This Week in PLoS

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In PLoS One this week, researchers at Thailand's National Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology present microPIR, a database of "microRNA-promoter target interactions for experimental microRNA researchers and computational biologists to study the microRNA regulation through gene promoter." The database "integrates various annotated genomic sequence databases repetitive elements, transcription factor binding sites, CpG islands, and SNPs offering users the facility to extensively explore relationships among target sites and other genomic features," the authors write. "The built-in genome browser of microPIR provides a comprehensive view of multidimensional genomic data." The resource also includes a PCR primer design module to facilitate experimental validation, and functional data from the OMIM and other resources, the team adds.

Elsewhere in the journal, a Japanese team led by investigators at Kitasato University presents the carbonic anhydrase XII, or CAXII, antibody as a sero-diagnostic marker for lung cancer, based on immunoprecipitation and MADLI TOF/TOF-mass spectrometry analysis.

Over in PLoS Genetics, the University of California, Davis' Daniele Filiault and Julin Maloof report on a GWAS for variants associated with increased hypocotyl elongation in Arabidopsis thaliana. Filiault and Maloof describe variants that underlie the shade-avoidance response in the plant.

A team led by investigators at Princeton University this week describes the "genetic architecture of highly complex chemical resistance traits across four yeast strains," through an extreme QTL mapping approach. The team says its results "improve our understanding of complex traits in yeast and have implications for study design in other organisms."

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This Week in PLoS

Mayo Clinic researchers building melanoma vaccine to combat skin cancer

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Public release date: 19-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Robert Nellis newsbureau@mayo.edu 507-284-5005 Mayo Clinic

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Mayo Clinic researchers have trained mouse immune systems to eradicate skin cancer from within, using a genetic combination of human DNA from melanoma cells and a cousin of the rabies virus. The strategy, called cancer immunotherapy, uses a genetically engineered version of the vesicular stomatitis virus to deliver a broad spectrum of genes derived from melanoma cancer cells directly into tumors. In early studies, 60 percent of tumor-burdened mice were cured in fewer than three months and with minimal side effects. Results of the latest study appear this week in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

"We believe that this new technique will help us to identify a whole new set of genes that encode antigens that are important in stimulating the immune system to reject cancer. In particular, we have seen that several proteins need to be expressed together to generate the most effective rejection of the tumors in mice," says Richard Vile, Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic researcher in the Department of Molecular Medicine and a coauthor of the study, along with Jose Pulido, M.D., a Mayo Clinic ophthalmologist and ocular oncologist.

Dr. Vile's success with melanoma adds to Mayo Clinic's growing portfolio of experimental cancer vaccines, which includes an active clinical trial of vesicular stomatitis vaccines for liver cancers. Future studies could include similar vaccines for more aggressive cancers, such as lung, brain and pancreatic.

"I do believe we can create vaccines that will knock them off one by one," Dr. Vile says. "By vaccinating against multiple proteins at once, we hope that we will be able to treat both the primary tumor and also protect against recurrence."

The immune system functions on a seek-and-destroy platform and has fine-tuned its capacity to identify viral invaders such as vesicular stomatitis virus. Part of the appeal of building cancer vaccines from the whole spectrum of tumor DNA is that tumors can adapt to the repeated attacks of a healthy immune system and display fewer antigens (or signposts) that the immune system can identify.

Cancers can learn to hide from a normal immune system, but appear unable to escape an immune system trained by the vesicular stomatitis virus with the wide range of DNA used in the library approach.

"Nobody knows how many antigens the immune system can really see on tumor cells," says Dr. Vile. "By expressing all of these proteins in highly immunogenic viruses, we increased their visibility to the immune system. The immune system now thinks it is being invaded by the viruses, which are expressing cancer-related antigens that should be eliminated."

Much immunotherapy research has slowed because of researchers' inability to isolate a sufficiently diverse collection of antigens in tumor cells. Tumors in these scenarios are able to mutate and reestablish themselves in spite of the body's immune system.

