Green Options

In an interview, this author asked Dr. Wang, about the foreseeable impacts/uses of this technique. “Ultimately,” said Wang, ” this is a new way of accelerating the evolution of the whole organism in a very directed fashion (i.e., controlled by scientist). This is going to be important in new cell based therapies, new cell based production of drugs, or, say, biofuels.”

A woman in China was sleeping in her bedroom when she heard a strange scratching noise.  When Duan Qiongxiu turned on the lights, she saw a “monster working its way along the wall using his claw.”

Dr. Norman Borlaug passed away this weekend at 95.  He left behind an amazing legacy of contribution to humanity.  It is likely that he saved more human lives than any other person in history.  He did it by developing far more productive wheat than had ever been grown.  His “short stature” wheat had shorter, thicker stems so that it could hold bigger heads of grain that would otherwise “lodge” (collapse over on to the ground where it can’t be harvested).  It was also resistant to the devastating wheat disease called “Stem Rust.”  This wheat ended up feeding millions of people around the world, particularly in Pakistan and India in the 1960s.  Borlaug’s breakthrough was a key part of the “Green Revolution” and it did much to address the hunger and poverty issues of the time.  For this, and his life-time of additional work Bourlag recieved the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Metal .  Only Martin Luther King, Elie Wiesel, Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa have received all of these commendations.  He was also awarded the National Medal of Science and a host of other awards from around the world.  There is an excellent article about the life and career of this remarkable man in the Des Moines Register.

In this the 150th anniversary year of the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (and the 200th anniversary year of his birth), it is worth returning to that era of profound discovery and re-examining some of the controversies and earlier evolutionary theories begotten in the years just preceding its publication. Today (and ever since Origin), the core, controversial idea of evolution tends to be rather simplistically summed up as: we are descended from apes. Of course, Darwinism, as [...]

It has been assumed for most of the history of micro-biological science that such micro-organisms are purely “reflexive”; they simply respond and adapt to external stimuli (such as exposure to chemicals, heat stress, or drugs). But research over he past 2 years by two different scientific teams (a Princeton team lead by Saeed Tavazoie, and, a team from the Weizmann Institute in Israel) is shaking up present understanding and over-turning basic assumptions.