Clipmarks | pokkets's 'gene' clips

Atheist quotes

Sun, 28 Jan 2007 11:39:11 GMT

clipped by: Chookiepuss

I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.

-Friedrich Nietzsche

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

-Stephen Roberts

I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence.

-Doug McLeod

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

-Epicurus

Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends! Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!

-Ned Flanders

Men never commit evil so fully and joyfuly as when they do it for religious convictions.

-Blaise Pascal

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

-Bertrand Russell

Praying is like a rocking chair-- it'll give you something to do, but it won't get you anywhere.

-Gypsy Rose Lee

We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.

-Gene Roddenberry

If a church sign says it, then it must be so:

http://shortthorts.blogspot.com/2006/10/fun-with-church-signs.html

Tags: atheist

Redheads will be extinct in 100 years say scientists

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 09:45:47 GMT

clipped by: michellezm

Clip Source: www.news.com.au

REDHEADS are becoming rarer and could be extinct in 100 years, according to genetic scientists.

The current National Geographic magazine reports that less than two per cent of the world's population has natural red hair, created by a mutation in northern Europe thousands of years ago.

Global intermingling, which broadens the availability of possible partners, has reduced the chances of redheads meeting and producing little redheads of their own.

It takes only one red-haired parent to produce ginger-headed babies, but two redheads obviously create a much stronger possibility.

If the gingers really want to save themselves they should move to Scotland.

An estimated 40 per cent of Scots carry the red gene and 13 per cent actually have red hair.

Some experts say that redheads could be gone as early as 2060, but others say the gene can be dormant for generations before returning.

today's carriers are more prone to skin cancer and have a higher sensitivity to heat and cold-related pain.

Tags: genetics, anthropology, current affairs

Top 10 Things You Didn't Know About Death

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:26:19 GMT

clipped by: locolapapa
clipper's remarks: See all ten on my clipmarks or visit the site.

Clip Source: www.shorttext.com

1. When a person dies, hearing is the last sense to go -- the first is usually sight, followed by taste, smell and touch

2. A human head remains conscious for about 15 to 20 seconds after it has been decapitated

3. 100 people choke to death on pens each year. One is more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a spider

4. Alexander's funeral would have cost $600 million today. A road from Egypt to Babylon was built to carry his body

5. When inventor Thomas Edison died in 1931, his friend Henry Ford captured his last dying breath in a bottle

6. Over 2500 left-handed people are killed each year from using products made for right-handed people

7. It takes longer than ever before a body to decompose due to preservatives in the food that we eat these days

8. An eternal flame lamp at the tomb of a Buddhist priest in Nara, Japan has kept burning for 1,130 years

9. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry is the first person to have his ashes put aboard a rocket and 'buried' in space

Tags: death, facts, interesting

Eighty million years without sex

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:02:04 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Asexual organisms are usually short-lived

The mystery of how an animal has survived for 80 million years without sex has been solved by UK scientists.

A Cambridge team says the creature owes its existence to a genetic quirk that offers some recompense for its prolonged celibacy.

Many asexual organisms have died out because they cannot adapt to changes in the natural world.

But an evolutionary trick allows this pond-dweller to survive when conditions change, researchers report in Science.

There could be some benefit to millions of years without sex after all

Dr Alan Tunnacliffe, University of Cambridge

The animal is a tiny invertebrate known as a bdelloid rotifer. It lives in freshwater pools. If deprived of water, it survives in a desiccated state until water becomes available again.

The secret to this novel survival mechanism lies in a twist of asexual reproduction, whereby the animal is able to make two separate proteins from two different copies of a key gene.