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Mayo Clinic researchers building melanoma vaccine to combat skin cancer

Engineering the Human Body to Combat Climate Change – Video

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12-03-2012 21:39 The threat of global climate change has prompted us to redesign many of our technologies to be more energy-efficient. From lightweight hybrid cars to long-lasting LED's, engineers have made well-known products smaller and less wasteful. But tinkering with our tools will only get us so far, because however smart our technologies become, the human body has its own ecological footprint, and there are more of them than ever before. So, some scholars are asking, what if we could engineer human beings to be more energy efficient? A new paper to be published in Ethics, Policy & Environment proposes a series of biomedical modifications that could help humans, themselves, consume less. Some of the proposed modifications are simple and noninvasive. For instance, many people wish to give up meat for ecological reasons, but lack the willpower to do so on their own. The paper suggests that such individuals could take a pill that would trigger mild nausea upon the ingestion of meat, which would then lead to a lasting aversion to meat-eating. Other techniques are bound to be more controversial. For instance, the paper suggests that parents could make use of genetic engineering or hormone therapy in order to birth smaller, less resource-intensive children. The lead author of the paper, S. Matthew Liao, is a professor of philosophy and bioethics at New York University. Liao is keen to point out that the paper is not meant to advocate for any particular human modifications, or even human ...

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Engineering the Human Body to Combat Climate Change - Video

The Next Big Frontier?

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At the Huffington Post's Science blog, Singularity University's Andrew Hessel says it's high time for a second Human Genome Project. "Today, in 2012, reading a human genome is no big deal," Hessel says. The next big frontier? "Genetic engineering," he adds.

Hessel proposes a challenge to the international research community:

I want to be absolutely clear that I'm talking only about the task of writing a complete 3 billion basepair human genome, correctly organized into 23 chromosomes, and packaged into a nucleus. A technical challenge, validated by showing the synthetic genome is functional if microinjected into a cultured cell. What I'm definitely not suggesting is growing a baby from a synthetic genome. Before we can fly, we need to be able to walk.

Hessel goes on to detail the reasons why writing a human genome is the next logical step in genomics, and suggests that "a coordinated effort to write a human genome would likely be completed in less than a decade, cost significantly less than the first HGP, and result in countless new biotech applications."

"It seems a no-brainer," he adds.

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The Next Big Frontier?

Genetic Engineering (excerpt) – Video

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26-10-2011 07:18 Genetic engineering may be one of the greatest breakthroughs in recent history, however, with scientific advancements new ethical issues are raised, forcing us to ask not how, but if we should push genetic research to its absolute limit. This programme looks at the possible benefits of genetic engineering, such as the curing of hereditary diseases and the creation of better, more efficient crops. It also explores the potential issues that arise with this new technology - the questionable morality of cloning, and the controversy that surrounds stem-cell research are two topics which are also investigated. Students will hear both a secular and religious perspectives on the morality of intervening in nature at the most fundamental level. To find out more about this film, follow this link: http://www.classroomvideo.co.uk

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Genetic Engineering (excerpt) - Video

Fast-track breeding could bring a second Green Revolution

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Green revolution:Fast-track breeding is beginning to develop crops that can produce more and healthier food without controversial genetic engineering.

In Zambia during the current planting season, a corn crop will go into the fields that begins the process of rapidly boosting vitamin A content by as much ten-fold helping to address a nutritional deficiency that causes 250,000-500,000 children to go blind annually, most of them in Africa and Asia. In China, Kenya, and Madagascar, also this planting season, farmers will put out a crop of Artemisia annua that yields 20 to 30 percent more of the chemical compound artemisinin, the basis for what is now the worlds standard treatment for malaria.

Both improvements are happening because of fast-track breeding technology that promises to produce a 21st-century green revolution. It is already putting more food on tables though its unclear whether it can add enough food to keep pace as the worlds human population booms to 9 billion people by 2050.

Fast-track breeding is also giving agronomists a remarkable tool for quickly adapting crops to climate change and the increasing challenges of drought, flooding, emerging diseases, and shifting agricultural zones. And it can help save lives: In the absence of prevention, half those victims of vitamin A deficiency now die shortly after going blind, according to the World Health Organization; and in 2010, lack of adequate treatment meaning artemisinin contributed to the deaths of 655,000 children from malaria.

The fast-track technology, called marker-assisted selection (MAS), or molecular breeding, takes advantage of rapid improvements in genetic sequencing, but avoids all the regulatory and political baggage of genetic engineering. Bill Freese, a science policy analyst with the Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit advocacy group, calls it a perfectly acceptable tool. I dont see any food safety issue. It can be a very useful technique if its used by breeders who are working in the public interest.

