GDF No Gays in the Military Policy ? Nov 5th 2012 ? Capitol News

The Society Against Sexual Orientation and Discrimination says it is paying close attention to the Government?s posture on revelations that two female soldiers were dismissed from the army because it was suspected that they were in a same sex relationship. The Guyana Defence Force has a strict No Gays in the military policy that many observers see as homophobic.

Cabinet Secretary Dr. Roger Luncheon was just last week, asked to comment on the issue since he ?also serves as the Secretary to the Defence Board. Dr. Luncheon?s view was that the issue in the Guyana Defence Force should be seen as one that could support the argument for decriminalization of sex acts between same sexes.

But Opposition Leader David Granger who years ago served as a Commander in the Guyana Defence Force believes the policy ought to change. Speaking to Capitol News on the issue, Granger said from all reports the two fired women soldiers were never given a fair hearing and their dismissal must be questioned.

Granger who is a retired Brigadier said the Guyana Defence Force must remain a professional force at all times.

The GDF has been relatively silent on the issue since this newscast broke the story. The Chief of Staff Gary Best had told this newscast initially, that the army has a don?t ask don?t tell policy. That does not appear to be so when one goes through an the GDF?s Personnel policy which has an entire section examining the issue of homosexuality and encouraging ranks to report to their superiors if they find out or suspect anyone serving in the army to be trending the same sex way.? A number of groups have been critical of the GDF?s decision to fire the women.

Source: http://www.capitolnewsonline.com/2012/11/06/gdf-no-gays-in-the-military-policy/

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A Discussion With George Church About His New ... - Science 2.0

In a conversation at an expo at Duke University last week, an executive with Oracle and I discussed my new project on sustainability and synthetic biology. He curiously asked if I made monsters. Honestly, I was not aware that profession even existed.

Clearly, there is a need for more education on this emerging technology. Books on synthetic biology are rare. This is unfortunate. In order to fill that void, scientists and writers are providing the needed discussions to supplement the existing highly technical articles. In Rob Carlson?s Biology is Technology (2010), he argues biology has long been a technology. In Revolutions, released earlier this year, based on philosophical and historical discussions I argue that synthetic biology is the logical extension of genomics.

So, why is synthetic biology important? Many scientists believe an influenza pandemic is impending. We have an astronomical federal deficit; there are developing countries with fast growing populations with pollution and a carbon footprint to match. We have volatile energy markets and limited natural resources. These all provide concerns for future generations. Although climate change is inevitable based on historical precedent, in order to address the current social conditions and challenges, policy makers are sorting through potential short term and long term solutions to these challenges as well as new sources of economic development.

In October, Basic Books released Regenesis by Harvard Medical School Geneticist George Church and science writer Ed Regis. Their successful collaboration interestingly resulted from the pair having the same literary agent. In Regenesis the authors ask, ?What should we do?? How can we balance economic growth and a sustainable environment? How can we outsmart viruses? In an attempt to answer these questions, Church and Regis argue that synthetic biology is an industrial revolution with the potential to change life as we know it and discuss its possibilities. Among these exciting possibilities are creating novel materials and biofuels, and providing a better understanding of evolution and complex diseases leading to new drugs and vaccines.

For me, reading Regenesis raised several questions. In order to better understand the barriers scientists face in their research, I posed these questions to George.

Your Career

I vaguely recall you lurking around the zoology labs in the old biology building at Duke University where I was also a graduate student, but more in field biology. I eventually became a policy analyst specializing in science and technology issues. You on the other hand in addition to being a pioneer in sequencing technology and personalized genomics, your labs have developed multiplex automated genome engineering (MAGE) which will enable researchers to perform genetic engineering at a mass scale bringing these possibilities closer to reality.

Q:? How did you end up in genomics??

A:?Searching for a confluence of computing and biology, I found this in crystallography and its application to solving the first RNA fold in Fall 1973 with Sung-Kim at Duke -- during which I typed in all known RNA sequences and wrote software to predict their 3D structures.??Noting that what we had (i.e. automation and computational modeling) was needed in the rest of biology, I switched to Harvard in 1977 to develop molecular multiplexing concepts and began applying them to genomes, proteomes, transcriptomes and other omes. In that year I also worked on the first broadly used plasmid vector (still in use today) pre-saging synbio systems and chassis projects.

