Stop the Land Grabs!

As the World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty takes place in Washington DC this week, farmers and environmental groups have organized to push back against the Bank's pro-corporate, pro-privatization land grab attempts and the rights and environmental violations they bring.

Screen grab from film (see below) from La Via Campesina and Friends of the Earth International on the devasting impacts of the World Bank's land grabs on Uganda. The groups -- including Focus on the Global South, Friends of the Earth International and GRAIN -- say the World Bank is a leading force behind the land grabs, which allow giant global corporations to gobble up land and resources from local communities. 

In a group statement on the Bank's conference, the protesting groups say, "The World Bank is playing a key role in this global land grab by making capital and guarantees available for big multinational investors, providing technical assistance and support to 'improve the agricultural  investment climate' in so-called recipient countries, and promoting policies and laws that are corporate-oriented rather than people-centered."

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/04/24-3

David Korten - A Plea for Rio+20: Don’t Commodify Nature

“Time is life.”"As alert citizen groups are pointing out," writes Korten, "the proposals being advanced would result in the ultimate commodification and financialization of nature for the short-term benefit of the same global profiteers who created the mortgage bubble that brought down much of the global economy in 2008."

With these three words, Karma Tshiteem, Secretary of the Bhutan Gross National Happiness Commission, ended his brief description of Bhutan’s distinctive approach to economic development. It caught my attention because of the striking contrast to our common Western phrase, “Time is money.”

The event I was attending was a small international gathering primarily of indigenous environmental leaders. I was privileged to be among the few nonindigenous writer-activists invited to join them.

Tshiteem was seated to my left. Winona LaDuke, program director of Honor the Earth and a celebrated Native American environmental author and activist, was on my right. Tom Goldtooth, global environmental leader and executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, sat directly across from me. Next to him was Pablo Solón, former Bolivian Ambassador to the United Nations. Pablo was a principal driver behind the 2010 World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

Read More:

http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/david-korten/a-plea-for-rio-20-dont-commodify-nature