Patent For A Pig: The Big Business of Genetics: The American biotechnology firm, Monsanto, has applied for a patent for pig breeding in 160 countries. The patent is for specific parts of the genetic material of pigs which Monsantos genetic researchers have decoded. If this patent is granted, pig breeding would be possible with the approval of the company.


Farmers and breeders are naturally alarmed because these genes have long existed in the great majority of their pigs. Using DNA tests they can prove that there is no new invention in the patent applications but that, instead, granting this patent would be to allow a part of nature to fall into the hands of a single company. Monsantos influence on the patent offices is huge. If the patent is approved, money will have to be paid to Monsanto for e
very pig in the world carrying this genetic marker.

This has long been the case for certain feedstuffs, such as genetically modified maize. Many farmers in the US have already become dependent on the company. It is not merely a question of money, however, but also a question of the risk posed to consumers. In America, as in Europe, cases of infertility in animals fed with genetically modified maize are becoming increasingly common. No-one yet knows what effects such products are having on humans.

A special project to search for pulsars has bagged the first student discovery of a millisecond pulsar - a super-fast spinning star, and this one rotates about 324 times per second. The Pulsar Search Collaboratory (PSC) has students analyzing real data from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's (NRAO) Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) to find pulsars. Astronomers involved with the project said the discovery could help detect elusive ripples in spacetime known as gravitational waves.

"Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of spacetime predicted by Einstein's theory of General Relativity," said Dr. Maura McLaughlin, from Western Virginia University. "We have very good proof for their existence but, despite Einstein's prediction back in the early 1900s, they have never been detected."

Four other pulsars have been discovered by high school students participating in this project.

"When you discover a pulsar, you feel like you're walking on air! It is the best experience you can ever have," said student co-discoverer Jessica Pal of Rowan County High School in Kentucky. "You get to meet astronomers and talk to them about your experience. I still can't believe I found a pulsar. It is wonderful to know that there is something out there in space that you discovered."

Washington, DC - New evidence from northern ice sheets suggests that volcanic eruptions triggered the multiple-century cool spell known as the Little Ice Age, and pinpoints the start of the climate shift to the final decades of the 13th century. Researchers have long known that the Little Ice Age began sometime after the Middle Ages and lasted into the late 19th century. But, estimates of its onset have ranged from the 13th to the 16th century.

According to the new study, the Little Ice Age began abruptly between 1275 and 1300 A.D., triggered by repeated, explosive volcanism and sustained by a self- perpetuating sea ice-ocean feedback in the North Atlantic Ocean, according to Gifford Miller, a geological sciences professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder (CU-Boulder), who led the study. The primary evidence comes from radiocarbon dates from dead vegetation emerging from rapidly melting icecaps on Baffin Island, combined with ice and sediment core data from the poles and Iceland, and from sea-ice climate model simulations, said Miller.

He and his colleagues will publish their findings on 31 January in Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

During the cool spell, advancing glaciers in mountain valleys in northern Europe destroyed towns. Famous paintings from the period depict people ice-skating on the Thames River in London and canals in the Netherlands, places that were ice-free before and after the Little Ice Age. There is evidence also that the Little Ice Age affected places far from Europe, including South America and China.

While scientific estimates regarding the onset of the Little Ice Age extend from the 13th century to the 16th century, there has been little consensus, said Miller. "The dominant way scientists have defined the little Ice Age is by the expansion of big valley glaciers in the Alps and in Norway," said Miller. "But the time in which European glaciers advanced far enough to demolish villages would have been long after the onset of the cold period," said Miller, a Fellow at his university's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.

As the sun heads toward its 2013 maximum, the corresponding increase in space weather may temporarily strip the radiation belts around Earth of their charged electrons. But a new study of data recorded by 11 independent spacecraft reveals that the deadly particles are blown into space rather than cast into our planet's atmosphere, as some scientists have suggested.

Streams of highly charged electrons zip through the Van Allen radiation belts circling Earth. When particles from the sun collide with the planet's magnetic field, which shields Earth from the worst effects, the resulting geomagnetic storms can decrease the number of dangerous electrons.

Where those particles go is something physicists have long puzzled over - and since they could wreak havoc on sensitive telecommunication satellites and pose a risk to astronauts in space, it's an important question, researchers say.

At the heart of the geomagnetic storm mystery are strange dips, known as dropouts, in the number of charged particles in the radiation belts. These lapses can happen multiple times per year, but when the sun is going through an active period - as it is now - the number can increase to several times per month, scientists involved in the new study explained.

The Earth is alive, asserts a new scientific theory of life emerging from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. The trans-disciplinary theory demonstrates that purportedly inanimate, non-living objects - for example, planets, water, proteins, and DNA - are animate, that is, alive.

