Artificial life forms evolve basic intelligence

FOR generations, the Avidians have been cloning themselves quietly in a box. They're not perfect, but most of their mutations go unnoticed. Then something remarkable happens. One steps forward, and that changes everything. Tens of thousands of generations down the line, some of its descendents will evolve memory.

Avidians are not microbes, or sci-fi alien life forms. They are the digital offspring of Charles Ofria and colleagues at Michigan State University (MSU) in East Lansing. They "live" in a computer world called Avida, and replicateMovie Camera using strings of coded computer instructions instead of DNA. But in many ways they are similar to real life: they compete with each other for resources, replicate, mutate, and evolve. They - or things like them - might eventually evolve to become artificially intelligent life forms.

Similar to microbes, Avidians take up very little space, have short generation times, and can evolve new traits to out-compete their rivals. Unlike microbes, their evolution can be stopped at any time, reversed, repeated, and the precise sequence of mutations that led to the new trait can be dissected. "They're wonderful evolutionary pets," says Ben Kerr, a biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.

They could become so much more. At the 12th annual international conference on artificial life in Odense, Denmark, this month, philosopher and computer scientist Robert Pennock of MSU will present the findings of experiments in which Avidians were made to evolve memory. ...

"In the past, the approach has been to start with high-level intelligence and reproduce that in a computer," says Grabowski. "This is the opposite. We're showing how complex traits like memory can be built from the bottom up, from things that are really very simple." To demonstrate this, Grabowski has evolved Avidians that move towards a light source. Her colleagues then translated the evolved "genome" into code that could control a Roomba robot. It worked: the Roomba was attracted to glowing light bulbs. ...

"Brains that have been evolved with HyperNEAT have millions of connections, yet still perform a task well, and that number could be pushed higher yet," he says. "This is a sea change for the field. Being able to evolve functional brains at this scale allows us to begin pushing the capabilities of artificial neural networks up, and opens up a path to evolving artificial brains that rival their natural counterparts."

via Artificial life forms evolve basic intelligence - life - 04 August 2010 - New Scientist.

Some day the Avidians may evolve so far that they will be doing experiments on us.

We have learned many interesting things about evolution from computer models.

Nature Reviews Genetics 7, 109-118 (February 2006):

... Digital genetics experiments reveal that genes that evolve with high mutation rates are subject to a new selective force: the pressure to develop robustness with respect to mutations. At sufficiently high mutation rates, robust replicators out-compete faster replicators. ...

Genes are not just passive repositories for information; they are active participants in the preservation of this information. Environmental regimes exert different pressures on how the information in a gene should be organized, leading to different levels of gene overlap and linkage

... Sexual recombination also changes the way in which information is stored in genes, leading to a more modular 'coding style' than is found in asexually reproducing clones. Because modularity affects the degree and form of the interaction of mutations (epistasis), such an adaptation can lead to synergistic epistasis — a prerequisite for sex according to Kondrashov's theory.

A solar salamander

Algae in the salamanders' cells could be providing them with photosynthetic products, including oxygen.

Photosynthetic algae have been found inside the cells of a vertebrate for the first time.

Occasionally, researchers stumble across something extraordinary in a system that has been studied for decades.

Ryan Kerney of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, did just that while looking closely at a clutch of emerald-green balls — embryos of the spotted salamander (Ambystoma maculatum). He noticed that their bright green colour comes from within the embryos themselves, as well as from the jelly capsule that encases them.

This viridescence is caused by the single-celled alga Oophila amblystomatis. This has long been understood to enjoy a symbiotic relationship with the spotted salamander, which lays its eggs in bodies of water. However, the symbiosis was thought to occur between the salamander embryo and algae living outside it — with the embryo producing nitrogen-rich waste that is useful to algae, and the algae increasing the oxygen content of the water in the immediate vicinity of the respiring embryos.

At a presentation on 28 July at the Ninth International Congress of Vertebrate Morphology in Punta del Este, Uruguay, Kerney reported that these algae are, in fact, commonly located inside cells all over the spotted salamander's body. Moreover, there are signs that intracellular algae may be directly providing the products of photosynthesis — oxygen and carbohydrate — to the salamander cells that encapsulate them.  ...

Such a close co-existence with a photosynthetic organism has previously been found in invertebrates, such as corals, but never in a vertebrate.

Because vertebrate cells have what is known as an adaptive immune system — which destroys biological material not considered 'self' — it was thought to be impossible for a symbiont to live stably inside them. But, in this case, the salamander cells have either turned their internal immune system off, or the algae have somehow bypassed it.

"On a lark, I decided to take a long-exposure fluorescent image of a pre-hatchling salamander embryo," says Kerney. When this revealed widely scattered dots of unstained cells fluorescing in the background — an indicator that those cells might contain chlorophyll — Kerney switched to transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to take a closer look.

"The surrounding salamander cells that contain the algae often have several mitochrondria bordering the algal symbiont," Kerney says, pointing to a TEM image.