Sustainability

Synthetic biology will lead to novel, biodegradable building materials and plastics, and even bioengineered houses in a desired shape supported by scaffolds grown from seeds. You reference? www.inhabitat.com/grow-your-own-treehouse. If this example does not amaze readers, Rachael Armstrong?s work on this topic http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/bio/armstrong? and especially http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/armstrong20120704 certainly will.?

Q: ?One of the topics in my current project looks at synthetic fuel as a supply side solution to sustainability. When I attend energy talks, inevitably a pie chart with the forecasts for 2020 and the percentage of each energy source emerges. Your discussion of Virgin Airlines use of biofuels is fascinating. Jay Keasling, Craig Venter, you, and others are also working on synthetic biofuels; however, these are not in the forecasts. Windmills get more respect than synthetic biology. Why do you think that is?

A: ?Many revolutions look irrelevant just before they change everything (swiftly). For example the WWW went from zero to millions of web pages in one year (1993).? Cyanobacteria are about 100X more efficient than the corn-to-ethanol that many knew from the start was simply lobbying, not smart bioengineering. Cyanobacterial biofuels are now closing in on $1.28 per gallon? goo.gl/9Z1t0

Evolution

You discuss the possibility of resurrecting extinct species, dinosaurs, and even Neanderthals.?

Q: But, what about factors relating to developmental biology? Given that we know the genetic codes of these species, what about epigenetics, microRNAs, and developmental pathways that help make up the phenome? How can bioengineers replicate these components?

A: Many of these epigenetic components self-assemble under the guidance of the genome (imbedded in a highly related cytopasm). We are also getting quite good at manipulating the epigenetics directly by introducing regulatory factors-- for example the 4 factors needed to change adult skin fibroblasts into embryo-like stem cells. Both strategies are improving rapidly now.

Diseases

For diseases, Duke?s Jingdong Tian?s lab recently created a 3D printer that can print out DNA using wells and layering. Possibly tissues and organs are next, which is very exciting.

Your discussion on transhumanism (H+) or extended life span by protection from viruses, TB, rabies, prions, skin cancer from UV rays,? and protection from Van Allen Belt radiation in future space flights through reprogramming DNA sounds equally promising. You talk about changing the cellular machinery that reads and expresses the viral genome in hosts, but also reprogramming viruses.

Q: How does this work? How can we possibly reprogram all viral genomes? Is the work on our own genomes similar to Geron?s work with telomerase therapy which is in clinical trials to provide DNA repair to overcome naturally occurring telomere shortening?

A:?In contrast to cells which share a core set of genes, viruses share very little, except for their dependence on those cellular core factors. These factors represent the nearly universal genetic code for translating mRNAs into proteins. We take advantage of the ?redundancy? of this code (i.e. 64 codons for 20 amino acids) to change the host genome without changing its proteome at all.? This requires so many accommodations (via computer) that no virus could mutate all at once sufficiently to accommodate the new code rules. We have made huge progress toward getting this to work in the key industrial microbe, E.coli.

Thermodynamics and Entropy

Q: What does the curious reader need to know about thermodynamics, entropy, and Harold Morowitz?s work at George Mason University as it relates to developing the field??

A: I make the argument that a shift from unrigorous qualitative description to quantitative measurements accompany each industrial revolution ? e.g. time for agricultural revolution, length for civil engineering, thermodynamic entropy and temperature for the steam revolution,etc.? The current revolution in computing and life, includes measures of information and replication. Harold Morowitz?s writing inspired me as a teenager to think about (and to work on Mycoplasma) minimal cells as complex, yet comprehensible and hence engineerable.? Harold has had similar influence on Tom Knight and Clyde Hutchison (and hence the whole JCVI).? How crucial will such minimal cells be? Is the transition from non-life to life qualitiative or quantitative? Read Regenesis.

