time to rethink genetics

Physorg | For years, genes have been considered the one and only way biological traits could be passed down through generations of organisms. Not anymore. For years, genes have been considered the one and only way biological traits could be passed down through generations of organisms. Not anymore.

Increasingly, biologists are finding that non-genetic variation acquired during the life of an organism can sometimes be passed on to offspring -- a phenomenon known as epigenetic inheritance. An article forthcoming in the July issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology lists over 100 well-documented cases of epigenetic inheritance between generations of organisms, and suggests that non-DNA inheritance happens much more often than scientists previously thought.

Biologists have suspected for years that some kind of epigenetic inheritance occurs at the cellular level. The different kinds of cells in our bodies provide an example. Skin cells and brain cells have different forms and functions, despite having exactly the same DNA. There must be mechanisms—other than DNA—that make sure skin cells stay skin cells when they divide.

Only recently, however, have researchers begun to find molecular evidence of non-DNA inheritance between organisms as well as between cells. The main question now is: How often does it happen?

"The analysis of these data shows that epigenetic inheritance is ubiquitous …," write Eva Jablonka and Gal Raz, both of Tel-Aviv University in Israel. Their article outlines inherited epigenetic variation in bacteria, protists, fungi, plants, and animals.

These findings "represent the tip of a very large iceberg," the authors say.

For example, Jablonka and Raz cite a study finding that when fruit flies are exposed to certain chemicals, at least 13 generations of their descendants are born with bristly outgrowths on their eyes. Another study found that exposing a pregnant rat to a chemical that alters reproductive hormones leads to generations of sick offspring. Yet another study shows higher rates of heart disease and diabetes in the children and grandchildren of people who were malnourished in adolescence.

In these cases, as well as the rest of the cases Jablonka and Raz cite, the source of the variation in subsequent generations was not DNA. Rather, the new traits were carried on through epigenetic means.

More information: Eva Jablonka and Gal Raz, "Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance: Prevalence, Mechanisms, and Implications for the Study of Heredity and Evolution," The Quarterly Review of Biology, June 2009.

one final bubble - then war

LewRockwell | The biggest financial bubble in history is being inflated in plain sight. This is the Mother of All Bubbles, and when it explodes, it will signal the end to the boom/bust cycle that has characterized economic activity throughout the developed world. Either unwilling or unable to call the bubble by its proper name, the media, Washington, and Wall Street describe the stupendous government expenditures on rescue packages, stimulus plans, buyouts, and takeovers as emergency measures needed to salvage the severely damaged economy.

All of this terminology is econo-jargon. It's like calling torture "enhanced interrogation techniques." Washington is inflating the biggest bubble ever: the Bailout Bubble. This is much bigger than the Dot-com and Real Estate bubbles which hit speculators, investors, and financiers the hardest. However destructive the effects of these busts on employment, savings and productivity, the Free Market Capitalist framework was left intact. But when the Bailout Bubble explodes, the system goes with it.

The economic framework of the United States has been restructured. Federal interventionist policies have given the government equity stakes, executive powers and management control of what was once private enterprise. To finance these buyouts, rescue and stimulus packages – instead of letting failed businesses fail and bankrupt banks and bandit brokerages go bankrupt – trillions of dollars are being injected into the stricken economy.

Phantom dollars, printed out of thin air, backed by nothing ... and producing next to nothing ... defines the Bailout Bubble. Just as with the other bubbles, so too will this one burst. But unlike Dot-com and Real Estate, when the Bailout Bubble pops, neither the President nor the Federal Reserve will have the fiscal fixes or monetary policies available to inflate another. With no more massive economic bubbles left to blow up, they'll set their sights on bigger targets. Given the pattern of governments to parlay egregious failures into mega-failures, the classic trend they follow, when all else fails, is to take their nation to war. Since the Bailout Bubble is neither called nor recognized as a bubble, its sudden and spectacular explosion will create chaos. A panicked public will readily accept any Washington/Wall Street/Main Stream Media alibi that shifts the blame for the catastrophe away from the policy makers and onto some scapegoat.

At this time we are not forecasting a war. However, the trends in play are ominous. While we cannot pinpoint precisely when the Bailout Bubble will burst, we are certain it will. When it does, it should be understood that a major war could follow.

society of sloth - (technocracy?)

Warsocialism | THE ONE-AND-ONLY HUMANE SOLUTION: Mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon; a global system of coercion – laws, police, punishments and rewards. In principle, the global commons can only be managed at the global level by people who understand the physical systems involved: scientists. Global coercion can be seen in the worldwide reactions to ozone depletion and global warming. Besides laws and paychecks, coercion can take many forms:

“It is not necessary to construct a theory of intentional cultural control. In truth, the strength of the control process rests in its apparent absence. The desired systemic result is achieved ordinarily by a loose though effective institutional process. It utilizes the education of journalists and other media professionals, built-in penalties and rewards for doing what is expected, norms presented as objective rules, and the occasional but telling direct intrusion from above. The main lever is the internalization of values.”

Step one would be to establish a global government of some sort with the authority to protect the global commons – our life-support system – as well as protecting universal human rights. This government would also oversee the “clean” manufacturing of “repairable” and “reusable” energy-efficient appliances and transportation systems. It would also insure the sustainable production of staples like wheat, rice, oats, and fish.

Does this new global government sound repressive or restrictive? Not at all! A great deal of freedom is possible – in fact, far more than we have now.

toxic textbooks helped cause the economic meltdown

The current economic meltdown is not the result of natural causes or human conspiracy, but because society at all levels became infected with false beliefs regarding the nature of economic reality. And the primary sources of this infection are the “neoclassical” or “mainstream” textbooks long used in introductory economics courses in universities throughout the world.

A new movement (its manifesto is at the bottom of this message) is being launched to encourage universities and schools to use economics textbooks that engage honestly with the real world.

Recently several prominent economists, including Hodgson and Keen, have publicly called for worldwide student protest to help bring about serious change in academic economics, especially in teaching. Although the circumstances for this have never been so favourable, the problem is how to get protest started up to the point where it becomes self-sustaining and nationally and internationally contagious.