Mitochondria are the powerhouses of animal cells, converting oxygen and a metabolic product of glucose into ATP, a molecule that cells use to store chemical energy. So salamander mitochondria gathered around an algal cell might be there to take advantage of the oxygen and carbohydrate generated by photosynthesis in that particular cell.

How the relationship between the two species originated is unknown. But Kerney is probing how algae enter salamander cells, and some earlier findings are proving helpful. ...

via A solar salamander : Nature News.

I believe this is the first ever documented symbiosis between a vertebrate and a photosynthetic organism. Astounding!

Dog saves Rockford man ...by eating his toe

He can joke about it now, but the day Jerry Douthett woke up and found his dog had eaten his big toe, he wasn't laughing.

"I started screaming for help for Rosee and I went to the bathroom to rinse my foot off and the toe was gone."

Jerry's wife Rosee found their dog Kiko covered in blood sitting on the bed where Jerry had been napping. "He took it right off at the toe nail...and also took the bone with it too."

Jerry's toe had been sore for more than a month. Jerry had tried to take care if it on his own. "(It) turned into an ulcer," explains Jerry. "It was like about the size of a nickel and the skin around it kept dying, so I would peel that back with scissors."

But it just didn't get any better.

Turns out, according to Spectrum Health's Dr. Russell Lampen, Jerry was in the advance stages of type 2 diabetes. "As diabetes goes uncontrolled, people develop vascular disease in their feet and they also develop nerve damage to the point of where he can't feel things," Dr. Lampen said.

Thinking back, Jerry says he did have a few signs. "A couple months back, I noticed that I couldn't get enough water. I kinda got numbness in the feet too... that's kind of a tell-tale sign." It was a series of events that led to their Jack Russell Terrier having the opportunity to gnaw off his master's big toe. Jerry and Rosee went downtown to celebrate Rosee becoming a citizen. After celebrating with a few beers and a few margaritas, followed by a nap, it led to Kiko's opportune moment to take care of the infection himself. "Anything that had an infection in it, he ate."

Dogs have a sense of smell a trillion times stronger than humans. They've been trained to smell and detect cancer, brain aneurisms and even diabetic shock. The burnquestion is - did Kiko know Jerry was sick? Or was he just attracted to the smell?

We may never know the answer but there is one thing Jerry does know - "He did save my life. Otherwise, I would have never went in. I wonder how much longer (if) I would have waited."

via Dog saves Rockford man by eating his toe | wzzm13.com | Grand Rapids, MI.

Google Wave Waving Good Bye

We have always pursued innovative projects because we want to drive breakthroughs in computer science that dramatically improve our users’ lives. Last year at Google I/O, when we launched our developer preview of Google Wave, a web app for real time communication and collaboration, it set a high bar for what was possible in a web browser. We showed character-by-character live typing, and the ability to drag-and-drop files from the desktop, even “playback” the history of changes—all within a browser. Developers in the audience stood and cheered. Some even waved their laptops.

We were equally jazzed about Google Wave internally, even though we weren’t quite sure how users would respond to this radically different kind of communication. The use cases we’ve seen show the power of this technology: sharing images and other media in real time; improving spell-checking by understanding not just an individual word, but also the context of each word; and enabling third-party developers to build new tools like consumer gadgets for travel, or robots to check code.

But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave.

Wave has taught us a lot, and we are proud of the team for the ways in which they have pushed the boundaries of computer science. We are excited about what they will develop next as we continue to create innovations with the potential to advance technology and the wider web.

via Official Google Blog: Update on Google Wave.

Let's pause for a moment of silence to remember Google Wave, a service that has gone off to greener pastures. Google confirmed the news late yesterday, saying the service hadn't seen the type of user adoption it had been hoping for.

The news is not all bad for Google, though; just this morning, iSuppli released new Android sales stats, and the numbers look pretty good. In fact, they look great. iSuppli's researchers say that Android's market share will surpass that of Apple's iOS by 2012, at which point Google's mobile OS will be used in 75 million smartphones.

via PC World

As PC World points out, there have been some other interesting Google projects that didn't fly.  Google Buzz  a Twitter like service that was  hit with a lawsuit. Google Fast Flip, a news reading feature where you flip through a stack of pages. Neat, but it takes more time than scanning a list of headlines. Google TV, where you control your TV with your Google Android phone ... after purchasing some extra hardware. ( This could still fly, I'd say.) And Google Me, a rumored "Facebook Killer".  Will 500 million facebook users migrate over to Google? Seems doubtful. If Google interfaced with Facebook and provided more features, perhaps.

UT professor uncovers clues into how viruses jump from hosts

HIV-AIDS. SARS. Ebola. Bird Flu. Swine Flu. Rabies. These are emerging infectious diseases where the viruses have jumped from one animal species into another and now infect humans. This is a phenomenon known as cross-species transmission (CST) and scientists are working to determine what drives it.

Gary McCracken, a professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and department head in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, is one of those scientists and has made a groundbreaking discovery into how viruses jump from host to host.

