Friday, September 05, 2014
the extended phenotype: indirect genetic effects on ecosystems
By CNu at September 05, 2014 1 comments
Labels: as above-so below , evolution , symbiosis
the body's ecosystem
By CNu at September 05, 2014 0 comments
Labels: microcosmos , symbiosis , What IT DO Shawty...
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
cooperative social networking key to helping microbes spread...,
By CNu at August 13, 2014 0 comments
Labels: microcosmos , symbiosis , tactical evolution , What IT DO Shawty...
microbial colonization...,
By CNu at August 13, 2014 0 comments
Labels: as above-so below , co-evolution , symbiosis , What IT DO Shawty...
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
missing microbes: conspicuously obvious once the man points it out...,
By CNu at August 12, 2014 0 comments
Labels: as above-so below , common sense , microcosmos , symbiosis
the quantified microbiome visualization looks strangely like an appflow visualization...,
By CNu at August 12, 2014 2 comments
Labels: microcosmos , symbiosis , tactical evolution
genetic information transfer promotes cooperation in bacteria
By CNu at August 12, 2014 0 comments
Labels: as above-so below , microcosmos , symbiosis , What IT DO Shawty...
Friday, April 04, 2014
microbial genes, brain & behaviour – epigenetic regulation of the gut–brain axis
By CNu at April 04, 2014 0 comments
Labels: Genetic Omni Determinism GOD , microcosmos , symbiosis , What IT DO Shawty...
Thursday, July 18, 2013
the human eusocial prime directive - cybernetic civilization
By CNu at July 18, 2013 8 comments
Labels: Genetic Omni Determinism GOD , stigmergy , symbiosis , What IT DO Shawty...
Saturday, May 25, 2013
coopetition...,
By CNu at May 25, 2013 0 comments
Labels: common sense , ethics , symbiosis , System D , tactical evolution
Sunday, April 07, 2013
human breath analysis and individual metabolic phenotypes
By CNu at April 07, 2013 23 comments
Labels: microcosmos , symbiosis , What IT DO Shawty...
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
“lives in a pineapple under the sea... Absorbent and yellow and porous is he.”
By CNu at October 23, 2012 1 comments
Friday, April 27, 2012
left in the dark: plant/human symbiosis and the fall of humanity
--Terence McKenna
Tony Wright and Graham Gynn are authors of Left In The Dark--the book that presents Tony’s research outlining a radical re-interpretation of the current data regarding human evolution and, they contend, our recent degenerated state we call “civilization”. You can read the book for free here. Despite such a young and extreme proposal positive reactions are growing and include such minds as Dennis McKenna, Stanislav Grof, Colin Groves, Michael Winkelman and many There are many mysterious anomalies about human evolution yet to be adequately explained. These include the human brains rapid expansion in size and complexity, why this accelerating expansion suddenly stalled roughly 200,000 years ago and our brains have been shrinking ever since, and why our rare glimpses of genius goes hand in hand with our species wide insanity.
The following is a discussion with Tony Wright on these anomalies and more, followed by some further information on his theory.
TS: After two decades of research and radical self-experimentation you’ve come to a synthesis between the ancient data and information coming out of modern science. Paradoxically this all seems to indicate a humongous problem, and simultaneously explains why we would be oblivious to it in the first place: we are all suffering from species wide neural retardation, and are now too deluded to even realize when faced with the mountain of evidence. Is this the general idea?
TW: Yes. It should be virtually impossible to find any supporting evidence for such a profound theory if there was no real problem with the development and structural integrity of our neural system in the first place. If there were only ancient accounts of the diagnosis, or any supporting biological data, or initial support from some of society’s sharpest minds, then it should at least ring alarm bells. That all those elements exist and in addition our collective behavior has long been thought by many to be insane indicates something really serious just doesn’t add up. If everything is fine then the theory would be a no-brainer to refute, and we should at least have no fear in thoroughly checking it out.
So during millions of years of evolution in the African tropical forest we developed a symbiosis with fruit, and your proposing that it is no coincidence the most complex tissue in the known universe evolved during a symbiosis with perhaps dozens of species of the most complex chemical factories on the planet. How did this occur?
I’m proposing that the accelerating expansion of the neo-cortex was due to a runaway feedback mechanism driven by our own hormone system in combination with the complex plant bio-chemistry provided by our diet. What has been overlooked is the profound effects of flooding our brains 24/7 for thousands of generations with this highly advanced molecular engineering formula. Fruit is essentially a womb-like developmental environment for the seeds and has very unique, highly complex hormonally active chemistry. Our early development is dictated by the transcription process whereby changes in how the DNA is read dictate the type of structures that develop. Steroids like testosterone are the key players here, but by incorporating more and more of these DNA-reading plant chemicals into our diet we basically shifted from a typical mammalian developmental environment to more of a plant developmental environment.
