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All rights reserved. webmaster@world-of-newave.com (Webmaster) Fri, 08 Aug 2008 01:46:22 GMT Fri, 08 Aug 2008 01:46:22 GMT Newave Lisa XML Engine v1.0 - http://www.world-of-newave.info/about.htm 60 http://www.world-of-newave.info/images/wi8831.gif World-of-Newave.info - Knowledge and Informational Database http://www.world-of-newave.info/ 88 31 {HEALTH > NEWS AND MEDIA} - How the Personal Genome Project Could Unlock the Mysteries of Life http://articles.world-of-newave.info/health/news-and-media/how-the-personal-genome-project-could-unlock-the-20080775638.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/health/news-and-media/how-the-personal-genome-project-could-unlock-the-20080775638.htm Sun, 27 Jul 2008 02:00:00 GMT George Church is dyslexic, narcoleptic, and a vegan. He is married with one daughter, weighs about 210 pounds, and has worn a pioneer-style bushy beard for decades. He has elevated levels of creatine kinase in his blood, the consequence of a heart attack. He enjoys waterskiing, photography, rock climbing, and singing in his church choir. His mother's maiden name is Strong. He was born on August 28, 1954. If this all seems like too much information, well, blame Church himself. As the director of the Lipper Center for Computational Genetics at Harvard Medical School, he has a thing about openness, and this information (and plenty more, down to his signature) is posted online at arep.med.harvard.edu/gmc/pers.html. By putting it out there for everyone to see, Church isn't just baiting identity thieves. He's hoping to demonstrate that all this personal information — even though we consider it private and somehow sacred — is actually fairly meaningless, little more than trivia. "The average person shouldn't be interested in this stuff," he says. "It's a philosophical exercise in what identity is and why we should care about that." As Church sees it, the only real utility to his personal information is as data that reflects his phenotype — his physical traits and characteristics. If your genome is the blueprint of your genetic potential written across 6 billion base pairs of DNA, your phenome is the resulting edifice, how you actually turn out after the environment has had its say, influencing which genes get expressed and which traits repressed. Imagine that we could collect complete sets of data — genotype and phenotype — for a whole population. You would very quickly begin to see meaningful and powerful correlations between particular genetic sequences and particular physical characteristics, from height and hair color to disease risk and personality. Church has done more than imagine such an undertaking; he has launched it: The Personal Genome Project, an effort to make those correlations on an unprecedented scale, began last year with 10 volunteers and will soon expand to 100,000 participants. It will generate a massive database of genomes, phenomes, and even some omes in between. The first step is to sequence 1 percent of each volunteer's genome, focusing on the so-called exome — the protein-coding regions that, Church suspects, do 90 percent of the work in our DNA. It's a long way from sequencing all 6 billion nucleotides — the As, Ts, Gs, and Cs — of the human genome, but even so, cataloging 60 million bits multiplied by 100,000 individuals is an audacious goal. The PGP stands as the tent pole of what Church calls his "year of convergence," the moment when his 30 years as a geneticist, a technologist, and a synthetic biologist all come together. The project is a proof of concept for the Polonator G.007, the genetic-sequencing instrument developed in Church's lab that hit the market this spring. And the PGP will also put Church's expertise in synthetic biology to use, reverse engineering volunteers' skin cells into stem cells that could help diagnose and treat disease. If the convergence comes off as planned, the PGP will bring personal genomics to fruition and our genomes will unfold before us like road maps: We will peruse our DNA like we plan a trip, scanning it for possible detours (a predisposition for disease) or historical markers (a compelling ancestry). Bringing the genome into the light, Church says, is the great project of our day. "We need to inspire our current youth in a way that outer space exploration inspired us in 1960," he says. "We're seeing signs that knowing about our inner space is very compelling." To Church, who built his first computer at age 9 and taught himself three programming languages by 15, all of this is unfolding according to the same laws of exponential progress that have propelled digital technologies, from computer memory to the Internet itself, over the past 40 years: Moore's law for circuits and Metcalfe's law for networks. These principles are now at play in genetics, he argues, particularly in DNA sequencing and DNA synthesis. Exponentials don't just happen. In Church's work, they proceed from two axioms. The first is automation, the idea that by automating human tasks, letting a computer or a machine replicate a manual process, technology becomes faster, easier to use, and more popular. The second is openness, the notion that sharing technologies by distributing them as widely as possible with minimal restrictions on use encourages both the adoption and the impact of a technology. #genome_table {font-size:95%;} #genome_table img {width:100px;height:100px;margin:9px 0px;} #genome_table .img_cell {text-align:center;} #genome_table .txt_cell {padding:12px 25px;} Inside the Personal Genome Project The project will turn information from 100,000 subjects into a huge database thath can reveal the connections between our genes and our physical selves. Here's how. — Thomas Goetz 1. Entrance Exam Volunteers take a quiz to show genetic literacy. One question: How many chromosomes do unfertilized human egg cells contain? a) 11, b) 22, c) 23, d) 46, or e) 92? (Answer: c.) Only those with a perfect score proceed, but retests are allowed. 2. Data Collection Volunteers sign an "open consent" form acknowledging that their information, though anonymized, will be accessible by others. They fill out their phenotype traits, listing everything from waist size to diet habits. Suitable respondents go on to the next step. 3. Sample Collection Volunteers hit the medical center, where they are interviewed by an MD. Then a technician draws some blood, gathers a saliva sample, and takes a punch of skin. Don't worry: It hurts about as much as a bee sting. 4. Lab Work The tissues are sent to a biobank, where DNA is extracted from the blood. One percent of it — the exome — is sequenced. Meanwhile, bacteria DNA is extracted from the saliva and sequenced to reveal the volunteer's microbiome. 5. Research Now the fun part: Crunching the numbers. PGP scientists and other researchers start working with the data assembled from 100,000 individuals to investigate potential links between phenotypes and genotypes. The team will look for patterns and statistically significant anomalies. 6. Sharing The volunteers get access to not only the raw data from their genome, but anything the research team gleans from their information. Insights — a newly discovered cancer risk, for example — are posted in a volunteer's file, which they'll be free to share with other PGP participants. "I always tell people, your biggest problem in life is not going to be hiding your stuff so nobody steals it," Church says. "It's going to be getting anybody to ever use it. Start hiding it and that decreases the probability to almost zero." For most of his career, Church has been known as a brilliant technologist, more behind-the-scenes tinkerer than scientific visionary. Though he was part of the group that kicked off the Human Genome Project, he's far less known than scientists like Francis Collins or J. Craig Venter, who took the stage at the end. His obscurity is due partly to his style. He talks about his accomplishments with a certain detachment that one might mistake for ambivalence. "He's not without ego; it's just a different sort of ego," says entrepreneur Esther Dyson, a friend and one of the first 10 PGP volunteers. "Everything is a subject of his intellectual curiosity, including himself." His low profile may be the result of his tendency to get too far ahead of the curve, working a decade or two ahead of his field — so far that even the experts don't always get what he's talking about. "Lots of George's work is so advanced it's not ready to become standard," says Drew Endy, a professor of bioengineering at Stanford and cofounder with Church of Codon Devices, a synthetic-biology startup. "He's perfectly happy to spin out tons of ideas and see what might stick. It's high-throughput screening for technology and science. That's not the way most people work." But thanks to the PGP, the Polonator, and the fact that the rest of the world is finally starting to understand what he's been talking about, Church's obscurity is coming to an end. He sits on the advisory board of more than 14 biotech companies, including personal genomics startup 23andMe and genetic testing pioneer DNA Direct. He has also cofounded four companies in the past four years: Codon Devices, Knome, LS9, and Joule Biosciences, which makes biofuels from engineered algae. Newsweek recently tagged him as one of the 10 Hottest Nerds ("whatever that means," Church laughs). For someone who has spent his whole career ahead of his time, he is suddenly very much a man of the moment. Most historians would cite Prague or Paris or Berkeley as the intellectual hub of the 1960s, but for people interested in computers, there was no place so significant as Hanover, New Hampshire. There, at Dartmouth College, an experiment in time-share computing was flourishing. Developed by professors John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz, the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System let students remotely access the power of a mainframe computer to do calculations for mathematics or science assignments or to play a simulated game of college football. It ran on an easy-to-learn, intuitive program that Kemeny and Kurtz called Basic. In 1967, the DTSS transitioned to a more-powerful GE-635 machine and offered remote terminals to 33 secondary schools and colleges, including Phillips Academy, a prep school in nearby Andover, Massachusetts. The terminal — not much more than a teletype machine, really — sat in the basement of the school's math building, forgotten until the next fall, when a young George Church showed up for his freshman year and began asking whether there was a computer on campus. Someone pointed Church to the basement. "There wasn't even a chair in the room. I had used a typewriter before, but never a teletype. And so I just started pressing keys," Church recalls. "Eventually I hit Return, and it came back with 'What?' And so I started typing in stuff like crazy and hitting Return. And it kept coming back with 'What?' At that point, I was pretty convinced it wasn't a human, but it was actually talking in words. So I just hadn't asked the right question or given the right answer." Soon, Church found a book on Basic. "I was just sailing," he says. He spent endless hours in that basement — he eventually borrowed a chair — and taught himself the intricacies of coding, learning to program in Basic, Lisp, and Fortran. Indeed, thinking in code came so naturally to Church that he stopped going to his classes (a habit that would later get him kicked out of graduate school at Duke) and taught the computer linear algebra instead. It turns out that learning how to write code — change it, hit Return, see what it will do — was ideal training for Church's eventual career in computational biology. "That's how we reverse engineer things like E. coli — you change something, and you see how it behaves," he says. "Little did I know that 30 years later, we would use almost exactly the same operations to optimize metabolic networks." Church first hit on the power of computation to automate biology in the mid-'70s when he was in graduate school at Harvard. At the time, he was working on recombinant DNA, a then-new technique to splice a gene from one organism into another. Identifying a sequence of 80 or so base pairs of genetic code was a slow, tedious process. "You had to literally read off the bases and write them on a piece of paper, one by one," Church says. "So I wrote a sequence-reading program that would crunch it out. When the senior graduate student heard I had automated that, he said, 'What do you want to do that for? That's the only fun part.'" By 1980, when Church's adviser, Wally Gilbert, won the Nobel Prize for DNA sequencing techniques, the process was still slow and expensive, executing one DNA strand at a time. So Church began working on one of his earlier targets for automation. His idea was to sequence several strands together by combining them into a single sample mixture. He called it multiplexing, drawing an analogy to signal multiplexing in electronics, in which more than one signal flows through a current at the same time. Church thought most of the work could even be integrated into one device rather than numerous machines. It was a provocative idea, not just because he was substituting several human tasks for machine-driven ones, but also because he didn't make the usual false promise that technology would simplify the process. On the contrary, multiplexing would be complicated, Church maintained. But technology was up to the task. Four years later, Church was invited to present his work on multiplexing at a small meeting in Alta, Utah. The Department of Energy had gathered about 20 scientists