Tags: biology, genetics, sex, science

Evolution for Creationists, Busting the Evolution Myths

Sun, 26 Nov 2006 21:07:58 GMT

clipped by: sohil

Clip Source: www.abarnett.demon.co.uk

Evolution - what YOU need to know

Evolution is a fact. Shocking and controversial this might sound, but bear with me. I'm not talking about Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. I'm talking about the changes in the gene pools of all species that occur every single day due to births and deaths. If you accept that most members of a species do not all have the exact same DNA (which is easily demonstrated), and you accept that sexual reproduction combines the DNA of two parents to form a slightly different combination of genes, and you accept that not all creatures survive long enough to be able to reproduce, then....

Tags: evolution, facts, science, creationism, god, biology, education

An open letter from GOD

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 20:26:27 GMT

clipped by: BigBadWolf
clipper's remarks: This is my kind of God... it is well worth the read.

Clip Source: www.universallight.org

The following was read on the air by radio commentator, Paul Harvey. (The original author is Bo Lozoff.)

My dear children, and believe Me, that is all of you, I consider Myself a pretty patient guy. I mean, look at the Grand Canyon. It took millions of years to get it right. And about evolution? Boy, nothing is slower than designing that whole Darwinian thing to take place cell by cell and gene by gene

And I have been patient through your fashions, your civilizations, wars and schemes, and the countless ways that you take Me for granted until you get yourselves into big trouble again and again.

You see, one human being to Me — even a bum on the street — is worth more than all of the holy books in the world.

I don't need you to defend Me, I don't need constant credit. I just want you to be good to each other.

Play nice with each other. Love and respect everyone. Be kind.

Tags: religion

Lonely? Your immune system is in overdrive.

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 04:06:43 GMT

clipped by: pokkets

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Maggie Fox

Lonely people's immune systems go haywire, so no wonder they are more likely to get sick and die young, researchers say.

They used a gene chip to look at the DNA of isolated people and found that people who describe themselves as chronically lonely have distinct patterns of genetic activity, almost all of it involving the immune system.

The study does not show which came first: the loneliness or the physical traits.

"What this study shows is that the biological impact of social isolation reaches down into some of our most basic internal processes: the activity of our genes," Cole says.

"We have known for years that there is this epidemiological relationship between social support - how many friends and family members you have around you - and a whole bunch of physical outcomes."

Some 200 genes controlling lonely people's immune systems seemed to be active

All 22,000 human genes were studied and compared, and 209 stood out in the loneliest people.

Tags: lonliness.depression, gene, human, immune, system, people

25 Greatest Science Books of All Time

Tue, 21 Nov 2006 02:26:37 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks:

The Origin of Species (1859)

Darwin's masterwork is, undeniably, The Origin of Species, in which he introduced his theory of evolution by natural selection. Prior to its publication, the prevailing view was that each species had existed in its current form since the moment of divine creation and that humans were a privileged form of life, above and apart from nature. Darwin's theory knocked us from that pedestal. Wary of a religious backlash, he kept his ideas secret for almost two decades while bolstering them with additional observations and experiments. The result is an avalanche of detail—there seems to be no species he did not contemplate—thankfully delivered in accessible, conversational prose. A century and a half later, Darwin's paean to evolution still begs to be heard: "There is grandeur in this view of life," he wrote, that "from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
Clip Source: discover.com

1. and 2. The Voyage of the Beagle (1845) and The Origin of Species (1859) by Charles Darwin [tie]

3. Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) by Isaac Newton (1687)

4. Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems by Galileo Galilei (1632)

5. De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres) by Nicolaus Copernicus (1543)

6. Physica (Physics) by Aristotle (circa 330 B.C.)

7. De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body) by Andreas Vesalius (1543)

8. Relativity: The Special and General Theory by Albert Einstein (1916)

Clip Source: discover.com
9. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (1976)
10. One Two Three . . . Infinity by George Gamow (1947)

11. The Double Helix by James D. Watson (1968)
12. What Is Life? by Erwin Schrödinger (1944)
13. The Cosmic Connection by Carl Sagan (1973)

14. The Insect Societies by Edward O. Wilson (1971)
15. The First Three Minutes by Steven Weinberg (1977)
16. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962)
17. The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould (1981)

18. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks (1985)
Clip Source: discover.com
19. The Journals of Lewis and Clark by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (1814)
20. The Feynman Lectures on Physics by* Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands (1963)

21. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male by Alfred C. Kinsey et al. (1948)
22. Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey (1983)

23. Under a Lucky Star by Roy Chapman Andrews (1943)
24. Micrographia by Robert Hooke (1665)

25. Gaia by James Lovelock (1979)
Honorable Mentions

Tags: science, book, books, reading, best of, list, history, literature, discover, darwin, newton, galileo

The Coming Death Shortage

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 11:33:49 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: "Why the longevity boom will make us sorry to be alive" a must read.
Though I fail to agree with many of the premises of this article, the critical views it presents are important and the issues need be taken into consideration seriously

Clip Source: www.theatlantic.com

Stem-cell banks, telomerase amplifiers, somatic gene therapy—the list of potential longevity treatments incubating in laboratories is startling. Three years ago a multi-institutional scientific team led by Aubrey de Grey, a theoretical geneticist at Cambridge University, argued in a widely noted paper that the first steps toward "engineered negligible senescence"—a rough-and-ready version of immortality—would have "a good chance of success in mice within ten years." The same techniques, De Grey says, should be ready for human beings a decade or so later. "In ten years we'll have a pill that will give you twenty years," says Leonard Guarente, a professor of biology at MIT. "And then there'll be another pill after that. The first hundred-and-fifty-year-old may have already been born."

The critical issue, in Goldman's view, will be not the costs per se but determining who will pay them. "We're going to have a very public debate about whether this will be covered by insurance," he says

Tags: longevity, death, economy, future, public debate

Homosexual behavior due to genetics and environmental factors

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:30:33 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: “Overall, genetics accounted for around 35 per cent of the differences between men in homosexual behavior and other individual-specific environmental factors (that is, not societal attitudes, family or parenting which are shared by twins) accounted for around 64 per cent. In other words, men become gay or straight because of different developmental pathways, not just one pathway.”

For women, genetics explained roughly 18 per cent of the variation in same-sex behavior, non-shared environment roughly 64 per cent and shared factors, or the family environment, explained 16 per cent.

The study shows that genetic influences are important but modest, and that non-shared environmental factors, which may include factors operating during fetal development, dominate.

Clip Source: www.thinkgene.com

Homosexual behavior is largely shaped by genetics and random environmental factors, according to findings from the world’s largest study of twins.

Writing in the scientific journal Archives of Sexual Behavior, researchers from Queen Mary’s School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, and Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm report that genetics and environmental factors (which are specific to an individual, and may include biological processes such as different hormone exposure in the womb), are important determinants of homosexual behavior.

This study puts cold water on any concerns that we are looking for a single ‘gay gene’ or a single environmental variable which could be used to ’select out’ homosexuality - the factors which influence sexual orientation are complex.

Studies of identical twins and non-identical, or fraternal, twins are often used to untangle the genetic and environmental factors responsible for a trait.

Tags: behavior, sexual behavior, genetics, environmental factors

Red wine may contain elixir of youth

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 11:21:22 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.theage.com.au

Red wine may contain elixir of youth

A substance in wine could prove to be an elixir of youth that holds back many of the effects of ageing, new research suggests.

Obese mice on high-calorie diets lived longer and had healthier hearts and livers when given the compound, resveratrol.

The molecule reversed gene activity patterns associated with diabetes, heart disease, and other obesity-related conditions.

Dr David Sinclair, one of the US researchers from Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, said: "The 'healthspan' benefits we saw in the obese mice treated with resveratrol, such as increased insulin sensitivity, decreased glucose levels, healthier heart and liver tissues, are positive clinical indicators and may mean we can stave off in humans age-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, but only time and more research will tell."

Tags: science, research, red wine, elixir, longevity, health

Human skin cells hide circadian clock

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:11:18 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

An internal clock hidden in human skin cells could reveal whether your body clock is out of sync with your lifestyle, say researchers.

