Scientists in the US succeed in developing the first living bacterial cell to be controlled entirely by synthetic DNA.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10132762.stm

Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first synthetic living cell.

The researchers constructed a bacterium’s “genetic software” and transplanted it into a host cell.

The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species “dictated” by the synthetic DNA.

The advance, published in Science, has been hailed as a scientific landmark, but critics say there are dangers posed by synthetic organisms.

The researchers hope eventually to design bacterial cells that will produce medicines and fuels and even absorb greenhouse gases.
“This is the first time any synthetic DNA has been in complete control of a cell”

Dr Craig Venter
J Craig Venter Institute
The team was led by Dr Craig Venter of the J Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in Maryland and California.

He and his colleagues had previously made a synthetic bacterial genome, and transplanted the genome of one bacterium into another.

Now, the scientists have put both methods together, to create what they call a “synthetic cell”, although only its genome is truly synthetic.

Dr Venter likened the advance to making new software for the cell.

The researchers copied an existing bacterial genome. They sequenced its genetic code and then used “synthesis machines” to chemically construct a copy.

Dr Venter told BBC News: “We’ve now been able to take our synthetic chromosome and transplant it into a recipient cell – a different organism.

“As soon as this new software goes into the cell, the cell reads [it] and converts into the species specified in that genetic code.”

The new bacteria replicated over a billion times, producing copies that contained and were controlled by the constructed, synthetic DNA.

“This is the first time any synthetic DNA has been in complete control of a cell,” said Dr Venter.

‘New industrial revolution’
Dr Venter and his colleagues hope eventually to design and build new bacteria that will perform useful functions.

Continue reading the main story
Even some scientists worry we lack the means to weigh up the risks such novel organisms might represent, once set loose

Susan Watts
BBC Newsnight science editor
Read Susan’s blog

“I think they’re going to potentially create a new industrial revolution,” he said.

“If we can really get cells to do the production that we want, they could help wean us off oil and reverse some of the damage to the environment by capturing carbon dioxide.”

Dr Venter and his colleagues are already collaborating with pharmaceutical and fuel companies to design and develop chromosomes for bacteria that would produce useful fuels and new vaccines.

But critics say that the potential benefits of synthetic organisms have been overstated.

Dr Helen Wallace from Genewatch UK, an organisation that monitors developments in genetic technologies, told BBC News that synthetic bacteria could be dangerous.

“If you release new organisms into the environment, you can do more harm than good,” she said.

“By releasing them into areas of pollution, [with the aim of cleaning it up], you’re actually releasing a new kind of pollution.

“We don’t know how these organisms will behave in the environment.”

Dr Wallace accused Dr Venter of playing down the potential drawbacks.

“He isn’t God,” she said, “he’s actually being very human; trying to get money invested in his technology and avoid regulation that would restrict its use.”

But Dr Venter said that he was “driving the discussions” about the regulations governing this relatively new scientific field and about the ethical implications of the work.

Continue reading the main story

The risks are unparalleled, we need safety evaluation for this kind of radical research and protections from military or terrorist misuse

Julian Savulescu
Oxford University ethics professor
He said: “In 2003, when we made the first synthetic virus, it underwent an extensive ethical review that went all the way up to the level of the White House.

“And there have been extensive reviews including from the National Academy of Sciences, which has done a comprehensive report on this new field.

“We think these are important issues and we urge continued discussion that we want to take part in.”

Dr Gos Micklem, a geneticist from the University of Cambridge, said that the advance was “undoubtedly a landmark” study.

But, he said, “there is already a wealth of simple, cheap, powerful and mature techniques for genetically engineering a range of organisms. Therefore, for the time being, this approach is unlikely to supplant existing methods for genetic engineering”.

The ethical discussions surrounding the creation of synthetic or artificial life are set to continue.

Professor Julian Savulescu, from the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, said the potential of this science was “in the far future, but real and significant”.

“But the risks are also unparalleled,” he continued. “We need new standards of safety evaluation for this kind of radical research and protections from military or terrorist misuse and abuse.

“These could be used in the future to make the most powerful bioweapons imaginable. The challenge is to eat the fruit without the worm.”

The son of Disney artists, Kevin was tutored in art by his parents and their artist friends.  At 16, he received a scholarship for drawing classes at Art Center College of Design. At 18, he was the youngest student to be accepted into the college program, where he studied Fine Art, Illustration and Film.

After college, Mack worked in the film industry doing traditional glass matte paintings, scenic paintings, sculpting, model making, animation, storyboards and set design, all the while continuing to pursue his own art and music.

In the mid-eighties, Kevin began experimenting with computers to make his art and music. Recognizing it’s potential for film work, he helped pioneer the use of computer graphics for visual effects and became one of the industry’s most innovative leaders.  Recently he received an honorary Doctorate of Science degree from Art Center for his contributions to the field of motion picture visual effects.

Mack’s work is the result of ongoing research in a wide range of fields from the mathematics of complexity to neuroscience and human perception.  His work in Artificial Life and Rule Based Systems, used on “What Dreams May Come” and “Fight Club”, inspired the development of tissue simulation software that is now being used for virtual stem cell research.  In 2006, Mack received the title of Honorary Neuroscientist, from UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, for his lectures there on perception, visualization and creativity.

