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Category Archives: Transhuman News

Sri Lanka in UN list of countries accused of intimidating critics

Posted: September 16, 2012 at 10:14 pm

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 September 2012, 12:47 GMT] Sri Lanka has been included in the the United Nations list of 16 nations singled out for cracking down on critics, the Washington Post reported. The UN report added that most of those countries governments are going unpunished for their acts of reprisal. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay told a special session of the Human Rights Council that the 16 nations detailed in a new report have been far from sufficient in preventing members of their own governments from resorting to intimidation and attacks on various activists, the Post further said.

The other 15 countries, named in the UN report covering mid-June 2011 to mid-July 2012, are: Algeria, Bahrain, Belarus, China, Colombia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Lebanon, Malawi, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Uzbekistan and Venezuela.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay

"Smear campaigns against those who cooperate with the U.N. may be organized. Threats may be made via phone calls, text messages or even direct contacts. People may also be arrested, beaten or tortured and even killed, Washington Post quoted Navi Pillay as saying.

While urging the UN Rights Council and the world's nations to do more to combat alleged cases of killings, beatings, torture, arrests, threats, harassment and smear campaigns against human rights defenders, Navi Pillay further said, [w]e need more coherent and solid strategies to put an end to reprisals. Reprisals are not only unacceptable: they are also ineffective in the long term. Preventing people from expressing their will or their dissent freely, does not succeed. Ultimately, freedom will always prevail. And information will always find its way to the outside word."

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Sri Lanka in UN list of countries accused of intimidating critics

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Dan Morain: Promise of youth fails to produce at the polls

Posted: at 9:13 am

The headline was true enough, though it was politically incorrect by today's standards: "Pretty Teen Coed Is First Vote Caster."

This newspaper detailed how Joanne Durbin, that "pretty blonde college student," and a half-dozen other newly minted young voters might change the face of democracy.

At 19, Durbin stepped into the voting booth and cast her ballot in a local El Dorado County election, apparently becoming the first Californian to exercise her right under the 26th Amendment, which took effect July 1, 1971, and lowered the voting age to 18 from 21. Before hurrying off to class at Sacramento State, Durbin surveyed the polling place and noted that no one lined up behind her.

"I guess they are just lazy, like the adults," Durbin, smart kid that she was, told the reporter.

Forty-one years later, Joanne Durbin Testerman is a nurse and a grandmother living in Arizona, where she helps care for her aging parents. She has missed only one election since, though she had a good excuse; she was giving birth to twins. But the youth vote has never materialized.

A product of the Vietnam War era, the 26th Amendment was in place for the 1972 presidential election. We know how that turned out. George McGovern, the peace candidate who sought to mobilize young people outraged by the Vietnam War and draft, won Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, and nothing else.

People described in the newspaper article are now in their 60s. I found a few of them with help from The Bee's researcher, Pete Basofin. They all had become regular voters and drilled into their kids' heads the need to vote.

"Politics governs the air you breathe," said Melanie Connors, 61, who spent a career as a child protective services worker. "You need to stay informed and involved."

"I have my two cents. I might as well put it in there. I fought for it," added Tony Kessler. A Navy veteran living in San Luis Obispo, he has voted every time since, except for a few years when he was living in Japan. "I thought things were going to start changing. But nothing happened."

Indeed, four decades later, the vast majority of young people still don't vote. The Public Policy Institute of California estimates that 19 percent of people 25 or younger are likely voters in this state, compared with 74 percent of voters who are 65 and older.

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Dan Morain: Promise of youth fails to produce at the polls

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Dion Lee: sleek, futuristic, leathery

Posted: at 9:12 am

Dion Lee fused sportswear and futurism in his sleek spring summer 2013 show at London Fashion Week.

The Australian wunderkind, showing in London for the second time, held the crowd of international editors on the edges of their benches as they leaned in for closer looks at his accomplished creations.

The first thing to catch their eyes? That would be the leatherlots of it. Appearing in forensically fitted pencil skirts and jackets, it featured slashed-and-plaited panels that created vertebrae-like patterns down the backs of thighs and spines.

But there was simplicity too, as in the purity of the white, midriff-baring tracksuit that opened the show (yup, midriffs: it's practically a Lee-girl requirement to show it off). Colour filtered into the opening series of white looks in the form of transparent orange panels. It built through periwinkle dresses into more blazers, this time with sea-creature swirls and folded-leather peplums.

Dressesexcellent, wearable dresseswere mostly high-necked, with split, neoprene bodice panels that brought to mind lungs and respiration. Has London given the designer room to breathe?

Theres always a consciousness of the body that runs through the collections, he told us backstage. Particularly with this one, there was that kind of layering and transparency and building those shapes underneath the torso. But it was also looking at parallels between technology and the human race.