Molecular breeding isnt genetic engineering, a technology that has long alarmed critics on two counts. Its methods seem outlandish taking genes from spiders and putting them in goats, or borrowing insect resistance from soil bacteria and transferring it into corn and it has also seemed to benefit a handful of agribusiness giants armed with patents, at the expense of public interest.

By contrast, molecular breeding is merely a much faster and more efficient way of doing what nature and farmers have always done, by natural selection and artificial selection respectively: It takes existing genes that happen to be advantageous in a given situation and increases their frequency in a population.

In the past, farmers and breeders did it by walking around their fields and looking at individual plants or animals that seemed to have desirable traits, like greater productivity, or resistance to a particular disease. Then they went to work cross-breeding to see if they could tease out that trait and get it to appear reliably in subsequent generations. It could take decades, and success at breeding in one trait often meant bringing along some deleterious fellow traveler, or inadvertently breeding out some other essential trait.

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Fast-track breeding could bring a second Green Revolution

GGN: Homeless Turned Into Mobile WI-FI, Genetic Engineering to Fight Warming, DNA is Your Destiny – Video

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15-03-2012 00:18 PLEASE SUBSCRIBE Please visit: http://www.ggnonline.com or http for the latest news commentary by Global Government News Please donate to GGN: http://www.paypal.com because it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. HEADLINES WITH LINKS: Can Lure of Driver's License Keep Kids in School? bit.ly DARPA wants swarms of "disposable" satellites to provide almost-live images on demand bit.ly Gingrich: Package Tracking Could Be Used To Locate Illegal Immigrants huff.to Obama administration blocks Texas voter ID law yhoo.it Turning the Homeless Into 4G Hotspots at SXSW yhoo.it Marketing to Your DNA: The Suits Want To Know More About You bit.ly How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did onforb.es New York State Set to Add All Convict DNA to Its Database nyti.ms Flu Vaccine Causes Death Of 7 Year Old Kaylynne Matten bit.ly Treating Children Whose Parents Refuse to Have Them Vaccinated bit.ly DNA database in doubt after teenager spends three months behind bars for rape in city he has never even visited because gene samples were mixed up bit.ly Critics warn that thousands of Britons could be extradited under plans for EU states to be given access to our DNA bank bit.ly Why the British are free-thinking and the Chinese love conformity: It's all in the genes claim scientists bit.ly Spanish doctors successfully perform 1st fetal lung surgery bit.ly Forget Asteroids and Volcanoes: Chemically Induced Infertility Threatens Human Race bit.ly Want to become a father? Put down ...

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GGN: Homeless Turned Into Mobile WI-FI, Genetic Engineering to Fight Warming, DNA is Your Destiny - Video

Genetically engineered human cosplay hair – Video

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14-03-2012 22:24 I am actually here to get everybody to live much longer. Japanese yogurt LKM512 lkm512.com doubles lab mammal life. I have not tried it, Do not know what it tastes like yet there is a yogurt from Japan published at the peer reviwed journal PLoS one that more than doubles the lifespan of mice. Its possible the yogurt scientist made a drawn manga comic at youtube http://www.youtube.com that perhaps people here would appreciate. I strongly support longevity to immortality research sometimes writing at imminst.org longecity.com as treonsverdery http://www.longecity.org all the kawaii made me super sympathetic to cosplayers Any humans or humanoids that dress up as creatures might have fun at conventions carrying around the yogurt that makes mice live twice as long. New hair colors Genetically engineering peoples hair to be different colors might be cosplay. anyway there is a medical journal article at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov called Nonviral in situ green fluorescent protein labeling and culture of primary, adult human hair follicle epithelial progenitor cells. Im not linked to the author or anything, I just thought that people here might like being genetically modified organisms. phycobilins are ocean colors that can also be made a part of genetic engineering actual cosplayer is verykindwhitecat visit her video at http://www.youtube.com

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Genetically engineered human cosplay hair - Video

Save the planet by genetically engineering humans to be smaller, suggests NYU philosopher

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NYU professor suggests we genetically engineer babies to be smaller and more 'energy-efficient' Other suggestions to save the planet include making humans intolerant to meat through pills or patches 'The Kyoto Protocol, has not produced demonstrable reductions in global emissions' Authors of study stress they are not advocating the ideas, just opening the debate up for radical cures

By Eddie Wrenn

PUBLISHED: 10:56 EST, 13 March 2012 | UPDATED: 02:43 EST, 14 March 2012

Mankind should consider extreme options - such as taking pills to wean humanity away from eating meat or genetically engineering ourselves to be smaller - in order to reduce our ecological footprint, says a leading philosopher.

