http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron therourke@gmail.com http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kyle-jarrard/neanderthals-getting-an-c_b_1529513.html A chorus of smart, modern minds is rising over the hills of anthropology that the ancient Neanderthals of Europe weren't anywhere nearly as dumb, insufferable and unrecognizable as everyone thought all these years. At long last, these creatures who roamed the Continent for hundreds of thousands of years only to become extinct 30,000 years ago under the onslaught of modern humans from Africa are getting a major upgrade by the scientific community. No more can we say that old Neanderthal -- prototype of shaggy man with absolutely zero smarts -- didn't know what he was doing. And no more can… ]]> Wed, 23 May 2012 09:44:15 -0700 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kyle-jarrard/neanderthals-getting-an-c_b_1529513.html http://www.livescience.com/20102-copying-mistake-build-man-brain.html A copying error appears to be responsible for critical features of the human brain that distinguish us from our closest primate kin, new research finds. When tested out in mice, researchers found this "error" caused the rodents' brain cells to move into place faster and enabled more connections between brain cells. ]]> Wed, 09 May 2012 08:14:46 -0700 http://www.livescience.com/20102-copying-mistake-build-man-brain.html http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2012/04/social-cell A single cell, such as a bacterium, is the simplest thing that can be alive. In addition to the materials from which it is constructed, it needs three features: a way of capturing energy (a metabolism), a way of reproducing (genes or something like genes) and a membrane that lets in what needs to come in and keeps out the rest. ]]> Mon, 30 Apr 2012 10:46:07 -0700 http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2012/04/social-cell http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6079/341?utm_content=tweetdeck&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=science&utm_source=shortener Genetic information storage and processing rely on just two polymers, DNA and RNA, yet whether their role reflects evolutionary history or fundamental functional constraints is currently unknown. With the use of polymerase evolution and design, we show that genetic information can be stored in and recovered from six alternative genetic polymers based on simple nucleic acid architectures not found in nature [xeno-nucleic acids (XNAs)]. We also select XNA aptamers, which bind their targets with high affinity and specificity, demonstrating that beyond heredity, specific XNAs have the capacity for Darwinian evolution and folding into defined structures. Thus, heredity and evolution, two… ]]> Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:31:07 -0700 http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6079/341?utm_content=tweetdeck&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=science&utm_source=shortener http://www.economist.com/node/21551450?fsrc=scn/tw/te/ar/justpressprint/bespoke-pets-just-press-print-the-economist Thanks to 3D printing, it will soon be possible to design and build household animals to order http://t.co/gJnpIQiJ – The Economist (TheEconomist) http://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/185881511801794560 ]]> Thu, 05 Apr 2012 03:02:41 -0700 http://www.economist.com/node/21551450?fsrc=scn/tw/te/ar/justpressprint/bespoke-pets-just-press-print-the-economist http://www.nextnature.net/2011/02/should-we-clone-neanderthals//nextnaturenet-exploring-the-nature-caused-by-people Next What? « http://t.co/OgnSQIf0 - Technology is never a neutral tool. It is rather a socio-cultural dimension,... http://t.co/nZ73f2eu – quin aaron shakra (jadecricket) http://twitter.com/jadecricket/status/187368761806958592 ]]> Wed, 04 Apr 2012 01:42:58 -0700 http://www.nextnature.net/2011/02/should-we-clone-neanderthals//nextnaturenet-exploring-the-nature-caused-by-people http://www.nature.com/news/life-changing-experiments-the-biological-higgs-1.10310#/ We put the question to experts in various fields. Biology is no stranger to large, international collaborations with lofty goals, they pointed out — the race to sequence the human genome around the turn of the century had scientists riveted. But most biological quests lack the mathematical precision, focus and binary satisfaction of a yes-or-no answer that characterize the pursuit of the Higgs. “Most of what is important is messy, and not given to a moment when you plant a flag and crack the champagne,” says Steven Hyman, a neuroscientist at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Nevertheless, our informal… ]]> Thu, 29 Mar 2012 08:44:00 -0700 