Daily Archives: October 23, 2015

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 1949 – 19451952 …

Posted: October 23, 2015 at 11:47 pm

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 1949

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union.

Signing of the NATO Treaty

NATO was the first peacetime military alliance the United States entered into outside of the Western Hemisphere. After the destruction of the Second World War, the nations of Europe struggled to rebuild their economies and ensure their security. The former required a massive influx of aid to help the war-torn landscapes re-establish industries and produce food, and the latter required assurances against a resurgent Germany or incursions from the Soviet Union. The United States viewed an economically strong, rearmed, and integrated Europe as vital to the prevention of communist expansion across the continent. As a result, Secretary of State George Marshall proposed a program of large-scale economic aid to Europe. The resulting European Recovery Program, or Marshall Plan, not only facilitated European economic integration but promoted the idea of shared interests and cooperation between the United States and Europe. Soviet refusal either to participate in the Marshall Plan or to allow its satellite states in Eastern Europe to accept the economic assistance helped to reinforce the growing division between east and west in Europe.

In 19471948, a series of events caused the nations of Western Europe to become concerned about their physical and political security and the United States to become more closely involved with European affairs. The ongoing civil war in Greece, along with tensions in Turkey, led President Harry S. Truman to assert that the United States would provide economic and military aid to both countries, as well as to any other nation struggling against an attempt at subjugation. A Soviet-sponsored coup in Czechoslovakia resulted in a communist government coming to power on the borders of Germany. Attention also focused on elections in Italy as the communist party had made significant gains among Italian voters. Furthermore, events in Germany also caused concern. The occupation and governance of Germany after the war had long been disputed, and in mid-1948, Soviet premier Joseph Stalin chose to test Western resolve by implementing a blockade against West Berlin, which was then under joint U.S., British, and French control but surrounded by Soviet-controlled East Germany. This Berlin Crisis brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of conflict, although a massive airlift to resupply the city for the duration of the blockade helped to prevent an outright confrontation. These events caused U.S. officials to grow increasingly wary of the possibility that the countries of Western Europe might deal with their security concerns by negotiating with the Soviets. To counter this possible turn of events, the Truman Administration considered the possibility of forming a European-American alliance that would commit the United States to bolstering the security of Western Europe.

Signing of the Brussels Treaty

The Western European countries were willing to consider a collective security solution. In response to increasing tensions and security concerns, representatives of several countries of Western Europe gathered together to create a military alliance. Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg signed the Brussels Treaty in March, 1948. Their treaty provided collective defense; if any one of these nations was attacked, the others were bound to help defend it. At the same time, the Truman Administration instituted a peacetime draft, increased military spending, and called upon the historically isolationist Republican Congress to consider a military alliance with Europe. In May of 1948, Republican Senator Arthur H. Vandenburg proposed a resolution suggesting that the President seek a security treaty with Western Europe that would adhere to the United Nations charter but exist outside of the Security Council where the Soviet Union held veto power. The Vandenburg Resolution passed, and negotiations began for the North Atlantic Treaty.

In spite of general agreement on the concept behind the treaty, it took several months to work out the exact terms. The U.S. Congress had embraced the pursuit of the international alliance, but it remained concerned about the wording of the treaty. The nations of Western Europe wanted assurances that the United States would intervene automatically in the event of an attack, but under the U.S. Constitution the power to declare war rested with Congress. Negotiations worked toward finding language that would reassure the European states but not obligate the United States to act in a way that violated its own laws. Additionally, European contributions to collective security would require large-scale military assistance from the United States to help rebuild Western Europes defense capabilities. While the European nations argued for individual grants and aid, the United States wanted to make aid conditional on regional coordination. A third issue was the question of scope. The Brussels Treaty signatories preferred that membership in the alliance be restricted to the members of that treaty plus the United States. The U.S. negotiators felt there was more to be gained from enlarging the new treaty to include the countries of the North Atlantic, including Canada, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Ireland, and Portugal. Together, these countries held territory that formed a bridge between the opposite shores of the Atlantic Ocean, which would facilitate military action if it became necessary.

