Eideard

Nearly two-thirds of Americans prefer the traditional religious greeting of “Merry Christmas” to the non-specific “Happy Holidays,” a poll found.

Of adults surveyed nationally, 64 percent said people should say, “Merry Christmas,” while 31 percent believe the appropriate greeting is “Happy Holidays,” the Knights of Columbus-Marist poll released Friday said.

For more than five decades, the Knights have been at the forefront of the campaign to “Keep Christ in Christmas,” producing public service announcements with the “Keep Christ in Christmas” message since the 1980s.

“That we prefer ‘Merry Christmas‘ by such a wide margin is indicative of the importance that Christmas has in the lives of the great majority of Americans,” Knights of Columbus Supreme Knight Carl Anderson said.

Reflections of vulgate communication skills is always dependent on context. If Mr. Supreme Knight Carl Anderson was trolling the streets of Berlin, say, in 1935 – no doubt his greeting would have been, “Heil, Hitler”. In fact, I have no reason to believe his peers, his antecedents said anything different.

We’ve all said something this dumb one time or another:

I don’t think our extended family has a single Chevy pickup anymore. Most of the pickups are Dodges, preferably diesel. But, the commercial makes me chuckle everytime I see it.

Viagra helps ailing hearts to recover in a surprising way – by making them less stiff, scientists have learned.

The impotency drug causes too-rigid heart chamber walls to become more elastic.

The research explains how Viagra might benefit patients with diastolic heart failure. People with the condition have abnormally inflexible ventricles, the heart’s major pumping chambers, that do not fill sufficiently with blood. This leads to blood ”backing up” in the lungs and breathing difficulties…

Scientists found that Viagra activates an enzyme that causes a protein in heart muscle cells to relax…

The drug’s active ingredient, sildenafil, inhibits an enzyme involved in the mechanism that regulates blood flow. However, the enzyme is slightly different in different parts of the body.

But, then, you already knew that.

The computer assisted design (CAD) tools that made it possible to fabricate integrated circuits with millions of transistors may soon be coming to the biological sciences. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have developed CAD-type models and simulations for RNA molecules that make it possible to engineer biological components or “RNA devices” for controlling genetic expression in microbes. This holds enormous potential for microbial-based sustainable production of advanced biofuels, biodegradable plastics, therapeutic drugs and a host of other goods now derived from petrochemicals.

“Because biological systems exhibit functional complexity at multiple scales, a big question has been whether effective design tools can be created to increase the sizes and complexities of the microbial systems we engineer to meet specific needs,” says Jay Keasling, director of JBEI…“Our work establishes a foundation for developing CAD platforms to engineer complex RNA-based control systems that can process cellular information and program the expression of very large numbers of genes. Perhaps even more importantly, we have provided a framework for studying RNA functions and demonstrated the potential of using biochemical and biophysical modeling to develop rigorous design-driven engineering strategies for biology…”

Synthetic biology is an emerging scientific field in which novel biological devices, such as molecules, genetic circuits or cells, are designed and constructed, or existing biological systems, such as microbes, are re-designed and engineered. A major goal is to produce valuable chemical products from simple, inexpensive and renewable starting materials in a sustainable manner. As with other engineering disciplines, CAD tools for simulating and designing global functions based upon local component behaviors are essential for constructing complex biological devices and systems. However, until this work, CAD-type models and simulation tools for biology have been very limited…

JBEI researchers are now using their RNA CAD-type models and simulations as well as the ribozyme and aptazyme devices they constructed to help them engineer metabolic pathways that will increase microbial fuel production. JBEI is one of three DOE Bioenergy Research Centers established by DOE’s Office of Science to advance the technology for the commercial production of clean, green and renewable biofuels. A key to JBEI’s success will be the engineering of microbes that can digest lignocellulosic biomass and synthesize from the sugars transportation fuels that can replace gasoline, diesel and jet fuels in today’s engines…

While the RNA models and simulations developed at JBEI to date fall short of being a full-fledged RNA CAD platform, Keasling, Carothers and their coauthors are moving towards that goal.

Cripes. Twenty-eight years ago I thought it was a big deal when I was instructing users on AutoCAD. Adding new modules to layout the drainage of subdivisions and recycle rainwater was finally possible with the horsepower we finally had in AT-level desktop computers. Woo-hoo!

Folks getting into the next generations of computational analysis are going to think they’re in a new dimension.

Harvesting dryland corn

Monsanto received deregulation from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for MON 87460, the company’s first-generation drought-tolerant trait for corn.