to mull over one question for five days: How might recent advances in genetics be used to measure an increase in genetic mutations arising from radiation exposure, as in Hiroshima? The group quickly reached the conclusion that technology circa 1984 couldn't answer that question. Meanwhile, they still had several more days in the mountains. "There were a bunch of us there who could talk about genomics as if it were an engineering exercise. And then we said, well, as a kind of booby prize, we could think of other things you could do," Church recalls, "like, say, sequencing the human genome." Though Church was almost entirely unknown before the meeting, his presentation on multiplex sequencing methods stole the show. When he fell into a huge snow drift during a break one afternoon, one participant worried that the future of sequencing had disappeared with him. That Alta brainstorm would become the Human Genome Project — the effort, adopted by the National Institutes of Health, to sequence one human genome for $3 billion within 15 years. However audacious the HGP seemed, Church was disappointed by it almost from the start. "We could have said our goal was to get everybody's genome for some affordable price," he says, "and one genome would be a milestone" on the way toward that goal. The HGP also played it safe with its choice of technology. Despite the promise of Church's multiplexing system, the HGP instead used a more established instrument manufactured by Applied Biosystems, based on a technique developed by biochemist Frederick Sanger. As Church saw it, this meant that the project had failed to put its $3 billion toward improving the state of the art. Even worse, the HGP consumed so many of the resources available to the field of genetics that it effectively locked that state of the art into 1980s technology. The result was nearly two decades of inertia. It wasn't until 2005, when the Human Genome Project was complete and new goals were put forth, that Church finally perfected the multiplexing approach he had presented 20 years earlier at Alta. In a paper published in Science, Church demonstrated a technique that could analyze millions of sequences in one run (Sanger's method could handle just 96 strands of DNA at a time). And Church's method not only accelerated the process, it made it far cheaper, too, elegantly demonstrating the power of automation to drive exponential advances and bring down costs. Church's approach, and a competing innovation developed by 454 Life Sciences that same year, inaugurated the second generation of sequencing, now in full swing. In the past three years, more companies have joined the marketplace with their own instruments, all of them driving toward the same goal: speeding up the process of sequencing DNA and cutting the cost. Most of the second-generation machines are priced at around $500,000. This spring, Church's lab undercut them all with the Polonator G.007 — offered at the low, low price of $150,000. The instrument, designed and fine-tuned by Church and his team, is manufactured and sold by Danaher, an $11 billion scientific-equipment company. The Polonator is already sequencing DNA from the first 10 PGP volunteers. What's more, both the software and hardware in the Polonator are open source. In other words, any competitor is free to buy a Polonator for $150,000 and copy it. The result, Church hopes, will be akin to how IBM's open-architecture approach in the early '80s fueled the PC revolution. In the sequencing game, though, the cost of the machine is only half the equation. The more telling expense is the operating cost, particularly the cost of sequencing entire human genomes. Executives at 454 estimate that their latest machine can pull off a whole genome sequence for $200,000. Applied Biosystems claims its instrument has completed a genome for just $60,000. Church maintains that, while the Polonator isn't up to whole-genome reads, it is clocking in at about one-third the cost of Applied Biosystems' estimate. A whole sequence from Knome, the retail genomics firm cofounded by Church, goes for $350,000. (It's worth noting that these figures are only roughly comparable, since each company uses slightly different quality measures and specifications.) As these numbers continue to drop, the mythical $1,000 genome comes ever closer. Sequencing a human genome for $1,000 is the somewhat arbitrary benchmark for true personalized genomics — when the science could become a component of standard medical care. An important catalyst in achieving that point is the Archon X Prize for Genomics, which is offering $10 million to the team that can sequence 100 complete genomes in 10 days for less than $10,000 each. As of June, seven teams, including Church's lab, had entered the competition. Church, who served for a time on the advisory board of the contest, says that the prize will drive costs down further and help publicize the potential of personalized whole-genome sequencing. That's important because Church hopes the Polonator and other next-generation instruments will inspire a new generation of smaller labs to begin work in personal genomics, as well as other genetic sciences. Already, the onslaught of technology has jump-started new projects, like sequencing part of the Neanderthal genome, examining extremophile microbes in old California iron mines, and studying the regenerative properties of the salamander. In medicine, cheaper sequencing has enabled research into drug-resistant tuberculosis; the genetics of breast, lung, and other cancers; and the DNA architecture of schizophrenics. But if the Polonator is going to lead that charge, it has to work — and work on a massive scale. And that means passing a major test: successfully sequencing the 100,000 exomes in the PGP. Photo: Lloyd Ziff All of us know our height, weight, and eye color. Fewer of us know our arm span or resting blood pressure. But who among us knows the direction of our hair whorls or the Gell-Coombs type of our allergies? This is the level of detail that the PGP requires the 100,000 volunteers to reveal about themselves, a list staggering in its exhaustiveness. The PGP will tally head circumferences, injuries, chin clefts and cheek dimples, whether volunteers can roll their tongues or hyperflex their joints, whether they dislike hot climates or are hot tempered, if they've often been exposed to power lines or wood dust or diesel exhaust or textile fibers. The project questionnaire asks how many meals they eat a day and whether they prefer their food fried, broiled, or barbecued. It even demands to know how much television they watch. And, of course, PGP volunteers will hand over most aspects of their medical history, from vaccines to prescriptions. This phenotype data will be integrated with a volunteer's genomic information, then combined with statistics from all the other subjects to create a potent database ripe for interrogation. In contrast to the heavy lifting that genetic research requires now — each study starts from scratch with a new hypothesis and a fresh crop of subjects, consent forms, and tissue samples — the PGP will automate the research process. Scientists will simply choose a category of phenotype and a possible genetic correlation, and statistically significant associations should flow out of the data like honey from a hive. A genetic predisposition for colon cancer, for instance, might be found to lead to disease only in connection with a diet high in barbecued foods, or a certain form of heart disease might be associated with a particular gene and exposure to a particular virus. Genomic discovery won't be a research problem anymore. It'll be a search function. (This helps explain why Google, among others, has donated to the project). The process began last year, and each of the first 10 volunteers has a background in medicine or genetics. They include John Halamka, CIO of Harvard Medical School and a physician; Rosalynn Gill, chief science officer at Sciona (a personalized genetics nutrition company); and Steven Pinker, the noted psychologist and author. The other 99,990 participants won't be expected to be so elite, though they will have to pass a genetics-literacy quiz to demonstrate informed consent. The general selection process, which starts with registration at personalgenomes.org, is scheduled to begin later this year. Besides offering up their genomes, subjects will have to part with some spit and a bit of skin. The saliva contains their microbiome — the trillions of microbes that exist, mostly symbiotically, on and in our bodies. If phenotype is a combination of genotype plus environment, the microbiome is the first wash of that environment over our bodies. By measuring some fraction of it, the PGP should offer a first look at how the genome-to-microbiome-to-phenome chain plays out. The skin sample goes into storage, creating what would be one of the world's largest biobanks. Members of Church's lab have devised a way to automate turning the skin cells into stem cells, and they hope to publish the technique later this year. (Similar work has been done at the University of Wisconsin and Kyoto University.) By reprogramming the skin cells using synthetically engineered adenoviruses, Church's team can transform the skin cells into many sorts of tissue — lungs, liver, heart. These tissues could be used as a diagnostic baseline to detect predisposition for various diseases. What's more, the reprogrammed cells could be used to treat disease, replacing damaged or failing tissue. It's an intriguing hint of how Church's work with synthetic biology complements genomic sequencing. If the PGP were simply an exercise in breaking down 100,000 individuals into data streams, it would be ambitious enough. But the project takes one further, truly radical step: In accordance with Church's principle of openness, all the material will be accessible to any researcher (or lurker) who wants to plunder thousands of details from people's lives. Even the tissue banks will be largely accessible. After Church's lab transforms the skin into stem cells, those new cell lines — which have been in notoriously short supply despite their scientific promise — will be open to outside researchers. This is a significant divergence from most biobanks, which typically guard their materials like holy relics and severely restrict access. For the PGP volunteers, this means they will have to sign on to a principle Church calls open consent, which acknowledges that, even though subjects' names will be removed to make the data anonymous, there's no promise of absolute confidentiality. As Church sees it, any guarantee of privacy is false; there is no way to ensure that a bad actor won't tap into a system and, once there, manage to extract bits of personal information. After all, even de-identified data is subject to misuse: Latanya Sweeney, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, demonstrated the ease of "re-identification" by cross-referencing anonymized health-insurance records with voter registration rolls. (She found former Massachusetts governor William Weld's medical files by cross-referencing his birth date, zip code, and sex.) To Church, open consent isn't just a philosophical consideration; it's also a practical one. If the PGP were locked down, it would be far less valuable as a data source for research — and the pace of research would accordingly be much slower. By making the information open and available, Church hopes to draw curious scientists to the data to pursue their own questions and reach their own insights. The potential fields of inquiry range from medicine to genealogy, forensics, and general biology. And the openness doesn't serve just researchers alone. PGP members will be seen as not only subjects, but as participants. So, for instance, if a researcher uses a volunteer's information to establish a link between some genetic sequence and a risk of disease, the volunteer would have that information communicated to them. This is precisely what makes the PGP controversial in genetics circles. Though Church talks about it as the logical successor to the Human Genome Project, other geneticists see it as a risky proposition, not for its privacy policy but for its presumption that the emerging science of genomics already has implications for individual cases. The National Human Genome Research Institute, for example, has cautioned that the burgeoning personal-genomics industry, which includes research-oriented projects like the PGP as well as straight-to-consumer companies like Navigenics and 23andMe and whole-genome-sequencing shops like Knome, puts the sales pitch ahead of the science. "A lot of people would like to rapidly capitalize on this science," says Gregory Feero, a senior adviser at the NHGRI. "But for an individual venturing into this now, it's a risk to start making any judgments or decisions based on current knowledge. At some point, we'll cross over into a time when that's more sensible." Church cautions, however, that keeping clinicians and patients in the dark about specific genetic information — essentially pretending the data or the technology behind it don't exist — is a farce. Even worse, it violates the principle of openness that leads to the fastest progress. "The ground is changing right underneath them," he says of the medical establishment. "Right now, there's a wall between clinical research and clinical practice. The science isn't jumping over. The PGP is what clinical practice would be like if the research actually made it to the patient." In the not-too-distant future, Church says, hospitals and clinics could be outfitted with a genome sequencer much the way they now have x-ray machines or