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Good morning, Ma,
Some further thinking (and glad to be in the SF BAY AREA) ... RE genetics revolution (which I teach about in one of my courses) ...
Besides the in case of emergency scenario, or fire drill, I'm hypothesizing, for Covid-19, & the cleaning up scenario, or get the cat back in the Bag' - with many now in a form of media generated self-quarantine - I wonder too whether some of the getting the cat back in the Bag' (sexuality?) - speculatively - could have emerged from this conference ...
"Biogen conference in Boston likely linked to as many as 300,000 COVID-19 cases worldwide, researchers say
A new study says COVID-19 cases linked to the conference at the Boston Marriott Long Wharf hotel in February were found as far away as Australia, Slovakia, and Sweden, as well as in 29 US states"
... And could Biogen also be a company in industry of excellent genetic engineers which could make significant advances in aging reversal ? See Biogen picture here -
How soon will we see an #AgingReversal #WUaSAgingReversal drug announced like this
And like Anders Tegnell in Sweden, is Tony Fauci helping to develop idea-wise the Covid-19 pandemic USA public health RESPONSE affecting California too (in its uniqueness)? ... (Mention of Fauci and Francis Collins by George Church
"Four dangerous years for The United States" ...
... So in what ways could Covid-19 be IDEOLOGY as well as a way to jumpstart genetic engineering for in case of emergency bio-warfare preparedness even?
This just appeared as headlines on "The Daily News" Dagens Nyheter (Sweden) and possibly regarding protecting children even
Photo: Magnus Hallgren / DN / TT
"Karolinska cancels child surgery
The staff must staff the covid care • Emergency procedures will be carried out."
Some of the above is scary stuff in an age of genetic engineering with genetic and social side effects ...
Sharing some thinking too ... can WUaS create 7.8 billion You at WUaS avatar bot electronic medical records for further genetic and genealogical research for everyone ? :)
Love, Scott
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Ma,
Jane Metcalfe in SF who sent this email is a friend and colleague of MIT/Harvard's Genetics' Professor George Church's ... ...with this article ~ Is DNA a Language? ...
So I ask in a Tweet ...
Love, Scott
"We Call DNA a Language. Is It?
As our understanding of the genome evolves, the metaphors we use to describe it should, too."
By Luke Shors
Ethics
Genetics
Society
Having the complete sequence of the human genome is similar to having all the pages of a manual needed to make the human body.
–National Institutes of Health’s Human Genome Project Completion Report, 2010
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From:
NEO.LIFE <jane@neo.life>Date: Thu, Dec 10, 2020, 4:56 PM
Subject: 30 Gifts for Bio Peeps; Is DNA a
Language?
To: <
sgkmacleod@worlduniversityandschool.org>
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In addition to a newsletter design refresh—how do you like it?—we have two gems for you today, one more thoughtful and one more playful. But since everyone I know is insanely busy right now, I’ll get out of your way and let you get right to it!
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DISPATCHES FROM THE NEOBIOLOGICAL FRONTIER |
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Machine Learning and Major Depression Having a quantitative, objective understanding of the specific brain networks associated with major depression could be the way to develop imaging biomarkers to diagnose and better treat the condition. But nobody knows how to tease depression from a brain scan. As a possible step in that direction, a group at Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International in Kyoto, Japan, applied machine-learning algorithms to find associations among the fMRI resting brain activity scans of 731 people both with and without depression and were able to report approximately 70 percent accuracy at validating depression diagnosis in a second set of 521 people. PLOS Biology
A Metastatic Map of Human Cancer Metastasis is the most common cause of cancer death, but our ability to predict which tumors will metastasize and treat accordingly is hampered by a lack of laboratory models, which rely on labor-intensive and expensive approaches like grafting human tumors onto mice. These models do exist for certain types of cancer, but extrapolating to other, genetically diverse cancers may not work. Now researchers at MIT and Harvard have developed “MetMap,” which reveals organ-specific patterns of metastasis. To demonstrate its potential, they investigated 21 breast cancer cell lines and found altered metabolism of fatty lipid molecules linked to metastasis—something they say could suggest a new therapeutic strategy. Nature
French Minister Says “Non” to Cultured Meat After four years of Donald Trump, it shouldn’t feel unusual for other politicians to use Twitter to announce government policy—but somehow it still does. Following the announcement last week that the government of Singapore will authorize the sale of Eat Just’s cultured chicken nuggets grown from animal cells in a lab, French agricultural minister Julien Denormandie took to Twitter to defend his country’s patrimoine. “Is this really the society we want for our children? I say NON. Let me be clear: meat comes from the living, not the lab. Count on me so that in France, meat remains natural and never artificial!” Perhaps he should bone up on modern industrial chicken farming.
The Made Exceeds the Grown In the last hundred years, the combined weight of all plants, bacteria, fungi, animals, and other organisms on Earth has shrunk, largely due to deforestation, which has halved the total mass of plants on our planet. Meanwhile the amount of human-made “anthropogenic” mass—like buildings, roads, plastics, and machines—is doubling every 20 years and now exceeds one teraton (1,000,000,000,000 tons). According to a group of researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, 2020 is the crossover point in which the amount of human-made mass has now exceeded all living biomass. Humans currently produce a mass equivalent to the combined weight of every living person on Earth each week, and if this trend continues, anthropogenic mass is expected to exceed 3 teratons by 2040—almost triple the current biomass. Nature |
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Treating, Not Tripping One of the more obscure but naturally occurring psychedelic chemicals is ibogaine, found in the roots of the West African shrub Tabernanthe iboga. But while it has shown promise for treating relapse in opioid and alcohol addiction, ibogaine may be too powerful. It causes hallucinations that can last more than 24 hours, and it has potentially neurotoxic side effects and sometimes induces fatal cardiac arrhythmias. But now researchers at the University of California, Davis have synthesized a non-hallucinogenic chemical analog of ibogaine they say has potential to treat addiction and depression more safely. Nature
Gene Therapy in One Eye Helps Vision in Both A gene therapy trial involving 37 people suffering from a common mitochondrial-linked genetic disease known as Leber hereditary optic neuropathy has shown the promise of this treatment to help thousands of people across the world regain and keep their vision. But the trial also yielded an unexpected result: Injecting the viral vector designed to correct the condition in one eye significantly improved vision in the other. Scientists at University of Cambridge and University of Pittsburgh, where the trial was done, say the improvements to the untreated eyes are likely due to the transfer of vector DNA from the injected eye. Science Translational Medicine
My Happy May Not Be Your Happy How happy are you? The answer, it turns out, depends to a large extent on where you live. The vast majority of happiness research relies on measures developed in the United States and other WEIRD countries (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic), where research dollars for this sort of thing tend to be more available. But happiness in those countries may be informed by an historic Protestant worldview that values personal achievement based on hard work.
We may not find the same self-centered tears of joy in other cultures, where happiness involves harmony in interpersonal relationships with others. The new study compared the performance of happiness scales developed in the United States and Japan and found that while the Japanese scale performed more consistently, both did poorly in Africa and the Middle East. This suggests a more universal measure of happiness should consider both scales—and probably new ones as well. PLOS One |
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“We’ve been promised a future of chrome—but what if the future is fleshy?”– CHRISTINA AGAPAKIS |
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Araucaria_araucana
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