Unfortunately, of course, as someone else noted, DNA on Earth really doesn't fare well in the face of exposure. We only have extremely old pieces because of exceptionally calm environments (trapped in amber, frozen deep in permafrost) that either don't really exist on Mars or would require a lot more digging than your average probe can handle. Not that it wouldn't be totally awesome...
We're not that blind. We can study the chemical fitness of different atoms by looking at the amount of energy it takes them to undergo various chemical reactions versus other counterparts. Silicon, despite science fiction's love for it, is an extremely inflexible atom: it can't form bonds with any of the major non-metals we use (oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, and phosphorus), and it can't form bonds with a number of the coordinating metal ions we use, either. You may say "oh, well, it can just use other stuff and have a big ol' alternative party," but there aren't many alternatives. Carbon is useful not only because it forms many bonds, but because it can form them with these atoms in particular, which are biochemically equivalent to tools. No tools, no catalyst, no enzyme, no metabolism, no life.
If I were a god-fearing scientist, I would tell you that we live in an experiment designed to see how frequently RNA, DNA, and polypeptide-based life evolves. (And I'm starting to worry I may eventually become one, simply because of how perfectly our biochemistry falls out of the periodic table. If there is an alternative way of doing things, it's not something obvious like swapping out one chemical.)
It's not as flexible as you might think. We have reason to believe that ribose and the nucleotides are inherently more common in the universe, and the chemical behaviour of DNA and RNA both are extremely convenient and flexible by comparison with the alternatives we've synthesized. These are artefacts of quantum physics, universal constants, and how stars die. If the universe is an experiment designed to see what conditions cause life to arise, current astrophysics would posit that we are about as standard as it gets.
The same goes for enclosing the self-replicating material in a membrane made out of lipids: some propose that the presence of lipids was required for life to start in the first place. Without some kind of solvent-filled (i.e. water-filled or ammonia-filled) cell, the only way to protect sensitive inner workings from the outside is by having a thick layer of solid material with no flexibility, which is extremely bad for evolution.
Moreover, a lot of the theories about life on Mars depend on it either (a) being cognate with life on Earth (perhaps even the cradle), or (b) having a comparable biosphere to Earth's billions of years ago. And that's without considering panspermia. Given that it's from roughly the same mix of nebula as Earth, we've already got a lot in common.
That all being said, however, Venter is once again vastly overambitious. 'Booting up' synthetic chromosomes only works in sufficiently similar chassis, and for very simple organisms (true Martian life would be radically different in terms of cell configuration and structure); an environmental sample of Ion Torrent reads is most likely not sufficient to clearly resolve specific genomes; any life on Mars is not likely to be near the surface within a rover's reach; any life near the rover's reach is probably a Terran contaminant. If anything comes out of this, it will be a new upper bound on "how many people can roll their eyes at Craig Venter."
That's an interesting and valid point, and I do like the idea of it. It certainly deals with spousal rights. Of course, as long as income tax is around, there will still be exemptions and special terms, but contract law admittedly would deal neatly with the rest of the matter.
Marriage affects taxation, property law, and rights in medical situations. All of those things are legal matters, and so the government needs to track it. How the nanites do you not know this?
Well, if you're ever in a lurch and have similar annoyed-nerding to do, start your post with "this is off-topic" or "I have karma to burn." That seems to be a pretty reliable licence to say or do anything as long as it isn't political, religious, goatse, or trolling.
Completely off-topic, the logo for today (in Tengwar) is complete gibberish. Whoever prepared it didn't realise that the keyboard layout didn't correspond to QWERTY, and apparently that Tengwar doesn't even map onto the Latin alphabet. Here is the correct orthography for English, and here is an Elvish orthography. Today's logo actually consists of the letters "zh h ch g j wh m". A fitting tribute to Slashdot that garbage from the submitter was posted without any editorial oversight.
Point-of-sale. A machine such as a cash register which detects and registers the exchange of goods for money on the part of the seller. (I sense sarcasm in your post, but others may genuinely be confused.)
So will Apple try to licence this technology to other mobile manufacturers, or will it forever remain on the shelf, never attaining sufficient popularity for POS vendors to support it?
The difference, as with all things in language, is that "theses" is commonly accepted, and "thesises" isn't. We are ostracising the submitter for getting a convention wrong, not violating a rule.
As far as the bacteria are concerned, I would guess that it's some subtly distinct combination of FDA regulations and poor conditions in individual factory farms; presumably ones that don't export their meat to other countries much. Psychologically, I would guess that the cultural pressure to compete in the US deepens the misery of those who feel they have failed.
Pfft, forget heads. Every cell does this all the time; it's how signalling cascades work. More embarrassingly, projects like this are routinely done by undergraduate students as part of the iGEM competition. To have this story publicised verges on humiliation.
