To thin it down a little..............
09 Sep 2005, 9:18 pm
some news that may interest you, is good for a read, but not much to post to.
enjoy the news below.
http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology ... bryos.html
http://www.livescience.com/technology/a ... tones.html
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld ... -headlines
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld ... -headlines
http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology ... brain.html
Last edited by aspergian_mutant on 09 Sep 2005, 9:31 pm, edited 3 times in total.
09 Sep 2005, 9:19 pm
Coming to a Cemetery Near You: Video Tombstones
By The Associated Press
posted: 08 September 2005
01:57 pm ET
MIAMI (AP) -- Video screens have shown up all over in recent years -- cell phones, bathrooms, car head rests, subway cars, even elevators. Next up: a solar-powered video panel embedded in a tombstone that plays a clip reminiscent of "This Is Your Life.''
Tasteless, you might say? A magnet for vandals?
On the contrary, says inventor Sergio Aguirre.
His soothingly named Serenity Panel is all about helping families celebrate the life of a lost loved one.
"While nothing ever replaces the gift of life, memories can now come one step closer to forever being remembered and not forgotten,'' waxes the Web site of Aguirre's company, Vidstone LLC.
The video headstone concept has been around for years, but previous inventors' ambitions have been laid to rest. One gave up for lack of demand and out of concerns his invention wouldn't be able to withstand years of harsh weather.
That's not deterring Aguirre, who quit his telecommunications job last month to work full time on Vidstone.
Aguirre, 32, promises the Serenity Panel will be durable, and while he hasn't sold any yet, he says he's got pre-orders from families whose relatives who have died. He wouldn't say how many pre-orders, and he hasn't yet collected any payment.
The device plays a 5-to-7-minute video featuring special moments from someone's life that would be compiled by anyone from friends and relatives of the deceased to funeral homes. Vidstone doesn't do video production.
The Serenity Panel's screen is covered by a solar panel, which can be flipped open by visitors. Once opened, the video starts.
The device includes two standard headphone jacks to listen to the audio. The solar panel protects the screen from sun damage and charges a battery inside, Aguirre said. Four hours of sun provides enough juice to play the video continuously for up to 90 minutes.
The 7-inch shatter-resistant LCD screen is designed to last for 15 years, when it can either be replaced with a newer device or covered with a bronze plaque. It will come with a one-year warranty; extended coverage for 10 years is about another $200.
Aguirre says the product is vandal-resistant and has been tested to survive the outdoors -- the unit will function between 32 degrees and 120 degrees Fahrenheit. He said the panel won't be damaged if temperatures get outside that range.
The Serenity Panel should be ready for sale in October and cost about $1,500, including the use of video-making software, he said.
G. Scott Mindrum, president and chief executive of funeral services company Making Everlasting Memories, got a patent for a similar device in 1998 but never produced it.
"I don't want to offer something that would fail,'' he said.
Aguirre insists that won't be a problem, and his panel has already created a buzz in the funeral industry. A prototype won an award for the most innovative product at this year's International Cemetery and Funeral Association convention in Las Vegas.
And an informal poll for the National Funeral Directors Association found that of the people who want funerals, 62 percent want some form of personalization, such as video or music tributes.
Indeed, Aguirre says he got the inspiration for Vidstone at the March 2004 wake for his father-in-law. The mood was glum and everyone was crying.
But then a movie screen rolled down and a video tribute was played. The first photo was of his father-in-law with a martini in hand, a pink boa wrapped around him and a top hat on.
"And so everybody started chuckling and smiling and the tears kind of cleared up,'' he said.
09 Sep 2005, 9:21 pm
Police Find Pot in 200-Pound Stolen Safe
By Associated Press
September 8, 2005, 10:12 PM EDT
ESCANABA, Mich. -- A man who reported a safe stolen from his home a month ago may now face charges after police found the safe -- with almost a pound of marijuana inside.