To this end a website www.toxictextbooks.com has been set up and, more importantly, also a Facebook group named Toxic Textbooks. The Facebook group is intended to provide the means by which students and others can organize themselves and spread the word.

Three or four minutes, literally, of help from each of you will give this movement a big kick start. I imagine that most of you, like myself until a few days ago, have had no experience with Facebook. But the thinking is: if it worked for Obama, it might also work for us.

Most of you are teachers of economics rather than students, and, true, this Facebook group is more likely to be run on the contributions of the many students who we hope will join it. But seeding it and legitimising protest by students is a very important role.

Joining Facebook and then the group is dead easy. Click facebook.com. Now all you need to give them is your name, email address and date of birth, which if you request, as I did, they promise not to reveal. Skip the optional rest (no photo required), click and you are signed up – two minutes.

Now to join Toxic Textbooks, click on "View and edit your profile". At the very bottom of the screen there should be a toolbar labelled "Applications". Click on the first icon to the right, a pair of heads, and this takes you to Groups. In the "Search for Groups" box at the top of the page type in Toxic Textbooks and click. A Toxic Textbooks rectangle should appear with a "Join Group" box on right. Click it, and then click "join" again and that's it.

foundations of war with china

NYTimes | Historical injustice aside, the Chinese also insisted that they should not be held responsible for the greenhouse gases they emit when producing goods for foreign consumers. But they refused to accept the logical implication of this view — that the burden should fall on those foreign consumers instead, that shoppers who buy Chinese products should pay a “carbon tariff” that reflects the emissions associated with those goods’ production. That, said the Chinese, would violate the principles of free trade.

Sorry, but the climate-change consequences of Chinese production have to be taken into account somewhere. And anyway, the problem with China is not so much what it produces as how it produces it. Remember, China now emits more carbon dioxide than the United States, even though its G.D.P. is only about half as large (and the United States, in turn, is an emissions hog compared with Europe or Japan).

The good news is that the very inefficiency of China’s energy use offers huge scope for improvement. Given the right policies, China could continue to grow rapidly without increasing its carbon emissions. But first it has to realize that policy changes are necessary.

There are hints, in statements emanating from China, that the country’s policy makers are starting to realize that their current position is unsustainable. But I suspect that they don’t realize how quickly the whole game is about to change.

As the United States and other advanced countries finally move to confront climate change, they will also be morally empowered to confront those nations that refuse to act. Sooner than most people think, countries that refuse to limit their greenhouse gas emissions will face sanctions, probably in the form of taxes on their exports. They will complain bitterly that this is protectionism, but so what? Globalization doesn’t do much good if the globe itself becomes unlivable.

It’s time to save the planet. And like it or not, China will have to do its part.

economic manhattan project

crisis opinions of the elite

In a speech delivered at Columbia Business School, Jeffrey D. Sachs discusses outcomes of the recent G-20 economic summit and what can be done to calm the effects of the global financial crisis on the world's poorest. Sachs is the Director of the Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University.

01. Examining the Economic Crisis 02 min 44 sec

02. Poverty, Scarcity, and Other Global Crises 03 min 54 sec

03. The Interrelation of Global Crises 02 min 25 sec

04. Crisis 1: The Economic Crisis 02 min 27 sec

05. Causes of the Crisis 03 min 47 sec

06. Failings of Greenspan's Monetary Policy 04 min 51 sec

07. Lead-Up to the Current Economic Collapse 02 min 42 sec

08. The Collapse and Its Aftermath 03 min 35 sec

09. The Loss of Bank Capital 02 min 53 sec

10. Problems with the Current Stimulus Package 01 min 56 sec

11. Crisis 2: Corruption, Deregulation, and Poverty 02 min 25 sec

12. How Wall Street Controls Washington 03 min 22 sec

13. Growing Gap Between Rich and Poor in America 02 min 15 sec

14. American Greed and Global Poverty 03 min 43 sec

15. Crisis 3: Global Warming 05 min 22 sec

16. Failings of the G20 04 min 36 sec

17. The Lack of True Reform 03 min 14 sec

Full Program 56 min 19 sec

who rules america?

Creators Syndicate | What do you suppose it is like to be elected president of the United States only to find that your power is restricted to the service of powerful interest groups?

A president who does a good job for the ruling interest groups is paid off with remunerative corporate directorships, outrageous speaking fees and a lucrative book contract. If he is young when he assumes office, like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, it means a long life of luxurious leisure.

Fighting the special interests doesn't pay and doesn't succeed. On April 30, the primacy of special over public interests was demonstrated yet again. The Democrats' bill to prevent 1.7 million mortgage foreclosures — and, thus, preserve $300 billion in home equity by permitting homeowners to renegotiate their mortgages — was defeated in the Senate, despite the 60-vote majority of the Democrats. The banksters were able to defeat the bill 51 to 45.

These are the same financial gangsters whose unbridled greed and utter irresponsibility have wiped out half of Americans' retirement savings, sent the economy into a deep hole and threatened the U.S. dollar's reserve currency role. It is difficult to imagine an interest group with a more damaged reputation. Yet, a majority of "the people's representatives" voted as the discredited banksters instructed.

Hundreds of billions of public dollars have gone to bail out the banksters, but when some Democrats tried to get the Senate to do a mite for homeowners, the U.S. Senate stuck with the banks. The Senate's motto is: "Hundreds of billions for the banksters, not a dime for homeowners."

If Obama was naive about well-intentioned change before the vote, he no longer has this political handicap.

little brown shirts

NYTimes | The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”

The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters,” like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.

“Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,” a Border Patrol agent explained. “I guarantee that he’ll shut up.”

One participant, Felix Arce, 16, said he liked “the discipline of the program,” which was something he said his life was lacking. “I want to be a lawyer, and this teaches you about how crimes are committed,” he said.

Cathy Noriego, also 16, said she was attracted by the guns. The group uses compressed-air guns — known as airsoft guns, which fire tiny plastic pellets — in the training exercises, and sometimes they shoot real guns on a closed range.