President Truman inspecting a tank produced under the Mutual Defense Assistance Program

The result of these extensive negotiations was the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949. In this agreement, the United States, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the United Kingdom agreed to consider attack against one an attack against all, along with consultations about threats and defense matters. This collective defense arrangement only formally applied to attacks against the signatories that occurred in Europe or North America; it did not include conflicts in colonial territories. After the treaty was signed, a number of the signatories made requests to the United States for military aid. Later in 1949, President Truman proposed a military assistance program, and the Mutual Defense Assistance Program passed the U.S. Congress in October, appropriating some $1.4 billion dollars for the purpose of building Western European defenses.

Soon after the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the outbreak of the Korean War led the members to move quickly to integrate and coordinate their defense forces through a centralized headquarters. The North Korean attack on South Korea was widely viewed at the time to be an example of communist aggression directed by Moscow, so the United States bolstered its troop commitments to Europe to provide assurances against Soviet aggression on the European continent. In 1952, the members agreed to admit Greece and Turkey to NATO and added the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955. West German entry led the Soviet Union to retaliate with its own regional alliance, which took the form of the Warsaw Treaty Organization and included the Soviet satellite states of Eastern Europe as members.

The collective defense arrangements in NATO served to place the whole of Western Europe under the American nuclear umbrella. In the 1950s, one of the first military doctrines of NATO emerged in the form of massive retaliation, or the idea that if any member was attacked, the United States would respond with a large-scale nuclear attack. The threat of this form of response was meant to serve as a deterrent against Soviet aggression on the continent. Although formed in response to the exigencies of the developing Cold War, NATO has lasted beyond the end of that conflict, with membership even expanding to include some former Soviet states. It remains the largest peacetime military alliance in the world.

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Gravitational singularity – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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A gravitational singularity or spacetime singularity is a location where the force of gravity has become effectively infinite, and the quantities that are used to measure the gravitational field of a singularity become infinite in a way that does not depend on the coordinate system from the standpoint of any observer of the singularity. These quantities are the scalar invariant curvatures of spacetime, which includes a measure of the density of matter. The laws of normal spacetime could not exist within a singularity and it is currently postulated that matter cannot cross the event horizon of a singularity due to the effects of time dialation.[1][2][3] Singularities are theorized to exist at the center of Black Holes, within Cosmic Strings, and as leftover remants from the early formation of the Universe following the Big Bang. Although gravitational singularities were proposed by Einstein in his General Relativity Theory, their existence has not been confirmed. [4][5][6][7]

For the purposes of proving the PenroseHawking singularity theorems, a spacetime with a singularity is defined to be one that contains geodesics that cannot be extended in a smooth manner.[8] The end of such a geodesic is considered to be the singularity. This is a different definition, useful for proving theorems.[9][10]

The two most important types of spacetime singularities are curvature singularities and conical singularities.[11] Singularities can also be divided according to whether or not they are covered by an event horizon (naked singularities are not covered).[12] According to modern general relativity, the initial state of the universe, at the beginning of the Big Bang, was a singularity.[13] Both general relativity and quantum mechanics break down in describing the Big Bang,[14] but in general, quantum mechanics does not permit particles to inhabit a space smaller than their wavelengths (See: Wave-particle_duality).[15]

Another type of singularity predicted by general relativity is inside a black hole: any star collapsing beyond a certain point (the Schwarzschild radius) would form a black hole, inside which a singularity (covered by an event horizon) would be formed, as all the matter would flow into a certain point (or a circular line, if the black hole is rotating).[16] This is again according to general relativity without quantum mechanics, which forbids wavelike particles entering a space smaller than their wavelength. These hypothetical singularities are also known as curvature singularities.