The Bark River man told Delta County sheriff's deputies last month that someone broke into his home Aug. 9 and took the 200-pound safe, which contained a rifle, muzzleloader, two knives, a rangefinder and a collection of silver dollars.
Deputies recovered the safe early Wednesday after receiving a tip, Detective Lt. Mike Gierke told the Daily Press of Escanaba. The safe was still locked, and when deputies called the owner to open it, they discovered the items he described, along with the marijuana and $500 cash.
"It was obvious the alleged victim did not think we were going to be tenacious enough to recover the safe," Gierke said.
The tip led to the arrest of Joseph Henderson, 21, Gladstone, whom deputies believe stole the safe. He was arraigned Wednesday in Delta County District Court on a count of home invasion.
Charges have not yet been sought against the Bark River man, but his arrest is pending, Gierke said
09 Sep 2005, 9:21 pm
Scientists Plan to Craft Embryo from Two Women
By The Associated Press
posted: 09 September 2005
09:54 am ET
LONDON (AP) -- Britain has granted permission to scientists to create a human embryo with genetic material from two mothers, officials said.
Scientists from Britain's Newcastle University plan to transfer the pro-nuclei -- the components of a nucleus of a human embryo -- by a man and woman into an unfertilized egg from another woman to prevent mothers passing certain genetic diseases to their unborn babies.
The application was initially rejected because of legislation prohibiting the alteration of the genetic structure of a cell while it is forming part of an embryo, the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority said in a statement Thursday. The authority is a government body that regulates fertility treatment and research.
The scientists eventually were given permission after reviewing the legislation.
The research could eventually lead to techniques that might prevent the transmission of genetic defects, researchers say.
"While the proposed technique has been found to be safe in animal embryos, it will be very important to determine whether it can safely be used in human eggs,'' university spokesman Mick Warwicker said.
No treatment exists for mitochondrial diseases, which arise from DNA outside the nucleus and are inherited separately from DNA in the nucleus.
The research does not involve human cloning. It would use normal IVF procedures, but before the sperm and egg fused, components would be implanted into a healthy female egg.
09 Sep 2005, 9:26 pm
Bronze-Age Boat Sailors Are Rescued
By ASHOK SHAMA
Associated Press Writer
September 9, 2005, 12:03 PM EDT
NEW DELHI -- International researchers attempting to sail 600 miles in a Bronze Age-style reed boat had to be rescued from the Arabian Sea after the vessel started to capsize, an Indian navy official said Friday.
The eight-member crew, including two Americans, left Sur, Oman, on Wednesday aboard the 40-foot boat made from reeds, date-palm fibers and tar, with a wool sail and two teak oars. Their goal: to follow what archaeologists believe was a Bronze Age trade route, ending in the historic Indian port of Mandvi.
Shadowing the reed boat for its protection were vessels from the Sultanate of Oman and the Indian navy. About seven miles into the trip, the reed boat met with "an accident" and started to take on water, said Cmdr. B.K. Garg, an Indian navy spokesman.
The sultanate's boat rescued the crew and returned them unharmed to Oman, Garg said. He had no further details about what caused the accident or the condition of the vessel.
"The sail has been terminated for the time being," Garg said.
The project was funded by Oman and some private organizations. Participants included archaeologist Gregory L. Possehl, a curator at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia; Maurizio Tosi of the University of Bologna; and Serge Cleuziou of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris.
Plans for the trip started after excavations in eastern Saudi Arabia turned up fragments of bitumen, or tar, bearing impressions of bound reeds, rope lashings and barnacles.
Researchers hailed the find as direct evidence of boat construction in the Arabian Sea during the Bronze Age and built their vessel based on that evidence, along with ancient texts and images.
Two days before the sail, Tom Vosmer, the vessel's director of design and construction, acknowledged that the boat -- dubbed the Magan after an ancient name for Oman -- provided little protection.