His article, "Host Phylogeny Constrains Cross-Species Emergence and Establishments of Rabies Virus in Bats," will appear in the Aug. 6 edition of Science and will be featured on the issue's cover.

It has been a long-held belief that rapid mutation is the main factor that allows viruses to overcome host-specific barriers in cellular, molecular or immunological defenses. Therefore, it has been argued that viruses emerge primarily between species with high contact rates.

McCracken and his colleagues now report that CST may have less to do with virus mutation and contact rates and more to do with host similarity.

"That innate similarity in the defenses of closely related species may favor virus exchange by making it easier for natural selection to favor a virus' ability to infect new hosts," McCracken explained. ...

The team made their discovery by analyzing hundreds of rabies viruses in 23 species of bats. In the United States, there are at least 45 different species of bats and many different strains of rabies. Not coincidentally, the CDC collects rabid bats after humans or their pets or livestock may have been exposed to the virus -- adding nearly 2,000 bats annually to its database. McCracken and his colleagues used this database to document the cases in which a rabies virus jumped from one species of bat to another. They verified the cases by genotyping both the viruses and the bats.

The researchers documented over 200 examples of CSTs and analyzed the best explanations for CSTs, such as geographic range, behavior, ecology and genetic relatedness. The study found that the majority of viruses from cross-species infections were tightly nested among genetically similar bat species. ..

via UT professor uncovers clues into how viruses jump from hosts.

Reading the Zip Codes of 3,500-Year-Old Letters

Unfortunately, when ancient kings sent letters to each other, their post offices didn't record the sender' return address. It takes quite a bit of super-sleuthing by today's archaeologists to determine the geographical origin of this correspondence — which can reveal a great deal about ancient rulers and civilizations.

Now, by adapting an off-the-shelf portable x-ray lab tool that analyzes the composition of chemicals, Prof. Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University's Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations can reveal hidden information about a tablet's composition without damaging the precious ancient find itself. These x-rays reveal the soil and clay composition of a tablet or artefact, to help determine its precise origin.

But Prof. Goren's process, based on x-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry, can go much further. Over the years, he has collected extensive data through physical "destructive" sampling of artefacts. By comparing this data to readouts produced by the XRF device, he's built a table of results so that he can now scan a tablet — touching the surface of it gently with the machine — and immediately assess its clay type and the geographical origin of its minerals.

The tool, he says, can also be applied to coins, ancient plasters, and glass, and can be used on site or in a lab. He plans to make this information widely available to other archaeological researchers.

In his recent study published in the Israel Exploration Journal, Prof. Goren and his colleagues investigated a Late Bronze Age letter written in the Akkadian language and found among the Ophel excavations in Jerusalem.

Its style suggests that it is a rough and contemporary tablet of the Amarna letters — letters written from officials throughout the Middle East to the Pharaohs in Egypt around 3,500 years ago, pre-biblical times. Using his device, Prof. Goren was able to determine that the letter is made from raw material typical to the Terra Rossa soils of the Central Hill Country around Jerusalem. This determination helped to confirm both the origin of the letter and possibly its sender.

"We believe this is a local product written by Jerusalem scribes, made of locally available soil. Found close to an acropolis, it is also likely that the letter fragment does in fact come from a king of Jerusalem," the researchers reported, adding that it may well be an archival copy of a letter from King Abdi-Heba, a Jesubite king in Jerusalem, to the Pharaoh in nearby Egypt.

Prof. Goren is also an expert at uncovering archaeological forgeries and has worked on the alleged ossuary, or bone box, of Jesus' brother James.

via American Friends of Tel Aviv University: Reading the Zip Codes of 3,500-Year-Old Letters.

US billionaires pledge 50% of their wealth to charity

Image:

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates (left) and billionaire investor Warren Buffett during the 2007 Berkshire Hathaway meeting in Omaha, Neb. (Nati Harnik/AP)

Thirty-eight US billionaires have pledged at least 50% of their wealth to charity through a campaign started by investor Warren Buffett and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

They include New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, CNN founder Ted Turner and entertainment executive Barry Diller.

"The Giving Pledge" lists all the families and individuals who have committed to the project.

The site says the pledge is a "moral commitment" not a "legal contract".

Related stories

* Who are the billionaire philanthropists?

The campaign was started in June to convince US billionaires to give away at least half of their fortunes either during their lifetimes or after their deaths.

"We've really just started but already we've had a terrific response," Mr Buffett said in a statement.

He added: "The Giving Pledge is about asking wealthy families to have important conversations about their wealth and how it will be used."

Those who pledge their money to "philanthropic causes and charitable organisations" must publicly state their intention through a letter of explanation.

'Improving education'

Other billionaires who have pledged large sums of their money include film producer George Lucas, philanthropist David Rockefeller and oil investor T Boone Pickens. ...

via BBC News - US billionaires pledge 50% of their wealth to charity.

Go Bill.

Churchill ordered UFO cover-up, National Archives show

Winston Churchill was accused of ordering a cover-up of a Second World War encounter between a UFO and a RAF bomber because he feared public "panic" and loss of faith in religion, newly released secret files disclose.