“I like shooting them,” Cathy said. “I like the sound they make. It gets me excited.”

end "drug" war now

HuffPo | Sen. Jim Webb has introduced legislation, with co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle, to create a blue-ribbon commission to examine criminal justice and drug policies and how they have led to our nation's jam-packed jails -- now filled with tens of thousands of nonviolent drug offenders.

"With so many of our citizens in prison compared with the rest of the world," Webb wrote in a recent Parade cover story, "there are only two possibilities: Either we are home to the most evil people on earth or we are doing something different--and vastly counterproductive. Obviously, the answer is the latter."

I understand that drugs continue to be a political hot potato, fueled by what the Latin American presidents described as "prejudices and fears that sometimes bear little relation to reality." And I can easily picture some on the president's team advising him to keep the issue on the backburner lest it turn into his "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

But the cost of the drug war -- both human and financial -- is far too high to allow politics to dictate the administration's actions. Indeed, with all the budget cutting going on, how can anyone justify spending tens of billions of dollars a year on an unwinnable war against our own people?

Change won't be easy. The prison-industrial complex has a deeply vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Which is why we need to keep the pressure on the president and his team to follow through on their drug policy promises.

As with the regulation of Wall Street, real reform of our nation's drugs policies won't happen without someone in the administration making it a top priority.

cuba's undersea oil

WaPo | Deep in the Gulf of Mexico, an end to the 1962 U.S. trade embargo against Cuba may be lying untapped, buried under layers of rock, seawater and bitter relations.

Oil, up to 20 billion barrels of it, sits off Cuba's northwest coast in territorial waters, according to the Cuban government -- enough to turn the island into the Qatar of the Caribbean. At a minimum, estimates by the U.S. Geological Survey place Cuba's potential deep-water reserves at 4.6 billion barrels of oil and 9.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, stores that would rank the island among the region's top producers.

Drilling operations by foreign companies in Cuban waters are still in the exploratory stage, and significant obstacles -- technological and political -- stand between a U.S.-Cuba rapprochement eased by oil. But as the Obama administration gestures toward improved relations with the Castro government, the national security, energy and economic benefits of Cuban crude may make it a powerful incentive for change.

Limited commercial ties between U.S. businesses and the island's communist government have been quietly expanding this decade as Cuban purchases of U.S. goods -- mostly food -- have increased from $7 million in 2001 to $718 million in 2008, according to census data.

Thawing relations could eventually open up U.S. investment in mining, agriculture, tourism and other sectors of Cuba's tattered economy. But the prospect of major offshore reserves that would be off-limits to U.S. companies and consumers has some Cuba experts arguing that 21st-century energy needs should prevail over 20th-century Cold War politics.

will designer brains divide humanity

NewScientist | Today, our minds are even more fluid and open to enhancement due to what Merlin Donald of Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, calls "superplasticity", the ability of each mind to plug into the minds and experiences of countless others through culture or technology. "I'm not saying it's a 'group mind', as each mind is sealed," he says. "But cognition can be distributed, embedded in a huge cultural system, and technology has produced a huge multiplier effect." In other words, humans already have minds evolving beyond anything seen before in history.

The next stage of brainpower enhancement could be technological - through genetic engineering or brain prostheses. Because the gene variants pivotal to intellectual brilliance have yet to be discovered, boosting brainpower by altering genes may still be some way off, or even impossible. Prostheses are much closer, especially as the technology for wiring brains into computers is already being tested (see "Dawn of the cyborgs"). Indeed, futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil believes the time when humans merge with machines will arrive as early as 2045 (New Scientist, 9 May, p 26).

It won't be long before "clip-on" computer aids become available for everybody, says Andy Clark, a pro-enhancement philosopher at the University of Edinburgh in the UK. These could be anything from memory aids to the ability to "search" for information stored in your brain. "We'll get a flowering of brain augmentations, some seeping through from the disabled community," he says. "I see them becoming fashion items, a bit like choosing clothing." Clark says that even today, devices such as head-up displays on spectacles or simply being adept at using computer programs like Photoshop come close to being physical extensions of people's minds.

Malafouris also believes such augmentation is the next logical stage in human development. "If we accept that tool use was part of the reason we came to develop language, then why should we perceive neuro-engineering as a threat rather than as the new stone industry of the 21st century?"

Not everyone thinks this is a good idea, however. Dieter Birnbacher, a philosopher at the University of Düsseldorf in Germany, says there are risks in technological self-improvement that could jeopardise human dignity. One potential problem arises from altering what we consider to be "normal": the dangers are similar to the social pressure to conform to idealised forms of beauty, physique or sporting ability that we see today.

People without enhancement could come to see themselves as failures, have lower self-esteem or even be discriminated against by those whose brains have been enhanced, Birnbacher says. He stops short of saying that enhancement could "split" the human race, pointing out that society already tolerates huge inequity in access to existing enhancement tools such as books and education.

The perception that some people are giving themselves an unfair advantage over everyone else by "enhancing" their brains would be socially divisive, says John Dupré at the University of Exeter, UK. "Anyone can read to their kids or play them music, but put a piece of software in their heads, and that's seen as unfair," he says. As Dupré sees it, the possibility of two completely different human species eventually developing is "a legitimate worry".

moscow warns of future energy wars

War games show that the capacity to wage war effectively will be constrained by resource depletion. Because of this fact, some state will seek the "advantage" of carrying out sooner and pre-emptively what's inevitably beyond that signpost up ahead.

Al Jazeera | Russia has warned that military conflicts over energy resources could erupt along its borders in the near future, as the race to secure oil and gas reserves gains momentum.

A Kremlin policy paper, which maps out Russia's main challenges to national security for the next decade, said "problems that involve the use of military force cannot be excluded" in competition for resources.

The National Security Strategy's release coincides with a deadline for countries around the world to submit sea bed ownership claims to a United Nations commission, including for the resource-rich Arctic.

The paper, signed off by Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's president, says international relations in the next 10 years will be shaped by battles over energy reserves.