microscopes. "In the old books," Church says, "almost every scientist was sitting there with a microscope on their table. Whether they're a physical scientist or a biological scientist, they've got that microscope there. And that inspires me." Wired deputy editor Thomas Goetz (thomas@wired.com) wrote about personal genomics in issue 15.12. Wired.Com How the Personal Genome Project Could Unlock the Mysteries of Life {new window}   Www.Wired.Com - George Church is dyslexic, narcoleptic, and a vegan. He is married with one daughter, weighs about 210 pounds, and has worn a pioneer-style bushy beard for decades. He has elevated levels of creatine kinase in his blood, the consequence of a heart attack. He enjoys waterskiing, photography, rock climbing, and singing in his church choir. His mother's maiden name is Strong. He was born on August 28, 1954. If this all seems like too much information, well, blame Church himself. As the director of the Lipper Center for Computational Genetics at Harvard Medical School, he has a thing about openness, and this information (and plenty more, down to his signature) is posted online at arep.med.harvard.edu/gmc/pers.html. By putting it out there for everyone to see, Church isn't just baiting identity thieves. He's hoping to demonstrate that all this personal information — even though we consider it private and somehow sacred — is actually fairly meaningless, little more than trivia. "The average person shouldn't be interested in this stuff," he says. "It's a philosophical exercise in what identity is and why we should care about that." As Church sees it, the only real utility to his personal information is as data that reflects his phenotype — his physical traits and characteristics. If your genome is the blueprint of your genetic potential written across 6 billion base pairs of DNA, your phenome is the resulting edifice, how you actually turn out after the environment has had its say, influencing which genes get expressed and which traits repressed. Imagine that we could collect complete sets of data — genotype and phenotype — for a whole population. You would very quickly begin to see meaningful and powerful correlations between particular genetic sequences and particular physical characteristics, from height and hair color to disease risk and personality. Church has done more than imagine such an undertaking; he has launched it: The Personal Genome Project, an effort to make those correlations on an unprecedented scale, began last year with 10 volunteers and will soon expand to 100,000 participants. It will generate a massive database of genomes, phenomes, and even some omes in between. The first step is to sequence 1 percent of each volunteer's genome, focusing on the so-called exome — the protein-coding regions that, Church suspects, do 90 percent of the work in our DNA. It's a long way from sequencing all 6 billion nucleotides — the As, Ts, Gs, and Cs — of the human genome, but even so, cataloging 60 million bits multiplied by 100,000 individuals is an audacious goal. The PGP stands as the tent pole of what Church calls his "year of convergence," the moment when his 30 years as a geneticist, a technologist, and a synthetic biologist all come together. The project is a proof of concept for the Polonator G.007, the genetic-sequencing instrument developed in Church's lab that hit the market this spring. And the PGP will also put Church's expertise in synthetic biology to use, reverse engineering volunteers' skin cells into stem cells that could help diagnose and treat disease. If the convergence comes off as planned, the PGP will bring personal genomics to fruition and our genomes will unfold before us like road maps: We will peruse our DNA like we plan a trip, scanning it for possible detours (a predisposition for disease) or historical markers (a compelling ancestry). Bringing the genome into the light, Church says, is the great project of our day. "We need to inspire our current youth in a way that outer space exploration inspired us in 1960," he says. "We're seeing signs that knowing about our inner space is very compelling." To Church, who built his first computer at age 9 and taught himself three programming languages by 15, all of this is unfolding according to the same laws of exponential progress that have propelled digital technologies, from computer memory to the Internet itself, over the past 40 years: Moore's law for circuits and Metcalfe's law for networks. These principles are now at play in genetics, he argues, particularly in DNA sequencing and DNA synthesis. Exponentials don't just happen. In Church's work, they proceed from two axioms. The first is automation, the idea that by automating human tasks, letting a computer or a machine replicate a manual process, technology becomes faster, easier to use, and more popular. The second is openness, the notion that sharing technologies by distributing them as widely as possible with minimal restrictions on use encourages both the adoption and the impact of a technology. #genome_table {font-size:95%;} #genome_table img {width:100px;height:100px;margin:9px 0px;} #genome_table .img_cell {text-align:center;} #genome_table .txt_cell {padding:12px 25px;} Inside the Personal Genome Project The project will turn information from 100,000 subjects into a huge database thath can reveal the connections between our genes and our physical selves. Here's how. — Thomas Goetz 1. Entrance Exam Volunteers take a quiz to show genetic literacy. One question: How many chromosomes do unfertilized human egg cells contain? a) 11, b) 22, c) 23, d) 46, or e) 92? (Answer: c.) Only those with a perfect score proceed, but retests are allowed. 2. Data Collection Volunteers sign an "open consent" form acknowledging that their information, though anonymized, will be accessible by others. They fill out their phenotype traits, listing everything from waist size to diet habits. Suitable respondents go on to the next step. 3. Sample Collection Volunteers hit the medical center, where they are interviewed by an MD. Then a technician draws some blood, gathers a saliva sample, and takes a punch of skin. Don't worry: It hurts about as much as a bee sting. 4. Lab Work The tissues are sent to a biobank, where DNA is extracted from the blood. One percent of it — the exome — is sequenced. Meanwhile, bacteria DNA is extracted from the saliva and sequenced to reveal the volunteer's microbiome. 5. Research Now the fun part: Crunching the numbers. PGP scientists and other researchers start working with the data assembled from 100,000 individuals to investigate potential links between phenotypes and genotypes. The team will look for patterns and statistically significant anomalies. 6. Sharing The volunteers get access to not only the raw data from their genome, but anything the research team gleans from their information. Insights — a newly discovered cancer risk, for example — are posted in a volunteer's file, which they'll be free to share with other PGP participants. "I always tell people, your biggest problem in life is not going to be hiding your stuff so nobody steals it," Church says. "It's going to be getting anybody to ever use it. Start hiding it and that decreases the probability to almost zero." For most of his career, Church has been known as a brilliant technologist, more behind-the-scenes tinkerer than scientific visionary. Though he was part of the group that kicked off the Human Genome Project, he's far less known than scientists like Francis Collins or J. Craig Venter, who took the stage at the end. His obscurity is due partly to his style. He talks about his accomplishments with a certain detachment that one might mistake for ambivalence. "He's not without ego; it's just a different sort of ego," says entrepreneur Esther Dyson, a friend and one of the first 10 PGP volunteers. "Everything is a subject of his intellectual curiosity, including himself." His low profile may be the result of his tendency to get too far ahead of the curve, working a decade or two ahead of his field — so far that even the experts don't always get what he's talking about. "Lots of George's work is so advanced it's not ready to become standard," says Drew Endy, a professor of bioengineering at Stanford and cofounder with Church of Codon Devices, a synthetic-biology startup. "He's perfectly happy to spin out tons of ideas and see what might stick. It's high-throughput screening for technology and science. That's not the way most people work." But thanks to the PGP, the Polonator, and the fact that the rest of the world is finally starting to understand what he's been talking about, Church's obscurity is coming to an end. He sits on the advisory board of more than 14 biotech companies, including personal genomics startup 23andMe and genetic testing pioneer DNA Direct. He has also cofounded four companies in the past four years: Codon Devices, Knome, LS9, and Joule Biosciences, which makes biofuels from engineered algae. Newsweek recently tagged him as one of the 10 Hottest Nerds ("whatever that means," Church laughs). For someone who has spent his whole career ahead of his time, he is suddenly very much a man of the moment. Most historians would cite Prague or Paris or Berkeley as the intellectual hub of the 1960s, but for people interested in computers, there was no place so significant as Hanover, New Hampshire. There, at Dartmouth College, an experiment in time-share computing was flourishing. Developed by professors John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz, the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System let students remotely access the power of a mainframe computer to do calculations for mathematics or science assignments or to play a simulated game of college football. It ran on an easy-to-learn, intuitive program that Kemeny and Kurtz called Basic. In 1967, the DTSS transitioned to a more-powerful GE-635 machine and offered remote terminals to 33 secondary schools and colleges, including Phillips Academy, a prep school in nearby Andover, Massachusetts. The terminal — not much more than a teletype machine, really — sat in the basement of the school's math building, forgotten until the next fall, when a young George Church showed up for his freshman year and began asking whether there was a computer on campus. Someone pointed Church to the basement. "There wasn't even a chair in the room. I had used a typewriter before, but never a teletype. And so I just started pressing keys," Church recalls. "Eventually I hit Return, and it came back with 'What?' And so I started typing in stuff like crazy and hitting Return. And it kept coming back with 'What?' At that point, I was pretty convinced it wasn't a human, but it was actually talking in words. So I just hadn't asked the right question or given the right answer." Soon, Church found a book on Basic. "I was just sailing," he says. He spent endless hours in that basement — he eventually borrowed a chair — and taught himself the intricacies of coding, learning to program in Basic, Lisp, and Fortran. Indeed, thinking in code came so naturally to Church that he stopped going to his classes (a habit that would later get him kicked out of graduate school at Duke) and taught the computer linear algebra instead. It turns out that learning how to write code — change it, hit Return, see what it will do — was ideal training for Church's eventual career in computational biology. "That's how we reverse engineer things like E. coli — you change something, and you see how it behaves," he says. "Little did I know that 30 years later, we would use almost exactly the same operations to optimize metabolic networks." Church first hit on the power of computation to automate biology in the mid-'70s when he was in graduate school at Harvard. At the time, he was working on recombinant DNA, a then-new technique to splice a gene from one organism into another. Identifying a sequence of 80 or so base pairs of genetic code was a slow, tedious process. "You had to literally read off the bases and write them on a piece of paper, one by one," Church says. "So I wrote a sequence-reading program that would crunch it out. When the senior graduate student heard I had automated that, he said, 'What do you want to do that for? That's the only fun part.'" By 1980, when Church's adviser, Wally Gilbert, won the Nobel Prize for DNA sequencing techniques, the process was still slow and expensive, executing one DNA strand at a time. So Church began working on one of his earlier targets for automation. His idea was to sequence several strands together by combining them into a single sample mixture. He called it multiplexing, drawing an analogy to signal multiplexing in electronics, in which more than one signal flows through a current at the same time. Church thought most of the work could even be integrated into one device rather than numerous machines. It was a provocative idea, not just because he was substituting several human tasks for machine-driven ones, but also because he didn't make the usual false promise that technology would simplify the process. On the contrary, multiplexing would be complicated, Church maintained. But technology was up to the task. Four years later, Church was invited to present his work on multiplexing at a small meeting in Alta, Utah. The Department of Energy had gathered about 20 scientists to mull over one question for five days: How might recent advances in genetics be used to measure an increase in genetic mutations arising from radiation exposure, as in Hiroshima? The group quickly reached the conclusion that technology circa 1984 couldn't answer that question. Meanwhile, they still had several more days in the