Steven Brown of the University of Zurich in Switzerland and his colleagues knew that the brain’s circadian clock causes a gene called Bmal1 to be more active in the body’s other cells during the daytime.

To find out how closely matched this activity was, they used a virus to equip skin cells taken from 11 early-rising people dubbed "larks" and 17 late-rising "owls" with a firefly gene that would produce a visible glow whenever Bmal1 was active. “The result is light coming out of the cell in a 24-hour rhythm,” says Brown.

By monitoring the times when the cells glowed, they demonstrated that skin cells showed the same sleep-wake patterns as those reported in questionnaires by at least half the donors.

“Knowing that skin clocks ‘tick’ in the same way as brain clocks provides a nice tool to address whether a person is likely to be an early or late riser,”

Tags: internal clock, skin cells

How schizophrenia develops: Major clues discovered

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:42:00 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

How schizophrenia develops: Major clues discovered

Schizophrenia may occur, in part, because of a problem in an intermittent on/off switch for a gene involved in making a key chemical messenger in the brain, scientists have found in a study of human brain tissue. The researchers found that the gene is turned on at increasingly high rates during normal development of the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain involved in higher functions like thinking and decision-making – but that this normal increase may not occur in people with schizophrenia.

The gene, GAD1, makes an enzyme essential for production of the chemical messenger, called GABA. The more the gene is turned on, the more GABA synthesis can occur, under normal circumstances. GABA helps regulate the flow of electrical traffic that enables brain cells to communicate with each other. It is among the major neurotransmitters in the brain.

Tags: schizophrenia, health, psychology, mental health

Scientists unveil 'supercarrot'

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 17:15:35 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Scientists in the US say they have created a genetically-engineered carrot that provides extra calcium.

They hope that adding the vegetable to a normal diet could help ward off conditions such as brittle bone disease and osteoporosis.

Someone eating the new carrot absorbs 41% more calcium than if they ate the old, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study suggests.

The calcium-charged vegetable still needs to go through many safety trials.

"These carrots were grown in carefully monitored and controlled environments," said Professor Kendal Hirschi, part of the team at the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas.

"Much more research needs to be conducted before this would be available to consumers."

But the scientists nonetheless hope their carrot could ultimately offer a healthier way of consuming sufficient quantities of the mineral.

A gene has been altered in the carrot which allows the calcium within it to cross more easily over the plant membranes.

Changing colour

Tags: supercarrots

Zebra's Stripes, Butterfly's Wings: How Do Biological Patterns Emerge?

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 17:08:30 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: Previous work identified a specific signal necessary for getting these fly egg cells to move; the problem is that this signal is “graded.” Like drops of ink spreading out on wet paper, this signal travels in between surrounding cells, gradually fading away as it moves outwards. But clear lines are required for pattern formation — there is no grey area between a zebra’s black and white stripes, between heart and liver cells and, in this case, between migrating cells and those that stay put.

How are graded signals converted to a clear move or stay signal? By examining flies containing mutations in different genes, the researchers discovered that one gene in particular, called apontic, is important for converting a graded signal.

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

A zebra’s stripes, a seashell’s spirals, a butterfly’s wings: these are all examples of patterns in nature.

The formation of patterns is a puzzle for mathematicians and biologists alike.

How does the delicate design of a butterfly’s wings come from a single fertilized egg?

How does pattern emerge out of no pattern?

“Pattern formation is a classic problem in embryology,” says Denise Montell, Ph.D., a professor of biological chemistry at Hopkins. “At some point, cells in an embryo must separate into those that will become heart cells, liver cells, blood cells and so on. Although this has been studied for years, there is still a lot we don’t understand.”

As an example of pattern formation, the researchers studied the process of how about six cells in the fruit fly distinguish themselves from neighboring cells and move from one location in the ovary to another during egg development.

Tags: biology, development, embryology, biological patterns