Nazi angel of death Josef Mengele 'created twin town in Brazil' - Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/brazil/4307262/Nazi-angel-of-death-Josef-Mengele-created-twin-town-in-Brazil.html

In what sounds like the plot of a John Carpenter film, the Daily Telegraph reports that a village in Brazil might be populated by genetically altered twins created by notorious Nazi doctor Josef Mengele. .. "For years scientists have failed to discover why as many as one in five pregnancies in a small Brazilian town have resulted in twins – most of them blond haired and blue eyed," we read. "But residents of Candido Godoi now claim that Mengele made repeated visits there in the early 1960s, posing at first as a vet but then offering medical treatment to the women of the town."

The Boys from Brazil!

So, that's the reason. I wonder how many other experiments all those expat doctors conducted around here (and I mean *here*, as in I live a few Km from a known nazidoctor dwelling).

"Nobody knows for sure exactly what date Mengele arrived in Candido Godoi, but the first twins were born in 1963, the year in which we first hear reports of his presence," he said.

In a new book, Mengele: the Angel of Death in South America, the Argentine historian Jorge Camarasa, a specialist in the post-war Nazi flight to South America, has painstakingly pieced together the Nazi doctor's mysterious later years. After speaking to the townspeople of Candido Godoi, he is convinced that Mengele continued his genetic experiments with twins – with startling results. He reveals how, after working with cattle farmers in Argentina to increase their stock, Mengele fled the country after fellow Nazi, Adolf Eichmann, was kidnapped by Israeli agents. He claims that Mengele found refuge in the German enclave of Colonias Unidas, Paraguay, and from there, in 1963, began to make regular trips to another predominantly German community just over the border in Brazil – the farming community of Candido Godoi.

Blood type distribution shows a different, and more complex genetic history than so-called racial categories.

23andMe, I know just three things about her: she's pregnant, she's married to Google's Sergey Brin, and she went to Yale. But after an hour chatting with her in the small office she shares with co-founder Linda Avey at 23andMe's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., I know some things no Internet search could reveal: coffee makes her giddy, she has a fondness for sequined shoes and fresh-baked

save

$399 saliva test that estimates your predisposition for more than 90 traits and conditions ranging from baldness to blindness. The 600,000 genetic markers that 23andMe identifies and interprets for each customer are "the digital manifestation of you Now personal genotyping is available to anyone who orders the service online and mails in a spit sample.

TIME

a real jurassic park would rule

"The Pyrenean ibex, a form of wild mountain goat, was officially declared extinct in 2000 when the last-known animal of its kind was found dead in northern Spain. Shortly before its death, scientists preserved skin samples of the goat, a subspecies of the Spanish ibex that live in mountain ranges across the country, in liquid nitrogen. ..." Dun dun dun.

DTI is a variant of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that can measure the structural integrity of the brain's white matter, which is made up of cells that carry nerve impulses from one part of the brain to another. The greater the structural integrity, the faster nerve impulses travel. >Personal Note: I worked with DTI during my internship at the MRRC (Magnetic Resonance Research Center) at Yale University. Our signals looked more similar to the second image except that we didn't have a 3d model extracted from the raw signal (the second one shows a raw DTI signal with an overlay of its 3d model representation).

The smarter the person, the faster information zips around the brain, a UCLA study finds. And this ability to think quickly apparently is inherited. The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, looked at the brains and intelligence of 92 people. All the participants took standard IQ tests. Then the researchers studied their brains using a technique called diffusion tensor imaging, or DTI. Capturing Mental Speed DTI is a variant of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that can measure the structural integrity of the brain's white matter, which is made up of cells that carry nerve impulses from one part of the brain to another. The greater the structural integrity, the faster nerve impulses travel. "These images really give you a picture of the mental speed of the brain," says Paul Thompson, Ph.D., a professor of neurology at UCLA School of Medicine. They're also "the most beautiful images of the brain you could imagine," Thompson says. "My daughter, who's 5, says they look like