mountains. "There were a bunch of us there who could talk about genomics as if it were an engineering exercise. And then we said, well, as a kind of booby prize, we could think of other things you could do," Church recalls, "like, say, sequencing the human genome." Though Church was almost entirely unknown before the meeting, his presentation on multiplex sequencing methods stole the show. When he fell into a huge snow drift during a break one afternoon, one participant worried that the future of sequencing had disappeared with him. That Alta brainstorm would become the Human Genome Project — the effort, adopted by the National Institutes of Health, to sequence one human genome for $3 billion within 15 years. However audacious the HGP seemed, Church was disappointed by it almost from the start. "We could have said our goal was to get everybody's genome for some affordable price," he says, "and one genome would be a milestone" on the way toward that goal. The HGP also played it safe with its choice of technology. Despite the promise of Church's multiplexing system, the HGP instead used a more established instrument manufactured by Applied Biosystems, based on a technique developed by biochemist Frederick Sanger. As Church saw it, this meant that the project had failed to put its $3 billion toward improving the state of the art. Even worse, the HGP consumed so many of the resources available to the field of genetics that it effectively locked that state of the art into 1980s technology. The result was nearly two decades of inertia. It wasn't until 2005, when the Human Genome Project was complete and new goals were put forth, that Church finally perfected the multiplexing approach he had presented 20 years earlier at Alta. In a paper published in Science, Church demonstrated a technique that could analyze millions of sequences in one run (Sanger's method could handle just 96 strands of DNA at a time). And Church's method not only accelerated the process, it made it far cheaper, too, elegantly demonstrating the power of automation to drive exponential advances and bring down costs. Church's approach, and a competing innovation developed by 454 Life Sciences that same year, inaugurated the second generation of sequencing, now in full swing. In the past three years, more companies have joined the marketplace with their own instruments, all of them driving toward the same goal: speeding up the process of sequencing DNA and cutting the cost. Most of the second-generation machines are priced at around $500,000. This spring, Church's lab undercut them all with the Polonator G.007 — offered at the low, low price of $150,000. The instrument, designed and fine-tuned by Church and his team, is manufactured and sold by Danaher, an $11 billion scientific-equipment company. The Polonator is already sequencing DNA from the first 10 PGP volunteers. What's more, both the software and hardware in the Polonator are open source. In other words, any competitor is free to buy a Polonator for $150,000 and copy it. The result, Church hopes, will be akin to how IBM's open-architecture approach in the early '80s fueled the PC revolution. In the sequencing game, though, the cost of the machine is only half the equation. The more telling expense is the operating cost, particularly the cost of sequencing entire human genomes. Executives at 454 estimate that their latest machine can pull off a whole genome sequence for $200,000. Applied Biosystems claims its instrument has completed a genome for just $60,000. Church maintains that, while the Polonator isn't up to whole-genome reads, it is clocking in at about one-third the cost of Applied Biosystems' estimate. A whole sequence from Knome, the retail genomics firm cofounded by Church, goes for $350,000. (It's worth noting that these figures are only roughly comparable, since each company uses slightly different quality measures and specifications.) As these numbers continue to drop, the mythical $1,000 genome comes ever closer. Sequencing a human genome for $1,000 is the somewhat arbitrary benchmark for true personalized genomics — when the science could become a component of standard medical care. An important catalyst in achieving that point is the Archon X Prize for Genomics, which is offering $10 million to the team that can sequence 100 complete genomes in 10 days for less than $10,000 each. As of June, seven teams, including Church's lab, had entered the competition. Church, who served for a time on the advisory board of the contest, says that the prize will drive costs down further and help publicize the potential of personalized whole-genome sequencing. That's important because Church hopes the Polonator and other next-generation instruments will inspire a new generation of smaller labs to begin work in personal genomics, as well as other genetic sciences. Already, the onslaught of technology has jump-started new projects, like sequencing part of the Neanderthal genome, examining extremophile microbes in old California iron mines, and studying the regenerative properties of the salamander. In medicine, cheaper sequencing has enabled research into drug-resistant tuberculosis; the genetics of breast, lung, and other cancers; and the DNA architecture of schizophrenics. But if the Polonator is going to lead that charge, it has to work — and work on a massive scale. And that means passing a major test: successfully sequencing the 100,000 exomes in the PGP. Photo: Lloyd Ziff All of us know our height, weight, and eye color. Fewer of us know our arm span or resting blood pressure. But who among us knows the direction of our hair whorls or the Gell-Coombs type of our allergies? This is the level of detail that the PGP requires the 100,000 volunteers to reveal about themselves, a list staggering in its exhaustiveness. The PGP will tally head circumferences, injuries, chin clefts and cheek dimples, whether volunteers can roll their tongues or hyperflex their joints, whether they dislike hot climates or are hot tempered, if they've often been exposed to power lines or wood dust or diesel exhaust or textile fibers. The project questionnaire asks how many meals they eat a day and whether they prefer their food fried, broiled, or barbecued. It even demands to know how much television they watch. And, of course, PGP volunteers will hand over most aspects of their medical history, from vaccines to prescriptions. This phenotype data will be integrated with a volunteer's genomic information, then combined with statistics from all the other subjects to create a potent database ripe for interrogation. In contrast to the heavy lifting that genetic research requires now — each study starts from scratch with a new hypothesis and a fresh crop of subjects, consent forms, and tissue samples — the PGP will automate the research process. Scientists will simply choose a category of phenotype and a possible genetic correlation, and statistically significant associations should flow out of the data like honey from a hive. A genetic predisposition for colon cancer, for instance, might be found to lead to disease only in connection with a diet high in barbecued foods, or a certain form of heart disease might be associated with a particular gene and exposure to a particular virus. Genomic discovery won't be a research problem anymore. It'll be a search function. (This helps explain why Google, among others, has donated to the project). The process began last year, and each of the first 10 volunteers has a background in medicine or genetics. They include John Halamka, CIO of Harvard Medical School and a physician; Rosalynn Gill, chief science officer at Sciona (a personalized genetics nutrition company); and Steven Pinker, the noted psychologist and author. The other 99,990 participants won't be expected to be so elite, though they will have to pass a genetics-literacy quiz to demonstrate informed consent. The general selection process, which starts with registration at personalgenomes.org, is scheduled to begin later this year. Besides offering up their genomes, subjects will have to part with some spit and a bit of skin. The saliva contains their microbiome — the trillions of microbes that exist, mostly symbiotically, on and in our bodies. If phenotype is a combination of genotype plus environment, the microbiome is the first wash of that environment over our bodies. By measuring some fraction of it, the PGP should offer a first look at how the genome-to-microbiome-to-phenome chain plays out. The skin sample goes into storage, creating what would be one of the world's largest biobanks. Members of Church's lab have devised a way to automate turning the skin cells into stem cells, and they hope to publish the technique later this year. (Similar work has been done at the University of Wisconsin and Kyoto University.) By reprogramming the skin cells using synthetically engineered adenoviruses, Church's team can transform the skin cells into many sorts of tissue — lungs, liver, heart. These tissues could be used as a diagnostic baseline to detect predisposition for various diseases. What's more, the reprogrammed cells could be used to treat disease, replacing damaged or failing tissue. It's an intriguing hint of how Church's work with synthetic biology complements genomic sequencing. If the PGP were simply an exercise in breaking down 100,000 individuals into data streams, it would be ambitious enough. But the project takes one further, truly radical step: In accordance with Church's principle of openness, all the material will be accessible to any researcher (or lurker) who wants to plunder thousands of details from people's lives. Even the tissue banks will be largely accessible. After Church's lab transforms the skin into stem cells, those new cell lines — which have been in notoriously short supply despite their scientific promise — will be open to outside researchers. This is a significant divergence from most biobanks, which typically guard their materials like holy relics and severely restrict access. For the PGP volunteers, this means they will have to sign on to a principle Church calls open consent, which acknowledges that, even though subjects' names will be removed to make the data anonymous, there's no promise of absolute confidentiality. As Church sees it, any guarantee of privacy is false; there is no way to ensure that a bad actor won't tap into a system and, once there, manage to extract bits of personal information. After all, even de-identified data is subject to misuse: Latanya Sweeney, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, demonstrated the ease of "re-identification" by cross-referencing anonymized health-insurance records with voter registration rolls. (She found former Massachusetts governor William Weld's medical files by cross-referencing his birth date, zip code, and sex.) To Church, open consent isn't just a philosophical consideration; it's also a practical one. If the PGP were locked down, it would be far less valuable as a data source for research — and the pace of research would accordingly be much slower. By making the information open and available, Church hopes to draw curious scientists to the data to pursue their own questions and reach their own insights. The potential fields of inquiry range from medicine to genealogy, forensics, and general biology. And the openness doesn't serve just researchers alone. PGP members will be seen as not only subjects, but as participants. So, for instance, if a researcher uses a volunteer's information to establish a link between some genetic sequence and a risk of disease, the volunteer would have that information communicated to them. This is precisely what makes the PGP controversial in genetics circles. Though Church talks about it as the logical successor to the Human Genome Project, other geneticists see it as a risky proposition, not for its privacy policy but for its presumption that the emerging science of genomics already has implications for individual cases. The National Human Genome Research Institute, for example, has cautioned that the burgeoning personal-genomics industry, which includes research-oriented projects like the PGP as well as straight-to-consumer companies like Navigenics and 23andMe and whole-genome-sequencing shops like Knome, puts the sales pitch ahead of the science. "A lot of people would like to rapidly capitalize on this science," says Gregory Feero, a senior adviser at the NHGRI. "But for an individual venturing into this now, it's a risk to start making any judgments or decisions based on current knowledge. At some point, we'll cross over into a time when that's more sensible." Church cautions, however, that keeping clinicians and patients in the dark about specific genetic information — essentially pretending the data or the technology behind it don't exist — is a farce. Even worse, it violates the principle of openness that leads to the fastest progress. "The ground is changing right underneath them," he says of the medical establishment. "Right now, there's a wall between clinical research and clinical practice. The science isn't jumping over. The PGP is what clinical practice would be like if the research actually made it to the patient." In the not-too-distant future, Church says, hospitals and clinics could be outfitted with a genome sequencer much the way they now have x-ray machines or microscopes. "In the old books," Church says, "almost every scientist was sitting there with a microscope on their table. Whether they're a physical scientist or a biological scientist, they've got that microscope there. And that inspires me." Wired deputy editor Thomas Goetz (thomas@wired.com) wrote about personal genomics in issue 15.12.
