Scientists Talk About Creating a Synthetic Human Genome

Scientists are now contemplating the fabrication of a human genome, meaning they would use chemicals to manufacture all the DNA contained in human chromosomes.

The prospect is spurring both intrigue and concern in the life sciences community because it might be possible, such as through cloning, to use a synthetic genome to create human beings without biological parents.

While the project is still in the idea phase, and also involves efforts to improve DNA synthesis in general, it was discussed at a closed-door meeting on Tuesday at Harvard Medical School in Boston. The nearly 150 attendees were told not to contact the news media or to post on Twitter during the meeting.

Organizers said the project could have a big scientific payoff and would be a follow-up to the original Human Genome Project, which was aimed at reading the sequence of the three billion chemical letters in the DNA blueprint of human life. The new project, by contrast, would involve not reading, but rather writing the human genome — synthesizing all three billion units from chemicals.

But such an attempt would raise numerous ethical issues. Could scientists create humans with certain kinds of traits, perhaps people born and bred to be soldiers? Or might it be possible to make copies of specific people?

“Would it be O.K., for example, to sequence and then synthesize Einstein’s genome?” Drew Endy, a bioengineer at Stanford, and Laurie Zoloth, a bioethicist at Northwestern University, wrote in an essaycriticizing the proposed project. “If so how many Einstein genomes should be made and installed in cells, and who would get to make them?”

Dr. Endy, though invited, said he deliberately did not attend the meeting at Harvard because it was not being opened to enough people and was not giving enough thought to the ethical implications of the work.




Credit to NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/14/science/synthetic-human-genome.html?_r=1

Mastercard, Visa Say Head & Hand Scanning Is The Future Of Buying

To keep transactions as secure as possible, the MasterCard is taking a multi-layered approach. “We know about device identification, geo location, forensics and analytics on behaviors. 

So you take everything that we already have, and you add another layer on top of that which would be a biometric authentication.” Say you’re ready to buy something on a merchant website, and you’ve already signed up for your bank’s mobile biometric payments option. 

“As a cardholder, that’s just another tool that your bank would offer, that MasterCard facilitates,” Reany says. You hit the pay button, and a message goes from the merchant through MasterCard to the bank. “At that point, we would have sent a notification back to the person’s phone saying ‘hey, are you really trying to buy something?’ You press the phone once to say ‘yes,’ and then it says hold your phone up. 

You hold your phone up to your eye level, you blink your eye, and you never press another button. The blink triggers the fact that the consumer is verifying themselves and that they’re alive. Then we do a quick facial recognition match and give the approval,” Reany says. “Just blink and buy, it’s really that quick.”

Credit to skywatchtv.com

http://skywatchtv.com/2016/05/10/mastercard-visa-say-head-hand-scanning-future-buying-begin-666-pilot-programs/

Obama administration tells public schools to let transgender students use bathrooms of their choice

There is no limit to the stupidity of the American government....

The Obama administration has sent a letter to every public school district in the country telling them to allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that match their chosen gender identity, as opposed to their birth certificate.

The letter, which is signed by officials at the Justice Department and the Department of Education, was sent out Friday. A copy was posted on the Department of Justice’s website.

While the letter does not have the force of law, it does warn that schools that do not abide by the administration’s interpretation of civil rights law may face lawsuits or loss of federal aid.

"There is no room in our schools for discrimination of any kind, including discrimination against transgender students on the basis of their sex," Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in a statement.

“No student should ever have to go through the experience of feeling unwelcome at school or on a college campus,” King said. “We must ensure that our young people know that whoever they are or wherever they come from, they have the opportunity to get a great education in an environment free from discrimination, harassment and violence.”

Status of "Bathroom Bill" Legislation | InsideGov

Under the guidance, schools are told that they must treat transgender students according to their chosen gender identity as soon as a parent or guardian notifies the district that that identity "differs from previous representations or records."

There is no obligation for a student to present a specific medical diagnosis or identification documents that reflect his or her gender identity, and equal access must be given to transgender students even in instances when it makes others uncomfortable, according to the directive.

Credit to FOX News

US Sends M1 Abrams Tanks to Georgia to 'Impress' Russia

The US Department of Defense deployed M1A2 Abrams main battle tanks to Georgia to take part in the Noble Partner 16 war-games in what appears to be the latest display of Washington's military power at a time when NATO's muscle flexing has become increasingly frequent close to Russia's border.

"The Pentagon has come to see armored vehicles as an important, if often slow, show of force. That's why a team of M1 Abrams main battle tanks made the long journey to the Republic of Georgia in early May 2016," he wrote for War is Boring.

The military drills, the Pentagon reported, are ostensibly meant to increase Georgia's self-defense capabilities and train approximately 200 Georgian troops, who serve in the NATO Response Force (NRF). The 40,000-strong force was created to tackle challenges in any part of the world. It is made up of soldiers from the bloc's member states as well as NATO partners.

The DoD, according to Trevithick, also pursued other, unstated, goals.


"In addition to helping train the Georgians for routine tasks, the Pentagon no doubt hopes its tanks will make impressions in Moscow and in the capitals of America's European allies," Trevithick noted.

The US deployed Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, M-119 light towed howitzers and several wheeled-support vehicles in addition to the tanks. The games involve 650 US troops, 500 Georgian service members and 150 soldiers from the UK.

The military drills were launched on May 11 and are scheduled to end on May 26.