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Source: http://www.science20.com/randall_mayes/discussion_george_church_about_his_new_book_regenesis_and_synthetic_biology-95999

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Mitt Romney Praises Chris Christie's Response To Hurricane Sandy

MORRISVILLE, Pa. -- Mitt Romney is praising New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's response to Hurricane Sandy.

The Republican presidential candidate told supporters in Pennsylvania Sunday night that Christie is giving "all of his heart and his passion" to help his state recover from the storm that wreaked havoc along the East Coast last week.

President Barack Obama visited New Jersey storm victims with Christie last week. The New Jersey governor publicly praised the president's leadership after the disaster, but on Sunday he said he still intended to vote for Romney.

Romney did not praise Obama but thanked "the governors that are dealing with this tragedy."

The Republican candidate made his comments at an evening rally in eastern Pennsylvania, along the New Jersey border.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/04/romney-christie_n_2074117.html

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Flying fish evolved to flee predators

The first flying fish may have evolved to escape marine reptile predators, researchers say.

These new findings hint that marine life may have recovered more quickly than before thought after the greatest mass extinction in Earth's history, scientists added.

Modern flying fish are capable of gliding through the air as much as 1,300 feet (400 meters) in 30 seconds, with a maximum flight speed of up to about 45 mph (72 kph), probably flying mainly to escape from predators such as dolphins, squid and other fish. Modern flying fish live in tropical and subtropical waters, and no known fossil specimens are older than 65 million years.

Now researchers find evidence that flight evolved another time in the history of fish. This is the earliest example of gliding on water seen in vertebrates ? that is, creatures with backbones. [ Image Gallery: The Freakiest Fish ]

Winged fish
Scientists analyzed fossils they excavated from southwest China in 2009. The ancient bones come from a marine fish named Potanichthys xingyiensis. "Potanos" means winged and "ichthys" means fish in Greek, while "xingyiensis" refers to the city of Xingyi near where the fossil was found.

The fish lived about 235 million to 242 million years ago in what researchers call the Yangtze Sea. This was part of the eastern Paleotethys Ocean that sat about where the Indian Ocean and Southern Asia are now located.

The newfound fish was apparently capable of gliding just like modern flying fish. For instance, it had a greatly enlarged pair of pectoral fins that could have served as wings. It also had a deeply forked tail fin whose lower half was much stronger than its upper half, and swimming with such a fin could potentially generate the power needed to launch the fish out of water.

However, modern flying fish do not appear to descend from this fossil. Instead, the ability to glide on water seems to have evolved independently in this ancient lineage.

Other fossils unearthed in the same area as Potanichthys include those of marine reptiles such as dolphin-shaped ichthyosaurs. These ancient flying fish may have evolved gliding for much the same reasons as modern flying fish ? to escape dangerous predators.

"The discovery of Potanichthys significantly adds to our knowledge of the ecological complexity in the Middle Triassic of the Paleotethys Ocean," said researcher Guang-Hui Xu, a paleontologist at China's Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing.

End-Permian extinction
The extinct group of fish to which this fossil belonged, known as the thoracopterids, was previously only seen in Austria and Italy. These findings suggest such fish lived from the western to eastern rim of the Paleotethys Ocean, hinting that other forms of life back then could have once spread from what is now Europe to Asia.

"In modern ecosystems, due to limitations of muscle function, flying fishes are unlikely capable of flight at temperatures below 20 degrees C (68 degrees F)," Xu told LiveScience. "We can reasonably apply similar limitations to the Triassic thoracopterids, and we suggest that Potanichthys adds a new datum supporting a generally hot climate in the Middle Triassic eastern Paleotethys Ocean."

Potanichthys lived about 10 million years after the end-Permian mass extinction about 250 million years ago, the greatest die-off in Earth's history, which claimed as much as 95 percent of the world's species.

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"The end-Permian mass extinction was the most dramatic event to impact ecological systems on Earth, and recovery from this extinction has long been viewed as more prolonged than the recoveries following other mass extinctions," Xu said.

"As the earliest evidence of over-water gliding in vertebrates, the new discovery lends support to the hypothesis that the recovery of marine ecosystems after the end-Permian was more rapid than previously thought."