Read about the latest medical technology, pharmaceuticals and biotech trends including diets, drugs, genetics, stem cells, medicine, health, and cloning from Wired.com. {...}
Published: July 27, 2008, 2:00 am - Indexed: July 28, 2008, 10:20 am - Page Size: 49KB
Category: Health > News and Media

]]> Health > News and Media {NORTH AMERICA > REAL ESTATE} - PRICES GOING TO DROP MORE (san mateo) $30000 http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/north-america/united-states/california/metro-areas/san-francisco-bay-area/business-and-economy/real-estate/prices-going-to-drop-more-san-mateo-30000-20080668631.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/north-america/united-states/california/metro-areas/san-francisco-bay-area/business-and-economy/real-estate/prices-going-to-drop-more-san-mateo-30000-20080668631.htm Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:30:00 GMT Today, Carol Migden’s Moratorium Senate Resolution SRC 87 passed the Senate Ag Committee and will now move on to be heard by the full senate. The Resolution passed 4-0. Read Coverage Here Basically, this Resolution would halt the spraying until further testing is done. My thought is that it might buy us a little more time to ensure that whatever testing is done is not being done by CDFA’s allies. I know everyone will be really glad to read this good news. Goodness knows, we need some, and we thank Carol Migden for her strong efforts to protect the innocent people of California from this aerial assault on our families. UPDATE: MORE GOOD NEWS! Twist ties halted in Sonoma County. Read All About It Here 6 comments Tuesday 17 Jun 2008 | admin | LBAM Spray Bay Area | | Link to This Kenwood Press - Wins the Award for the Most Horrible LBAM Article To Date Sunday 15 Jun 2008 | LBAM Spray Bay Area Are you sitting down? I hope you have a good, firm chair to sit in before you read what is undoubtedly the worst, most offensive article any news source has yet published on the LBAM public health crisis. The honor of infamy goes to reporter Sarah Campbell of the Kenwood Press, and I warn you, reading the following news piece may cause your blood pressure to skyrocket dangerously high. Here is the jaw-dropping Kenwood Press article In addition to regurgitating the CDFA’s tired propaganda regarding the ‘threat’ of the light brown apple moth, Campbell gets wonderfully cute, summing up deadly chemicals being poured on human beings like this, “So, if you sense something’s a little different in the air this summer, don’t worry, it’s just the love.” I would like this misguided reporter to have to stand up and read this article to the DeLay family, the Wilcox family, the Lynbergs, the Nagels and the hundreds of other Central Coast families who fell so terribly ill after being forced to inhale carcinogenic pesticides by the CDFA in 2007. I would like her to play it up for big laughs as Mrs. Wilcox turns quietly aside to give her little baby another dose of corticosteroids to keep him breathing. And, I would like you, my valued readers, to join me in letting this news writer know what you think of her coverage after you’ve read the above piece. Lies are one thing. They are easy to call ‘evil’ once you know what you’re hearing. But levity…in the face of 7 million people being force-fed deadly pesticides….I hardly know how to respond. But I did try, and here is the letter I’ve just sent off to Ms. Campbell: Dear Ms. Campbell, I am writing in regards to your article on the subject of the light brown apple moth featured in this month’s edition of the Kenwood Press. I am running the web’s most active blog on this subject, and feel compelled to write to you personally, having read your coverage of this issue. What you have done, Ms. Campbell, either due to a lack of information and research or for other reasons I can’t conceive of, is to tell the people of Sonoma County that if something is different in the air this summer, it’s love. In point of fact, if something is different in the air this summer it is toxic chemicals which will cause devastating harm to humans, wildlife, the watershed and soil. To begin with, the substance the CDFA intends to spray is a registered pesticide, not an alternative to a pesticide as you have stated in your article. The 2 forms of Checkmate sprayed on the people of the Central Coast in 2007 are registered with the EPA as pesticides. The aerial pesticide consists of 3 extremely dangerous components: 1) the carcinogenic, mutagenic, endocrine disrupting ‘inert’ ingredients, 2) the synthetic insect pheromone mimics which a growing body of evidence suggests causes alarming sexual aggression in large mammals including human beings and 3) the plastic microcapsules, more than half of which will be smaller than the American Lung Association’s designation of PM10 - a size of particulate matter which lodges deep in the human lung from which it cannot be expelled and causes disease and death. My blog is frequented by many members of the hundreds and hundreds of families who were sickened by the 2007 spraying. One man’s baby went into cardiac arrest, his eyes rolled back into his head and he was rushed to an emergency hospital while having respiratory failure. This formerly-healthy baby is now being kept breathing by means of corticosteroids. Local school attendance in the Monterey/Santa Cruz area was cut in half during the spraying due to illness. Many of my women readers experienced bizarre reproductive health effects including menopausal women over the age of 65 recommencing menstruation. Dogs, cats, rabbits and honeybees died. The local people woke up to a world devoid of bird song after the enforced aerial spraying and over 600 sea birds washed up dead on the beaches. Imagine, no bird song. Some regions have seen no hummingbirds since the spraying last fall in their gardens. My readers and their friends and family were victims of an illegal and unconstitutional aerial assault. Some of them are still sick with respiratory problems, 10 months later. One by one, UC scientists and independent physicians (not employed by the USDA or CDFA) have stepped forward to explain that exposure to the aerial spray will cause catastrophic damage to infants, children, expectant mothers, elders and any resident who is in poor health. The CDFA is planning to chronically expose 7 million people to a registered pesticide encapsulated in PM10 particulate matter. This will be happening 8 hours a night, up to 5 nights a month, 9 months out of the year for 5-10 years. And, because the pesticide is designed to break down over a 30-90 day period each time it is sprayed, the air and our bodies will never be free of it. We will be eating, drinking and breathing this toxic, carcinogenic pollution for the next decade. I’m hoping that at this point, you are starting to see how inappropriate your remarks about love being in the air seem to me and to anyone who is having their life turned upside down by this aerial assault on the public health. In regards to the twist ties, again, your article strives to portray these materials as safe and necessary. In point of fact, over 30% of the chemicals in the twist ties are being kept a secret from the public, so there is no way for you or anyone else in Sonoma to know what you are being exposed to. What we know do know about the twist ties is this: 1) 33.48% of the ingredients in the twist ties are secret. They do not have to be disclosed to the public because of laws which protect trade secrets rather than public health. 2) The product is being listed as harmful if absorbed through skin and dangerous to the eyes. People exposed to the product are instructed to contact a poison control center and go to a doctor. 3) You are supposed to bring the container for the toxic twist ties with you to the doctor. You will not have the container if you are poisoned by LBAM twist ties. 4) Because 33.48% of the ingredients on the twist ties are secret, your doctor will have no idea what you were poisoned by. 5) The Material Safety Data Sheet created by the manufacturer says that this poison must not be applied to water or areas where water surface is present. In other words, you must not put it near creeks, ponds, coasts, reservoirs, rivers, or any other type of watershed. The sheet says do not contaminate water when disposing of this product. From this, we understand that Isomate-LBAM PLUS twist ties contaminate water. 6) This is an unregistered product that has been approved for use in California only. It has not gone through the normal battery of tests required of registered products. The region which CDFA intends to blanket with these toxic materials not only includes schools and parks, but also thousands of people. Children will be surrounded by these dangerous poisons and will undoubtedly be touching them as they play in and around trees and bushes. Pets and wildlife are also going to be at risk of chemical damage from these twist ties. These are not harmless products, as you have portrayed them, and I cannot understate the disservice you have done to your community by falsely informing people of the safety of registered pesticides and toxic substances. As for the light brown apple moth, your article is strangely silent on the fact that this moth has done and is expected to do zero damage to California’s agriculture and environment. You are totally incorrect in stating that California has no natural predators of this harmless bug. Birds, bats and bugs eat the light brown apple moth…I hope you will agree with me that Sonoma County has a tremendous amount of birds, bats and bugs. But, if we kill them off with pesticides we will be removing the very predators that do keep leafrollers in a good balance. As was discovered by a team of scientists who visited New Zealand to research the LBAM, so long as organophosphate pesticides aren’t being used and killing off the birds, bats and bugs, LBAM is no problem. Even CDFA admits it has done zero damage in California, despite the fact that it has been here from as little as 7 and as many as 50 years. I urge you, Ms. Campbell, to do further research on this issue which is without question the most egregious California has faced in modern times. Do you really support a government that subjects its citizens to aerial spraying of pesticide on human beings without their consent? Do you really want to live in a country where this can happen? 