In theoretical modeling with supersymmetry theory, a singularity in the moduli space (a geometric space using coordinates to model objects, observers, or locations) happens usually when there are additional massless degrees of freedom (dimensions) at a certain point. Similarly, in String Theory and in M Theory, it is thought that singularities in spacetime often mean that there are additional degrees of freedom (physical dimensions beyond the four dimensions described by General Relativity) that exist only within the vicinity of the singularity. The same fields related to the whole spacetime are postulated to also exist according to this theory; for example, the electromagnetic field. In known examples of string theory, the latter degrees of freedom are related to closed strings, while the degrees of freedom are "stuck" to the singularity and related either to open strings or to the twisted sector of an orbifold (A theoretical construct of abstract mathematics). This is however, only a theory.[17][18]

A theory supported by Stephen Hawkings called the Black hole information paradox postulates that matter cannot cross the event horizon of a singularity or black hole and remains as stored information just beyond the event horizon and is slowly released as Hawking radiation or held at the event horizon permanently due to the effects of time dialation. "The information is not stored in the interior of the black hole as one might expect, but in its boundary - the event horizon," he told a conference at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. (meaning that as matter enters the event horizon of a black hole the deeper it travels inside the black hole, the slower time flows for that matter relative to an observer outside the black hole watching the matter travel through the event horizon. Time essentially slows until it virtually stops as the matter reaches the event horizon of the singularity and can never make it to the center and is held there forever).[19]

Solutions to the equations of general relativity or another theory of gravity (such as supergravity) often result in encountering points where the metric blows up to infinity. However, many of these points are completely regular, and the infinities are merely a result of using an inappropriate coordinate system at this point (meaning that Einsteins partial differential equations that describe spacetime curvature and gravity produce infinite values if you provide bad data). In order to test whether there is a singularity at a certain point, one must check whether at this point diffeomorphism invariant quantities (coordinates in a coordinate system describing an observer in such a way that the relationships of the physical law being tested do not vary based on the coordinates of the observer being at different locations) which are scalars become infinite (a scalar is a pure number representing a value, like length). Such quantities are the same in every coordinate system, so these infinities will not "go away" by a change of coordinates. (when proper coordinate systems are used to describe an observers location, no matter what system is employed, a singularity will always produce these infinites using Einstein's partial differential equations to describe space time curvature).

An example is the Schwarzschild solution that describes a non-rotating, uncharged black hole. In coordinate systems convenient for working in regions far away from the black hole, a part of the metric becomes infinite at the event horizon. However, spacetime at the event horizon is regular. The regularity becomes evident when changing to another coordinate system (such as the Kruskal coordinates), where the metric is perfectly smooth. On the other hand, in the center of the black hole, where the metric becomes infinite as well, the solutions suggest a singularity exists. The existence of the singularity can be verified by noting that the Kretschmann scalar, being the square of the Riemann tensor i.e. , which is diffeomorphism invariant, is infinite. While in a non-rotating black hole the singularity occurs at a single point in the model coordinates, called a "point singularity". In a rotating black hole, also known as a Kerr black hole, the singularity occurs on a ring (a circular line), known as a "ring singularity". Such a singularity may also theoretically become a wormhole.[20]

A conical singularity occurs when there is a point where the limit of every diffeomorphism invariant quantity is finite, in which case spacetime is not smooth at the point of the limit itself. Thus, spacetime looks like a cone around this point, where the singularity is located at the tip of the cone. The metric can be finite everywhere if a suitable coordinate system is used. An example of such a conical singularity is a cosmic string. Cosmic strings are theoretical, and their existence has not yet been confirmed. [21]

Until the early 1990s, it was widely believed that general relativity hides every singularity behind an event horizon, making naked singularities impossible. This is referred to as the cosmic censorship hypothesis. However, in 1991, physicists Stuart Shapiro and Saul Teukolsky performed computer simulations of a rotating plane of dust that indicated that general relativity might allow for "naked" singularities. What these objects would actually look like in such a model is unknown. Nor is it known whether singularities would still arise if the simplifying assumptions used to make the simulation were removed.[22][23][24]

Some theories, such as the theory of loop quantum gravity suggest that singularities may not exist. The idea is that due to quantum gravity effects, there is a minimum distance beyond which the force of gravity no longer continues to increase as the distance between the masses becomes shorter.[25][26]

