The Journal Science Interviews J. Craig Venter About the first "Syntheti...

Dr. Venter has created a replication of an existing life form from four chemicals sequenced together artifically. The bacteria he created as a copy produces mastitis in goats. The experiment was to prove that life could be created in this manner. It was not to prove the viability of a new life form in addition to the technique of assembling life from discrete parts. Now that the method has been proven, the technique can be used to explore new and creative life designs.

irreligulous: BlueGene Blue Brain Neuron Supercomputer

irreligulous: BlueGene Blue Brain Neuron Supercomputer: "10,000 neurons run by a room full of computers. A new 'Neurogrid' chips is about to come out that puts the same power into one single chip..."

The size of the computers used to simulate a portion of a rat brain tells us we have a fair way to go.

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

If you wish to contact Doug Axe, you can contact Robert L. Crowther, II Director of Communications Center for Science & Culture Discovery Institute, That information is from the Biologic Institute web site http://biologicinstitute.org/contact/ The Discovery Institute has a political and idealogical agenda of promoting intelligent design. They were involve in the Dove School Case where ID was rejected as a scientific viewpoint in court. The Discovery Institute was on the wrong side in that case.

Craig Venter Announces a living synthetic cell

This podcast is possibly one of the landmark announcements of the century. Craig Venter clearly explains the process taken to synthesize a genome from the four chemical components in DNA and insert the resulting DNA in a pre-existing cell that had its own DNA removed previously. The announcement is very lucid with clear definitions of many new terms.

Venter also explains why this approach was taken and what the institute plans to do with the resulting tool

A Samsung Robot In Every Home By 2020? | h+ Magazine

A Samsung Robot In Every Home By 2020? | h+ Magazine

Ray Kurzweil has an article on the convergence of information systems in Korea and their strengths in dealing with them by the year 2020. He also predicts a robot in every Korean home by that time.

New Study Shows Evolution can be Very Rapid.

The practical significance of Magnus Karlsson's discoveries is broad and just as varied as his grasshoppers. He believes this new knowledge can be used in planning preservation projects for threatened species and to improve yields in agriculture.

"But the most important part of the dissertation is that I have shown that evolution sometimes proceeds incredibly rapidly. This is huge," says Magnus Karlsson.

His dissertation is titled Evolution in Changing Environments Revealed by Fire Melanism in Pygmy Grasshoppers.

Singing at America House on Linden Road

We are getting to the point where we have regular fans among the people who watch our shows at America House on Linden Road. It is fun to see them every month or so. It is also fun to try to give them a song which they may not have heard in awhile. I do enjoy going over there.

We have another show at the Pines on Davison Road next Monday. I am looking forward to it. We are doing more four-part harmony. I really have to push my range to do first tenor at this age. *It would be better if I could go to second.

The Hobbit's Predecessors

Long before a 'hobbit' species of human lived on Indonesia's Flores island, other human-like creatures colonised the area. That much was clear.
But scientists have now been able to date their presence to at least one million years ago - some 120,000 years earlier than previously recognised.
The team reports the discovery of these humans' tools in the journal Nature.

Possibly, the hobbit's ancestors were a more primitive humanoid which had migrated out of Africa at an earlier date.

Evolution of Mineral Species

I do, however, want to emphasize one intriguing
insight: most of Earth’s thousands of minerals
owe their existence to the development of life
on the planet. If you think of all the nonliving
world as a stage on which life plays out its evolutionary
drama, think again. The actors renovated
their theater along the way. This observation
also has implications for the quest to find
signs of life on other worlds. Sturdy minerals
rather than fragile organic remains may provide
the most robust and lasting signs of biology.

Scientific American reported on most minerals evolving from life over the last 2 billion years. A few minerals had existed before the Sun's ignition about 4.6 Billion years ago. About 250 minerals formed at that time and still exist. The began to form planetesimals which grew as time passed and collusions took place. Finally, a massive collision took place between the primitive Earth and the Moon.

The Majority of minerals arrived after the great oxidation event about 2billion years ago. This was caused by photosynthesis from blue-green algae. About 2500 new minerals arose.

Then came a billion year period that was relatively quiet. That's called the Boring Billion. About 800 million years ago most of the Earth's continents were clumped along the equator in a land-mass called Rodinia. For the next 200 million years the Earth cycled from snowball to hot box and back. The Glaciation moved minerals around along.

About 460 million years ago, the first land plants, mosses, arose. By the Devonian period, 400 million years ago the Earth had a modern look. Earth's near surface minerology was strikingly modern too.

Conclusions for future research demand that only planets with life would have the oxygen for extensive ocidation.

Viewing minerals in an evolutionary context
also elucidates a more general theme of evolving
systems throughout the cosmos. Simple states
evolve into increasingly complicated states in
many contexts: the evolution of chemical elements
in stars, mineral evolution in planets, the
molecular evolution that leads to the origin of
life, and the familiar biological evolution
through Darwinian natural selection.

From Robert M. Hazen. in Scientific American March 2010