I don't know much more beyond what I've already said, but I'd guess that it has something to do with how we farm meat. Similar to how the parasites that caused colony collapse disorder spread amongst bees, factory farming is a very efficient environment for the spread of undesirable microbes and diseases—and because the animals affected would probably get fatter quicker, it would be seen as a good thing to a farmer.
As for psychological effects, I think it's safe to assume that a lot of people who are obese are in poverty and hence more likely to be depressed. The combination of having to exercise extra to prevent weight gain and still needing to eat a normal amount of food to get other nutrients probably exacerbates the problem. In the end, I imagine a lot of them do understand how to deal with obesity, but they just don't see it as a battle they can win—so they feel they have nothing to lose by indulging their hunger even further.
You're completely off-topic, but to reward your curiosity I'll gladly take the hit to my karma.
It's been demonstrated by the Knight group at the University of Colorado, in mice, that individuals with a very specific immune defect will accrue a specific kind of bacteria (Bacteriodetes) in their intestines. The presence of this bacteria has been shown to cause dramatic weight gain in the host, because of how it modifies the nutrients that are left over in the gut. Transplanting these bacteria into the intestines of healthy mice can cause dramatic weight gain, and it's strongly believed that the same phenomenon occurs in humans.
That's not to say that there isn't a psychological element, but it's not simply a matter of mental dysfunction.
Given that the general public won't even know the difference between a genuine attack and just turning off the power grid? Pretty damn easily! (But, of course, for extra convincingness points, they can always use the years of detailed forensic work done by security analysts on viruses like Stuxnet to fabricate the fingerprint of their attacking nation of choice.)
That's my point exactly. This is no more or less organic than a greenhouse or garden without the fancy bits. I only mentioned automation being 'less' organic as an exercise in splitting semantic hairs.
...one might even call it orthogonal to organic! Or not related to organic at all!
I mean, the worms, sure, but arduinos? Automation does not make things magical, it just makes them work. (And if anything, doesn't that make the growing more artificial?)
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, of course, as someone else noted, DNA on Earth really doesn't fare well in the face of exposure. We only have extremely old pieces because of exceptionally calm environments (trapped in amber, frozen deep in permafrost) that either don't really exist on Mars or would require a lot more digging than your average probe can handle. Not that it wouldn't be totally awesome...
O-ho. :) I see what you did there.
We're not that blind. We can study the chemical fitness of different atoms by looking at the amount of energy it takes them to undergo various chemical reactions versus other counterparts. Silicon, despite science fiction's love for it, is an extremely inflexible atom: it can't form bonds with any of the major non-metals we use (oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, and phosphorus), and it can't form bonds with a number of the coordinating metal ions we use, either. You may say "oh, well, it can just use other stuff and have a big ol' alternative party," but there aren't many alternatives. Carbon is useful not only because it forms many bonds, but because it can form them with these atoms in particular, which are biochemically equivalent to tools. No tools, no catalyst, no enzyme, no metabolism, no life.
If I were a god-fearing scientist, I would tell you that we live in an experiment designed to see how frequently RNA, DNA, and polypeptide-based life evolves. (And I'm starting to worry I may eventually become one, simply because of how perfectly our biochemistry falls out of the periodic table. If there is an alternative way of doing things, it's not something obvious like swapping out one chemical.)
It's not as flexible as you might think. We have reason to believe that ribose and the nucleotides are inherently more common in the universe, and the chemical behaviour of DNA and RNA both are extremely convenient and flexible by comparison with the alternatives we've synthesized. These are artefacts of quantum physics, universal constants, and how stars die. If the universe is an experiment designed to see what conditions cause life to arise, current astrophysics would posit that we are about as standard as it gets.
The same goes for enclosing the self-replicating material in a membrane made out of lipids: some propose that the presence of lipids was required for life to start in the first place. Without some kind of solvent-filled (i.e. water-filled or ammonia-filled) cell, the only way to protect sensitive inner workings from the outside is by having a thick layer of solid material with no flexibility, which is extremely bad for evolution.
Moreover, a lot of the theories about life on Mars depend on it either (a) being cognate with life on Earth (perhaps even the cradle), or (b) having a comparable biosphere to Earth's billions of years ago. And that's without considering panspermia. Given that it's from roughly the same mix of nebula as Earth, we've already got a lot in common.
That all being said, however, Venter is once again vastly overambitious. 'Booting up' synthetic chromosomes only works in sufficiently similar chassis, and for very simple organisms (true Martian life would be radically different in terms of cell configuration and structure); an environmental sample of Ion Torrent reads is most likely not sufficient to clearly resolve specific genomes; any life on Mars is not likely to be near the surface within a rover's reach; any life near the rover's reach is probably a Terran contaminant. If anything comes out of this, it will be a new upper bound on "how many people can roll their eyes at Craig Venter."