The former Prime Minister allegedly banned reporting of the “bizarre” incident, off the east coast of England, for half a century amid fears disclosures about unidentified flying objects would create public hysteria.He is said to have made the orders during a secret war meeting with US General Dwight Eisenhower, the then commander of the Allied Forces, at an undisclosed location in America during the latter part of the conflict.

The claims are contained in thousands of pages of declassified files on UFOs, released on Thursday online by the National Archives.

The 18 files, which cover from 1995 to 2003, are made up of more than 5,000 pages of reports, letters, and drawings drawn from correspondence with the public and questions raised in parliament. The allegations involving Churchill were made by the grandson of one his personal bodyguards, an RAF officer who overheard the discussion, who wrote to the Ministry of Defence in 1999 inquiring about the incident after his grandfather disclosed details to his family.- telegraph

The government took the threat of UFOs so seriously in the 1950s that UK intelligence chiefs met to discuss the issue, newly-released files show.

Ministers even went on to commission weekly reports on UFO sightings from a committee of intelligence experts.

The papers also include a wartime account claiming prime minister Winston Churchill ordered a UFO sighting be kept secret to prevent "mass panic".

The files show reports of UFOs peaked in 1996 - when The X Files was popular.

The Joint Intelligence Committee is better known for providing briefings to the government on matters relating to security, defence and foreign affairs.

But the latest batch of UFO files released from the Ministry of Defence to the National Archives shows that, in 1957, the committee received reports detailing an average of one UFO sighting a week.

The files also include an account of a wartime meeting attended by Winston Churchill in which, it is claimed, the prime minister was so concerned about a reported encounter between a UFO and RAF bombers, that he ordered it be kept secret for at least 50 years to prevent "mass panic".

X Files

Nick Pope, who used to investigate UFO sightings for the MoD, said: "The interesting thing is that most of the UFO files from that period have been destroyed.

"But what happened is that a scientist whose grandfather was one of his [Churchill's] bodyguards, said look, Churchill and Eisenhower got together to cover up this phenomenal UFO sighting, that was witnessed by an RAF crew on their way back from a bombing raid.

"The reason apparently was because Churchill believed it would cause mass panic and it would shatter people's religious views."

Reports of sightings of UFOs peaked in 1996 in the UK - when science fiction drama The X Files was popular.

According to the files, there were more than 600 reports in 1996, compared with an average of 240 in the previous five years.

The figures for 1996 show 609 reported sightings of unidentified flying objects, 343 letters from the public to the MoD's UFO desk and 22 enquiries and questions from MPs.

But by 2009, the MoD's UFO inquiry desk -Sec(AS)2 - had been closed down.

The 18 files released on Thursday are the latest to come out as part of a three-year project between the MoD and the National Archives.

Dr David Clarke, a UFO consultant to the National Archives, explained why the papers are being made public now.

Dr Clarke told the BBC: "Since the Freedom of Information Act arrived in 2005, this subject - UFOs - have become the third-most popular subject for people to write to the Ministry of Defence saying 'please could you release this file, or papers that you hold on this particular case'.

"What they've decided to do is to be totally open and to say, 'look we're not holding any secrets back about this subject we've got all these files and we're going to make them available to the public'."

One includes details on "aerial phenomena" prepared for a meeting of the Cabinet Office's Joint Intelligence Committee in April 1957.

According to a note included in the Red Book, the weekly intelligence survey, four incidents involving UFOs tracked by RAF radars were "unexplained".

'Spaceman'

The documents also include reports of a famous incident dubbed the "Welsh Roswell" in 1974, where members of the public reported seeing lights in the sky and feeling a tremor in the ground. ...

They are available to download for free for a month from The National Archives website

via BBC News - Churchill ordered UFO cover-up, National Archives show.

New China Daytime UFO Sighting Over Leshan City, Sichuan China?

What do you make of this?  Are these the same picture?  I overlaid them in Photoshop, but can't seem to get them to line up exactly. Close, however. The orbs are about in the same place if you line up the buildings... but not exactly.  if they move slightly, especially with time stamps on the images, this would be more interesting... Are they two stills from a video?

According to chines media report on July 26, 2010 citizens of Leshan City saw a Triangular UFO in the sky around 10 A.M.Above three unknown luminous body lead to a group of people gather around in Leshan, city.

Lu Shan who captured the above image with his phone camera describes the unknown round illuminated discs light first appeared in the west to the naked eye to judge its diameter about 20 to 50 cm; 10 minutes, the south from the building the speed of 1 meter per minute slowly move to the north, and the radius is becoming increasingly small and lasting for more than 10 minutes before disappearing.

Professor Wang Sichao, from Purple Mountain Observatory of Chinese Academy of Science, said the identity of those discs still can't be determined before comprehensive analysis.

Wang explained that formation of a mock sun could be influenced by many respects, including directions of ice crystals in sky, the number of ice crystals and the number of cirrus clouds. Those ice crystals are just like prisms that could cause sunshine to bend and form a circle around the sun.