"The attention of international politics in the long-term perspective will be concentrated on the acquisition of energy resources," it said. "Amid competitive struggle for resources, attempts to use military force to solve emerging problems can't be excluded.

"The existing balance of forces near the borders of the Russian Federation and its allies can be violated," it added.

The document said regions including the Middle East, the Barents Sea, the Arctic, the Caspian Sea and Central Asia could all be at the centre of competing claims for resources.

Russia, the world's biggest natural gas producer, has already accused the United States, with which it shares a small sea border, of coveting its mineral wealth.

But Moscow is also finding its control over natural gas exports under threat, as the European Union seeks alternative supply routes that would bypass Russia and the Ukraine.

The country is also embroiled in a territorial dispute with Norway over claims to the Arctic sea bed, where around 25 per cent of the world's untapped reserves are believed to lie underneath the ice.

ambassador to cuba?

jesus of suburbia

BurningPlatform | Beneath the finely groomed blissful suburban façade of America lurk desperation, denial, hypocrisy, and anger. The kids of suburbia today have an entirely different reality than the suburbs I grew up in during the 1970’s. The Ozzie & Harriet idealized version of suburbia from the 1950’s has degenerated to the Green Day nightmare vision of today. The suburbs have mansion-like homes with spotless interiors, entertainment centers, three car garages, manicured lawns, and no soul. The children of suburbia have been brought up on soda pop and Ritalin. They come home to empty mansions, as both parents must work to pay for the glorious abode. Our homes have gotten bigger and better, while our lives have gotten smaller and less satisfying. One third of all children in the United States are growing up in a single parent household. Many kids feel angry and disconnected from their families, friends and home. Fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce. The kids feel rage and hopelessness at their existence in a suburban nightmare. There are 2 million children who take Ritalin every day. Is this because they truly have ADHD, or it is the painless way out for overstressed suburban parents?

My parents both grew up in South Philly. My Dad had a good secure job with Atlantic Richfield and they took the leap to the 1st ring of suburbs outside of Philadelphia in 1955. They bought a 1,120 sq ft row home in Collingdale for $10,000. It had 3 small bedrooms and one small bathroom. They raised three kids (and three dogs) in this home and my Mother still lives there today. I shared (not happily) a 100 sq ft room with my brother and when I was six, the boogeyman who lived under the bed. We had a double bed, two bureaus, a nightstand, a bookshelf and a desk for studying in this room. When I walk in the room today, I wonder how we possibly shared this small space. Prisoners at Guantanamo have more space. In the summer, with no air conditioner upstairs, I’m sure it got as hot as a Guantanamo prison cell. The walls were so thin between row homes I knew what the people next door were thinking. People never moved. We were a neighborhood where everyone knew everyone. You could depend on your neighbors. There were cookouts, holiday parties, and you could ask your neighbor for a cup of sugar. If your son (me) fell through the basement stairs and cracked his head open on the concrete floor, a neighbor would drive him to the hospital. The fathers went to work. Mothers worked at home, because they could. Mothers were there when the kids arrived home from school. No one was divorced in our neighborhood. All the kids went to the same school. No one was diagnosed with ADHD. I cut our lawn with a manual push mower. Times have surely changed. Bigger hasn’t translated into better over the decades.

the real "inconvenient" truth

Oil Drum | On American Sustainability—Anatomy of a Societal Collapse (Summary)

Most Americans believe that we are “exceptional”—both as a society and as a species. We believe that America was ordained through divine providence to be the societal role model for the world. And we believe that through our superior intellect, we can harness and even conquer Nature in our continuous quest to improve the material living standards associated with our ever-increasing population.

The truth is that our pioneering predecessors drifted, quite by accident, upon a veritable treasure trove of natural resources and natural habitats, which they wrested by force from the native inhabitants, and which we have persistently overexploited in order to create and perpetuate our American way of life. The truth is that through our “divine ordination” and “superior intellect”, we have been persistently and systematically eliminating the very resources upon which our way of life and our existence depend.

We now find ourselves in a “predicament”. We are irreparably overextended—living hopelessly beyond our means ecologically and economically—at a time when the supplies of many critical resources upon which we depend will soon be insufficient to enable our American way of life. We are about to discover that we are simply another unsustainable society subject to the inescapable consequence of our unsustainable resource utilization behavior—societal collapse.

bdsm mormons got PAID under W...,

Der Spiegel | CIA Outsourced Development of Interrogation Plan

The torture practices used in interrogations of al-Qaida prisoners were not developed by government officials in Washington, but by private security experts. In return for a daily consulting fee, they personally supervised the program at the CIA's secret prisons from the very beginning.

James Mitchell's new life begins with the same ritual every morning: He goes jogging, wearing Adidas shorts and a black tank top, his iPod in his ear. Then he gets into his luxury SUV and drives back to luxury home on Lake Vienna Drive in Pasco County, Florida.

The hacienda-style house, with a natural stone façade, columned walkways and palm trees in front of the door is brand-new. Mitchell has just had it built, in the midst of an upscale, gated community.

The freestanding garage to the right of the house is big enough for three or four cars, and a mountain bike is mounted to the back of the SUV. Mitchell, a tanned man in his late 50s with silver-gray hair, a neatly trimmed beard and trendy sunglasses, spends two hours a day exercising. In fact, exercise plays an important role in his new life under Florida's blue skies.

Mitchell is the man who, on the behalf of the administration of former President George W. Bush, developed the rules of the program that was somewhat shamefacedly referred to as "special interrogation techniques" and was authorized by the president in the summer of 2002. In truth, Mitchell developed a torture manual. His client was the CIA. The American foreign intelligence agency has engaged in its own share of dubious practices over the years, activities it initially treated as praiseworthy and would later come to bitterly regret. But now it has become clear that the CIA, ironically enough, outsourced its torture practices in interrogations during the darkest years of the Bush administration. It entrusted the development and supervision of these interrogations to a private security firm run by James Mitchell and his partner, Bruce Jessen.