Technology, the human race and some mighty fine leather jacketscome back next season, Dion. Youre welcome in London anytime.

See the full collection here

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Dion Lee: sleek, futuristic, leathery

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Fifteen Questions with Junot Díaz

Posted: at 8:10 am

Junot Daz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Drown, meets me in front of the Harvard Bookstore. Its 9 a.m. on a Friday, and the early September humidity is just beginning to spike. Daz is wearing a mottled red t-shirt, dark grey jeans, running shoes, and a Boston Red Sox cap. He kisses me on both cheeks when we meet. Recovering from back surgery, Daz finds sitting almost impossible so we begin walking down Bow Street towards the Charles River.

Fifteen Minutes: You did an interview with The New York Times recently and talked about many of your favorite books. Its an impressive listhow do you find time to read all of those authors?

Junot Daz: You have to understand: Its what I do. When something is really important to you, I think youre always looking for an excuse. I find reading more important to me than almost anything, including my writing. I consider myself a reader way more than I consider myself a writer. Perhaps what might have struck anybody about that interview was that this quantity of reading is more emblematic of the way I organize my life than anything.

FM: Did you read anything before we met this morning?

JD: Before I came here I read a chapter of a book on invasive species while I had my damn oatmeal, and I said, I could have my fucking oatmeal and just chill. Or, I could put in 25 pages. And so 25 pages are done. The book will be done by this evening because I sort of use these still, interstitial moments to burn through them. My favorite line of the chapter was the last line: It is unlikely that anyone will ever again enter New Zealand carrying a red deer.

FM: Theres one line that really struck me from a short story you wrote titled The Cheaters Guide to Love. The line was: The half-life of love is forever. Can you explain that to me?

JD: I think you discover somethingperhaps some of us discover it young, perhaps some of us discover it much older. You can get over a person romantically and never fall out of love with them. As a young person I had no idea that that was possible. I always thought that eventually a relationship would come to end, and your imaginary would find in time surcease. But I think when you really fall in love, there seems to be something permanent that happens to you.

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Fifteen Questions with Junot Díaz

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Prop. 37: Another example of the perils of the initiative process

Posted: September 15, 2012 at 9:12 am

Love it or hate it, the one thing you can say for sure about California's ballot initiative process is that it's the absolute worst way to craft policy dealing with complex scientific issues.

That doesn't stop advocates on one side or another from constantly trying, with the result that the public's understanding of the underlying facts plummets faster than you can say, well, "Proposition 37."

Proposition 37 is on November's ballot. The measure would require some, but not all, food sold in California and produced via genetic engineering to be labeled as such. (There are exemptions for milk, restaurant food and other products.)

Genetic engineering, or genetic modification, which involves manipulating DNA or transferring it from one species to another, is increasingly common in agriculture and food processing, and wouldn't be banned or even regulated by the measure. Genetic engineering has pluses and minuses. It can increase crop yields and pest resistance. But it can also affect the environment in negative ways pollen or seeds from genetically engineered crops can be spread by wind, birds or insects to territory where they're unwanted, for example.

Once you've said that, you've said pretty much everything that's known to be relevant to Proposition 37. The rest is baloney, of the non-genetically engineered variety.

So what does this mean for you? It means that between now and election day your airwaves are likely to be filled with steaming piles of fatuous nonsense about genetically engineered foods (which will be depicted as horrifically perilous or absolutely safe), about trial lawyers, about struggling mom-and-pop grocery stores, about the evils of multinational agribusinesses and federal regulators. You'll be presented with learned scientific and economic studies on both sides, and they'll almost certainly be misleading, incomplete or irrelevant, though they'll sound pretty danged convincing.

This will all come to you courtesy of war chests that are already in the neighborhood of $30 million, total.

Great initiative system we have here in the Golden State. As a procedure for producing rational law, it could only be designed by a mad scientist working with rogue DNA.

Let's start with the Yes on 37 campaign. It describes its bottom line as your right to know what's in your food; so what's wrong with mandating explicit labeling? That's fair as far as it goes, but it doesn't go very far. The danger in enacting rules like this is that while they sound perfectly reasonable, they distract from the need for thoughtful and effective regulation and for action at the Legislature, not the ballot box.

"All consumers should have a right to know how their food is produced," observes Gregory Jaffe, head of the biotechnology project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which is no crony of the food industry. "But that includes not merely genetic engineering, but irradiated foods and those produced from cloning."

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Prop. 37: Another example of the perils of the initiative process

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Time to Bid Eczema Good Night

Posted: at 9:11 am

One of the biggest discomforts with eczema is when itching strikes at bedtime. Sleep disruption due to itching may snowball into a morning of physical and mental distress. In order to get a good nights sleep, here are some practical tips.