The Einstein-Cartan-Sciama-Kibble theory of gravity naturally averts the gravitational singularity at the Big Bang. This theory extends general relativity to matter with intrinsic angular momentum (spin) by removing a constraint of the symmetry of the affine connection and regarding its antisymmetric part, the torsion tensor, as a variable in varying the action. The minimal coupling between torsion and Dirac spinors generates a spinspin interaction in fermionic matter, which becomes dominant at extremely high densities and prevents the scale factor of the Universe from reaching zero. The Big Bang is replaced by a cusp-like Big Bounce at which the matter has an enormous but finite density and before which the Universe was contracting (what is theorized is that matter exerts a counterforce based upon the spin (angular momentum) which is present in all fermionic matter that will resist the effects of gravity beyond a certain point of compression and a singularity can never fully form). [27]

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Origins of Eugenics: From Sir Francis Galton to Virginias …

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Sir Francis Galton. Courtesy of the American Philosophical Society. [2.1]

ENLARGE [2.2] Faces and Races, illustration from a eugenical text, Racial History of Mankind. Courtesy of Special Collections, Pickler Memorial Library, Truman State University.

[2.3] Harry H. Laughlin and Charles Davenport at the Eugenics Record Office. Courtesy of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives.

Sir Francis Galton first coined the term eugenics in 1883. Put simply, eugenics means well-born. Initially Galton focused on positive eugenics, encouraging healthy, capable people of above-average intelligence to bear more children, with the idea of building an improved human race. Some followers of Galton combined his emphasis on ancestral traits with Gregor Mendels research on patterns of inheritance, in an attempt to explain the generational transmission of genetic traits in human beings.

Negative eugenics, as developed in the United States and Germany, played on fears of race degeneration. At a time when the working-class poor were reproducing at a greater rate than successful middle- and upper-class members of society, these ideas garnered considerable interest. One of the most famous proponents in the United States was President Theodore Roosevelt, who warned that the failure of couples of Anglo-Saxon heritage to produce large families would lead to race suicide.

The center of the eugenics movement in the United States was the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) at Cold Spring Harbor, New York. Biologist Charles Davenport established the ERO, and was joined in his work by Director Harry H. Laughlin. Both men were members of the American Breeders Association. Their view of eugenics, as applied to human populations, drew from the agricultural model of breeding the strongest and most capable members of a species while making certain that the weakest members do not reproduce.

Eugenicists attempted to demonstrate the power of heredity by constructing pedigree charts of defective families. These charts were used to scientifically quantify the assertion that human frailties such as profligacy and indolence were genetic components that could be passed from one generation to the next. Two studies were published that charted the propensity towards criminality, disease, and immoral behavior of the extended families of the Jukes and the Kallikaks. Eugenicists pointed to these texts to demonstrate that feeblemindedness was an inherited attribute and to reveal how the care of such degenerates represented an enormous cost to society.

The ERO promoted eugenics research by compiling records or pedigrees of thousands of families. Charles Davenport created The Family History Book, which assisted field workers as they interviewed families and assembled pedigrees specifying inheritable family attributes which might range from allergies to civic leadership. Even a propensity for carpentry or dress-making was considered a genetically inherited trait. Davenport and Laughlin also issued another manual titled How to Make a Eugenical Family Study to instruct field workers in the creation of pedigree charts of study subjects from poor, rural areas or from institutionalized settings. Field workers used symbols to depict defective conditions such as epilepsy and sexual immorality.

The American Eugenics Society presented eugenics exhibits at state fairs throughout the country, and provided information encouraging high-grade people to reproduce at a greater rate for the benefit of society. The Society even sponsored Fitter Family contests.

ENLARGE [2.4] Kallikak family of New Jersey Normal and Degenerate Lines (enlarge to view additional eugenical pedigree charts). Courtesy of Paul Lombardo.

ENLARGE [2.5] Eugenics Display. Courtesy of the American Philosophical Society.

[2.6] Winners of Fittest Family Contest. Courtesy of the American Philosophical Society.

[2.7] Harry H. Laughlin photograph. Courtesy of American Philosophical Society.

ENLARGE [2.8] Comparative Intelligence Chart. Courtesy of the American Philosophical Society.