However, the situation was not adequate enough in Leshan to form this phenomenon, according to Wang.

via New China Daytime UFO Sighting Over Leshan City, Sichuan China |UFO News|UFO Footage|2010 UFO Sightings|Alien Pictures|Coverup|Disclosure Project|Web Bot.

Based on 39 years of research, Professor Wang discovered a pattern. He found that July and August are the best months for viewing, generally after 10:00 pm. Wang also stated that major UFO sightings tend to occur in years ending with numbers 1, 2 or 7.

After 39 years studying UFOs, Professor Wang concludes that most reports have been hoaxes. The objects spotted were mostly missiles, satellites and meteors. Yet, he admits a few cases still can't be explained, and these could be actual encounters with alien intelligence.

Since June 30, at least eight UFO sightings were reported in Xinjiang, Hunan, Zhejiang, Chongqing and other parts of China. Some of the objects later turned out to be rockets, planes or lighted kites. Yet, some remain a mystery.

via UFO blogger.

Here is the result of stretching and rotating the large image to try to fit it over the small one. Perhaps someone else can make it work... to me it seems possible these are two different images close together.

Caroline Giuliani, daughter of former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, busted in alleged shoplift attempt

The Ivy League daughter of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani was busted Wednesday for shoplifting at an upper East Side beauty store, cops said.

Harvard senior Caroline Giuliani was caught at about 3:30 p.m stealing $150 worth of cosmetics from Sephora on E. 86th St. and Lexington Ave., sources said.

"She was caught red-handed. She knew it, and didn't act out," a police source said.

The 20-year-old daughter of New York's toughest-talking law-and-order mayor was arrested for misdemeanor petty larceny and hauled out of the store in handcuffs.

She was taken to the 19th Precinct stationhouse and issued a desk appearance ticket that requires her to return to court on Aug. 31.

"She kept her head low and you could see her eyes were tearing up," a source said of her wait at the stationhouse.

Once store employees learned who the suspect's father was, they told cops they didn't want to press charges.

A spokeswoman for the Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said there's been no decision about whether prosecutors will pursue the case. "Once we review the case, we will decide whether or not to file a criminal complaint," said DA spokeswoman Erin Duggan.

Caroline smiled nervously as she walked out of the 19th Precinct at about 7:30 p.m. with her mother, Donna Hanover. Neither would comment as they climbed into a Chevy Suburban and drove to Hanover's East Side home.

"This is a personal matter and Mayor Giuliani asks the media to respect the privacy of his daughter at this time," said a spokeswoman for the ex-mayor. The father and daughter have had a frosty relationship since his divorce from Hanover in 2002.

via Caroline Giuliani, daughter of former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, busted in alleged shoplift attempt.

When you can afford the stuff, it is more of a sport than a crime, I guess. Or a cry for help.

Genome of ancient sponge reveals origins of first animals, cancer

The sponge, which was not recognized as an animal until the 19th century, is now the simplest and most ancient group of animals to have their genome sequenced.

In a paper appearing in the August 5 issue of the journal Nature, a team of researchers led by Daniel Rokhsar of the University of California, Berkeley, and the Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute (JGI), report the draft genome sequence of the sea sponge Amphimedon queenslandica and several insights the genome gives into the origins of both the first animals and cancer.

All living animals are descended from the common ancestor of sponges and humans, which lived more than 600 million years ago.

A sponge-like creature may have been the first organism with more than one cell type and the ability to develop from a fertilized egg produced by the merger of sperm and egg cells.– that is, an animal.

"Our hypothesis is that multicellularity and cancer are two sides of the same coin," said Rokhsar, program head for computational genomics at JGI and a professor of molecular and cell biology and of physics at UC Berkeley. "If you are a cell in a multicellular organism, you have to cooperate with other cells in your body, making sure that you divide when you are supposed to as part of the team. The genes that regulate this cooperation are also the ones whose disruption can cause cells to behave selfishly and grow in uncontrolled ways to the detriment of the organism."

As part of the new analysis, the team looked in the sponge genome for more than 100 genes that have been implicated in human cancers and found about 90 percent of them. Future research will show what roles these genes play in endowing sponge cells with team spirit.

Sponges are often described as the "simplest" living animals, while humans are considered relatively "complex," but how this differential complexity is encoded in the genome is still a major question in biology.

The new study shows that, while the sponge genome contains most of the gene families found in humans, the number of genes in each family has changed significantly over the past 600 million years. By analyzing which gene families were enriched or depleted in different groups of animals, the authors identified groups of gene functions that are associated with morphological complexity.

"The genome raises questions of what it means to be an animal," said first author Mansi Srivastava, a former UC Berkeley graduate student who now is a post-doctoral associate at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass.

"Though we think of a sponge as a simple creature whose skeleton we take to the bathtub, it has a lot of the major biochemical and developmental pathways we associate with complex functions in humans and other more complex animals," she said. "But there are certain missing components. Future studies will reveal how sponges operate as bona fide animals without those components, and how the addition of those components led to the evolution of more complex animals."