1. HYDRATE

Take a nice cool bath an hour before bed. It not only cleans your body but also washes away the heat from your skin. It brings back vital moisture which your skin needs. Make sure to apply emollient after bathing to lock in skins moisture.

2. VENTILATE

Your sleeping environment should be planned, too. Heat leads to skin irritation. So keep to a cool bedroom temperature. Make sure air circulates properly. Avoid thick beddings and sheets and dress only in the most comfortable cotton night clothes.

3. MOISTURIZE

Stick to a daily moisturizing routine. Apply your emollient 30 minutes before sleeping to help reduce night time itching.

"Noon, nakakaawa si Hanna when all the itching kept her up at night. But Ive learned the best ways to give her the most comfortable sleeping environment. It helps to be always prepared with Elica, too. Kaya ayan mahimbing na lagi ang tulog nya (Before, I would feel bad for Hanna when all the itching kept her up at night. But Ive learned the best ways to give her the most comfortable sleeping environment. It helps to be always prepared with Elica, too. Now, she's able to sleep soundly)," Celebrity mom Maricel Laxa-Pangilinan shares.

ONE SOLUTION. ONCE A DAY.

Should flare-ups persist, its good to know theres a medicine that you can count on. Elica is specially formulated to help relieve the symptoms of eczema. Applied once a day, Elica helps stop the itching, take out the redness and ease the swelling to help bring back smooth, healthy skin.

Time to Bid Eczema Good Night

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Space Station Spin-Off Could Protect Mars-Bound Astronauts From Radiation

Posted: September 14, 2012 at 3:18 pm

It's hard to think of many spinoffs from the $100 billion project to build and launch the International Space Station. In fact, there is precious little done on the ISS that isn't focused on just keeping the thing in orbit.

One exception is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which is designed, among other things, to determine whether cosmic ray particles are made of matter or antimatter.

The spectrometer consists of a giant magnet that deflects charged particles and a number of detectors that characterise the mass and energy of these particles. It was bolted to the ISS last year and is currently bombarded by about 1000 cosmic rays per second.

Today, Roberto Battiston at the University of Perugia in Italy and a few pals say that the technology developed for the spectrometer could be used for protecting astronauts from radiation during the long duration spaceflights in future.

The journey to the asteroids, Mars or beyond is plagued with technological problems. Among the most challenging is finding a way to protect humans from the high energy particles that would otherwise raise radiation levels to unacceptable levels.

On Earth, humans are protected by the atmosphere, the mass of the Earth itself and the Earth's magnetic field. In low earth orbit, astronauts loose the protection of the atmosphere and radiation levels are consequently higher by two orders of magnitude.

In deep space, astronauts loose the protecting effect of the Earth's mass and its magnetic field, raising levels a further five times and beyond the acceptable limits that humans can withstand over the 18 months or so it would take to get to Mars or the asteroids.

An obvious way to protect astronauts is with an artificial magnetic field that would steer charged particles away. But previous studies have concluded that ordinary magnets would be too big and heavy to be practical on a space mission.

However, superconducting magnets are more powerful, more efficient and less massive. They are much better candidates for protecting humans.

The only problem is that nobody has built and tested a superconducting magnet in space.

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Space Station Spin-Off Could Protect Mars-Bound Astronauts From Radiation

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Research: Hopping DNA supercoils

Posted: at 3:17 pm

Artistic impression of the dynamics of DNA supercoils. A person manipulates a long DNA molecule. Loops in the DNA molecule are created by winding up the DNA. For the first time ever, the research by Van Loenhout, Grunt and Dekker revealed how these DNA loops dynamically move along the DNA strand.

If you take hold of a DNA molecule and twist it, this creates 'supercoils', which are a bit like those annoying loops and twists you get in earphone cables. Research carried out by TU Delft, The Netherlands, has found that in the DNA molecule these coils can make their way surprisingly quickly along the length of the DNA. This newly discovered 'hopping' mechanism - which takes places in a matter of milliseconds - could have important biological implications, because cells use the coils to bring specific pieces of DNA into contact with one another. The researchers from Cees Dekker's group at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience in Delft will be publishing their results in Science this week.

Supercoiling

A DNA molecule in a cell is not simply a loose wire; it is completely wound up in a tangle of loops ('DNA supercoils'). These supercoils in a DNA molecule (see the illustration on the right) are similar to those annoying loops and twists you often get in earphone cables.

In living cells, the DNA supercoils form and unravel and move along the DNA molecule. They are vital to the regulation of DNA activity, in determining which genes are switched on or off for example. One of the ways in which cells use the supercoils is to bring pieces of DNA into contact with one another.

Dynamic

Static images of the DNA supercoils have been studied in detail in the past, but their dynamics remained unknown up till now. PhD student Marijn van Loenhout from the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at Delft developed a new technique that enabled him to observe how the coils travel along a DNA molecule for the first time. The research was led by Professor Cees Dekker, head of the Bionanoscience Department.