ENLARGE [2.9] Virginias Racial Integrity Act of 1924 (enlarge to view additional Virginia legislative acts). Courtesy of Special Collections, Pickler Memorial Library, Truman State University.

In 1914, Harry H. Laughlin attended the first Race Betterment Conference, sponsored by J. H. Kellogg. The same year, in his Model Sterilization Law, Laughlin declared that the socially inadequate of society should be sterilized. This Model Law was accompanied by pedigree charts, which were used to demonstrate the hereditary nature of traits such as alcoholism, illegitimacy, and feeblemindedness. Laughlin asserted that passage of these undesirable traits to future generations would be eradicated if the unfortunate people who possessed them could be prevented from reproducing. In 1922 Laughlins Model Law was included in the book Eugenical Sterilization in the United States. This book compiled legal materials and statistics regarding sterilization, and was a valuable reference for sterilization activists in states throughout the country.

Proponents of eugenics worked tirelessly to assert the legitimacy of this new discipline. For Americans who feared the potential degradation of their race and culture, eugenics offered a convenient and scientifically plausible response to those fears. Sterilization of the unfit seemed a cost-effective means of strengthening and improving American society.

By 1924 Laughlins influence extended in several directions. He testified before Congress in support of the Immigration Restriction Act to limit immigration from eastern and southern Europe. Laughlin influenced passage of this law by presenting skewed data to support his assertion that the percentage of these immigrant populations in prisons and mental institutions was far greater than their percentage in the general population would warrant.

Laughlin also provided guidance in support of Virginias Racial Integrity Act, which made it illegal for whites in Virginia to marry outside their race. The act narrowly defined who could claim to be a member of the white race stating that the term white person shall apply only to such person as has no trace whatever of any blood other than Caucasian. Virginia lawmakers were careful to leave an escape clause for colleagues who claimed descent from Pocahontasthose with 1/16 or less of the blood of the American Indian would also count as white.

The language of Laughlins Model Sterilization Act was used in Virginias Eugenical Sterilization Act to legalize compulsory sterilizations in the state. This legislation to rid Virginia of defective persons was drafted by Aubrey E. Strode, a former member of the Virginia General Assembly, at the request of longtime associate, Albert Priddy, who directed the Virginia Colony for the Epileptic and Feebleminded in Lynchburg, Virginia.

2004 Claude Moore Health Sciences Library

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Upstaged NATO searches for ‘360-degree’ response to Russia

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TRAPANI, Italy The brass band played, the flags waved and Western generals delivered speeches brimming with resolve as NATO began big war games in the central Mediterranean this week.

But the military display seemed faintly unreal while Russian warplanes were bombing Syrian rebels a few hundred miles to the east in a coordinated action with President Bashar al-Assad's armed forces and Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

NATO, which waged an air campaign to help Libyan rebels oust Muammar Gaddafi, then left that country to descend into anarchy, is not a player in Syria and is watching uncomfortably as its former Cold War adversary Russia widens its role there.

The speed and scope of Moscow's intervention in Syria's four-year-old civil war, coming after Russia's seizure of Crimea and support for pro-Kremlin rebels in eastern Ukraine last year, wrong-footed the U.S.-led alliance and has heightened soul-searching about its future.

"The West has been tactically surprised. I don't think they anticipated what (Russian President Vladimir) Putin would get up to," said Nick Witney, a former European Defence Agency chief now at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

NATO last year set in motion its biggest modernization since the Cold War. But the alliance's political and military elite now see the need for a broader plan that goes beyond deterring Russia in the east. They call it thinking "360 degrees".

"We need to develop a strategy for all kinds of crises, at 360 degrees," said Gen. Denis Mercier, the Frenchman who heads NATO's command focused on future threats. "We need to react in the south, in the east, the north, all around."

NATO's problem is that such a strategy is still embryonic while developments in Europe's neighborhood are moving faster than the ponderous approach of the 28-nation defense pact, created in 1949 to deter the Soviet threat.

From the Baltics, where Russia has a naval base in Kaliningrad, through the Black Sea and annexed Crimea, to Syria, Moscow has stationed anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles able to cover huge areas.