Erik Andrulis, PhD, assistant professor of molecular biology and microbiology, advanced his controversial framework in his manuscript "Theory of the Origin, Evolution, and Nature of Life," published in the peer-reviewed journal, Life. His theory explains not only the evolutionary emergence of life on Earth and in the Universe but also the structure and function of existing cells and biospheres.

In addition to resolving long-standing paradoxes and puzzles in chemistry and biology, Andrulis' theory unifies quantum and celestial mechanics. His unorthodox solution to this quintessential problem in physics differs from mainstream approaches, like string theory, as it is simple, non-mathematical, and experimentally and experientially verifiable.

The basic idea of Andrulis' framework is that all physical reality can be modeled by a single geometric entity with life-like characteristics: the gyre. The so-called "gyromodel" depicts objects - particles, atoms, chemicals, molecules, and cells - as quantized packets of energy and matter that cycle between excited and ground states around a singularity, the gyromodel's center. A singularity is itself modeled as a gyre, wholly compatible with the thermodynamic and fractal nature of life. An example of this nested, self-similar organization is the Russian Matryoshka doll.

A BBC documentary based on the book The Aquatic Ape by author Elaine Morgan. This hypothesis was first proposed by biologist Alister Hardy and is an alternative human origin theory.

Part 1

A Russian scientist says that a video of the surface of Venus from a Soviet probe sent there in 1982 shows evidence of a scorpion-like creature, along with other objects that he believes are evidence of life. However, NASA scientists say the objects in question are more likely video distortions and a lens cap.

Leonid Ksanfomaliti works for the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and recently published his detailed analysis of video taken by the Russian Venus-13 probe. His article in the Russian Solar System Research (Astronomicheskii Vestnik) magazine points out three objects he says were constantly moving. Besides the "scorpion", Ksanfomaliti pointed out a disk shaped object and a black patch.

The idea of life on Venus is not given much credence by most mainstream scientists because of the extreme surface temperatures, which can exceed 800 degrees Fahrenheit.

The first 10,000 Raspberry Pis will be coming off the assembly line in the next few weeks. What's a Raspberry Pi, you ask?

It's a little $25 single-board computer that's about as powerful as a typical smartphone. The project is the brainchild of Eben Upton of Cambridge University who co-founded the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The foundation is a registered charity in the U.K.

While the first batch of Raspberry Pis are expected to be snatched up by hackers, computer geeks and electronics hobbyists, the ultimate aim of the project is to get these cheap little computers into the hands of schoolkids.

Most primary and secondary school computer education consists of learning how to use Microsoft Office and other proprietary software programs. Kids are being taught how to be users rather than creators of software.

One commentator on BBC Radio Four's Material World program likened the current computer curriculum in the U.K. as being similar to the high school typing classes of old. My sense is that it's not much different in Canada.

The hope is that through the Raspberry Pi, students will once again start learning about how computers work and how to program. I say "again" because when I think back to my high school computer training back in the punch card days of the 1970s, I was learning the rudimentary basics of programming. While I never became a programmer, what I learned back then helped me for the rest of my life.

The low cost of the Raspberry Pi means that parents won't have to worry about their children "breaking" the family computer by experimenting.

The Pirate Bay, one of the world's most infamous online piracy and file-sharing sites, is now hosting a type of mock-up file that allows your 3D printer to create physical objects.
ThePirateBay.org yesterday announced via its blog, first reported by GigaOM, that users can now search in a new category called "Physibles".

Physibles, as the blog explains, are mock-up files that allow a 3D printer to create a physical object:

"We believe that the next step in copying will be made from digital form into physical form. It will be physical objects. Or, as we decided to call them: Physibles.

Data objects that are able (and feasible) to become physical. We believe that things like three-dimensional printers, scanners and such are just the first step. We believe that in the nearby future, you will print your spare parts for your vehicles," The Pirate Bay predicted in its post yesterday.

Greenhouse gas emissions from biofuels such as palm oil, soybean and rapeseed are higher than those for fossil fuels when the effects of Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC) are counted, according to leaked EU data seen by EurActiv.

The default values assigned to the biofuels compare to those from Canada's oil sands - also known as tar sands - according to the figures, which should be released along with long-awaited legislative proposals on biofuels in the spring.

A spokesperson for the European Commission said she could "not comment on leaked documents, such as impact assessments which have not been published."

But industry and civil society sources described the data as credible and in line with other studies. One said it would sound a death knell for the biodiesel industry, if published.

"I think the science has proved clearly that because of the link to deforestation in places such as South East Asia, a lot of the biodiesels have significantly negative impacts on the climate," Robbie Blake, a spokesman for Friends of the Earth, told EurActiv.