The two psychologists, who had never even conducted an interrogation before -- in other words, two amateurs -- were largely responsible for developing the CIA's prisoner interrogation program. The recently published report of the Committee on Armed Services of the US Senate came out with new proof and details about this collaboration, ABC News succeeded in filming both Jessen and Mitchell who both refused to answer any questions concerning their past saying that they were not allow to speak about it.

swarm savvy

ScienceNews | “There is a new excitement in this whole field of decision making these days,” says ant biologist Nigel Franks of the University of Bristol in England. Franks and Seeley organized a multidisciplinary conference on collective decision making held in January at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. And both biologists contributed to a special issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (March 27) on the same topic. The issue considers insects as well as the European Parliament.

Even compared with gatherings of diplomats in bespoke suits, bee nests and ant colonies have plenty to contribute to the field. “The really lovely thing is that we can take these things apart and put them back together again, and we can challenge them with different problems,” Franks says. Seeley notes that studying honeybees has taught him a lot about how to run faculty meetings.

All but the darkest view of university professors credits them with more cognitive power than can be found in the minuscule brains (sorry, bees) of insects. So one might wonder how well collective wisdom works for nonhuman animals.

That question is what makes the research so intriguing. Bee colonies have been making collective decisions for about 30 million years, Seeley says, “so they’ve had lots of chances for failing systems to get pruned out by natural selection.” Bees have unique needs of course, but when it comes to real estate (alas, humans), bees almost always get it right.

the american dream is dying

The Trumpet | The American dream is fading. For many Americans, the idea is this: Simply survive. The borrow-and-spend-your-way-to-happiness model has evaporated. Now the harsh light of economic reality is pouring through the windows.

In its latest “Study of the American Dream” survey, MetLife reports that the country has “experienced major changes” that will likely leave “a lasting impact on how Americans achieve and sustain the dream.” The American dream has “once again been revised—possibly to a greater extent than could have been imagined just one year ago.”

Where previous generations generally defined the American dream as a combination of a good family life, home ownership, and a degree of financial security, the 2009 study found that the Americans dream now consists of an almost singular focus on financial security.

Paying the bills and putting food on the table has become the main concern for growing numbers of Americans. And more Americans define the dream not as a destination, but as a “never-ending chase.” The report’s executive summary states:

Across generations, the economic crisis has been a loud wake-up call for consumers. Economic concerns that arose in 2007—e.g., savings, job security, retirement shortfalls—have expanded dramatically over the past 12 months; cracks in the foundation of the American dream have worsened considerably. Concerns about the health of the American economy, inadequate personal safety nets and the erosion of corporate and social safety nets have left major portions of the American public—across all socio and economic demographics—exposed to financial hardship (possibly even ruin) on a scale not seen in most Americans’ lifetimes.

Americans are living on the edge. Half of those surveyed said they could only meet their financial obligations for one month if they were to lose their job. Almost 28 percent said they could not even last two weeks.

A whopping 72 percent of America’s population says it doesn’t have enough savings to last more than three months.

music and genetic code

Concerning to interesting theme on music, I would like to pay attention on physiological aspects of music and their connection with genetic code.

From the information viewpoint, living organisms are information essences. They live due to receiving of the genetic information from the ancestors, and they exist to transfer the genetic information to their descendants. In the biological literature it is possible quite often now to meet the statement that living organisms are the texts since a molecular level of their organization. Just from the information-hereditary viewpoint, all living organisms are unified wonderfully: all of them have identical bases of system of genetic coding (from many other possible viewpoints - for example, locomotion, metabolisms, etc -, living organisms have no such unification, they are differ one from another in many cases).

All heritable physiological aspects of living organisms are co-ordinated with basic structures of genetic code (heritable physiological subsystems of organism can’t be transmitted to next biological generations without such agreement with basic mechanisms of genetic coding).

It’s well known, that special musical forms have essential physiological possibilities to stimulate processes of biological growth, to have therapy effects, etc. So, it can be supposed, that these musical forms are connected (co-ordinated) with genetic coding system structurally. And interesting question is the following: on the base of using of our modern scientific knowledge of structures of genetic code, can we create musical forms which will be else more effective in physiological aspects to use them in the field of mass media, medicine, ergonomics, sport, etc?

My own investigations in this direction are connected with new results on genetic code structures. These results are described at the FIS site http://fis.iguw.tuwien.ac.at/recources/papers.html in my article “Genetic
Code and the Ancient Chinese “Book of Changes”” . An existence of binary sub-alphabets of genetic code was shown and a biperiodic octet table of 64 genetic triplets was constructed by me there. This genetic biperiodic table was coincided practically with a historical famous table of 64 hexagrams of the Ancient Chinese “Book of Changes””, written several thousands years ago (according to Ancient Chinese statements, the system of this Book is the main archetype of all nature; this system is a base for many branches of Orient medicine, culture, philosophy, etc.). If “physiological music” has a connection with genetic code, the question on its connection with this ancient conception of archetypes is urgent. According to Ancient Chinese statements, “music is that that represents a harmony of sky and earth, a co-ordination of Yin and Yang” (“Lui shi chun tsu”).

Some of these questions are considered in a special paragraph “Genetic code and music» in my book: S.V.Petoukhov “Biperiodic Table of Genetic Code and Number of Protons”, Moscow, 2001, 258 p. (in Russian; information on this book, on its content, etc. in English is at site http://members.tripod.com/vismath/sg/petoukhov.htm ).

I believe that binary sub-alphabets of genetic code and its biperiodic table permit to investigate a language of music more deeply and to create special forms of musical compositions characterized by the most physiological activity (so named “genetic music” or “genomusic”). Perhaps, due to its structural relationship with genetic code, this genetic music will be addressed to Jungian archetypes of people by the shortest route. (By the way, Carl Jung was connoisseur and profound expert of this “Book of Changes”, and the biperiodic table of genetic code has a connection with Jungian archetypes).

This theme of “genetic structured” music is a small addition to very interesting works by Juan Roederer è Michael Leyton, discussed on this session. In my opinion, physiological mechanisms and mathematical formalisms, analyzed by them for a theory of musical perception, should be coordinated (adjusted) with the specific structure of genetic code. The biological evolution can be interpreted in a whole as a process of deployment and duplicating of the certain forms of ordering (they can be named as “archetypes”). This thesis has a realization in physiological effective music also.