NATO officials see the emergence of a strategy of defensive zones of influence, with surface-to-air missile batteries and anti-ship missiles that could disrupt NATO moving across air, land and sea or deny it access to some areas.

Unconventional warfare techniques are part of the equation, ranging from unidentified troops - the so-called "green men" without insignia on their uniforms seen in Crimea and eastern Ukraine - to disinformation operations and cyber attacks.

OVERESTIMATING RUSSIA?

NATO also faces failing states, war, Islamist militancy and a refugee crisis at Europe's borders. That is partly a result of the European Union's inability to stabilize its neighborhood economically.

But critics say it is also due to U.S. President Barack Obama's aversion to entanglement in Middle East wars in the wake of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. That has led to a decline in Washington's influence across the region.

While NATO is drawing up a multi-layered deterrence plan, officials acknowledge a risk that Russia might again move faster to pre-empt Western action. For instance, it could move warships from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Libyan coast to hamper any possible NATO effort to support a government of national unity in the future.

Still, some say NATO has been here before and any talk of a lack of preparedness is overblown. Past bouts of questioning of the alliance's relevance led to operations in the Balkans and in Afghanistan - a significant departure from 40 years of Cold War deterrence in which NATO forces never operated "out of area".

A NATO official rejected any suggestion the alliance was passively watching Russia's military build-up in Syria, noting that three allies the United States, France and Turkey were involved individually in the coalition waging air strikes against Islamic State rebels in Syria and Iraq.

Some experts see a danger of overestimating Putin, who oversees an economy weakened by Western sanctions and lower oil prices and cannot match NATO military power over the long term.

"We should be under no illusions about Putin's hostility to the West but also be very careful not to over react to what a damaged Russian economy can produce in the way of military capability," said Witney, a former British defense planner.

LOOKING TO AMAZON, DHL

NATO's public response is to test its new spearhead force of 5,000 troops, ready to move within a few days. Over the next five weeks, the alliance is carrying out its biggest military exercises since 2002, with 36,000 troops, 230 military units, 140 aircraft and more than 60 ships, to certify the force.

Such measures, agreed at a NATO summit in Wales last year following Russia's annexation of Crimea, are aimed chiefly at reassuring eastern allies that Russia will not be able to invade them too. There is still debate about whether the spearhead force could be used in North Africa or beyond.

Small command posts with NATO flags from Estonia to Bulgaria and the spearhead force are ready. But one NATO diplomat called such measures "the minimum necessary", and Gen. Mercier said the so-called Readiness Action Plan was "just a first step".

"We have worked on reassuring our allies," said Gen. Philip Breedlove, NATO's supreme commander in Europe. "We are not exactly sure what it will take to work in the future," he said when asked what NATO's modern deterrents might look like.

The next NATO summit next July in Warsaw is the target date for proposals for more modern, agile deterrents.

Such ideas include setting up NATO-flagged command posts on the southern flank and adapting the spearhead force for maritime and air operations.

They could also feature a permanent naval force to patrol the Mediterranean and work more closely with the European Union and the United Nations in stabilizing fragile states.

Another idea involves including a nuclear deterrent in training exercises, something Britain supports but others, such as Germany, worry would be seen as a provocation by Russia.

NATO's Gen. Mercier even suggested looking to companies such as courier DHL Worldwide Express and online retailer Amazon.com to improve NATO's deployment speed.

"The question is how to have new ideas to make deployments easier. We should look at what the civilian world does, to DHL and Amazon. How do they improve their logistics?" Mercier said.

(Reporting by Robin Emmott; Editing by Paul Taylor)

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Upstaged NATO searches for '360-degree' response to Russia

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NATO: Pictures, Videos, Breaking News

Posted: at 12:49 am

Marina Kaljurand is Estonia's Minister of Foreign Affairs. Prior to becoming Foreign Minister in July 2015, she was a long-time Estonian diplomat, and an ambassador to the United States, Mexico, Canada, Russia, Kazakhstan and Israel.

From Syria to Ukraine, a pesky and newly reinvigorated Vladimir Putin is testing the west. In this new geopolitical face-off, Poland has assumed key strategic importance and will no doubt play a hugely significant diplomatic and even military role.