31 cities have now passed strong resolutions vehemently opposing the bombardment of their communities with aerial pesticides. Mayors, senators, representatives, major media, independent medical experts and UC scientists are demanding that these misguided agencies uphold the California Constitution which protects our right to safety. We cannot be safe when we are being chronically exposed to deadly chemicals. CDFA has now been found guilty by 2 superior courts of violating the California Environmental Quality Act in declaring their completely unfounded emergency. It was this phony declaration that enabled them to spray our neighbors on the Central Coast who then fell horribly ill. CDFA has been found guilty…they are lawbreakers, not people you should trust. To put it bluntly, they are liars. Why would they lie to us? CDFA stands to receive billions of dollars in federal funding over the next decade if they are not stopped from spraying us. In order to keep the money coming in, they are totally willing to spray me, my family, you, your family, with carcinogenic pesticide. What you have done, Ms. Campbell, is to reprint their totally unscientific hogwash about the ‘threat’ of this negligible bug that needs to be reclassified as a harmless insect. At best, the LBAM issue is a trade issue, as you will quickly discover with a bit of research. At worst, this is the most blatant human experiment to be undertaken by our government in its total history. I am writing to you out of horrified concern, having read what you have just written for our community to read. I implore you to run corrections at the least of the misstatements you have authored regarding the chemicals being an alternative to pesticides, being safe, and the LBAM having no predators here. I urge you to correct the gross misstatement that Oakland, Marin, San Francisco and other cities have ‘elected’ to be aerially sprayed. To the contrary, all of the local governments are demanding that the spraying be halted, but are being told the pesticide will be enforced on them. We have been told ‘there is no vote’. We are being told we have no choice. I urge you correct what you wrote. And, I am praying you will do more than this. I am praying you will sit down with your editors and start truly researching what is happening here, and that you will print a truthful article in next month’s Kenwood Press. When you are in the media, you are responsible for printing the facts…all of the facts. How will you feel if, when the twist ties go up, your neighborhood falls ill, children are being rushed to the ER, and you’ve got people asking you why you made light of what is, in fact, a terribly dangerous substance? How will the Kenwood Press staff feel when the planes start flying over the Bay Area and the vast population begins to fall ill, as happened on the Central Coast last year, and you have to face that you have covered this issue with a tongue-in-cheek reference to ‘love being in the air’? Unfortunately, it is death that’s in the air for our most vulnerable and precious populations…children, mothers, elders, the infirm. Nothing to laugh about, I am sure you will agree, once you start learning more about this matter. I do understand, CDFA has employed some first-class liars. Their statements seem so plausible if you don’t understand how they operate. Anyone can be duped if they don’t take the time to find out what is actually going on here in California. But, I am so hoping that this letter will be the start of your own research. What is happening is going to affect you and everyone you care for who lives here, Ms. Campbell. Allow me to suggest that you visit the following sites to read articles and watch video documentation of the truth about the most severe public health crisis our state has ever faced. Here is a YouTube page featuring numerous interviews both with families who were sickened by the 2007 spraying and with scientists: http://youtube.com/user/eon3 These are the most active websites regarding this issue: http://www.lbamspray.com http://www.dontspraycalifornia.org http://www.stopthespray.org http://www.cassonline.org http://www.veganreader.com http://www.dontspray.com Over the past months, my family has been devoting all of our free time to trying to educate our communities about what happened to Central Coast families in 2007. I have spoken with countless, honest individuals who were sickened by CDFA’s illegal spraying. I don’t want this to happen to our Bay Area, and am so hoping that when you learn more about this, you will feel the need that we do to work to protect our families from this unnecessary, unconstitutional violation of our basic human rights. Sincerely, & etc. I think you’ll agree with me that the Central Coast families and the Bay Area families who are set to be sprayed have already got enough to deal with without being snickered at by totally uninformed and unworthy news people. Can this woman have done more than 5 minutes of research on this subject prior to firing up Microsoft Word? I hope you will take a moment to set her straight and let her know this is no joking matter: Contact: Sarah Campbell sarah@kenwoodpress.com 5 comments Sunday 15 Jun 2008 | admin | LBAM Spray Bay Area | | Link to This East Bay Community Town Hall Meeting Sunday 15 Jun 2008 | LBAM Spray Bay Area EAST BAY COMMUNITY TOWN HALL TO STOP THE SPRAY Monday, June 23, 2008 7:00 pm -9:00 pm Location: Lakeside Park Garden Center at Lake Merritt 666 Bellevue Avenue, Oakland, CA. 94610 Directions: http://www.oaklandnet.com/parks/rental_facilities/gardencenter_directions.asp Sponsored by Stop the Spray- East Bay and Pesticide Watch Learn about the latest legal and legislative strategies to protect our communities from the spraying program for Light Brown Apple Moth. Hear the most up-to-date science and health information. Get involved! Speakers will include: John Russo - Oakland City Attorney ~ providing the most current information on legal strategies to stop the spray in the Bay Area Douglas MacLean, Communications Director, Assemblyman Sandré Swanson ~ reporting on legislative strategies to stop the spray Daniel Harder, Ph.D., Executive Director, Arboretum, UC Santa Cruz, ~ providing scientific evidence the moth is not a threat Lawrence Rose, MD, MPH, former senior Public Medical Officer for Cal-OSHA and part of the UCSF Occupational/Environmental Medicine Department ~ discussing toxicity of the spray and health effects 0 comments Sunday 15 Jun 2008 | admin | LBAM Spray Bay Area | | Link to This Moth Nights Sfbay.Craigslist.Org PRICES GOING TO DROP MORE (san mateo) $30000 {new window}   Sfbay.Craigslist.Org - Today, Carol Migden’s Moratorium Senate Resolution SRC 87 passed the Senate Ag Committee and will now move on to be heard by the full senate. The Resolution passed 4-0. Read Coverage Here Basically, this Resolution would halt the spraying until further testing is done. My thought is that it might buy us a little more time to ensure that whatever testing is done is not being done by CDFA’s allies. I know everyone will be really glad to read this good news. Goodness knows, we need some, and we thank Carol Migden for her strong efforts to protect the innocent people of California from this aerial assault on our families. UPDATE: MORE GOOD NEWS! Twist ties halted in Sonoma County. Read All About It Here 6 comments Tuesday 17 Jun 2008 | admin | LBAM Spray Bay Area | | Link to This Kenwood Press - Wins the Award for the Most Horrible LBAM Article To Date Sunday 15 Jun 2008 | LBAM Spray Bay Area Are you sitting down? I hope you have a good, firm chair to sit in before you read what is undoubtedly the worst, most offensive article any news source has yet published on the LBAM public health crisis. The honor of infamy goes to reporter Sarah Campbell of the Kenwood Press, and I warn you, reading the following news piece may cause your blood pressure to skyrocket dangerously high. Here is the jaw-dropping Kenwood Press article In addition to regurgitating the CDFA’s tired propaganda regarding the ‘threat’ of the light brown apple moth, Campbell gets wonderfully cute, summing up deadly chemicals being poured on human beings like this, “So, if you sense something’s a little different in the air this summer, don’t worry, it’s just the love.” I would like this misguided reporter to have to stand up and read this article to the DeLay family, the Wilcox family, the Lynbergs, the Nagels and the hundreds of other Central Coast families who fell so terribly ill after being forced to inhale carcinogenic pesticides by the CDFA in 2007. I would like her to play it up for big laughs as Mrs. Wilcox turns quietly aside to give her little baby another dose of corticosteroids to keep him breathing. And, I would like you, my valued readers, to join me in letting this news writer know what you think of her coverage after you’ve read the above piece. Lies are one thing. They are easy to call ‘evil’ once you know what you’re hearing. But levity…in the face of 7 million people being force-fed deadly pesticides….I hardly know how to respond. But I did try, and here is the letter I’ve just sent off to Ms. Campbell: Dear Ms. Campbell, I am writing in regards to your article on the subject of the light brown apple moth featured in this month’s edition of the Kenwood Press. I am running the web’s most active blog on this subject, and feel compelled to write to you personally, having read your coverage of this issue. What you have done, Ms. Campbell, either due to a lack of information and research or for other reasons I can’t conceive of, is to tell the people of Sonoma County that if something is different in the air this summer, it’s love. In point of fact, if something is different in the air this summer it is toxic chemicals which will cause devastating harm to humans, wildlife, the watershed and soil. To begin with, the substance the CDFA intends to spray is a registered pesticide, not an alternative to a pesticide as you have stated in your article. The 2 forms of Checkmate sprayed on the people of the Central Coast in 2007 are registered with the EPA as pesticides. The aerial pesticide consists of 3 extremely dangerous components: 1) the carcinogenic, mutagenic, endocrine disrupting ‘inert’ ingredients, 2) the synthetic insect pheromone mimics which a growing body of evidence suggests causes alarming sexual aggression in large mammals including human beings and 3) the plastic microcapsules, more than half of which will be smaller than the American Lung Association’s designation of PM10 - a size of particulate matter which lodges deep in the human lung from which it cannot be expelled and causes disease and death. My blog is frequented by many members of the hundreds and hundreds of families who were sickened by the 2007 spraying. One man’s baby went into cardiac arrest, his eyes rolled back into his head and he was rushed to an emergency hospital while having respiratory failure. This formerly-healthy baby is now being kept breathing by means of corticosteroids. Local school attendance in the Monterey/Santa Cruz area was cut in half during the spraying due to illness. Many of my women readers experienced bizarre reproductive health effects including menopausal women over the age of 65 recommencing menstruation. Dogs, cats, rabbits and honeybees died. The local people woke up to a world devoid of bird song after the enforced aerial spraying and over 600 sea birds washed up dead on the beaches. Imagine, no bird song. Some regions have seen no hummingbirds since the spraying last fall in their gardens. My readers and their friends and family were victims of an illegal and unconstitutional aerial assault. Some of them are still sick with respiratory problems, 10 months later. One by one, UC scientists and independent physicians (not employed by the USDA or CDFA) have stepped forward to explain that exposure to the aerial spray will cause catastrophic damage to infants, children, expectant mothers, elders and any resident who is in poor health. The CDFA is planning to chronically expose 7 million people to a registered pesticide encapsulated in PM10 particulate matter. This will be happening 8 hours a night, up to 5 nights a month, 9 months out of the year for 5-10 years. And, because the pesticide is designed to break down over a 30-90 day period each time it is sprayed, the air and our bodies will never be free of it. We will be eating, drinking and breathing this toxic, carcinogenic pollution for the next decade. I’m hoping that at this point, you are starting to see how inappropriate your remarks about love being in the air seem to me and to anyone who is having their life turned upside down by this aerial assault on the public health. In regards to the twist ties, again, your article strives to portray these materials as safe and necessary. In point of fact, over 30% of the chemicals in the twist ties are being kept a secret from the public, so there is no way for you or anyone else in Sonoma to know what you are being exposed to. What we know do know about the twist ties is this: 1) 33.48% of the ingredients in the twist ties are secret. They do not have to be disclosed to the public because of laws which protect trade secrets rather than public health. 