The scientists detailed their findings online Wednesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

? 2012 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49625945/ns/technology_and_science-science/

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Obama 2nd term: Leverage, lessons learned, legacy

WASHINGTON (AP) ? If he wins, President Barack Obama would try to apply the leverage of his victory toward a lasting economic revival on his terms, guided by political lessons learned and the legacy he wants.

Because Obama has made his race against Mitt Romney about two competing visions for the nation, he would interpret a victory as a mandate to pursue economic recovery and debt reduction his way, adamant about raising taxes on families making more than $250,000.

With jobs still in soaring demand, he would push to steer money toward energy development, education and worker training, manufacturing support and infrastructure.

The contours of Obama's second term would be formed by how his first one ends in December. The outcome of efforts by Obama and Congress to avoid an economic whammy of spending cuts and tax increases ? all set for January ? will influence whether they could reach a much farther-reaching debt-reduction deal later. Obama wants to get one done in the first six months of 2013.

That, in turn, would shape everything else.

In the first year of a new term, Obama would also plunge into one of the big unmet promises of his first term, immigration reform. He would put his capital into fixing a complex and politically explosive problem, meaning finding the votes and the path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants, all without mass deportations or amnesty for those who broke the law.

Starting this time without a gut-wrenching recession and wars in two countries, Obama would be freer to pursue the agenda he wants.

Yet the forces working against him would not be going anywhere: formidable opposition from Republicans, fatigue within the White House and the fractured politics of the nation.

On foreign affairs, Obama's priorities include familiar threats, most urgently the international drive to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. A second Obama term would mean closing out the war in Afghanistan by the end of 2014, deepening U.S. engagement across Asia, targeting terror networks and keeping a post-Arab Spring Middle East from unraveling.

For all his ideas, Obama will need some new people around him.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner plan to leave. It is widely expected that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will not stay on for a second term.

Change is also expected within the top staff ranks of the White House, where loyalty is rewarded and outsiders have had trouble piercing the bubble.

For all the chants of four more years, a second-term president like Obama would really get less than two years to swing for big change at home.

Then lame-duck realities set in, power starts to slip and attention shifts to the next election. In his favor, he would never again need to worry about getting re-hired by voters.

Obama's personal style is unlikely to differ. America knows him. He prides himself on his steadiness.

What he does plan to change is the way in which he pulls the American people into his personal political process. After operating in emergency legislative mode in the first half of his term, and then seeing his party get a midterm drubbing, Obama seemed to realize he was personally disconnected from precisely the people he was trying to help.

"The most important lesson I've learned is that you can't change Washington from the inside. You can only change it from the outside," Obama said in reflecting on his first four years. "So something that I'd really like to concentrate on in my second term is being in a much more constant conversation with the American people so that they can put pressure on Congress."

Those people would see a president who is bound to look a little grayer and sound more reflective across another term, as he has in his first. He already claims a rank of seniority on the world stage, where elections and political turmoil have led to major leadership changes from Europe to Asia. And the team surrounding Obama each day will look different, too.

Historians who know Obama know he is mindful of leaving a consequential legacy. An immigration overhaul and perhaps tax changes would help cement a legacy built on his health care law, an economic recovery, Wall Street regulation, the killing of Osama bin Laden and the appointment of two Supreme Court justices so far.

Trouble is, Obama is almost certain to be operating in the same divided government that stymied him in the second half of his term.

Republicans have a chance to win control of the Senate or at least shrink the Democrats' margin. And the House appears likely to remain safely Republican in the coming election.

Obama's political calculus is that his re-election itself would force Republicans to heed the American people and work with him because they will no longer need to try to defeat him. On a matter such as immigration, he is betting that Republicans will have to compromise with him or risk alienating Hispanics and undermining their party for decades.

It is all assuming a lot on his part.

___

Follow Ben Feller on Twitter at www.twitter.com/BenFellerDC

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-2nd-term-leverage-lessons-learned-legacy-201124754--election.html

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Kim Kardashian vs. Fergie: Clash of the Cats!

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