Nikolas Kozloff

Author, 'Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left'

In the hell of bad solutions on offer for Syria, some are worse than others. And the one devised by Russian President Vladimir Putin is probably the most infernal of all.

Recent developments confirm a major shift in the balance of power in the Middle East. It appears to me that Russia is dictating the pace of events, raising the question of whether Syria is becoming a proxy war between the United States and Russia.

Since Russian President Vladamir Putin began his military air campaign in Syria last week, Western media has been clamoring to explain his motivation. Most of the analysis so far has been incomplete or half-baked at best.

No one should have been surprised that Russia committed their military to the task of saving their ally in Syria from defeat. And no one should now be surprised if Saudi Arabia steps up its support for the Syrian opposition; or if the opposition attacks Russian forces in Syria.

James Zogby

President, Arab American Institute; author, 'Arab Voices'

The challenge of Putin as well as ISIS requires an answer beyond avoidance and containment. The threat is immediate but also the challenge to the rule of law and the ideology upon which free and democratic states have prospered as societies and economies over the last few decades.

Information warfare requires an infrastructure of broadcasting, social media, and other communication assets that can direct messages to the same audiences the Russians target, but do so more effectively.

Philip Seib

Professor, University of Southern California

LONDON -- The refugee crisis that dominates Europe's TVs and newspapers is the product of the horrendous civil war that still rages in Syria. Why will we not focus our attention on this? The reality in Syria is that the war creates the refugees. Do more to stop this war.

No doubt, the bombastic Donald is an unlikely president. Yet what may be most extraordinary about his campaign is that on foreign policy, at least, he may be the most sensible Republican in the race.

Turkey's offering Washington a fig leaf of cooperation against the Islamic State, but it's turning all its firepower against the most effective anti-ISIS fighters in the region -- the Kurds.

The challenge for the European Union and its member states, particularly Germany, is in balancing the often incongruous demands of co-operation and self-interest, and thus demonstrate to their own citizens that concrete achievements can still create a Europe of solidarity and prosperity as Schuman envisaged.

David Miles

Managing Editor of Global Politics, Carnegie Scholar, Associate Fellow at The Centre for Global Constitutionalism

As a Jew, Schumer is not allowed to "break ranks" and make up his own mind based on his clear thinking. In doing so, he is clearly an "Israel-firster" and a "Netanyahu marionette".

Shahar Azani

Executive Director of StandWithUs Northeast U.S, a Global Israel Education Organization. Former diplomat. Loves Israel. In love with Life.

The headlines on the talks between Brussels and Athens on the 86 billion euro bailout of Greece seem to indicate nothing but problems. It appears that even before talks can begin, Greece is being asked to enact further laws.

It was seventy years ago that human beings were first targeted with -- and annihilated by -- an atomic bomb.

The Turkish President's self-serving fake war against terrorism could have the tragic consequence of escalating the violence throughout Turkey and neighboring countries. If Ankara is truly interested in countering the Jihadists, it should have done that long ago, instead of arming and abetting ISIS and other terror groups.

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NATO: Pictures, Videos, Breaking News

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Genome Journal – NRC Research Press

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What’s a Genome? – Genome News Network

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A genome is all of a living thing's genetic material. It is the entire set of hereditary instructions for building, running, and maintaining an organism, and passing life on to the next generation. The whole shebang.

In most living things, the genome is made of a chemical called DNA. The genome contains genes, which are packaged in chromosomes and affect specific characteristics of the organism.

Imagine these relationships as a set of Chinese boxes nested one inside the other. The largest box represents the genome. Inside it, a smaller box represents the chromosomes. Inside that is a box representing genes, and inside that, finally, is the smallest box, the DNA.

In short, the genome is divided into chromosomes, chromosomes contain genes, and genes are made of DNA.

The word " genome " was coined in about 1930, even though scientists didn't know then what the genome was made of. They only knew that the genome was important enough, whatever it was, to have a name.

Each one of earth's species has its own distinctive genome: the dog genome, the wheat genome, the genomes of the cow, cold virus, bok choy, Escherichia coli (a bacterium that lives in the human gut and in animal intestines), and so on.