2) The product is being listed as harmful if absorbed through skin and dangerous to the eyes. People exposed to the product are instructed to contact a poison control center and go to a doctor. 3) You are supposed to bring the container for the toxic twist ties with you to the doctor. You will not have the container if you are poisoned by LBAM twist ties. 4) Because 33.48% of the ingredients on the twist ties are secret, your doctor will have no idea what you were poisoned by. 5) The Material Safety Data Sheet created by the manufacturer says that this poison must not be applied to water or areas where water surface is present. In other words, you must not put it near creeks, ponds, coasts, reservoirs, rivers, or any other type of watershed. The sheet says do not contaminate water when disposing of this product. From this, we understand that Isomate-LBAM PLUS twist ties contaminate water. 6) This is an unregistered product that has been approved for use in California only. It has not gone through the normal battery of tests required of registered products. The region which CDFA intends to blanket with these toxic materials not only includes schools and parks, but also thousands of people. Children will be surrounded by these dangerous poisons and will undoubtedly be touching them as they play in and around trees and bushes. Pets and wildlife are also going to be at risk of chemical damage from these twist ties. These are not harmless products, as you have portrayed them, and I cannot understate the disservice you have done to your community by falsely informing people of the safety of registered pesticides and toxic substances. As for the light brown apple moth, your article is strangely silent on the fact that this moth has done and is expected to do zero damage to California’s agriculture and environment. You are totally incorrect in stating that California has no natural predators of this harmless bug. Birds, bats and bugs eat the light brown apple moth…I hope you will agree with me that Sonoma County has a tremendous amount of birds, bats and bugs. But, if we kill them off with pesticides we will be removing the very predators that do keep leafrollers in a good balance. As was discovered by a team of scientists who visited New Zealand to research the LBAM, so long as organophosphate pesticides aren’t being used and killing off the birds, bats and bugs, LBAM is no problem. Even CDFA admits it has done zero damage in California, despite the fact that it has been here from as little as 7 and as many as 50 years. I urge you, Ms. Campbell, to do further research on this issue which is without question the most egregious California has faced in modern times. Do you really support a government that subjects its citizens to aerial spraying of pesticide on human beings without their consent? Do you really want to live in a country where this can happen? 31 cities have now passed strong resolutions vehemently opposing the bombardment of their communities with aerial pesticides. Mayors, senators, representatives, major media, independent medical experts and UC scientists are demanding that these misguided agencies uphold the California Constitution which protects our right to safety. We cannot be safe when we are being chronically exposed to deadly chemicals. CDFA has now been found guilty by 2 superior courts of violating the California Environmental Quality Act in declaring their completely unfounded emergency. It was this phony declaration that enabled them to spray our neighbors on the Central Coast who then fell horribly ill. CDFA has been found guilty…they are lawbreakers, not people you should trust. To put it bluntly, they are liars. Why would they lie to us? CDFA stands to receive billions of dollars in federal funding over the next decade if they are not stopped from spraying us. In order to keep the money coming in, they are totally willing to spray me, my family, you, your family, with carcinogenic pesticide. What you have done, Ms. Campbell, is to reprint their totally unscientific hogwash about the ‘threat’ of this negligible bug that needs to be reclassified as a harmless insect. At best, the LBAM issue is a trade issue, as you will quickly discover with a bit of research. At worst, this is the most blatant human experiment to be undertaken by our government in its total history. I am writing to you out of horrified concern, having read what you have just written for our community to read. I implore you to run corrections at the least of the misstatements you have authored regarding the chemicals being an alternative to pesticides, being safe, and the LBAM having no predators here. I urge you to correct the gross misstatement that Oakland, Marin, San Francisco and other cities have ‘elected’ to be aerially sprayed. To the contrary, all of the local governments are demanding that the spraying be halted, but are being told the pesticide will be enforced on them. We have been told ‘there is no vote’. We are being told we have no choice. I urge you correct what you wrote. And, I am praying you will do more than this. I am praying you will sit down with your editors and start truly researching what is happening here, and that you will print a truthful article in next month’s Kenwood Press. When you are in the media, you are responsible for printing the facts…all of the facts. How will you feel if, when the twist ties go up, your neighborhood falls ill, children are being rushed to the ER, and you’ve got people asking you why you made light of what is, in fact, a terribly dangerous substance? How will the Kenwood Press staff feel when the planes start flying over the Bay Area and the vast population begins to fall ill, as happened on the Central Coast last year, and you have to face that you have covered this issue with a tongue-in-cheek reference to ‘love being in the air’? Unfortunately, it is death that’s in the air for our most vulnerable and precious populations…children, mothers, elders, the infirm. Nothing to laugh about, I am sure you will agree, once you start learning more about this matter. I do understand, CDFA has employed some first-class liars. Their statements seem so plausible if you don’t understand how they operate. Anyone can be duped if they don’t take the time to find out what is actually going on here in California. But, I am so hoping that this letter will be the start of your own research. What is happening is going to affect you and everyone you care for who lives here, Ms. Campbell. Allow me to suggest that you visit the following sites to read articles and watch video documentation of the truth about the most severe public health crisis our state has ever faced. Here is a YouTube page featuring numerous interviews both with families who were sickened by the 2007 spraying and with scientists: http://youtube.com/user/eon3 These are the most active websites regarding this issue: http://www.lbamspray.com http://www.dontspraycalifornia.org http://www.stopthespray.org http://www.cassonline.org http://www.veganreader.com http://www.dontspray.com Over the past months, my family has been devoting all of our free time to trying to educate our communities about what happened to Central Coast families in 2007. I have spoken with countless, honest individuals who were sickened by CDFA’s illegal spraying. I don’t want this to happen to our Bay Area, and am so hoping that when you learn more about this, you will feel the need that we do to work to protect our families from this unnecessary, unconstitutional violation of our basic human rights. Sincerely, & etc. I think you’ll agree with me that the Central Coast families and the Bay Area families who are set to be sprayed have already got enough to deal with without being snickered at by totally uninformed and unworthy news people. Can this woman have done more than 5 minutes of research on this subject prior to firing up Microsoft Word? I hope you will take a moment to set her straight and let her know this is no joking matter: Contact: Sarah Campbell sarah@kenwoodpress.com 5 comments Sunday 15 Jun 2008 | admin | LBAM Spray Bay Area | | Link to This East Bay Community Town Hall Meeting Sunday 15 Jun 2008 | LBAM Spray Bay Area EAST BAY COMMUNITY TOWN HALL TO STOP THE SPRAY Monday, June 23, 2008 7:00 pm -9:00 pm Location: Lakeside Park Garden Center at Lake Merritt 666 Bellevue Avenue, Oakland, CA. 94610 Directions: http://www.oaklandnet.com/parks/rental_facilities/gardencenter_directions.asp Sponsored by Stop the Spray- East Bay and Pesticide Watch Learn about the latest legal and legislative strategies to protect our communities from the spraying program for Light Brown Apple Moth. Hear the most up-to-date science and health information. Get involved! Speakers will include: John Russo - Oakland City Attorney ~ providing the most current information on legal strategies to stop the spray in the Bay Area Douglas MacLean, Communications Director, Assemblyman Sandré Swanson ~ reporting on legislative strategies to stop the spray Daniel Harder, Ph.D., Executive Director, Arboretum, UC Santa Cruz, ~ providing scientific evidence the moth is not a threat Lawrence Rose, MD, MPH, former senior Public Medical Officer for Cal-OSHA and part of the UCSF Occupational/Environmental Medicine Department ~ discussing toxicity of the spray and health effects 0 comments Sunday 15 Jun 2008 | admin | LBAM Spray Bay Area | | Link to This Moth Nights
PRICES GOING TO DROP MORE {...}
Published: June 19, 2008, 9:30 am - Indexed: June 19, 2008, 10:39 am - Page Size: 20KB
Category: Regional > North America > United States > California > Metro Areas > San Francisco Bay Area > Business and Economy > Real Estate