Along with regulating gene transcription many of these molecules increase brain activity, modulate the endocrine system including the pineal gland, inhibit mono amine oxidase (MAO inhibitors), are antioxidants and also inhibit the activity of our own hormones such as testosterone and oestrogens. Just altering the activity of these two hormones has a dramatic affect on many aspects of our development, physiology and neural structure. For example, decreasing they’re activity extends juvenility and the window for brain development by delaying the onset of sexual maturity.
All this coming together would have many interconnected affects and, being that this bio-chemistry would be present in the developmental environment it would dramatically impact what develops at this most sensitive and rapid stage of brain/endocrine system growth in the uterus.
This carried on after birth through breastfeeding, and then afterwards through directly ingesting this highly advanced molecular engineering cocktail we call fruit. Each generation would pass down a progressively modified neuro-endocrine system as a result. So after millions of years of ever more entangled co-evolution nearly all of the transcription chemicals present during our early development and on through life that were essential to our optimal design/functioning were lost and replaced by progressively worse substitutes irrelevant to our evolution . . . all the way until we reach today’s ‘junk’ food. Ironically much of this actually has the opposite effect of fruit bio-chemistry on our hormones, causing the unique process to reverse.
All of this sounds complex but at its foundation it’s just really basic engineering principles: If you change the design (transcription) and construction materials that a system or technology is built from and fueled by, then the structure and functionality of that system will inevitably change as a result. This logic is obvious when applied to any of our technologies but paradoxically we haven’t applied it to the thing involved in generating our perception, which just happens to be the most complex piece of kit we know. Our perception is directly correlated with and ‘effectively’ a product of the extremely sensitive structure and bio-chemistry of our brain and this has changed out of all recognition in a very short time. (more on this symbiosis)
By CNu at April 27, 2012 7 comments
Labels: co-evolution , symbiosis
Sunday, March 18, 2012
competing visions of a computer-controlled future
About four decades ago, Faggin was one of the first employees at Intel when he and his team developed the world's first mass-produced microprocessor, the component that would become the heart of the modern era. Computer systems are ubiquitous today. They control everything, from mobile phones to Airbus aircraft to nuclear power plants. Faggin's tiny creation made new industries possible, and he has played a key role in the progress of the last few decades. But even the man who triggered this massive revolution is slowly beginning to question its consequences.
"We are experiencing the dawn of a new age," Faggin says. "Companies like Google and Facebook are nothing but a series of microprocessors, while man is becoming a marginal figure."
The Worrying Speed of Progress
This week, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Google chairman Eric Schmidt opened CeBIT -- the digital industry's most important annual trade fair -- in the northern German city of Hanover, there was a lot of talk of the mobile Internet once again, of "cloud computing," of "consumer electronics" and of "connected products." The overarching motto of this convention is "Trust" -- in the safety of technology, in progress and in the pace at which progress unfolds.
This effort to build trust seems more necessary than ever, now that those who place their confidence in progress are being joined by skeptics who also see something dangerous about the rapid pace of development.
In his book "The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future," American computer scientist Martin Ford paints a grim picture. He argues that the power of computers is growing so quickly that they will be capable of operating with absolutely no human involvement at some point in the future. Ford believes that 75-percent unemployment is a possibility before the end of the century.
"Economic progress ultimately signifies the ability to produce things at a lower financial cost and with less labor than in the past," says Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. As a result, he says, increasing effectiveness goes hand in hand with rising unemployment, and the unemployed merely become "human waste."
Likewise, in their book "Race Against the Machine," Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, both scholars at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), argue that, for the first time in its history, technological progress is creating more jobs for computers than for people.
By CNu at March 18, 2012 9 comments
Labels: co-evolution , symbiosis
Friday, March 16, 2012
how your cat is making you crazy..,
Certainly Flegr’s thinking is jarringly unconventional. Starting in the early 1990s, he began to suspect that a single-celled parasite in the protozoan family was subtly manipulating his personality, causing him to behave in strange, often self-destructive ways. And if it was messing with his mind, he reasoned, it was probably doing the same to others.
The parasite, which is excreted by cats in their feces, is called Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii or Toxo for short) and is the microbe that causes toxoplasmosis—the reason pregnant women are told to avoid cats’ litter boxes. Since the 1920s, doctors have recognized that a woman who becomes infected during pregnancy can transmit the disease to the fetus, in some cases resulting in severe brain damage or death. T. gondii is also a major threat to people with weakened immunity: in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, before good antiretroviral drugs were developed, it was to blame for the dementia that afflicted many patients at the disease’s end stage. Healthy children and adults, however, usually experience nothing worse than brief flu-like symptoms before quickly fighting off the protozoan, which thereafter lies dormant inside brain cells—or at least that’s the standard medical wisdom.