Mack’s visionary abstract dimensional images and animations explore infinity, complexity, perception and consciousness and have been exhibited at The Siggraph Art Gallery, Cannibal Flower, The Hive, The Los Angeles Center for Digital Art and Sony Pictures Imageworks. in 1998, Kevin’s animated film “Annihilation Becomes Creation Through a Stretch of the Imagination” was featured in the Siggraph Electronic Theater. This year he created an abstract animated piece for the opening of the new Siggraph Computer Animation Festival at the Nokia theater in Los Angeles. He also exhibited works in the Siggraph Art Gallery. Kevin will be exhibiting several pieces in the Visual Amalgam event at the James Gray Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica in October.

Mack is a native of Los Angeles, California, where he lives with his wife, artist Snow Mack and their sons, Jon and Ray.

SLAC Menlo Park, Calif.—Jets of particles streaming from black holes in far-away galaxies operate differently than previously thought, according to a study published today in Nature. The new study reveals that most of the jet’s light—gamma rays, the universe’s most energetic form of light—is created much farther from the black hole than expected and suggests a more complex shape for the jet.

The research was led by scientists at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, jointly located at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University, with participation from scientists from around the world. The study included data from more than 20 telescopes including the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and KANATA telescope.

High above the flat Milky Way galaxy, bright galaxies called blazars dominate the gamma-ray sky, discrete spots on the dark backdrop of the universe. As nearby matter falls into the black hole at the center of a blazar, “feeding” the black hole, it sprays some of this energy back out into the universe as a jet of particles.

“As the universe’s biggest accelerators, blazar jets are important to understand,” said KIPAC Research Fellow Masaaki Hayashida, who serves as corresponding author on the paper with KIPAC Astrophysicist Greg Madejski. “But how they are produced and how they are structured is not well understood. We’re still looking to understand the basics.”

Researchers had previously theorized that such jets are held together by strong magnetic field tendrils, while the jet’s light is created by particles revolving around these wisp-thin magnetic field “lines.”

Yet, until now, the details have been relatively poorly understood. The recent study upsets the prevailing understanding of the jet’s structure, revealing new insight into these mysterious yet mighty beasts.

“This work is a significant step toward understanding the physics of these jets,” said KIPAC Director Roger Blandford. “It’s this type of observation that is going to make it possible for us to figure out their anatomy.”

Locating the Gamma Rays

Over a full year of observations, the researchers focused on one particular blazar jet, located in the constellation Virgo, monitoring it in many different wavelengths of light: gamma-ray, X-ray, optical, infrared and radio. Blazars continuously flicker, and researchers expected continual changes in all types of light. Midway through the year, however, researchers observed a spectacular change in the jet’s optical and gamma-ray emission: a 20-day-long flare in gamma rays was accompanied by a dramatic change in the jet’s optical light.

Although most optical light is unpolarized—consisting of light rays with an equal mix of all polarizations or directionality—the extreme bending of energetic particles around a magnetic field line can polarize light. During the 20-day gamma-ray flare, optical light streaming from the jet changed its polarization. This temporal connection between changes in the gamma-ray light and changes in the optical light suggests that both types of light are created in the same geographical region of the jet; during those 20 days, something in the local environment altered to cause both the optical and gamma-ray light to vary.

“We have a fairly good idea of where in the jet optical light is created; now that we know the gamma rays and optical light are created in the same place, we can for the first time determine where the gamma rays come from,” said Hayashida.

This knowledge has far-reaching implications about how energy escapes a black hole. The great majority of energy released in a jet escapes in the form of gamma rays, and researchers previously thought that all of this energy must be released near the black hole, close to where the matter flowing into the black hole gives up its energy in the first place. Yet the new results suggest that—like optical light—the gamma rays are emitted relatively far from the black hole. This, Hayashida and Madejski said, in turn suggests that the magnetic field lines must somehow help the energy travel far from the black hole before it is released in the form of gamma rays.

“What we found was very different from what we were expecting,” said Madejski. “The data suggest that gamma rays are produced not one or two light days from the black hole [as was expected] but closer to one light year. That’s surprising.”

Rethinking Jet Structure

In addition to revealing where in the jet light is produced, the gradual change of the optical light’s polarization also reveals something unexpected about the overall shape of the jet: the jet appears to curve as it travels away from the black hole.

“At one point during a gamma-ray flare, the polarization rotated about 180 degrees as the intensity of the light changed,” said Hayashida. “This suggests that the whole jet curves.”

This new understanding of the inner workings and construction of a blazar jet requires a new working model of the jet’s structure, one in which the jet curves dramatically and the most energetic light originates far from the black hole. This, Madejski said, is where theorists come in. “Our study poses a very important challenge to theorists: how would you construct a jet that could potentially be carrying energy so far from the black hole? And how could we then detect that? Taking the magnetic field lines into account is not simple. Related calculations are difficult to do analytically, and must be solved with extremely complex numerical schemes.”