... What sponges lack, however, are a gut, muscles and neurons."This incredibly old ancestor possessed the same core building blocks for multicellular form and function that still sits at the heart of all living animals, including humans," said coauthor Bernie Degnan ... , essentially all the genomic innovations that we deem necessary for intricate modern animal life have their origins much further back in time that anyone anticipated, predating the Cambrian explosion by tens if not hundreds of millions of years.

"What marked the evolutionary origin of animals was the ability of individual cells to assume specialized properties and work together for the greater good of the entire organism. The sponge represents a window on this ancient and momentous event," said coauthor Dr. Kenneth S. Kosik, the Harriman Professor of Neuroscience at UC Santa Barbara and co-director of the Neuroscience Research Institute.

...  The sponge genome may also have more practical implications, according to Degnan."Sponges produce an amazing array of chemicals of direct interest to the pharmaceutical industry," he said. "They also biofabricate silica fibers directly from sea water in an environmentally benign manner, which is of great interest in communications. With the genome in hand, we can decipher the methods used by these simple animals to produce materials that far exceed our current engineering and chemistry capabilities."

via Genome of ancient sponge reveals origins of first animals, cancer.

Childhood Personality Traits Predict Adult Behavior

Personality traits observed in childhood are a strong predictor of adult behavior, a study by researchers at the University of California, Riverside, the Oregon Research Institute and University of Oregon suggests.

Using data from a 1960s study of approximately 2,400 ethnically diverse elementary schoolchildren in Hawaii, researchers compared teacher personality ratings of the students with videotaped interviews of 144 of those individuals 40 years later.

What they discovered was surprising, said Christopher S. Nave, a doctoral candidate at UC Riverside and lead author of the paper, “On the Contextual Independence of Personality: Teachers’ Assessments Predict Directly Observed Behavior After Four Decades.” Co-authors of the paper are Ryne A. Sherman, a UCR doctoral candidate; David C. Funder, UCR professor of psychology; Sarah E. Hampson, a researcher at the Oregon Research Institute; and Lewis R. Goldberg, professor of psychology emeritus at the University of Oregon. The research was sponsored by the National Institute on Aging through a grant to the Oregon Research Institute.

“We remain recognizably the same person,” Nave said. “This speaks to the importance of understanding personality because it does follow us wherever we go across time and contexts.”

The researchers examined four personality attributes – verbally fluent, adaptable, impulsive and self-minimizing. They found that:

• Youngsters identified as verbally fluent – defined as unrestrained talkativeness – tended, as middle-aged adults, to display interest in intellectual matters, speak fluently, try to control the situation, and exhibit a high degree of intelligence. Children rated low in verbal fluency by their teachers were observed as adults to seek advice, give up when faced with obstacles, and exhibit an awkward interpersonal style.

• Children rated as highly adaptable – defined as coping easily and successfully with new situations – tended, as middle-aged adults, to behave cheerfully, speak fluently and show interest in intellectual matters. Those who rated low in adaptability as children were observed as adults to say negative things about themselves, seek advice and exhibit an awkward interpersonal style.

• Students rated as impulsive as adults were inclined to speak loudly, display a wide range of interests and be talkative. Those who were rated low on impulsivity were observed, as adults, to be fearful or timid, keep others at a distance and express insecurity.

• Children whose teachers rated them as having a tendency to self-minimize – defined as humble, minimizing their own importance or never showing off – as adults were likely to express guilt, seek reassurance, say negative things about themselves and express insecurity. Those who were ranked low as self-minimizing were observed as adults to speak loudly, show interest in intellectual matters and exhibit condescending behavior.

“We think that personality resides within us,” Nave said. “It’s a part of us, a part of our biology. Life events still influence our behaviors, yet we must acknowledge the power of personality in understanding future behavior as well.”

Further study will expand knowledge that “one’s personality has important outcomes associated with it.” In addition, future research will “help us understand how personality is related to behavior as well as examine the extent to which we may be able to change our personality.”

via UCR Newsroom: Childhood Personality Traits Predict Adult Behavior.

Compact microscope a marvel

A compact microscope invented at Rice University is proving its potential to impact global health.

In a paper published online today in the journal PLoS ONE, Rice alumnus Andrew Miller and co-authors show that his portable, battery-operated fluorescence microscope, which costs $240, stacks up nicely against devices that retail for as much as $40,000 in diagnosing signs of tuberculosis.

Miller and colleagues at The Methodist Hospital Research Institute (TMHRI) analyzed samples from 19 patients suspected of having TB, an infectious disease that usually attacks the lungs and can be fatal if not treated. His instrument, called the Global Focus microscope, performed just as well as the lab's reference-standard fluorescence microscope. The team reported similar findings were obtained in 98.4 percent of the samples tested.

Miller created the 2.5-pound microscope as his senior design project last year, working with faculty in Rice 360˚: Institute for Global Health Technologies. The goal was to make an inexpensive, portable and highly capable microscope that could be used in clinics in developing countries that have limited access to lab equipment and may lack electricity.