But if Flegr is right, the “latent” parasite may be quietly tweaking the connections between our neurons, changing our response to frightening situations, our trust in others, how outgoing we are, and even our preference for certain scents. And that’s not all. He also believes that the organism contributes to car crashes, suicides, and mental disorders such as schizophrenia. When you add up all the different ways it can harm us, says Flegr, “Toxoplasma might even kill as many people as malaria, or at least a million people a year.”
An evolutionary biologist at Charles University in Prague, Flegr has pursued this theory for decades in relative obscurity. Because he struggles with English and is not much of a conversationalist even in his native tongue, he rarely travels to scientific conferences. That “may be one of the reasons my theory is not better known,” he says. And, he believes, his views may invite deep-seated opposition. “There is strong psychological resistance to the possibility that human behavior can be influenced by some stupid parasite,” he says. “Nobody likes to feel like a puppet. Reviewers [of my scientific papers] may have been offended.” Another more obvious reason for resistance, of course, is that Flegr’s notions sound an awful lot like fringe science, right up there with UFO sightings and claims of dolphins telepathically communicating with humans.
But after years of being ignored or discounted, Flegr is starting to gain respectability. Psychedelic as his claims may sound, many researchers, including such big names in neuroscience as Stanford’s Robert Sapolsky, think he could well be onto something. Flegr’s “studies are well conducted, and I can see no reason to doubt them,” Sapolsky tells me. Indeed, recent findings from Sapolsky’s lab and British groups suggest that the parasite is capable of extraordinary shenanigans. T. gondii, reports Sapolsky, can turn a rat’s strong innate aversion to cats into an attraction, luring it into the jaws of its No. 1 predator. Even more amazing is how it does this: the organism rewires circuits in parts of the brain that deal with such primal emotions as fear, anxiety, and sexual arousal. “Overall,” says Sapolsky, “this is wild, bizarre neurobiology.” Another academic heavyweight who takes Flegr seriously is the schizophrenia expert E. Fuller Torrey, director of the Stanley Medical Research Institute, in Maryland. “I admire Jaroslav for doing [this research],” he says. “It’s obviously not politically correct, in the sense that not many labs are doing it. He’s done it mostly on his own, with very little support. I think it bears looking at. I find it completely credible.”
What’s more, many experts think T. gondii may be far from the only microscopic puppeteer capable of pulling our strings. “My guess is that there are scads more examples of this going on in mammals, with parasites we’ve never even heard of,” says Sapolsky.
By CNu at March 16, 2012 2 comments
Labels: neuromancy , parasitic , symbiosis
Saturday, January 21, 2012
life as art: the legacy of lynn margulis
According to Dawkins, we might be impressed by two living systems working in some sort of mutually beneficial accord but in reality it is nothing more than a convoluted extension of selfishness. Don't be too moved by the astonishing sight of a pollen dusted humming bird feeding on a symbiotic nectar rich bloom! Don't let exotic symbiotic corals (that are a union of an animal and an alga) blow your mind! Don't gloat too long over a picture of a bobtail squid packed full of symbiotic bioluminescent bacteria! Move on people, this symbiosis business is all smoke and mirrors. Life is, at heart, no more than inert bits of digital DNA code that know nothing of cooperation and harmonious coexistence but only the competitive drive to replicate. If their phenotypic expression is involved in some exquisite symbiotic arrangement or another, then this is really beside the point.
Such was the kind of paradigmatic resistance that Margulis was up against. It is probably no coincidence that it was a woman who came to the fore promoting the significance of symbiosis in the evolution of life -- and not just the symbiotic origins of mitochondria and chloroplasts or the symbiosis evinced by corals or flowering plants and their pollinators, but even the emergence of new species through the process of symbiogenesis (this is still a contentious issue -- but examples continue to emerge). Is there something deeply feminine about cooperation? Is the drive for co-existence somehow more active in the female psyche than in the male psyche? In any case, legend tells us that Margulis had a really hard time convincing her academic male superiors that certain organelles within mammalian cells were once free living bacteria. It's one thing to note the symbiotic alliance of, say, cleaner fish with their bigger fish customers (who could easily gobble up the diminutive cleaners if they wanted), but when you realise that mitochondria (the energy engines of animals) and chloroplasts (the energy engines of plants) were once separate living micro-organisms that are now symbiotically woven inside animals and plants, symbiosis emerges as a kind of advanced technique learned by life, so sophisticated and subtle in deployment that we may be blind to it. If, however, we acknowledge the important role symbiosis has played in life's evolution, the way we perceive life begins to change. Life is no longer seen to be wholly red in tooth and claw -- but rather symbiotic in embrace and interchange (at least where possible).