With best regards
Sergei Petoukhov

information and music

Here you can find links to mails from the FIS mailing list sorted by discussion themes. This page will not always be up to date, so if you want to read new mails from the complete mailing list, choose one of the links on the left.

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Music Session

• [Fis] music session Pedro C. Marijuan
• [Fis] Music Session, kickoff text Juan G Roederer
• Re: [Fis] Music Session, kickoff text Pedro C. Marijuan
• [Fis] Reply to Pedro Juan G Roederer
• Re: [Fis] Music Session, kickoff text Pedro C. Marijuan
• Re: [Fis] Reply to Pedro Luis Serra
• Re: [Fis] Reply to Pedro Jerry LR Chandler
• Re: [Fis] Reply to Luis Michael Leyton

music between worlds

Roederer | Speech and music both involve the transmission of information by acoustic waves—air pressure oscillations within given ranges of frequency and amplitude. We have a clear understanding of what kind of information is conveyed by human speech, and strategies and algorithms are being developed to configure electromagnetic signals that may allow an alien intelligence to learn about human language and its relation to events in the environment and abstract things like numbers. Similar considerations apply to our strategies and algorithms to find out about the possible existence of linguistic communication in other civilizations. But what kind of biologically relevant information is conveyed by music? From our subjective experience we know that it has to do with feelings, i.e., the emotional states of the organism—but how do we explain this to an alien civilization? And how do we look for interstellar messages that may carry information on emotional states of extraterrestrial beings?

A related aspect difficult to convey as an interstellar message is the fact that, in contrast to speech, music seems to serve no immediate “practical” purpose (this, of course, is common to all expressions of art). Again, we know from experience that an important purpose of music is emotional arousal. But can we explain why we respond emotionally to successions and superpositions of tones which seem to have little relationship with environmental events, current or in our evolutionary past? And if we do have an answer, how would we formulate it in an interstellar message? Must we assume that musical feelings are such a ubiquitous attribute of intelligent beings that our message would be understood at once?

The purpose of this chapter is to analyze “music” as a human endeavor in the most comprehensive, objective and scientific terms possible, and to argue on neuroscientific grounds that musical arts may indeed be ubiquitous in civilizations exhibiting human-like intelligence.

music: complex shapes and memory stores?

Leyton | The book A Generative Theory of Shape (Michael Leyton, Springer-Verlag, 2001) develops new foundations to geometry in which shape is equivalent to memory storage. With respect to this, the argument is given that art-works are maximal memory stores. The present paper reviews some of the basic principles concerning our claim that, in particular, musical works are maximal memory stores. The argument is that maximizing memory storage explains the structure of musical works.

We first review the basic geometric theory of the book: A generative theory of shape is developed that has two properties regarded as fundamental to intelligence – maximization of transfer and maximization of recoverability. Aesthetic structuration is taken to be equivalent to intelligence. Thus aesthetics is brought into the very foundations of the new theory of geometry. A mathematical theory of transfer and recoverability is developed, using symmetry-breaking wreath products.

From this, it becomes possible to develop a theory of musical composition, as follows:

Musical works are complex shapes.

A theory of complex-shape generation is presented, in which any structure is described as unfolded from a maximally collapsed version of that structure, called an alignment kernel. This process is formalized by proposing a new class of groups called unfolding groups. The alignment kernel is a subgroup of that structure, consisting of symmetry ground-states which are themselves formalized by a new class of groups called iso-regular groups. In music, the iso-regular groups represent the anticipation hierarchies, for example the regular meters of the work. The process of musical composition is then described by an unfolding group, which "unfolds" the work, by successively breaking the iso-regular groups of the alignment kernel.

dry taps in mexico city

Time | The reek of unwashed toilets spilled into the street in the neighborhood of unpainted cinder block houses. Out on the main road, hundreds of residents banged plastic buckets and blocked the path of irate drivers while children scoured the surrounding area for government trucks. Finally, the impatient crowd launched into a high-pitched chant, repeating one word at fever pitch: "Water, Water, Water!"

About five million people, or a quarter of the population of Mexico City's urban sprawl, woke up Thursday with dry taps. The drought was caused by the biggest stoppage in the city's main reservoir system in recent years to ration its depleting supplies. Government officials hope this and four other stoppages will keep water flowing until the summer rainy season fills the basins back up. But they warn that the Mexican capital needs to seriously overhaul its water system to stop an unfathomable disaster in the future. (See pictures of the world water crisis.)

It is perhaps unsurprising that the biggest metropolis in the Western hemisphere is confronting problems with its water supply — and becoming an alarming cautionary tale for other megacities. Scientists have been talking for years about how humans are pumping up too much water while ripping apart too many forests, and warning that the vital liquid could become the next commodity nations are fighting over with tanks and bombers. But it is hard for most people to appreciate quite how valuable a simple thing like water is — until the taps turn off.

conference of the birds..,

Come you lost Atoms

to your Centre draw,

And be the Eternal Mirror

that you saw:

Rays that have wander'd

into Darkness wide

Return and back

into your Sun subside

the chemist

Wikipedia | Information about Attar's life is rare. He is mentioned by only two of his contemporaries, `Awfi and Nasir ud-Din Tusi. However, all sources confirm that he was from Nishapur, a major city of medieval Khorasan (now located in the northeast of Iran), and according to `Awfi, he was a poet of the Seljuq period. It seems that he was not well known as a poet in his own lifetime, except at his home town, and his greatness as a mystic, a poet, and a master of narrative was not discovered until the 15th century.

`Attar was probably the son of a prosperous chemist, receiving an excellent education in various fields. While his works say little else about his life, they tell us that he practiced the profession of pharmacy and personally attended to a very large number of customers.[1] The people he helped in the pharmacy used to confide their troubles in `Attar and this affected him deeply. Eventually, he abandoned his pharmacy store and traveled widely - to Kufa, Mecca, Damascus, Turkistan, and India, meeting with Sufi Shaykhs - and returned promoting Sufi ideas.