]]> Regional > North America > United States > California > Metro Areas > San Francisco Bay Area > Business and Economy > Real Estate {LITERATURE > CYBERPUNK} - The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away -- story about geek monasteries for smart people who don't fit in http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/literature/genres/cyberpunk/the-things-that-make-me-weak-and-strange-get-engineered-2008081113.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/literature/genres/cyberpunk/the-things-that-make-me-weak-and-strange-get-engineered-2008081113.htm Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:45:40 GMT Tor.com has just published a new story of mine, "The Things that Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away" (the title is from "The Future Soon," a Jonathan Coulton song), which is about geek monasteries that house smart people who can't get along in the world and put them to work as coders. The story is the first Tor.com piece to be Creative Commons licensed and you're encouraged to remix it, translate it, whatever. There's already a podcast of me reading the story (also CC licensed) and PDF, Mobipocket and Sony reader files are already available. Lawrence?s cubicle was just the right place to chew on a thorny logfile problem: decorated with the votive fetishes of his monastic order, a thousand calming, clarifying mandalas and saints devoted to helping him think clearly. From the nearby cubicles, Lawrence heard the ritualized muttering of a thousand brothers and sisters in the Order of Reflective Analytics, a susurration of harmonized, concentrated thought. On his display, he watched an instrument widget track the decibel level over time, the graph overlaid on a 3D curve of normal activity over time and space. He noted that the level was a little high, the room a little more anxious than usual. He clicked and tapped and thought some more, massaging the logfile to see if he could make it snap into focus and make sense, but it stubbornly refused to be sensible. The data tracked the custody chain of the bitstream the Order munged for the Securitat, and somewhere in there, a file had grown by 68 bytes, blowing its checksum and becoming An Anomaly. Order lore was filled with Anomalies, loose threads in the fabric of reality?bugs to be squashed in the data-set that was the Order?s universe. Starting with the pre-Order sysadmin who?d tracked a $0.75 billing anomaly back to foreign spy-ring that was using his systems to hack his military, these morality tales were object lessons to the Order?s monks: pick at the seams and the world will unravel in useful and interesting ways. The Things that Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away, MP3 link... Boingboing.Net The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away -- story about geek monasteries for smart people who don't fit in {new window}   Www.Boingboing.Net - Tor.com has just published a new story of mine, "The Things that Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away" (the title is from "The Future Soon," a Jonathan Coulton song), which is about geek monasteries that house smart people who can't get along in the world and put them to work as coders. The story is the first Tor.com piece to be Creative Commons licensed and you're encouraged to remix it, translate it, whatever. There's already a podcast of me reading the story (also CC licensed) and PDF, Mobipocket and Sony reader files are already available. Lawrence?s cubicle was just the right place to chew on a thorny logfile problem: decorated with the votive fetishes of his monastic order, a thousand calming, clarifying mandalas and saints devoted to helping him think clearly. From the nearby cubicles, Lawrence heard the ritualized muttering of a thousand brothers and sisters in the Order of Reflective Analytics, a susurration of harmonized, concentrated thought. On his display, he watched an instrument widget track the decibel level over time, the graph overlaid on a 3D curve of normal activity over time and space. He noted that the level was a little high, the room a little more anxious than usual. He clicked and tapped and thought some more, massaging the logfile to see if he could make it snap into focus and make sense, but it stubbornly refused to be sensible. The data tracked the custody chain of the bitstream the Order munged for the Securitat, and somewhere in there, a file had grown by 68 bytes, blowing its checksum and becoming An Anomaly. Order lore was filled with Anomalies, loose threads in the fabric of reality?bugs to be squashed in the data-set that was the Order?s universe. Starting with the pre-Order sysadmin who?d tracked a $0.75 billing anomaly back to foreign spy-ring that was using his systems to hack his military, these morality tales were object lessons to the Order?s monks: pick at the seams and the world will unravel in useful and interesting ways. The Things that Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away, MP3 link...
The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away -- story about geek monasteries for smart people who don't fit in - Boing Boing {...}
Published: August 6, 2008, 2:45 pm - Indexed: August 6, 2008, 9:56 pm - Page Size: 80KB
Category: Arts > Literature > Genres > Cyberpunk

]]> Arts > Literature > Genres > Cyberpunk {EUROPE > HEADLINE LINKS} - Weird science http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/europe/united-kingdom/news-and-media/headline-links/weird-science-20080666646.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/europe/united-kingdom/news-and-media/headline-links/weird-science-20080666646.htm Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:27:25 GMT Explosions. Bunsen burners. Adoring crowds in evening dress - or school uniform - eyes wide with wonderment. Can we recapture the excitement of science, asks historian Lisa Jardine. News.Bbc.Co.Uk Weird science {new window}   News.Bbc.Co.Uk - Explosions. Bunsen burners. Adoring crowds in evening dress - or school uniform - eyes wide with wonderment. Can we recapture the excitement of science, asks historian Lisa Jardine.
BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Weird science {...}
Published: June 27, 2008, 4:27 pm - Indexed: June 28, 2008, 10:39 am - Page Size: 66KB
Category: Regional > Europe > United Kingdom > News and Media > Headline Links

]]> Regional > Europe > United Kingdom > News and Media > Headline Links {EUROPE > NEWS AND MEDIA} - Weird science http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/europe/united-kingdom/news-and-media/weird-science-20080680144.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/europe/united-kingdom/news-and-media/weird-science-20080680144.htm Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:27:25 GMT Can the excitement it used to spark be recaptured? News.Bbc.Co.Uk Weird science {new window}   News.Bbc.Co.Uk - Can the excitement it used to spark be recaptured?
BBC NEWS | Magazine | Weird science {...} Explosions. Bunsen burners. Adoring crowds in evening dress - or school uniform - eyes wide with wonderment. Can we recapture the excitement of science, asks historian Lisa Jardine. {...}
Published: June 27, 2008, 4:27 pm - Indexed: June 29, 2008, 9:26 am - Page Size: 59KB
Category: Regional > Europe > United Kingdom > News and Media

]]> Regional > Europe > United Kingdom > News and Media {NEWS > BREAKING NEWS} - Cold science http://articles.world-of-newave.info/science/news/breaking-news/cold-science-20080622340.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/science/news/breaking-news/cold-science-20080622340.htm Mon, 23 Jun 2008 12:19:42 GMT Travelling with the ship monitoring rapid Arctic change News.Bbc.Co.Uk Cold science {new window}   News.Bbc.Co.Uk - Travelling with the ship monitoring rapid Arctic change
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Ice diary: Science in the fast-changing Arctic {...} Liz Kalaugher reports from the High Arctic as she travels aboard the Amundsen, a Canadian Coast Guard vessel. She has joined an expedition investigating the effects of climate change off Banks Island. {...}
Published: June 23, 2008, 12:19 pm - Indexed: June 23, 2008, 12:41 pm - Page Size: 59KB
Category: Science > News > Breaking News

]]> Science > News > Breaking News {SCIENCE > NEWS} - Cold science http://articles.world-of-newave.info/science/news/cold-science-20080674538.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/science/news/cold-science-20080674538.htm Mon, 23 Jun 2008 12:19:42 GMT Travelling with the ship monitoring rapid Arctic change News.Bbc.Co.Uk Cold science {new window}   News.Bbc.Co.Uk - Travelling with the ship monitoring rapid Arctic change
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Ice diary: Science in the fast-changing Arctic {...} Liz Kalaugher reports from the High Arctic as she travels aboard the Amundsen, a Canadian Coast Guard vessel. She has joined an expedition investigating the effects of climate change off Banks Island. {...}
Published: June 23, 2008, 12:19 pm - Indexed: June 23, 2008, 1:04 pm - Page Size: 58KB
Category: Science > News

]]> Science > News {EUROPE > NEWSPAPERS} - Traditional classroom science experiments http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/europe/united-kingdom/news-and-media/newspapers/traditional-classroom-science-experiments-20080660724.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/europe/united-kingdom/news-and-media/newspapers/traditional-classroom-science-experiments-20080660724.htm Mon, 16 Jun 2008 21:23:28 GMT Science lessons have traditionally given pupils the opportunity to learn by carrying out a variety of practical experiments. Examples include: Telegraph.Co.Uk Traditional classroom science experiments {new window}   Www.Telegraph.Co.Uk - Science lessons have traditionally given pupils the opportunity to learn by carrying out a variety of practical experiments. Examples include:
Traditional classroom science experiments - Telegraph {...}
Published: June 16, 2008, 9:23 pm - Indexed: June 17, 2008, 7:54 am - Page Size: 35KB
Category: Regional > Europe > United Kingdom > News and Media > Newspapers

]]> Regional > Europe > United Kingdom > News and Media > Newspapers {EUROPE > NEWS AND MEDIA} - Science plan will change skyline http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/europe/united-kingdom/england/tyne-and-wear/news-and-media/science-plan-will-change-skyline-20080618410.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/europe/united-kingdom/england/tyne-and-wear/news-and-media/science-plan-will-change-skyline-20080618410.htm Thu, 05 Jun 2008 19:17:53 GMT Plans for a multi-million pound Science City are set to transform the skyline of Newcastle. News.Bbc.Co.Uk Science plan will change skyline {new window}   News.Bbc.Co.Uk - Plans for a multi-million pound Science City are set to transform the skyline of Newcastle.
BBC NEWS | England | Tyne | Science plan will change skyline {...}
Published: June 5, 2008, 7:17 pm - Indexed: June 5, 2008, 9:57 pm - Page Size: 42KB
Category: Regional > Europe > United Kingdom > England > Tyne and Wear > News and Media

]]> Regional > Europe > United Kingdom > England > Tyne and Wear > News and Media {EUROPE > NEWS AND MEDIA} - Science centre '40% funding cut' http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/europe/united-kingdom/scotland/news-and-media/science-centre-40-funding-cut-2008064748.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/europe/united-kingdom/scotland/news-and-media/science-centre-40-funding-cut-2008064748.htm Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:53:39 GMT Glasgow Science Centre is being hit by government funding cuts, the Lib Dems claim. News.Bbc.Co.Uk Science centre '40% funding cut' {new window}   News.Bbc.Co.Uk - Glasgow Science Centre is being hit by government funding cuts, the Lib Dems claim.
BBC NEWS | Scotland | Glasgow, Lanarkshire and West | Science centre '40% funding cut' {...}
Published: June 5, 2008, 3:53 pm - Indexed: June 5, 2008, 10:36 pm - Page Size: 42KB
Category: Regional > Europe > United Kingdom > Scotland > News and Media

]]> Regional > Europe > United Kingdom > Scotland > News and Media