Vosmer said Monday that although weather forecasts were favorable, there was always the danger of a large wave swamping the vessel. He was also concerned about an early leak that needed re-tarring.
"The boat seems good, but it's completely untried," Vosmer said. "We don't know what it's going to do when we get into the big seas in the Indian Ocean."
Just in case, the vessel was equipped with an emergency life raft and life jackets, an emergency beacon, the navigation equipment and lights, a radar reflector and a bilge pump.
The eight-member crew consisted of Vosmer and the navigator, both Americans; a sailing master from Australia; two Omani seamen; two Italian graduate students; and an Indian archaeologist.
Researchers had hoped the voyage would help them learn about Bronze age boat construction techniques, as well as how well such boats worked, how to sail them, and what life aboard such a vessel might have been like.
09 Sep 2005, 9:28 pm
Study Suggests Human Brains Still Evolving
By The Associated Press
posted: 08 September 2005
10:13 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The human brain may still be evolving. So suggests new research that tracked changes in two genes thought to help regulate brain growth, changes that appeared well after the rise of modern humans 200,000 years ago.
That the defining feature of humans -- our large brains -- continued to evolve as recently as 5,800 years ago, and may be doing so today, promises to surprise the average person, if not biologists.
"We, including scientists, have considered ourselves as sort of the pinnacle of evolution,'' noted lead researcher Bruce Lahn, a University of Chicago geneticist whose studies appear in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
"There's a sense we as humans have kind of peaked,'' agreed Greg Wray, director of Duke University's Center for Evolutionary Genomics. "A different way to look at is it's almost impossible for evolution not to happen.''
Still, the findings also are controversial, because it's far from clear what effect the genetic changes had or if they arose when Lahn's "molecular clock'' suggests -- at roughly the same time period as some cultural achievements, including written language and the development of cities.
Lahn and colleagues examined two genes, named microcephalin and ASPM, that are connected to brain size. If those genes don't work, babies are born with severely small brains, called microcephaly.
Using DNA samples from ethnically diverse populations, they identified a collection of variations in each gene that occurred with unusually high frequency. In fact, the variations were so common they couldn't be accidental mutations but instead were probably due to natural selection, where genetic changes that are favorable to a species quickly gain a foothold and begin to spread, the researchers report.
Lahn offers an analogy: Medieval monks would copy manuscripts and each copy would inevitably contain errors -- accidental mutations. Years later, a ruler declares one of those copies the definitive manuscript, and a rush is on to make many copies of that version -- so whatever changes from the original are in this presumed important copy become widely disseminated.
Scientists attempt to date genetic changes by tracing back to such spread, using a statistical model that assumes genes have a certain mutation rate over time.
For the microcephalin gene, the variation arose about 37,000 years ago, about the time period when art, music and tool-making were emerging, Lahn said. For ASPM, the variation arose about 5,800 years ago, roughly correlating with the development of written language, spread of agriculture and development of cities, he said.
"The genetic evolution of humans in the very recent past might in some ways be linked to the cultural evolution,'' he said.
Other scientists urge great caution in interpreting the research.
That the genetic changes have anything to do with brain size or intelligence "is totally unproven and potentially dangerous territory to get into with such sketchy data,'' stressed Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute.
Aside from not knowing what the gene variants actually do, no one knows how precise the model Lahn used to date them is, Collins added.
Lahn's own calculations acknowledge that the microcephalin variant could have arisen anywhere from 14,000 to 60,000 years ago, and that the uncertainty about the ASPM variant ranged from 500 to 14,000 years ago.
Those criticisms are particularly important, Collins said, because Lahn's testing did find geographic differences in populations harboring the gene variants today. They were less common in sub-Saharan African populations, for example.
That does not mean one population is smarter than another, Lahn and other scientists stressed, noting that numerous other genes are key to brain development.
"There's just no correlation,'' said Duke's Wray, calling education and other environmental factors more important for intelligence than DNA anyway.
The work was funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
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