From reducing our reliance on fossil fuels to finding more energy-efficient ways to travel, the push is on for humans to combat the threat of global climate change.

But the ways in which we change our behaviour - either culturally or through technology - are still up for debate.

Engineering of the future: Could we re-wire humans to be intolerant of meat and less of a drain on our planet's resources?

Professor Matthew Liao of New York University has outlined some of the dramatic ways we can alter our future.

Professor Matthew Liao suggests we debate new methods to reduce our damage to the environment

He and his co-authors make suggestions ranging from providing pills that give people an aversion to eating meat to genetic engineering or hormone therapy so that parents give birth to smaller, less resource-intensive children.

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Save the planet by genetically engineering humans to be smaller, suggests NYU philosopher

LUCIEN NOCELLI talks Jazz Fusion Album EVOLUCIEN with SPLAT MOD MUSIC TV (2012 OFFICIAL) – Video

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16-01-2012 07:28 http://WWW.LUCIENNOCELLI.COM AVAILABLE ON ITUNES itunes.apple.com FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com SPLAT MOD MUSIC TV sits down with recording artist Lucien Nocelli to discuss his latest jazz fusion release EvoLucien - a Jazz Fusion concept album containing artwork, and a 24 page booklet describing the song inspirations which tell an interesting take on the human creation story, human evolution, genetics, genetic engineering, our human genome and many more interesting takes on our origins. TRACK LISTING: 1 - Life Beyond the Trees 2 - Stone Tools 3 - Lake Turkana 4 - Out of Africa (First Migration, Second Migration) 5 - Tones of Stones and Bones 6 - Intervention 7 - FOXP2 8 - Lulu Upgrade 9 - Eden (Mitochondrial Eve, Y Chromosomal Adam) 10 - March of the Ancestral Modern Humans / Discovering New Lands 11 - Evolution (Mutation, Natural Selection, Genetic Drift) Includes topics covering: adam and eve, sumarians, dna, ergaster, cradle of mankind, ancients, ancient civilizations, africa, homo erectus, hominids, neaderthal, origins, genome, intervention, genetic engineering,

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LUCIEN NOCELLI talks Jazz Fusion Album EVOLUCIEN with SPLAT MOD MUSIC TV (2012 OFFICIAL) - Video

How Engineering the Human Body Could Combat Climate Change

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Some of the proposed modifications are simple and noninvasive. For instance, many people wish to give up meat for ecological reasons, but lack the willpower to do so on their own. The paper suggests that such individuals could take a pill that would trigger mild nausea upon the ingestion of meat, which would then lead to a lasting aversion to meat-eating. Other techniques are bound to be more controversial. For instance, the paper suggests that parents could make use of genetic engineering or hormone therapy in order to birth smaller, less resource-intensive children.

The lead author of the paper, S. Matthew Liao, is a professor of philosophy and bioethics at New York University. Liao is keen to point out that the paper is not meant to advocate for any particular human modifications, or even human engineering generally; rather, it is only meant to introduce human engineering as one possible, partial solution to climate change. He also emphasized the voluntary nature of the proposed modifications. Neither Liao or his co-authors, Anders Sandberg and Rebecca Roache of Oxford, approve of any coercive human engineering; they favor modifications borne of individual choices, not technocratic mandates. What follows is my conversation with Liao about why he thinks human engineering could be the most ethical and effective solution to global climate change.

Judging from your paper, you seem skeptical about current efforts to mitigate climate change, including market based solutions like carbon pricing or even more radical solutions like geoengineering. Why is that?

Liao: It's not that I don't think that some of those solutions could succeed under the right conditions; it's more that I think that they might turn out to be inadequate, or in some cases too risky. Take market solutions---so far it seems like it's pretty difficult to orchestrate workable international agreements to affect international emissions trading. The Kyoto Protocol, for instance, has not produced demonstrable reductions in global emissions, and in any event demand for petrol and for electricity seems to be pretty inelastic. And so it's questionable whether carbon taxation alone can deliver the kind of reduction that we need to really take on climate change.