The TU Delft team used magnetic tweezers to stretch out a small section of a DNA molecule and were then able to observe the movement of the DNA coils using fluorescence microscopy (see movies at the website). They succeeded in showing these movements in real time, at the level of the individual DNA molecule.

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Van Loenhout: "We have discovered that the coils can move slowly along the DNA via diffusion. But what we also saw - and this was totally unexpected - that they can 'hop' along relatively long distances (micrometres). In such a movement a loop disappears in one spot, while simultaneously another loop appears in another spot, much further away. This information enables us to test theories about the mechanics of DNA, testing how you tie a knot in DNA, as it were."

Making music in outer space

Posted: at 3:16 am

Most astronauts are engineers, fighter pilots or scientists, but the next Canadian in space will bring an artists sensibility to his command of the International Space Station.

Chris Hadfield is scheduled to rocket off Dec. 5 for six months in the claustrophobic confines of the space station from a launch pad on a barren plateau in Kazakhstan, along with Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko and NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn. Where some might see a long stint of isolation, the veteran Canadian astronaut sees precious time to create music and visual art.

Video: Mars rover beams back audio recording

A man on the moon

Mr. Hadfield has collaborated with Ed Robertson of the Barenaked Ladies to write a song he will record in the space station, using the guitar, keyboard and ukulele on board, along with the clings and clangs of the machinery that scrubs carbon dioxide from the air and runs systems. The space-themed song is already being rearranged for distribution across Canada for use by childrens choirs, school bands and anyone who wants to pay homage to space travel.

Mr. Hadfield, 53, a retired Canadian air force colonel, tried out the untitled track with his band, Bandella, in a Houston club on Wednesday night. We had a big crowd and everybody loved it. Ed is a great songwriter, and hes rightfully proud of his little ditty, Mr. Hadfield said in an interview.

Mr. Hadfield is also working with a Japanese artist named Takahiro Ando to take images of the Earth using a watery lens to refract and reflect them. The process plays on a Japanese tradition of admiring the moon through liquid reflections, whether from a pond, a pan or cup of sake.

The experiment module, as it is called, is a plastic drum with a clear end that will allow Mr. Hadfield to place it against the space stations windows. He will inject water droplets into the drum while a super high-definition camera rolls and captures fine-resolution still photographs. I will try to be Andosans hands and eyes, Mr. Hadfield said from Houston.

Mr. Hadfield, who learned Russian so he can co-pilot the Soyuz spacecraft that will deliver the crew to the space station, has been training for more than two years to run the various systems and experiments under his command.

In a 20-year career in the space program, Mr. Hadfield has spent 20 days in space. Hes also ventured out on spacewalks twice, where he was struck by how it more than goes into your eyes. It fills your entire mind. Its just an overwhelming beauty.

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Making music in outer space

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DNA ‘junk' contains a treasure of information about disease

Posted: at 3:16 am

Among the many mysteries of human biology is why complex diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure and psychiatric disorders are so difficult to predict and, often, to treat. An equally perplexing puzzle is why one individual gets a disease such as cancer or depression, while an identical twin remains perfectly healthy.

Now scientists have discovered a vital clue to unraveling these riddles.

The human genome is packed with at least 4 million gene switches that reside in bits of DNA that once were dismissed as junk but that turn out to play critical roles in controlling how cells, organs and other tissues behave.

The discovery, considered a major medical and scientific breakthrough, has enormous implications for human health because many complex diseases appear to be caused by tiny changes in hundreds of gene switches.

The findings are the fruit of an immense federal project, involving 440 scientists from 32 labs around the world.

As they delved into the junk parts of the DNA that are not actual genes containing instructions for proteins they discovered it's not junk at all. At least 80 percent of it is active and needed.

The result is an annotated road map of much of this DNA, noting what it's doing and how.

It includes the system of switches that, acting like dimmer switches for lights, control which genes are used in a cell and when they are used, and determine, for instance, whether a cell becomes a liver cell or a neuron.

The findings have immediate applications for understanding how alterations in the nongene parts of DNA contribute to human diseases, which may in turn lead to new drugs.

Category Archives: Transhuman News

Sri Lanka in UN list of countries accused of intimidating critics

Dan Morain: Promise of youth fails to produce at the polls

Dion Lee: sleek, futuristic, leathery

Fifteen Questions with Junot Díaz

Prop. 37: Another example of the perils of the initiative process

Time to Bid Eczema Good Night

Space Station Spin-Off Could Protect Mars-Bound Astronauts From Radiation

Research: Hopping DNA supercoils

Making music in outer space

DNA ‘junk' contains a treasure of information about disease

The Prometheus League

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