http://www.nature.com/news/life-changing-experiments-the-biological-higgs-1.10310#/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=gamers-outdo-computers-matching-disease-genes/gamers-outdo-computers-at-matching-up-disease-genes-scientific-american An excellent example of distributed cognition. http://t.co/O3V5h1Nv – Sam Scott (bigsagacity) http://twitter.com/bigsagacity/status/184651180788551680 ]]> Tue, 27 Mar 2012 07:58:19 -0700 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=gamers-outdo-computers-matching-disease-genes/gamers-outdo-computers-at-matching-up-disease-genes-scientific-american http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/03/when-independent-thought-flourishes/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GeneExpressionBlog+(Gene+Expression)/when-independent-thought-flourishes-gene-expression-discover-magazine When independent thought flourishes... (on change, but not too much) : http://t.co/jcKa2VOC by @razibkhan ]]> Mon, 19 Mar 2012 16:25:06 -0700 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/03/when-independent-thought-flourishes/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GeneExpressionBlog+(Gene+Expression)/when-independent-thought-flourishes-gene-expression-discover-magazine http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/15/110815fa_fact_kolbert?currentPage=all The question of what defines the human has, of course, been kicking around since Socrates, and probably a lot longer. If it has yet to be satisfactorily resolved, then this, Pääbo suspects, is because it has never been properly framed. “The challenge is to address the questions that are answerable,” he told me. Pääbo’s most ambitious project to date, which he has assembled an international consortium to assist him with, is an attempt to sequence the entire genome of the Neanderthal. The project is about halfway complete and has already yielded some unsettling results, including the news, announced by Pääbo… ]]> Wed, 07 Mar 2012 15:56:05 -0700 http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/15/110815fa_fact_kolbert?currentPage=all http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2012/01/nature-nurture-and-liberal-values-roger-scruton-jesse-prinz-david-eagleman-neuroscience/ Biology determines our behaviour more than it suits many to acknowledge. But people—and politics and morality—cannot be described just by neural impulses ]]> Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:35:21 -0700 http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2012/01/nature-nurture-and-liberal-values-roger-scruton-jesse-prinz-david-eagleman-neuroscience/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2011/11/14/neanderthal-neuroscience/ As scientists began to build a database of human DNA in the 1990s, it became possible to test these ideas with genes. In his talk, Paabo described how he and his colleagues managed to extract some fragments of DNA from a Neanderthal fossil–by coincidence, the very first Neanderthal discovered in 1857. The DNA was of a special sort. Along with the bulk of our genes, which are located in the nucleus of our cells, we also carry bits of DNA in jellybean-shaped structures called mitochondria. Since there are hundreds of mitochondria in each cell, it’s easier to grab fragments of… ]]> Mon, 21 Nov 2011 03:09:18 -0700 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2011/11/14/neanderthal-neuroscience/ http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110809/full/476136a.html By comparing individual DNA letters in multiple modern human genomes with those in the Neanderthal genome, the date of that interbreeding has now been pinned down to 65,000–90,000 years ago. Montgomery Slatkin and Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas, theoretical geneticists from the University of California, Berkeley, presented the finding at the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution meeting in Kyoto, Japan, held on 26–30 July.
Slatkin says that their result agrees with another study presented at the meeting that came from the group of David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, who was involved in sequencing both the… ]]> Mon, 15 Aug 2011 02:45:39 -0700 http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110809/full/476136a.html http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110721/full/475438a.html The increasingly sophisticated blending of different species to create chimaeras is pushing biology into a new ethical dimension. Last year, scientists used new stem-cell technologies to create a mouse with a functioning pancreas composed entirely of rat cells. So might it soon be possible to create a monkey with a brain composed entirely of human neurons? And would it think like a human?