With respect to geoengineering, the worry is that it's just too risky---many of the technologies involved have never been attempted on such a large scale, and so you have to worry that by implementing these techniques we could endanger ourselves or future generations. For example it's been suggested that we could alter the reflectivity of the atmosphere using sulfate aerosol so as to turn away a portion of the sun's heat, but it could be that doing so would destroy the ozone layer, which would obviously be problematic. Others have argued that we ought to fertilize the ocean with iron, because doing so might encourage a massive bloom of carbon-sucking plankton. But doing so could potentially render the ocean inhospitable to fish, which would obviously also be quite problematic.

One human engineering strategy you mention is a kind of pharmacologically induced meat intolerance. You suggest that humans could be given meat alongside a medication that triggers extreme nausea, which would then cause a long-lasting aversion to meat eating. Why is it that you expect this could have such a dramatic impact on climate change?

Liao: There is a widely cited U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization report that estimates that 18% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions and CO2 equivalents come from livestock farming, which is actually a much higher share than from transportation. More recently it's been suggested that livestock farming accounts for as much as 51% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. And then there are estimates that as much as 9% of human emissions occur as a result of deforestation for the expansion of pastures for livestock. And that doesn't even to take into account the emissions that arise from manure, or from the livestock directly. Since a large portion of these cows and other grazing animals are raised for consumption, it seems obvious that reducing the consumption of these meats could have considerable environmental benefits.

Even a minor 21% to 24% reduction in the consumption of these kinds of meats could result in the same reduction in emissions as the total localization of food production, which would mean reducing "food miles" to zero. And, I think it's important to note that it wouldn't necessarily need to be a pill. We have also toyed around with the idea of a patch that might stimulate the immune system to reject common bovine proteins, which could lead to a similar kind of lasting aversion to meat products.

Your paper also discusses the use of human engineering to make humans smaller. Why would this be a powerful technique in the fight against climate change?

Liao: Well one of the things that we noticed is that human ecological footprints are partly correlated with size. Each kilogram of body mass requires a certain amount of food and nutrients and so, other things being equal, the larger person is the more food and energy they are going to soak up over the course of a lifetime. There are also other, less obvious ways in which larger people consume more energy than smaller people---for example a car uses more fuel per mile to carry a heavier person, more fabric is needed to clothe larger people, and heavier people wear out shoes, carpets and furniture at a quicker rate than lighter people, and so on.

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How Engineering the Human Body Could Combat Climate Change

GMO Foods Exposed-Jeffrey M. Smith – Video

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24-02-2012 05:57 Jeffrey M. Smith, a leading consumer advocate promoting healthier, non-GMO foods. Smith is the author of Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You're Eating and Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods. Smith is also featured in Scientists Under Attack: Genetic Engineering in the Magnetic Field of Money, a 60 minute, award winning film by Bertram Verhaag. Smith's books and Verhaag's film are available at the Infowars Store. http://www.seedsofdeception.com [Seeds of Deception] Your Price: $17.95 http://www.infowarsshop.com _________________________________________ http://www.infowars.com http http://www.infowars.net http http://www.youtube.com (New Section Added to Prisonplanet.tv) http://www.prisonplanet.tv twitter.com SIGN UP FOR A MEMBERSHIP (FULL ACCESS to all files and content on PrisonPlanet.tv) prisonplanet.tv _________________________________________ The Light of the World,Movie(Full Length) http://www.youtube.com

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GMO Foods Exposed-Jeffrey M. Smith - Video

Red Ice Radio – Shannon Dorey – Hour 1 – The Nummo

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09-01-2012 15:45 Dorey is a graduate of Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario where she studied English, History and mythology. Her interests were expanded into religious studies after studying the New Testament at the University of Windsor in 1991. She began her writing career as a journalist and still continues writing articles for various online publications. She joins us to discuss her second book, The Nummo. The Dogon talked about alien beings known as Nummo who came to Earth from another star system. These fish and serpent like beings were hermaphrodites who spent more time in water than on land. Shannon presents examples of how these amphibious aliens appeared all over the ancient world and makes connection with mitochondrial Eve, Mary Magdalene, Masonic symbolism and more. She reveals how the Dogon religion is the core religion from which other religions including Judaism and Christianity have evolved. We'll discuss the Nummo's voyage to Earth, their knowledge of genetic engineering, Dogon mythology and their intention with humanity. http://www.redicecreations.com

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Red Ice Radio - Shannon Dorey - Hour 1 - The Nummo