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/politics/20160513/1039555914/us-m1a2-abrams-tanks.html#ixzz48XoXltde

Catastrophic San Andreas Quake Could Happen Anytime, Experts Say

Southern California’s section of the San Andreas fault is “locked, loaded and ready to roll,” a leading earthquake scientist said Wednesday at the National Earthquake Conference in Long Beach.

The San Andreas fault is one of California’s most dangerous, and is the state’s longest fault. Yet for Southern California, the last big earthquake to strike the southern San Andreas was in 1857, when a magnitude 7.9 earthquake ruptured an astonishing 185 miles between Monterey County and the San Gabriel Mountains near Los Angeles.

It has been quiet since then — too quiet, said Thomas Jordan, director of the Southern California Earthquake Center.





Although the Pacific plate is moving northwest relative to North America at about 16 feet, or 5 meters, every 100 years, the southern San Andreas fault has been quiet for more than a century. (Thomas Jordan / Southern California Earthquake Center)

“The springs on the San Andreas system have been wound very, very tight. And the southern San Andreas fault, in particular, looks like it’s locked, loaded and ready to go,” Jordan said in the opening keynote talk.

Other sections of the San Andreas fault also are far overdue for a big quake. Further southeast of the Cajon Pass, such as in San Bernardino County, the fault has not moved substantially since an earthquake in 1812, and further southeast toward the Salton Sea, it has been relatively quiet since about 1680 to 1690.


Here’s the problem: Scientists have observed that based on the movement of tectonic plates, with the Pacific plate moving northwest of the North American plate, earthquakes should be relieving about 16 feet of accumulated plate movement every 100 years. Yet the San Andreas has not relieved stress that has been building up for more than a century.

Jordan said it’s important that California focus on becoming resilient to a potential huge earthquake, one as strong as a magnitude 8. He praised Los Angeles’ plan to require earthquake retrofits on apartment and concrete buildings, pushed into law by Mayor Eric Garrett.

Credit to Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-san-andreas-fault-earthquake-20160504-story.html

The single global currency system, The federation of Earth and The Interfaith

Cell phone radiation causes brain cancer, scientists conclude

The question of whether cell phones cause brain cancer has been definitively settled, doctors and scientists from around the country warned recently at a pediatric conference in Baltimore.

"The weight of the evidence is clear: cell phones do cause brain cancer," said Dr. Devras Davis, president of the Environmental Health Trust.

Children are particularly vulnerable to the damaging effects of cell phone radiation, even in the womb, the experts warned. That's why pregnant women should also limit their cell phone use.

"Keep the phone away from the abdomen — especially toward the end of pregnancy," Davis said.


Oxidative damage leads to cancer
Cell phones emit a type of radiation known as radiofrequency radiation (RFR), which is also used to transmit wireless internet signals. This is different from ionizing radiation (such as from X-rays), which is known to cause DNA damage and cancer. Until recently, many health experts insisted that RFR was simply too low energy to cause the kind of cell damage that causes cancer – even as the studies linking RFR exposure and cancer continued to pile up.

In 2010, the landmark international Interphone study found that ten years or more of cell phone use was associated with a 40 percent higher risk of brain tumors, a 300 percent higher risk of acoustic nerve tumors, and also an increased risk of parotid gland tumors. The risk of brain tumors was 400 percent higher among those who began using phones before age 20. Strikingly, the methodology of this industry-funded study was widely criticized for data analysis techniques designed to show lower risk – suggesting that the true risk is much higher.

In 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified RFR as a possible carcinogen.

Then, in 2015, a study in Electromagnetic Biology & Medicine provided part of the answer as to how RFR might lead to cancer. A review of prior research into the biological effects of RFR exposure showed that the levels of radiation absorbed through normal cell phone or wireless internet use produce oxidative stress, a condition in which the body's antioxidant capability is overwhelmed, and free radicals start to build up in the body.

Free radicals cause oxidative damage to cells and DNA, and have been strongly linked to cancer, heart disease, dementia and other health conditions.


Children at higher risk
Children are especially vulnerable to the health risks of cell phones, attendees at the Baltimore conference warned. According to Davis, their brains absorb twice as much radiation as adult brains do, given the same exposure.

This could explain studies showing that a pregnant woman's cell phone use can affect her unborn child.

"There's a correlation between cell phone use in pregnancy and behavioral problems in their children," said Dr. Hugh Taylor of the Yale School of Medicine.

Children are also harmed by the disrupting effects that cell phones have on human social relationships, warned clinical psychologist Catherine Steiner-Adair.

"These devices are really stressing and straining our family relationships because the average mom or dad will check their phones 60 to 110 times a day," she said.

In fact, numerous studies have shown that parents regularly ignore their children to look at their phones instead, and that this is correlated with a higher level of behavioral disturbance in their children. And the children are aware of being ignored: In one international study, a third of children said that their parents spend as much or more time on their mobile devices as they do with them; a similar number said they felt unimportant when their parents were distracted from them by a device; and more than half said their parents check their devices too often.

Parental overuse of mobile devices makes children more likely to develop technology addictions, which in turn is linked with cognitive, emotional and social problems.

"So we're getting like a triple, quadruple whammy between the biological effect, the psychological effects and the brain waves effects," said pediatric neurologist Dr. Martha Herbert.

Credit to Natural News

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/053980_cell_phones_brain_cancer_scientific_evidence.html#ixzz48VFp2Hxe