Such an animal might be useful to researchers studying human cognition or human-specific pathogens. But it would be ethically unacceptable and should be banned, argues a government-commissioned report from the UK Academy of Medical… ]]> Fri, 22 Jul 2011 01:30:09 -0700 http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110721/full/475438a.html http://theeuropean-magazine.com/282-bostrom-nick/283-perfection-is-not-a-useful-concept Interview with Nick Bostrom

Our long track record of survival–humans have been around for about 100,000 years–gives us some assurance that the natural risks have been rather small.

If they have not ended human history until now, they are unlikely to have that effect in the near future. So the risks we should really worry about come from new developments. They introduce new factors with a lot of statistical uncertainty, and we cannot be confident that their risks are manageable. The potential of human action to do good and evil is larger than it… ]]> Mon, 20 Jun 2011 09:21:17 -0700 http://theeuropean-magazine.com/282-bostrom-nick/283-perfection-is-not-a-useful-concept http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/15/chris-stringer-origin-our-species-review "If there has been no spiritual change of kind / Within our species since Cro-Magnon Man . . ." The poet Louis MacNeice was voicing a commonplace that was accepted by most experts on human evolution until very recently – in fact still is by some. The evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould put it like this: "There's been no biological change in humans in 40,000 or 50,000 years. Everything we call culture and civilisation we've built with the same body and brain."

The Cro-Magnons were the creators of the cave paintings at Lascaux and Altamira – the… ]]> Thu, 16 Jun 2011 16:18:36 -0700 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/15/chris-stringer-origin-our-species-review http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/science/15evolve.html The origin of animals was one of the most astonishing and important transformations in the history of life. From single-celled ancestors, they evolved into a riot of complexity and diversity. An estimated seven million species of animals live on earth today, ranging from tubeworms at the bottom of the ocean to elephants lumbering across the African savanna. Their bodies can total trillions of cells, which can develop into muscles, bones and hundreds of other kinds of tissues and cell types.
The dawn of the animal kingdom about 800 million years ago was also an ecological revolution.
Animals devoured… ]]> Sun, 20 Mar 2011 05:37:46 -0700 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/science/15evolve.html http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2873004/ According to this view, ancient viruses, as with the ones today, could only make copies of themselves by succesfully infecting a host. So they become engines of innovation, using every possible dodge to get their genetic payload inside the host cell. In an early, RNA-protein world, there would not be enzymes to degrade DNA, so a virus encoded by DNA would have a big survival advantage. This suggests a scenario in which a clever parasite brings along DNA plus the means of copying DNA-- a different parasite at least for bacteria and archaea/eukaryotes-- and hijacks the cell's existing interpretation equipment.… ]]> Wed, 02 Mar 2011 07:32:46 -0700 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2873004/ http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/17/110117fa_fact_brooks?currentPage=all We are living in the middle of a revolution in consciousness. Over the past few decades, geneticists, neuroscientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists, and others have made great strides in understanding the inner working of the human mind. Far from being dryly materialistic, their work illuminates the rich underwater world where character is formed and wisdom grows. They are giving us a better grasp of emotions, intuitions, biases, longings, predispositions, character traits, and social bonding, precisely those things about which our culture has least to say. Brain science helps fill the hole left by the atrophy of theology and philosophy.
]]> Thu, 13 Jan 2011 03:17:38 -0700 http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/17/110117fa_fact_brooks?currentPage=all http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/12/the-danger-of-cosmic-genius/8306/ Freeman Dyson is one of those force-of-nature intellects whose brilliance can be fully grasped by only a tiny subset of humanity, that handful of thinkers capable of following his equations. His principal contribution has been to the theory of quantum electrodynamics, but he has done stellar work, too, in pure mathematics, particle physics, statistical mechanics, and matter in the solid state. He writes with a grace and clarity that is rare, even freakish, in a scientist, and his books, including Disturbing the Universe, Weapons and Hope, Infinite in All Directions, and The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet, have made… ]]> Sat, 13 Nov 2010 06:07:00 -0700 http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/12/the-danger-of-cosmic-genius/8306/