`Attar's initiation into Sufi practices is subject to much speculation and fabrication. Of all the famous Sufi Shaykhs supposed to have been his teachers, only one - Majd ud-Din Baghdadi - comes within the bounds of possibility. The only certainty in this regard is `Attar's own statement that he once met him.

In any case it can be taken for granted that from childhood onward `Attar, encouraged by his father, was interested in the Sufis and their sayings and way of life, and regarded their saints as his spiritual guides.

`Attar reached an age of over 70 and died a violent death in the massacre which the Mongols inflicted on Nishabur in April 1221.[1] Today, his mausoleum is located in Nishapur. It was built by Ali-Shir Nava'i in the 16th century.

Like many aspects of his life, his death, too, is blended with legends and speculation.

Attar

Wikipedia | The word 'Attar', 'ittar' or 'othr' is basically an Arabic word which means 'scent'; this in turn is believed to have been derived from the Sanskrit word Sugandha, meaning 'aromatic'. The earliest distillation of Attar was mentioned in the Ayurvedic text Charaka Samhita. The Harshacharita, written in 7th century A.D. in Northern India mentions use of fragrant agarwood oil.

The story of Indian perfumes is as old as the civilization itself. Archaeological evidence shows the earliest inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent held plants in great reverence. With the passage of time, scented oils were extracted by pressing, pulverizing or distilling aromatic vegetal and animal produce. Such processes led to the development of the art of alchemy, the earliest indications of which are available from the perfume jars and terracotta containers of the Indus Valley civilization. That the art has survived for centuries speaks volumes for the Indian perfumes.

Integrated into India's daily life, scented plants are used to celebrate every aspect of Indian culture, from the ritual to the culinary, from the celibate to the erotic. Vedas mentioned a combination of numerous herbs, twigs, barks and flowers as offering to Gods in yagnas.

Archaeological excavations have revealed round copper stills, used for making attars, that are at least five-thousand years old. These stills are called degs. Following the seasons of the flowers, traditional attar-makers, with their degs, traveled all over India to make their attars on-the-spot. Even now, rural areas often lack good roads to quickly transport the harvested flowers, and a few traditional attar-makers still travel with their degs to be close to the harvest. Their equipment has changed little, if at all, in the last five thousand years.

In ancient India, an Attar was prepared by placing precious flowers and sacred plants into a water or vegetable oil. Slowly the plants and flowers would infuse the water/oil with their delicate fragrance. The plant and flower material would then be removed and a symphony of their aromatic beauty would be held in the Attar. These Attars were then worn as a sacred perfume or to anoint.

In Ain-e-Akbari, Abul Fazal, has mentioned that Akbar used ittar daily and burnt incense sticks in gold and silver censers. A princess’s toilette was incomplete without incense and attar. A very popular ittar with the Mughal princes was ood, prepared in Assam.

Ittar is an indigenous product of Kannauj Uttar Pradesh India. According to Mr. Afsar Ali Khan of Nizam Attars Hyderabad India. There is a legend on how the first ittars were made. The forest dwelling Hindu Sadhus, used certain perfumed jungle herbs and roots in their bonfires during the winters. The shepherds who grazed their sheep in that region, found the perfume lingering in the burnt wood, long after the Sadhus left the place. Word spread about this incident and some enterprising people, searched and found the fragrant herbs and roots. Then the experiments on ittar began and one of the first ittars to be made was Rose and Hina.

what does it mean?

NPR | Dancers Are Vocal Mimics

Schachner says the important thing is that, like humans — and unlike dogs or cats — parrots and elephants are both known to be vocal mimics. They can imitate sounds. "And that's really striking," she says.

It means dancing may be a byproduct of an ability that evolved for vocal imitation and vocal learning. After all, to mimic a sound, you have to listen to it and its rhythm and then use that information to coordinate movement — to shape the way you move your lips and tongue.

All of these findings have convinced Tecumseh Fitch, an evolutionary biologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland who is interested in the origin of music.

"The capacity to extract a beat from sound and move your body to it was, until these papers, believed to be uniquely human," he says, adding that if parrots can really dance, all kinds of new experiments are now possible.

"For example, what genes are turned on while a bird is dancing?" wonders Fitch. "What genes are turned on by listening to a beat, versus listening to sounds that don't have a beat?"

And what would happen if a bird never heard any music for the first few years of its life? Could it still dance later on? That would be an interesting study, Fitch says, and one that could never be done on

what is music?

Wired | Knowledge is passed down directly from generation to generation in the animal kingdom as parents teach their children the things they will need to survive. But a new study has found that, even when the chain is broken, nature sometimes finds a way.

Zebra finches, which normally learn their complex courtship songs from their fathers, spontaneously developed the same songs all on their own after only a few generations.

“We found that in this case, the culture was pretty much encoded in the genome,” said Partha Mitra of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, co-author of a study in Nature on Sunday.

Birds transmit their songs through social interactions, as humans do for languages, dances, cuisine and other cultural elements. Though birds and humans have clearly followed different evolutionary paths, birdsong culture can still inform theories of human culture.

Normally, male finches learn their complex courtship songs (MP3) from their uncles and fathers. But if there are no vocal role models around, the song will deviate from the traditional song and be harsh to female finch ears (MP3). Each bird, then, must learn from his father or uncles, as they learned from their fathers, and so on — but this can only take us so far down the lineage.

“It’s the classic ‘chicken and the egg’ puzzle,” Mitra said. “Learning may explain how the son copies its father’s song, but it doesn’t explain the origin of the father’s song.”

Dale one mo gin...,

this time, however, it's a MAJOR node on the dot map. It should go without saying that I find the "culture in the genome" implication a priori ridiculous. Not because I find questions of extended phenotype intrinsically dubious, but instead, because the questions begged by the phenomenon observed are so much deeper and more interesting than the tired trope that these monkeys parroted.

they're part of the biosphere...,

Wired | A virus so large and strange that it’s redefined the very concept of a virus has been photographed for the first time. It’s even weirder than expected.