Theorist Jonathan McKinney, a Stanford University Einstein Fellow and expert on the formation of magnetized jets, agrees that the results pose as many questions as they answer. “There’s been a long-time controversy about these jets—about exactly where the gamma-ray emission is coming from. This work constrains the types of jet models that are possible,” said McKinney, who is unassociated with the recent study. “From a theoretician’s point of view, I’m excited because it means we need to rethink our models.”

As theorists consider how the new observations fit models of how jets work, Hayashida, Madejski and other members of the research team will continue to gather more data. “There’s a clear need to conduct such observations across all types of light to understand this better,” said Madejski. “It takes a massive amount of coordination to accomplish this type of study, which included more than 250 scientists and data from about 20 telescopes. But it’s worth it.”

With this and future multi-wavelength studies, theorists will have new insight with which to craft models of how the universe’s biggest accelerators work.

The gamma-ray observations used in this study were made by the Large Area Telescope on board the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, an astrophysics and particle physics partnership developed by NASA in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, along with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the United States. LAT collaboration members were key participants in the development of this research. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory managed construction of the LAT and now plays the central role in science operations, data processing and making scientific data available to collaborators for analysis.

The optical polarization data that played a crucial role in this study was taken by the KANATA collaboration, using the KANATA telescope located in Higashihiroshima, Japan. The KANATA telescope is operated by Hiroshima University.

The GASP-WEBT observatories participating in this work are Abastumani, Calar Alto, Campo Imperatore, Crimean, Kitt Peak (MDM), L’Ampolla, Lowell (Perkins-PRISM), Lulin, Roque de los Muchachos (KVA and Liverpool), San Pedro Ma´rtir, St Petersburg for the optical–NIR bands, and Mauna Kea (SMA),Medicina, Metsahovi, Noto and UMRAO for the millimeter radio band.

The campaign also included data from NASA satellites Swift and the ROSSI X-ray Timing Explorer, and the Japanese satellite Suzaku.

작성자: ksinae 시간: 오전 7:43

A red plume of hydrogen gas streams in three dimensions across a movie screen that almost spans the width of a dark conference room. Within the plume a brilliant white spot forms. The spot expands and quickly explodes into an orange and red cloud. Soon this cloud dissipates and a new bright dot grows elsewhere on the screen. In less than a minute, the movie has told the story of a young galaxy forming.

http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2008/12/09/lights-camera-render/

ITER is based on the ‘tokamak’ concept of magnetic confinement, in which the plasma is contained in a doughnut-shaped vacuum vessel. The fuel – a mixture of Deuterium and Tritium, two isotopes of Hydrogen – is heated to temperatures in excess of 150 million°C, forming a hot plasma. Strong magnetic fields are used to keep the plasma away from the walls; these are produced by superconducting coils surrounding the vessel, and by an electrical current driven through the plasma.

http://www.iter.org/MACH/Pages/VacuumVessel.aspx

Construction of the National Ignition Facility began at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1997, and was formally completed in May 2008.
The goal, as its name implies, is to harness the power of the largest laser ever built to start “ignition” – effectively a carefully controlled thermonuclear explosion.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8485669.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7972865.stm

http://www.myspace.com/matmos1

http://www.junkmedia.org/index.php?i=883

There’s a great mocking Morton Feldman quote about musical structure: “Structure? Structure? What are you building, a house?” The truth is that I think we kind of are building little model houses. I think of our songs as akin to a walk through someone’s house: first the entrance, then the first room, then another, and then another, and then another, and as you go, you pick up more clues to what the person is like, and sometimes you can’t square the riding boots in the hallway with the ballgowns in the closet. Our songs are kind of inconsistent, and they don’t usually repeat sections — we don’t use verse/chorus structure, which is why we’ve made so many things for Bjork that really don’t work. We don’t naturally think in terms of that kind of return again and again to an assertive, strong chorus “moment”. Martin says it’s more like free association and I think he’s right.

Spend a lot of time with a minimum of equipment and a maximum of enjoyment in the process of fiddling and experimenting and you will have fun. Don’t worry about buying the latest or most expensive anything, and don’t worry if at first you’re just imitating other people’s records that you like, that’s how almost everybody gets started. Gradually you will stumble onto things that you can call your own, that you find out for yourself. Don’t hang all your hopes on other people (labels, shows, scenes)- nobody is ever going to care about what you do as much as you do, and that’s just fine. Be ruthless about your own work- throw lots of it away, start over. Recycle things

Don Keye  Matmos interview

Feb 2/3, 3-6pm, critical media theory, Sylvere Lotringer
The first seminar is on the Situationists and extrapolate from the Society of the Spectacle to Virilio’s media instantaneity and Baudrillard’s simulations (also touch upon 60s architecture: archigram, oblique archi, Yves Klein’s archi of the air, superstudio, etc. consumerism and technology) ; the second seminar focuses on mobilization/immobilization, war and technology, etc.

Feb 4/5 10am, all day
cosm, Wes Smith Graham Wakefield
we’re going to focus on cosm and work on constructing sensors and actuators in virtual spaces. the basis for the workshop will be Braitenberg’s Vehicles book. (book ordered for library)