The microscope was built with off-the-shelf parts encased in a rugged plastic shell Miller created with a 3-D printer at Rice's Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK). Light to power the 1,000-times magnification microscope comes from a top-mounted LED flashlight.

The Global Focus microscope won this year's Hershel M. Rich Invention Award, which is presented annually by Rice Engineering Alumni to a Rice faculty member or student who has developed an original invention. It was the first undergraduate project to win the award.

Miller graduated from Rice in 2009 with a degree in bioengineering and works full time as a medical device designer for Thoratec, a San Francisco company that makes ventricular assist devices. Part time, he continues working to commercialize the microscope in a way that will ensure its cost remains low for users in developing countries. He has also replaced the microscope's plastic casing with aluminum for better stability. ...

Four days of blind testing of 63 smear samples, including control slides, confirmed the Global Focus microscope was every bit as capable as the lab's more sophisticated instrument in identifying positive smear specimens.

via Compact microscope a marvel.

Police: Idaho Man John Olele Bit Off His Roommate's Nose

... Police believe John Olele, 30, bit off his housemate's nose after a heated argument Sunday night.

According to KVAL, police in Boise, Idaho, responded to a 911 call about a fight at 9:49 p.m. and reportedly spotted "an adult male with most of his nose missing."

Officers scoured the property in search of the victim's nose but were unable to recover the detached flesh. The victim was treated at a hospital.

Police found Olele in the home and charged him with "mayhem," according to the Idaho Statesman.

The charge, which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison, can be leveled against "[a] person who unlawfully and maliciously deprives a human being of a member of his body, or disables, disfigures or renders it useless, or cuts out or disables the tongue, puts out an eye, slits the nose, ear or lip," according to the state criminal codes.

via Police: Idaho Man John Olele Bit Off His Roommate's Nose.

I think he ate it. Does he look like a nose eater to you? Would you know one if you saw one?

Wikipedia Explains Law on Use of FBI Seal Image to the FBI

This from Joe Peacock of Fark:

So, you get a letter from the FBI asking you to comply with a demand, or face "further legal action." Most people would be reaching for the Depends adult diapers right then, if they hadn't soiled themselves already.

But not Wikipedia. When the FBI sent the user-generated encyclopedia a letter demanding that the site take down an image of the agency's seal, the Wikipedia folks stood their ground.

According to the Wikipedians, the law that the feds cited only limits the use of the agency's seal to create fake badges or otherwise falsely represent affiliation with the bureau.

Wikipedia responded with what I feel is the best please-fornicate-yourself anyone's given another entity in the past 10 years: "While we appreciate your desire to revise the statute to reflect your expansive vision of it, the fact is that we must work with the actual language of the statute, not the aspirational version."

Wow. We'll be watching to see how this plays out. ...

via Wikipedia Explains Law on Use of FBI Seal Image to the FBI.

Remains of St John the Baptist 'found'

Bone fragments of St John the Baptist appear to have been found on Sveti Ivan Island near Bulgaria's southern Black Sea.

He is considered one of the most important figures in Christianity.

Further tests are still to be carried out on the fragments, which were discovered late last month.

The BBC's Malcolm Brabant reports.

via BBC News - Remains of St John the Baptist 'found'.

He's all over the place, it seems... India, Bulgaria, Turkey, Romania, Egypt, Rome...

The presumed 'Head of St John', enshrined in Rome

Istanbul claims to possess the saint's arm and a piece of his skull in the Topkapi Palace, as does the Coptic Orthodox Monastery of Saint Macarius the Great in Scetes, Egypt,^[49] while John's right hand, with which he baptised Jesus, is said to be in the possession of the Serbian Orthodox Cetinje monastery in Montenegro, and also at the Romanian skete of the Forerunner on Mount Athos. Armenians believe that Gandzasar Monastery's Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, in Nagorno Karabakh, too contains or contained in the past St. John's head. A discussion about how St. John's head ended up in medieval Armenia's province of Artsakh, and in Gandzasar, can be found in the History of the Land of Aghvank, a collection of texts attributed to the medieval Armenian historian Movses Kaghankatvatsi. The fourth-century Armenian Monasery of Surb Karapet (Monastery of Saint John the Baptist, now in southeastern Turkey) established by Saint Gregory the Illuminator contained the relics of Saint John the Baptist; its fate is unclear after the complete destruction of the church by the Turkish army.

In July 2010 a small sarcophagus was uncovered on St. Ivan Island, Bulgaria. According to local archaeologists, the sarcophagus holds relics of John the Baptist which were donated by Constantinople to the destroyed monastery on the island.^[50][51]

An Armenian Apostolic Church, "St. John's" at Chinsurah, West Bengal, India, also claims to possess a portion of the hand of St. John. Each year on "Chinsurah Day" in the month of January, the Armenians of Calcutta make a pilgrimage to this Church and during the mass the pilgrims are blessed with this hand. During the year, the relic is kept at the Armenian Church, Calcutta. ^{- wikipedia}

Hippy Tune Hating Waterloo Man Arrested for Air Horn Blasting

A Waterloo man faces a disorderly conduct charge after he retaliated against noisy neighbors by blasting an air horn in their direction.