So genomes belong to species, but they also belong to individuals. Every giraffe on the African savanna has a unique genome, as does every elephant, acacia tree, and ostrich. Unless you are an identical twin, your genome is different from that of every other person on earthin fact, it is different from that of every other person who has ever lived.

Though unique, your genome is still recognizably a human genome. The difference is simply a matter of degree: The genome differences between two people are much smaller than the genome differences between people and our closest relatives, the chimpanzees.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Updated on January 15, 2003

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Genome dictionary definition | genome defined

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noun

Genome is defined as all of a somatic cell's genetic information, or a set of haploid chromosomes.

An example of a genome is what determines the physical characteristics of a person.

Origin of genome

also genom

noun

Origin of genome

Related Forms:

(plural genomes)

From German Genom; gene + -ome

SentencesSentence examples

But this (a listing of illustrations of how the genome can change other than by mutations) doesnt constitute a crisis its a very interesting finding that shows that variation in a genome can arise by processes other than mutation of an organisms own DNA. The disposition of that variation still must occur via either natural selection (it can be good or bad) or genetic drift (no effect on fitness). This hasnt really changed the theory of evolution one iota, though its changed our view of where organisms can acquire new genes. Jerry Coyne

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Genome dictionary definition | genome defined

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Genome | Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

Posted: at 12:47 am

A genome is the full set of instructions needed to make every cell, tissue, and organ in your body. Almost every one of your cells contains a complete copy of these instructions, written in the four-letter language of DNA (A, C, T, and G). The human genome contains 3 billion of these "letters" or bases. This means that if your genome were written out on sheets of paper and stacked as books, the tower of tomes would be almost as high as the Washington Monument!

If you think of the human genome as an encyclopedia, the information it contains is divided into 23 volumes, called chromosomes. Each chromosome contains genes - "sentences" of genetic instructions that tell the cell how to make proteins. We know the human genome contains about 20,500 of these genes, but the meaning of much of the remaining text within it is a mystery.

Surprisingly, the human genome is not static. Throughout life, exposure to certain substances - such as X-rays, sunlight, chemicals, and more - can begin to subtly change the genome in some cells. If a cell acquires a set of genomic changes that allows it to grow out of control, invade surrounding tissue, and spread to other sites in the body, cancer develops. A cancer patient is thought to harbor two distinct human genomes - the version contained in normal cells, and an altered one contained in tumor cells.

But ours is not the only genome on the block. All organisms have genomes - not just humans and animals, but also bacteria, fungi, viruses, and other microorganisms that cause diseases. Studying microbial genomes as well as the genomes of their hosts (including humans) can shed light on the nature of infectious diseases. Moreover, analyzing the genomes of our closer relatives - primates, mammals, and vertebrates - and comparing them to our own genome can help researchers determine what parts of the human genome have remained unchanged over time and are therefore likely to be essential.

In 1990, researchers set out to sequence (determine the order of As, Cs, Ts, and Gs in) the human genome. The effort, known as the Human Genome Project, was an international collaboration that concluded in 2003. However, sequencing the human genome was just a first step - now scientists face the challenge of using the tools and knowledge gained from the Human Genome Project to better understand human health and improve disease diagnosis and treatment.

Want to learn more?

You can learn more about some of the efforts to decipher important information in the human genome and other genomes by reading about the Broad's Genome Biology Program. You can also read about how Broad researchers are applying genomics to the study of infectious diseases like malaria and tuberculosis by visiting the Broad's Infectious Disease Program page and the Genomic Sequencing Center for Infectious Diseases. In addition, scientists involved in the Broad's Cancer Genome Projects are working to document all of the genome-based abnormalities in tumor genomes.

The Human Genome Project website will give you more insights into the public effort to sequence the human genome. You can also watch a NOVA program on "Cracking the Code of Life" to find out more about the race to complete the sequence.

Interested in where the word "genome" comes from? Joshua Lederberg and Alexa T. McCray offer a brief history of the word, as well as a "lexicome" of terms ending in "-ome."

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Genome | Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

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