Smart People Really Do Think Faster http://bit.ly/ey8Db So...that means all us twitter users are wicked smart [from http://twitter.com/AdamPieniazek/statuses/1375120864]

The Russian geneticist Dmitri Belyaev provided a very interesting potential explanation. Genetics at the time was preoccupied with easily measurable traits that could be passed on - if you bred dogs, you could pick the biggest puppies, breed them, and they would produce bigger dogs on average. Fine. But that is selection of a single simple trait, something that likely did not require that many genes to “switch” in order for the puppies to be bigger.

Well, designer pets for one. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the project ran into serious financial trouble in the late 1990s. They had to cut down the amount of foxes drastically, and the project survived primarily on funding obtained from selling the tame foxes as exotic pets. Imagine a menagerie of dwarf exotic animals, who crave human attention and form bonds with people. It would be obscenely profitable. And the out there thought for the day? We’re doing this to ourselves. We don’t encourage people to act aggressively all day to everyone they meet. We reward certain behaviours more than other behaviours. My unprovable conjecture? Humanity is selecting itself for certain behaviours, and the traits we think of as fundamentally human (loss of hair, retention of juvenile characteristics relative to primates) are a side effect of this self-selection.

Dmitri Belyaev foxes

via rp

science aging health weird genetics news

there's something more than meets the eye, here.

!! digital information을 세번쩨 replicator로 규정. 그런데 그것이 copy,mutation,natural selection을 모두 충족하는가? 글쓴이에 의하면 현재의 컴퓨터들은 웹 상에서, 인간의 통제를 벗어나 스스로 복제하고, 정보를 수집하며, 편집하고, 뭐..그런말을 하는데.. / / mutation은 없고 summary만 있을뿐 아닌가? 그리고 natural selection은 혹시 virus에 의한것을 말하는가? 그렇다면 너무 유치하고.. 검색순위 상단에 오르는 것을 말한다면 그것은 인간에 의한것인데?

There's a new type of evolution going on and it may not be to our liking, says Susan Blackmore

Memes are a new kind of information - behaviours rather than DNA - copied by a new kind of machinery - brains rather than chemicals inside cells. This is a new evolutionary process because all of the three critical stages - copying, varying and selection - are done by those brains. So does the same apply to new technology?

So it takes about 25 kilobits — 3.2 kbytes — of data to code for a virus that has a non-trivial chance of killing a human.

Amazing.

"Mitra’s team wanted to find out what would happen if an isolated bird raised his own colony. As expected, birds raised in soundproof boxes grew up to sing cacophonous songs. But then scientists let the isolated birds give voice lessons to a new round of hatchlings. They found that the young males imitated the songs — but they tweaked them slightly, bringing the structure closer to that of songs sung in the wild. When these birds grew up and became tutors, their pupils’ song continue to conform, with tweaks. After three to four generations, the teachers were producing strapping young finches that belted out normal-sounding songs."

A very cool study, and a well-written article.

via http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/08/can-culture-be-genetically-encoded-new-research-says-yes.html

GReader: Culture May Be Encoded in DNA [feedly] http://ow.ly/58hy [from http://twitter.com/ChipRiley/statuses/1700727055]

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.

From better eating and lifestyle habits we become radically healthier, more potent and with improved genes

there's hope. you are not your genes

David Dobbs tells us about a new theory in genetics called the orchid hypothesis that suggests that the genes that underlie some of the most troubling human behaviors -- violence, depression, anxiety -- can, in combination with the right environment, also be responsible for our best behaviors. Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind's phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail -- but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society's most cr

People that are genetically prone to being at risk in poor environments are also more successful in good environments

found via kottke.org

"the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species also underlie humankind’s phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success"

Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind’s phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail—but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society’s most creative, successful, and happy people.

a bad environment and poor parenting vs the right environment and good parenting

“stress diathesis” or “genetic vulnerability” model Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind’s phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail—but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society’s most creative, successful, and happy people. The Atlantic Online | December 2009 |

chevere

Animations can be viewed within your web browser (the Macromedia Flash plugin is required) or downloaded for play from your computer.