That's an interesting and valid point, and I do like the idea of it. It certainly deals with spousal rights. Of course, as long as income tax is around, there will still be exemptions and special terms, but contract law admittedly would deal neatly with the rest of the matter.
I'm not making a vacuous argument. Why do you oppose spousal rights? They're legal recognition of marital trust.
Marriage affects taxation, property law, and rights in medical situations. All of those things are legal matters, and so the government needs to track it. How the nanites do you not know this?
...and now the logo's in LOGO, and animated. How does that make you feel?
Well, if you're ever in a lurch and have similar annoyed-nerding to do, start your post with "this is off-topic" or "I have karma to burn." That seems to be a pretty reliable licence to say or do anything as long as it isn't political, religious, goatse, or trolling.
I'm not convinced Google would—after all, they already offer free POP and IMAP. As does Apple, and iCloud doesn't even have ads in it. (I think?)
Completely off-topic, the logo for today (in Tengwar) is complete gibberish. Whoever prepared it didn't realise that the keyboard layout didn't correspond to QWERTY, and apparently that Tengwar doesn't even map onto the Latin alphabet. Here is the correct orthography for English, and here is an Elvish orthography. Today's logo actually consists of the letters "zh h ch g j wh m". A fitting tribute to Slashdot that garbage from the submitter was posted without any editorial oversight.
Point-of-sale. A machine such as a cash register which detects and registers the exchange of goods for money on the part of the seller. (I sense sarcasm in your post, but others may genuinely be confused.)
The one remaining theory is that Apple expects their devices to surpass all others, I suppose.
So will Apple try to licence this technology to other mobile manufacturers, or will it forever remain on the shelf, never attaining sufficient popularity for POS vendors to support it?
Your horse is not nearly as high as you think it is.
The difference, as with all things in language, is that "theses" is commonly accepted, and "thesises" isn't. We are ostracising the submitter for getting a convention wrong, not violating a rule.
As far as the bacteria are concerned, I would guess that it's some subtly distinct combination of FDA regulations and poor conditions in individual factory farms; presumably ones that don't export their meat to other countries much. Psychologically, I would guess that the cultural pressure to compete in the US deepens the misery of those who feel they have failed.
Pfft, forget heads. Every cell does this all the time; it's how signalling cascades work. More embarrassingly, projects like this are routinely done by undergraduate students as part of the iGEM competition. To have this story publicised verges on humiliation.
I don't know much more beyond what I've already said, but I'd guess that it has something to do with how we farm meat. Similar to how the parasites that caused colony collapse disorder spread amongst bees, factory farming is a very efficient environment for the spread of undesirable microbes and diseases—and because the animals affected would probably get fatter quicker, it would be seen as a good thing to a farmer.
As for psychological effects, I think it's safe to assume that a lot of people who are obese are in poverty and hence more likely to be depressed. The combination of having to exercise extra to prevent weight gain and still needing to eat a normal amount of food to get other nutrients probably exacerbates the problem. In the end, I imagine a lot of them do understand how to deal with obesity, but they just don't see it as a battle they can win—so they feel they have nothing to lose by indulging their hunger even further.
You're completely off-topic, but to reward your curiosity I'll gladly take the hit to my karma.
It's been demonstrated by the Knight group at the University of Colorado, in mice, that individuals with a very specific immune defect will accrue a specific kind of bacteria (Bacteriodetes) in their intestines. The presence of this bacteria has been shown to cause dramatic weight gain in the host, because of how it modifies the nutrients that are left over in the gut. Transplanting these bacteria into the intestines of healthy mice can cause dramatic weight gain, and it's strongly believed that the same phenomenon occurs in humans.
That's not to say that there isn't a psychological element, but it's not simply a matter of mental dysfunction.
Consporacy theories? Sorry, I don't know much about fungi.
I've heard a few good ideas about the evolution of creationism, but none of the resultant jokes were designed very intelligently.
Given that the general public won't even know the difference between a genuine attack and just turning off the power grid? Pretty damn easily! (But, of course, for extra convincingness points, they can always use the years of detailed forensic work done by security analysts on viruses like Stuxnet to fabricate the fingerprint of their attacking nation of choice.)
It actually is indeed old news—Nightly 19 has been doing this to me for a week now (with the Acrobat plug-in) and it's been pretty obnoxious.
That's my point exactly. This is no more or less organic than a greenhouse or garden without the fancy bits. I only mentioned automation being 'less' organic as an exercise in splitting semantic hairs.
...one might even call it orthogonal to organic! Or not related to organic at all!
I mean, the worms, sure, but arduinos? Automation does not make things magical, it just makes them work. (And if anything, doesn't that make the growing more artificial?)