Monsanto’s Crimes Against Humanity with Jeffrey M. Smith 2/2 – Video

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18-10-2011 02:20 Host Aaron Dykes interviews Jeffrey Smith about a Bertram Verhaag documentary, Scientists Under Attack: Genetic Engineering in the Magnetic Field of Money, about GMOs and the need for the independence of science. http://www.seedsofdeception.com http://www.prisonplanet.tv Scientists Under Attack: Genetic Engineering in the Magnetic Field of Money is a 60 minute, award winning film by Bertram Verhaag about GMOs and the need for the independence of science. Nearly 95% of genetic engineering research is paid for and controlled by international corporations such as Monsanto. This film exposes how these globalist companies manipulate scientific research to hide the dangers of genetically altered plants and animals. (Buy Your Copy Today at The Infowars Store) http://www.infowarsshop.com

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Monsanto's Crimes Against Humanity with Jeffrey M. Smith 2/2 - Video

How Human Engineering Could Be the Solution to Climate Change

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Some of the proposed modifications are simple and noninvasive. For instance, many people wish to give up meat for ecological reasons, but lack the willpower to do so on their own. The paper suggests that such individuals could take a pill that would trigger mild nausea upon the ingestion of meat, which would then lead to a lasting aversion to meat-eating. Other techniques are bound to be more controversial. For instance, the paper suggests that parents could make use of genetic engineering or hormone therapy in order to birth smaller, less resource-intensive children.

The lead author of the paper, S. Matthew Liao, is a professor of philosophy and bioethics at New York University. Liao is keen to point out that the paper is not meant to advocate for any particular human modifications, or even human engineering generally; rather, it is only meant to introduce human engineering as one possible, partial solution to climate change. He also emphasized the voluntary nature of the proposed modifications. Neither Liao or his co-authors, Anders Sandberg and Rebecca Roache of Oxford, approve of any coercive human engineering; they favor modifications borne of individual choices, not technocratic mandates. What follows is my conversation with Liao about why he thinks human engineering could be the most ethical and effective solution to global climate change.

Judging from your paper, you seem skeptical about current efforts to mitigate climate change, including market based solutions like carbon pricing or even more radical solutions like geoengineering. Why is that?

Liao: It's not that I don't think that some of those solutions could succeed under the right conditions; it's more that I think that they might turn out to be inadequate, or in some cases too risky. Take market solutions---so far it seems like it's pretty difficult to orchestrate workable international agreements to affect international emissions trading. The Kyoto Protocol, for instance, has not produced demonstrable reductions in global emissions, and in any event demand for petrol and for electricity seems to be pretty inelastic. And so it's questionable whether carbon taxation alone can deliver the kind of reduction that we need to really take on climate change.

With respect to geoengineering, the worry is that it's just too risky---many of the technologies involved have never been attempted on such a large scale, and so you have to worry that by implementing these techniques we could endanger ourselves or future generations. For example it's been suggested that we could alter the reflectivity of the atmosphere using sulfate aerosol so as to turn away a portion of the sun's heat, but it could be that doing so would destroy the ozone layer, which would obviously be problematic. Others have argued that we ought to fertilize the ocean with iron, because doing so might encourage a massive bloom of carbon-sucking plankton. But doing so could potentially render the ocean inhospitable to fish, which would obviously also be quite problematic.

One human engineering strategy you mention is a kind of pharmacologically induced meat intolerance. You suggest that humans could be given meat alongside a medication that triggers extreme nausea, which would then cause a long-lasting aversion to meat eating. Why is it that you expect this could have such a dramatic impact on climate change?

Liao: There is a widely cited U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization report that estimates that 18% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions and CO2 equivalents come from livestock farming, which is actually a much higher share than from transportation. More recently it's been suggested that livestock farming accounts for as much as 51% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. And then there are estimates that as much as 9% of human emissions occur as a result of deforestation for the expansion of pastures for livestock. And that doesn't even to take into account the emissions that arise from manure, or from the livestock directly. Since a large portion of these cows and other grazing animals are raised for consumption, it seems obvious that reducing the consumption of these meats could have considerable environmental benefits.

Even a minor 21% to 24% reduction in the consumption of these kinds of meats could result in the same reduction in emissions as the total localization of food production, which would mean reducing "food miles" to zero. And, I think it's important to note that it wouldn't necessarily need to be a pill. We have also toyed around with the idea of a patch that might stimulate the immune system to reject common bovine proteins, which could lead to a similar kind of lasting aversion to meat products.