The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory's learning center has a nice library of animations demonstrating various biology concepts. Some of the concepts covered in the animations library include DNA restriction and transformation, DNA arrays, and model organisms. The animations can be viewed online or downloaded. In addition to the animations library, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has a library of 3D models. Highlighting the list of 3D models is a model of the human brain. Like the other animations, the 3D models can be viewed online or downloaded for use on your local hard drive.

DIY at home genetic engineering movement has begun

"Co-founder Mackenzie Cowell, a 24-year-old who majored in biology in college, said amateurs will probably pursue serious work such as new vaccines and super-efficient biofuels, but they might also try, for example, to use squid genes to create tattoos that glow."

"Many of these amateurs may have studied biology in college but have no advanced degrees and are not earning a living in the biotechnology field. Some proudly call themselves "biohackers" — innovators who push technological boundaries and put the spread of knowledge before profits."

biohackers

RT: @rapella {reassuring} So we’re all a bunch of mutants http://bit.ly/a1s6S (I love this, it's made me very happy). [from http://twitter.com/nijay/statuses/3819538334]

'We are all mutants', scientists find http://twurl.nl/li4gus [from http://twitter.com/znth/statuses/3714551195]

I'm a mutant! we are all mutants! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8227442.stm [from http://twitter.com/madguy000/statuses/3712074988]

Although the configuration program specified tasks for all 100 cells, it transpired that only 32 were essential to the circuit's operation. Thompson could bypass the other cells without affecting it. A further five cells appeared to serve no logical purpose at all--there was no route of connections by which they could influence the output. And yet if he disconnected them, the circuit stopped working.

genetic fpga evolution/programming

CREATURES FROM PRIMORDIAL SILICON

apply evolution to digital FPGA

Using FPGAs to evolve solutions to problems.

About 95% of the human genome has once been designated as "junk" DNA. While much of this sequence may be an evolutionary artifact that serves no present-day purpose, some junk DNA may function in ways that are not currently understood. The conservation of some junk DNA over many millions of years of evolution may imply an essential function that has been "turned off." Now scientists say there's a junk gene that fights HIV. And they've discovered how to turn it back on. What these scientists have done could give us the first bulletproof HIV vaccine. They have re-awakened the human genome's latent potential to make us all into HIV-resistant creatures, and hey've published their ground-breaking research in PLoS Biology. A group of scientists led by Nitya Venkataraman and Alexander Colewhether wanted to try a new approach to fighting HIV - one that worked with the body's own immune system. They knew Old World monkeys had a built-in immunity to HIV: a protein called retrocyclin, which c

Darwin's Radio: Prehistoric Gene Reawakens to Battle HIV

evolutionary theory put to work in optimising

SnapAds: Survival Of The Fittest Meets Madison Avenue

"BBC News - 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists" http://j.mp/cIRoBL

Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first living cell to be controlled entirely by synthetic DNA. The researchers constructed a bacterium's "genetic software" and transplanted it into a host cell. The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species "dictated" by the synthetic DNA. The advance, published in Science, has been hailed as a scientific landmark, but critics say there are dangers posed by synthetic organisms. Some also suggest that the potential benefits of the technology have been over-stated. But the researchers hope eventually to design bacterial cells that will produce medicines and fuels and even absorb greenhouse gases. The team was led by Dr Craig Venter of the J Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in Maryland and California.

2009-03-26 18:05:21 <sissypapi> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7951331.stm

Awwww

Experts believe it is probably an albino, which is an extremely rare phenomenon in African elephants. ¶ They are unsure of its chances of long-term survival – the blazing African sunlight may cause blindness and skin problems for the calf.

pink elephant

shoplifting pornos