Carl Herold said he got tired of the "hippie tunes" constantly coming from across the street. The 62-year-old bought an air horn from an old dump truck last week, pointed it at his neighbor's house, connected it to an air compressor for power and started tooting away.

His neighbors called police within minutes. The arresting officer said he heard the horn blasts every few seconds starting about five blocks from the house. He arrested Herold when he refused to stop.

Herold told The Associated Press on Monday he hasn't decided if he'll fight the arrest.

via Waterloo man arrested for blasting air horn in retaliation for neighbors' noise.

My uncle was the bass player for Steppenwolf. Herold, it seems, was not born to be wild. There will be no hippie tunes in jail... so he wins.

US military to create japanese comic books

The US military is using manga to teach a new generation in Japan about the importance of the countries' half-century security alliance.

A new comic book series features an American boy called Usa-kun - a word play on USA and ''usagi'', Japanese for rabbit - who wears a hooded jacket with bunny ears and befriends a Japanese girl, Anzu Arai.

In the first issue of Our Alliance - A Lasting Partnership, to be published online today, the boy tells Anzu that he has come to defend her home, as they are ''important friends''.

The United States is publishing the Japanese-language comic as the countries mark the 50th anniversary of the security treaty, and two days before the 65th anniversary of the US dropping an atom bomb on Hiroshima.

Over the past year, Japan's new centre-left government strained ties by publicly toying with the idea of moving a controversial US airbase off the southern island of Okinawa.

In the four-part comic series, the two characters ''explore and learn about the US military in Japan and its role in the US-Japan alliance''. The manga format was ''a very common way of communicating'', said Major Neal Fisher, of the US Forces' public affairs office in Japan.

''A lot of people love manga … Manga is a very light-hearted way to carry information'' on where the US bases are, what they do and how they co-operate with the Japanese forces, he said.

The US, having led the occupation of Japan after World War II, has 47,000 troops stationed around the country.

The comic will be published on www.usfj.mil/manga.

via Latest US signals are in manga.

Scientists make link between brain acid and cognition

Almost anyone who has faced a test or a deadline probably wished there was a smart pill to pop. New research suggests that this may eventually be possible.

University of Maryland scientists have linked a brain compound called kynurenic acid to cognition, potentially opening the door to development of a drug that could aid learning in healthy people -- and in those with disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.

"Workers might want to take a pill so they can work harder, and college students would be interested because they already are taking amphetamine-type pills so they will be sharper," said Robert Schwarcz, professor of psychiatry, pediatrics and pharmacology and experimental therapeutics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. His research has focused on healthy people, but he says, "What happens with diseases would be a major add-on."

There are many other research projects around the country into brain function. They are examining a wide variety of factors -- vitamin supplements, estrogen, herbs, red wine -- as well as ways to bolster blood circulation and chemicals that initiate actions in the brain. Several drugs are already being used to improve cognition in Alzheimer's patients, but they aren't effective for every patient.

The odds are long for any new drug treatment gaining government approval for use in humans, but Schwarcz believes that the kynurenic acid discovery could be the breakthrough needed by pharmaceutical companies to produce a commercial product. No human tests have been performed based on the findings, but he believes that at least four major companies have picked up on his research and have begun active drug development programs.

Other scientists think the research shows promise in a sorely needed area.

via Scientists make link between brain acid and cognition.

Radioactive Boars Rampaging Through Germany

It sounds like the plot of a B-movie, yet it’s bizarrely true: Radioactive boars are on the loose and thriving in Germany’s forests.

A succession of mild winters has left Germany scrambling to deal with a skyrocketing wild boar population. Tales of swarming beasts rampaging through city streets and attacking citizens occur with alarming regularity.

The problem has been aggravated by the lingering effects of the Chernobyl disaster from twenty-five years ago; a large portion of the wild animals are contaminated by radioactivity.

Poisonous radiation leaves the beasts completely inedible (wild boar is considered a delicacy in Germany), and the phenomenon is becoming expensive for the German government. In the last hunting season, 650,000 boar were shot versus 287,000 in the previous year. And due to atomic energy regulations, the government must buy contaminated animals from hunters who catch them.

Berlin compensated hunters to the tune of over $500,000 in 2009, writes German newspaper Der Spiegel -- quadruple the payment in 2007.

Though the Chernobyl explosion happened a quarter century ago, high levels of radiation remain in the region’s vegetation. And wild boars are especially susceptible because of their proclivity for mushrooms and truffles, which are especially efficient at absorbing radiation.

"In the regions where it is particularly problematic, all boar that are shot are checked for radiation," Andreas Leppmann from the German Hunting Federation told the paper. There are 70 measuring stations in Bavaria alone.

While general radioactivity in plants should continue to decrease, levels in fungi may even increase, leaving no end in sight for this issue. One expert told Der Spiegel that the problem will likely remain for at least another 50 years.

via FOXNews.com - Radioactive Boars Rampaging Through Germany.