Your paper also discusses the use of human engineering to make humans smaller. Why would this be a powerful technique in the fight against climate change?

Liao: Well one of the things that we noticed is that human ecological footprints are partly correlated with size. Each kilogram of body mass requires a certain amount of food and nutrients and so, other things being equal, the larger person is the more food and energy they are going to soak up over the course of a lifetime. There are also other, less obvious ways in which larger people consume more energy than smaller people---for example a car uses more fuel per mile to carry a heavier person, more fabric is needed to clothe larger people, and heavier people wear out shoes, carpets and furniture at a quicker rate than lighter people, and so on.

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How Human Engineering Could Be the Solution to Climate Change

Genetic Engineering – Seven Wonders of the Microbe World (6/7) – Video

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29-11-2011 10:08 Free learning from The Open University http://www.open.edu --- This video explores the ways in which humans are learning to exploit microbes to produce medicines, fuel and food. (Part 6 of 7) Playlist link - http://www.youtube.com --- Study 'Biology' at the Open University: www3.open.ac.uk

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Genetic Engineering - Seven Wonders of the Microbe World (6/7) - Video

Progress, no big breakthrough, in hunt for HIV cure

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(Reuters) - Scientists, stymied for decades by the complexity of the human immunodeficiency virus, are making progress on several fronts in the search for a cure for HIV infections, a leading medical research conference was told this week in Seattle.

Promising tactics range from flushing hidden HIV from cells to changing out a person's own immune system cells, making them resistant to HIV and then putting them back into the patient's body.

A major stumbling block is the fact that HIV lies low in pools or reservoirs of latent infection that even powerful drugs cannot reach, scientists told the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, one of the world's largest scientific meetings on HIV/AIDS.

"We need to get the virus to come out of the latent state, then rely on the immune system or some other treatment to kill the virus," said Dr. Kevin De Cock, director of the Center for Global Health at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

HIV, which surfaced more than 30 years ago, infects more than 33 million people worldwide. Thanks to prevention measures, tests that detect HIV early and new antiretroviral drugs that can control the virus for decades, infection with the virus that causes AIDS is no longer a death sentence.

Still, questions of cost, side effects, drug resistance and ultimate lifespan, make lifelong use of antiviral drugs a less-than-ideal solution.

The International AIDS Society last year formally added the aim of finding a cure to its HIV strategy of prevention, treatment and care.

Early human trials of vaccines designed to prevent or treat infection with the difficult to target virus have proved disappointing. HIV is a "provirus" that is integrated into the DNA of a host cell, where it can remain latent or eventually reactivate.

"It has proven to be an incredibly formidable challenge to develop a vaccine," said John Coffin, professor of molecular biology at Tufts University in Boston. "In recent years the pendulum is swinging back."

Scientific advances in molecular engineering are allowing researchers to delve more deeply into the mechanism of HIV.

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Progress, no big breakthrough, in hunt for HIV cure

From 'Refrigerator Mothers' to untangling the genetic roots of autism

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Public release date: 7-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Michael Bernstein m_bernstein@acs.org 202-872-6042 American Chemical Society

With the "Refrigerator Mother" notion about the cause of autism a distant and discredited memory, scientists are making remarkable progress in untangling the genetic roots of the condition, which affects millions of children and adults, according to an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News. C&EN is the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society.

In the story, C&EN Associate Editor Lauren K. Wolf points out that most people in the 1960s believed autism resulted from a lack of maternal warmth and emotional attachment. It was a hypothesis popularized by Austrian-born American child psychologist and writer Bruno Bettelheim. Now scientists around the globe are focusing on genes that have been implicated in autism and related conditions, collectively termed "autism spectrum disorders." That research may solve mysteries about autism, which affects 1 in 110 children in the U.S. Among them: what causes autism, why does it affect more boys than girls and what can be done to prevent and treat it?

C&EN explains that scientists now have solidly implicated certain genes as being involved in autism. Most of those genes play a role in the transmission of signals through the junctions or "synapses" between nerve cells. Synapses are the territory where one nerve releases a chemical signal that hands off messages to an adjoining nerve. The human brain has an estimated 1,000 trillion synapses, and they are hot spots for miscommunications that underpin neurological disorders like autism. Scientists now are gleaning information on what those genes do, what brain circuits they affect and how the proteins they produce function. In doing so, they are paving the way for future medications for autism spectrum disorders.

###

The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 164,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

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