The virus was originally discovered infecting amoebas in a Parisian water tower in 1992. It was orders of magnitude bigger than any other virus — so large, in fact, that researchers figured it was a microbe.

It took 11 years for the mimivirus to be officially defined as a virus, though the definition didn’t quite fit. In addition to its enormous size, many of its genes came from bacteria. Some researchers called it a “missing link” that blurred the boundaries between viruses and living cells, between living and dead.

“The new structural finds, along with previous genetic and morphological work, confirm that mimivirus is an odd mix of genes and parts found in viruses, bacteria and even eukaryotes, the organisms that sequester their DNA in a nucleus,” write the researchers.

fist tap to Dale.

the art of illusion...,

Wired | The trick is called Looks Simple, and the point is that even a puff on a cigarette, closely examined, can disintegrate into smoke and mirrors. "People take reality for granted," Teller says shortly before stepping onstage. "Reality seems so simple. We just open our eyes and there it is. But that doesn't mean it is simple."

"Tricks work only because magicians know, at an intuitive level, how we look at the world," says Macknik, lead author of the paper. "Even when we know we're going to be tricked, we still can't see it, which suggests that magicians are fooling the mind at a very deep level." By reverse-engineering these deceptions, Macknik hopes to illuminate the mental loopholes that make us see a woman get sawed in half or a rabbit appear out of thin air even when we know such stuff is impossible. "Magicians were taking advantage of these cognitive illusions long before any scientist identified them," Martinez-Conde says.

Fist tap to my man Dale.

preparedness plans in place...,

WaPo | The Bush administration implemented an $8 billion pandemic flu planning program that created a detailed national blueprint and funneled millions of dollars to state and local governments to create and rehearse their own plans.

After the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the World Health Organization instituted measures that heightened the world's ability to identify and respond swiftly to outbreaks. They included international regulations that call for countries to report worrisome outbreaks quickly and a revised pandemic threat alert system, which was ratcheted up quickly last week.

So when reports emerged from Mexico of a new virus that most people might have no immunity against, and that appeared to be spreading easily from person to person and -- in an eerie echo of 1918 -- was killing healthy young adults, the world went on high alert.

"If what was being reported in Mexico played out in the United States and elsewhere, this was a potentially serious epidemic that was getting underway," Inglesby said. "We had to respond quickly."

The reaction has also been influenced by political missteps in previous emergencies, including the mixed messages and poor communication about the 2001 anthrax letters and the slow reaction to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

AP | "If we do move into a pandemic, then our expectation is that we will see a large number of people infected worldwide," Fukuda said. "If you look at past pandemics, it would be a reasonable estimate to say perhaps a third of the world's population would get infected with this virus."

With the current total population of more than 6 billion, that would mean an infection total of 2 billion, he said, but added that the world has changed since pandemics of earlier generations, and experts are unable to predict if the impact will be greater or smaller.

to serve man...,

Reuters | Stephen Friedman, chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank's board of directors, resigned on Thursday amid questions about his purchases of stock in his former firm, Goldman Sachs (GS.N).

Friedman, a retired chairman of Goldman Sachs who has led the New York Fed's board since January 2008, said he quit to prevent criticism about his stock buying from becoming a distraction as the Fed battles a severe U.S. recession.

"Although I have been in compliance with the rules, my public service motivated continuation on the Reserve Bank Board is being mischaracterized as improper," he said in a letter of resignation to New York Fed President William Dudley.

"The Federal Reserve System has important work to do and does not need this distraction," Friedman said.

The U.S. central bank is comprised of a seven-member Board of Governors in Washington, and 12 regional Fed banks.

economic misinformation or bald-faced lying?

Knowing what we know about reduced exploration, precipitous oil-field decline, reduced overall production, and dire workforce sustainability issues - all of which information is in the public domain - this Associate Press International wire feed stands out as an obviously and patently false piece of propaganda. Oil prices are no doubt rising, but not for the reasons given by this "reporter". Is this an example of nonsense economics distorting the reporter's perception and narrative, or, is this just bald-faced lying from a propaganda organ as much in decline as global oil supply?

AP | Oil rises above $57 on economic recovery hopes
Oil prices rose above $57 a barrel Friday in Asia as investors bet that a year-end recovery in the global economy will boost oil demand.

Traders have shaken off weeks of dismal economic news amid signs that the slowdown has eased and a recovery could gain steam by the end of the year.

"Market psychology has clearly turned around," said Christoffer Moltke-Leth, head of sales trading for Saxo Capital Markets in Singapore. "I could see oil going above $60."

Benchmark crude for June delivery was up 53 cents to $57.24 a barrel by midday in Singapore, in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. On Thursday, the contract rose as high as $58.57 a barrel, a six-month high, before settling up 32 cents at $56.47.

Until this week, oil had traded in a range near $50 a barrel since the end of March as investors looked for evidence that the U.S. economy had stabilized after a severe recession in the fourth and first quarters.

On Thursday, several U.S. retailers, led by Wal-Mart Stores Inc., reported better-than-expected April sales, and new applications for jobless benefits fell to the lowest level in 14 weeks, signaling a wave of layoffs may have peaked.

Still, some traders are skeptical that the recent run-up in prices is warranted, given the slump in consumer demand and surging crude inventories. The International Monetary Fund forecasts the global economy will shrink 1.3 percent this year.

"I think the market has gotten a little ahead of itself," Moltke-Leth said. "The fundamentals don't support this recent rally."

Investors will be watching for the monthly U.S. jobs report for April. The unemployment rate rose to 8.5 percent in March, the highest since 1983.

"It's like the market is saying, `Hey, we're not in free fall anymore, that's good.'" Moltke-Leth said. "But you still have an economy contracting and more people unemployed, and that will continue for a long while."

In other Nymex trading, gasoline for June delivery rose 2.80 cents to $1.69 a gallon and heating oil gained 1.44 to $1.50 a gallon. Natural gas for June delivery jumped 6.8 cent to $4.12 per 1,000 cubic feet.

In London, Brent prices rose 80 cents to $57.27 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.