In the 25 or so hours since NBA center Jason Collins came out on the cover of Sports Illustrated, he’s been praised by everyone from Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant to presidents Bill Clinton (turns out Collins and Chelsea Clinton attended Stanford concurrently) and Barack Obama.And yet there’s an audience Collins may have to work to win over — gay writers, who have been taking him to task since he came out.Bloomberg View’s Josh Barro, for instance, implies that Collins, who is in the twilight of his career at 34, has been dragging his feet and shirking “an obligation to lead” for years:Continue Reading… … Read More
Read our salon: Should the U.S. intervene in Syria?
Reports that Syria may have engaged in the use of chemical weapons have sparked debate as to whether such activity crosses a “red line” and warrants U.S. intervention. As politicians across the world prescribe courses of action — Israel and England have just weighed in – we asked two experts with divergent views to discuss the issue with us — and you.Lina Khatib, the Head of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at Stanford University has argued for U.S. intervention. Daniel Serwer, Senior Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations, at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, has called for evaluating the issue in a broader context. At 11:15 a.m. ET, they’ll engage in a back-and-forth right here in a real-time Salon. Submit your own thoughts in the comments section, and we’ll do our best to bring you in on the discussion, too.<a href=”http://branch.com/b/syria-6″>Syria</a>Continue Reading… … Read More
Today’s Scuttlebot: E-Mail Cachet and Cellphone Dial Tones
The technology reporters and editors of The New York Times scour the Web for important and peculiar items. For Friday, selections include the influence of Silicon Valley on Stanford, Google scientists talking about building a “Star Trek” computer and how a decision decades ago to make cellphones without dial tones later helped texting technology. … Read More
Drone strikes linked to “unprecedented” psychological trauma in Pakistan
A report from the AFP this week finds that the psychological trauma suffered by Pakistanis living under the threat of U.S. drone strikes and Taliban fighting is “unprecedented.” An extensive, on the ground study carried out last year by the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic of Stanford Law School and the Global Justice Clinic at the New York University School of Law described the environment of “constant fear” under which Pakistanis in drone-struck regions, such as Waziristan, live. Monday’s AFP report notes a “growing number of Pakistanis living in the tribal areas on the Afghan border who ha[ve] suffered from conditions related to depression, anxiety and other mental health problems because of war”:Continue Reading… … Read More
No Doomsday but Ontario Takes Out the Knives
Jim Stanford: Ontario slashes with austerity regime even though predicted massive deficit has not
developed … Read More
De-Extinction Would Be Really Cool
The current issue of Science has an
article on the
costs and benefits of de-extinction, i.e., using biotechnology
to resurrect species. The article by Stanford University scholars
Jacob Sherkow and Henry Greely note that extinct species might be
brought back to life by means of back-breeding, cloning, or genetic
engineering.
Back-breeding would use selective breeding of species closely
related aim at producing the phenotype of the extinct species,
e.g., the Tauros
Project is working to revive the auroch. Cloning could be used
if a sufficiently well-preserved nucleus from the tissue of an
extinct species could be tranferred into the enucleated egg of a
similar species and then implanted in a surrogate. So far this has
only been attempted with the recently extinct
Pyrenean ibex. A kid was born but died of lung malformations
soon after.
Perhaps the more promising, though more technically difficult
route toward de-extinction, would be to isolate DNA from preserved
tissue of an extinct species and then sequence it, e.g., a wooly
mammoth. Then that information could be used to alter the genetic
sequences in a closely related species, e.g., an Indian elephant,
resulting in a wooly mammoth.
The authors observe:
De-extinction is a particularly intriguing application of our
increasing control over life. We think it will happen. The most
interesting and important question is how humanity will deal with
it.
They suggest that some might object to de-extinction on the
grounds that the resurrected creatures might be exploited, vectors
for pathogens, invasive, examples of “playing god,” or lessen
people’s concerns about extinction. On the benefit side, the
authors them as …
… falling into five categories: scientific knowledge,
technological advancement, concrete environmental benefits,
justice, and “wonder.”
To my mind, those benefits clearly outweigh the rather
insubstantial objections cited by the authors, especially the last
one. As the authors write:
The last benefit might be called “wonder,” or, more colloquially
“coolness.” This may be the biggest attraction, and possibly the
biggest benefit, of de-extinction. It would surely be very cool to
see a living wooly mammoth. And while this is rarely viewed as a
substantial benefit, much of what we do as individuals—even many
aspects of science—we do because it’s “cool.”
Yes.
See below 1933 footage of the last Tasmanian Tiger.
Scientists use biological tissue to recreate main computer component inside E coli bacteria
Stanford researchers demonstrate ‘transcriptors’ inside E coli bacteria, in advance in synthetic biology Scientists have used biological tissue to recreate one of the main components of a modern computer inside living cells. The biological device behaves like a transistor, one of the…