By CNu at January 21, 2012 1 comments
Labels: symbiosis
Monday, December 19, 2011
as above, so below: the worldview of Lynn Margulis
Lynn Margulis, biologist and Distinguished Professor of Geosciences, composed a grand and powerful view of the living and the non-living. Integrating the work of obscure Russian scientists, DNA pulled from cell organelles, computer-generated daisies, and the hindguts of termites, her vision was wider in scope and more profound in depth than any other coherent scientific world view. At the time of her death on November 22nd, 2011, it is a vision that remains misunderstood and misconstrued by many scientists.
Much of this view came from her uncanny ability to first lean forward and see the smallest inhabitants of the Earth; to hover there, and then to leap back at the speed of thought to conceptualize the entire planet. Lean forward, then stand back. This inner movement, this seeing from soil to space, marked a unique scientific endeavor.
This perspective was earned only through walking through diverse areas of study -- geology, genetics, biology, chemistry, literature, embryology, paleontology. Those fields, are sometimes separated by an untraversed distance at universities: they are housed in separate buildings which may as well be different worlds. In Margulis, they found agreement and discussion with each other; they were reconnected, just as they are intrinsically connected in nature.
This journey led her to emphasize in all her scientific work two phenomena -- the fusing of distinct beings into a single being: symbiosis; and the interaction of organisms and their environments to create relational "loops" that led to regulation of many Earth systems: Gaia Theory.
Taken separately these concepts have the ability to redefine, respectively, how we understand organisms and the environment.
Taken together, they can redefine our consciousness.
By CNu at December 19, 2011 1 comments
Labels: as above-so below , symbiosis
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
infection link to mental illness...,
Then, a week after Brody became ill, he awoke one morning to find his world was no longer safe. Paranoid about germs and obsessed with cleanliness, he refused to touch things and showered several times a day. His fear prevented him from attending school, and he insisted on wearing nothing but a sheet or demanding that his mother microwave his clothes or heat them in the dryer before dressing.
So began a horrific battle with a sudden-onset mental illness that was diagnosed as pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorder associated with streptococcus, or PANDAS. The puzzling name describes children who have obsessive-compulsive disorder that occurs suddenly — and often dramatically — within days or weeks of a simple infection, such as strep throat.
"He washed his hands over and over and was using hand-sanitizer nonstop," said Tracy Kennedy, who has home-schooled her 11-year-old son since early November. "He had never been like this before. Ever. He just woke up with it."
The bizarre illness, first recognized in the mid-1990s, has been cloaked in controversy. Now, however, studies are reinforcing the belief that some psychiatric illnesses can be triggered by ordinary infections and the body's immune response. While the theory remains unproved, the research raises the possibility that some cases of mental illness might be cured by treating the immune system dysfunction.
"Some people get sick with whatever infection, and they recover and they're fine," says M. Karen Newell Rogers, an immunologist at Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine in Temple, Texas, who studies such illnesses. "Other people get sick and recover, but they are not the same."
PANDAS is thought to be caused by antibodies generated as a result of an infection, usually strep. Normally, an infection causes the body to generate antibodies that fight the infection and promote healing. But in PANDAS, the antibody response is thought to go awry, attacking brain cells and resulting in OCD symptoms.
A greater understanding of the link between strep and OCD has opened the door to the study of other psychiatric or neurological illnesses that may be linked to improper immune response, including cases of autism, schizophrenia and anorexia.
By CNu at December 06, 2011 0 comments
Labels: symbiosis , What IT DO Shawty...
Thursday, November 03, 2011
levels of symbiotic cooperation previously unknown...,
By CNu at November 03, 2011 1 comments
Labels: symbiosis , What IT DO Shawty...
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
told you so...,
Our own symbionts, the microbes that reside throughout our bodies, primarily in our guts, have a more independent—some might say downright rocky—relationship with us, their hosts.
Although gut bacteria have long been called commensal (in which only one party derives benefit, but neither is harmed), it is now clear that we draw many benefits from their colonization of our body, some of them essential to our health. Our relationship with gut bacteria is complicated, however. While involved in metabolizing food into energy, producing micronutrients, and shaping our immune systems, gut microbes are also increasingly being linked to medical conditions including obesity, inflammatory bowel disease, and diabetes. And our understanding of their influence continues to widen: these bacteria may play a critical role in cancer, either protecting us from it, or in some cases, promoting its initiation and progression.
By CNu at August 16, 2011 0 comments
Labels: co-evolution , symbiosis
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