Stephen Hawking thinks survival of human race dependent on fleeing to space - 06/14/2006
Stephen Hawking, the world-renowned physicist and author of "a Brief History of Time" says the survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there's an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy Earth.
Humans could have a permanent base on the moon in 20 years and a colony on Mars in the next 40 years, the British scientist told a news conference. "We won't find anywhere as nice as Earth unless we go to another star system," he added.
"It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species," Hawking said. "Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of."
Based on an article from...
Sylvia Hui of the Associated Press, "Stephen Hawking says humans must flee to space to survive" Lewiston Tribune. 06 June 2006. Sec. 2A.
Scientist searches for deadly DNA that doesn't exist - 01/27/2007
A Boise State University professor is focusing on bits of DNA code that don't exist anywhere in the natural world.
The search by Greg Hampikan is for DNA not appearing in any DNA databases being built up for organisms on Earth. His hypothesis it that it might mean they're incompatible with life, which could cause them to function as genetic antibiotics and capable of curing disease.
"If there is a sequence that is dangerous to life, that every time it comes up, it kills the organism, then we are going to detect that because we'll find it by it not being in any database," said genetics professor Greg Hampikian. "It's thinking in reverse."
Hampikian's research has been called "bio-prospecting." Several drug companies are conducting similar tests on unmapped sequences for the same reason.
Hampikian's research is a tedious job which requires him to sort randomly chosen combinations of the four letters of DNA's alphabet - A, G, C and T, which stand for adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine - that combine to make genetic sequences. He then looks to see if his randomly chosen sequence matches any natural ones in DNA databanks compiled from living species.
If no match appears, he has a biotechnology lab create a string of DNA that follows the sequence. Hampikian will soon conduct tests on 20 separate strings of five simple DNA sequences that form basic chains. The research team will impregnate bacteria cultures with these chosen small strings of DNA.
The team will focus initially on measuring the created DNA effects against laboratory-safe versions of e-coli, anthrax, flesh-eating bacteria, a relative of tuberculosis and cancer cells.
The Department of Defense is monitoring Hampikian's research, but for a more specific purpose. The agency gave Hampikian a $1 million grant to build an alphabet of unknown DNA sequences, similar to the system for number bar codes. These DNA bar codes could then be placed in
blood, saliva and other body fluids given as samples to crime labs for DNA testing. The feds say since the unknown sequences are highly likely not to exist in nature, the DNA bar coding system would distinguish those samples from forensic evidence taken at the crime scene, and would be used as a tag that would safeguard the evidence.
Based on an article from...
Jesse Harlan Alderman of the Associated Press, "Researcher searches for DNA so deadly it doesn't exist" Lewiston Tribune. 27 January 2007. Sec. 2C.
One million living species, and still
counting - 04/09/2007
Scientists have cataloged 1,009,000 living species to date, and are hopeful of completing the entire listing by the year 2011. The count will reach 1.75 million living species at the end of the project, according to estimated projections.
Thomas M. Orrell, a biologist at the Smithsonian's national Museum of Natural History, said the finished catalog will include all known living organisms, from plants and animals to fungi and microorganisms such as bacteria, protozoa and viruses.
"Many are surprised that despite over two centuries of work by biologists and the current worldwide interest in biodiversity, there is presently no comprehensive catalog of all known species of organisms on Earth," Orrell said.
The project is led by Orrell and Frank Bisby of the University of Reading in England. There are 3,000 biologists, with peer review and special software directing the project.
The establishment of internationally accepted standards for species' names will help researchers compare the diversity of life in various regions of the world and produce uniform catalogues af germs, packets of seeds or genetic resources.
Taxonomy, the formal system of naming living things was launched by the Swedish scientist Karl von Linne - known as Linnaeus - in the 1700s and his name still appears in the database.
The biggest section of the database is currently the lepIndex, listing 253,680 species of lepidoptera, which are butterflies and moths. The smallest section is the database that covers 86 species of krill, the tiny shrimp-like creatures that whales eat.
Based on an article from...
Randolph E. Schmid of the Associated Press, "Worldwide list of living species tops 1 million mark" Lewiston Tribune. 09 April 2007. Sec. 3A.
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