Drought-tolerant corn is projected to be introduced as part of an overall system that would offer farmers improved genetics, agronomic practices and the drought trait. Monsanto plans to conduct on-farm trials in 2012 to give farmers experience with the product, while generating data to help inform the company’s commercial decisions…

…Hobart Beeghly, U.S. product management lead said, “This spring farmers in the Western Great Plains will have an opportunity to see how the system performs on their farm through on-farm trials…”

The drought-tolerant trait is part of Monsanto’s Yield and Stress collaboration in plant biotechnology with Germany-based BASF. The collaboration is aimed at developing higher-yielding crops and crops more tolerant to adverse environmental conditions, such as drought…

The USDA deregulation concludes the U.S. federal regulatory process. Import approvals in key corn import markets with functioning regulatory systems are in progress.

Most Americans stil don’t realize that the bulk of corn we read about being grown in the United States is there to feed cattle and hogs, poultry, critters we end up eating – who are fed in the first place with maize.

Dryland farming ain’t ever easy; but, developing drought-tolerant grains – for example – saves more money and energy in the long range than trying to keep land arable with irrigation and imported water.

 
NASA astronaut Dan Burbank shared a matchless view of Comet Lovejoy from the International Space Station, showing the comet’s magnificent tail from a vantage point high above the atmosphere.

“I probably saw the most amazing thing I have ever seen in space, and that’s saying an awful lot, because every day is filled with amazing things,” he told Detroit’s WDIV-TV in an interview.

Hundreds of photos, captured from an altitude of 240 miles, were assembled into the video you see here. You can see the comet rise from the horizon, shining through the green line of atmospheric airglow, and then fade away as the sunrise breaks out in brilliance. It’s a view only three people can see with their own eyes — although that little list will rise to six on Friday when three more crewmates arrive on a Russian Soyuz craft.

Breathtaking. I’m happy I’m alive in a time where at least I can watch something like this secondhand.

The population of the United States grew this year at its slowest rate since the 1940s…as the gloomy economy continued to depress births and immigration fell to its lowest level since 1991…

And just maybe a few other factors like reflecting upon opportunity, choices in general?

The population grew by 2.8 million people from April 2010 to July 2011, according to the bureau’s new estimates. The annual increase, about 0.7 percent when calculated for the year that ended in July 2011, was the smallest since 1945, when the population fell by 0.3 percent in the last year of World War II.

“The nation’s overall growth rate is now at its lowest point since before the baby boom,” the Census Bureau director, Robert M. Groves, said in a statement…Underlying the modest growth was an immigration level that was the lowest in 20 years…slowed substantially when the housing market collapsed, and the jobs associated with its boom that were popular among immigrants disappeared…

A lagging birth rate also contributed. Births in the United States declined precipitously during the recession and its aftermath, down by 7.3 percent from 2007 to 2010, according to Kenneth M. Johnson, the senior demographer at the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. There were slightly over four million births in the year that ended in July, the lowest since 1999.

Economic trauma tends to depress births. In the Great Depression, the birth rate fell by a third, Mr. Johnson said. It is unclear whether the current dip means that births are being delayed or that they are foregone, as they were in the Depression, he said.

In a particularly striking measure of economic distress, birth rates among Hispanics, who are concentrated in states hardest hit by the economic downturn, like Florida and Arizona, declined by 17 percent from 2007 to 2010, Mr. Johnson said. That is compared with a 3.8 percent decline for whites and a 6.7 percent decline for blacks. Rates dropped most sharply among young Hispanics, down by 23 percent for women ages 20 to 24 between 2007 and 2010.

Or – one might hope – sufficient education about everything from equal opportunities in a macho culture to the addition of birth control and abortion to a woman’s choices may have sufficiently affected women in the Hispanic population to bring the birth rate more in line with previous immigrant populations – after a generation or two. Certainly, a greater likelihood than Catholic ideology in the Hispanic community reversing what are normal processes among incomers unto the 2nd and 3rd generations of citizenship.

I doubt if he was any happier when my father waited till the funeral was over and done – and then told the priest to take his church and archaic rules and stick them where the sun don’t shine. And the whole family walked away from that church.

Another example of how NOT to dress for a casual stroll through customs

A stunning model proved to be more than meets the eye after she was arrested by Italian police trying to smuggle more than £250,000 of cocaine into the country inside breast and buttock implants.

The 33-year-old woman, identified only by the initials MFM, was held by officers as she tried to distract them with her plunging neckline and tight-fitting outfit at Rome’s Fiumicino airport. But her plan backfired as they were so captivated by her looks they pulled her over for questioning and discovered the drugs when she failed to explain why she had been to South America.

The woman had flown to Rome from Sao Paolo in Brazil and a search by female officers revealed the fake breast and buttock implants she was wearing had also been used to hide 5.5lbs of cocaine…

”She had tried to distract them with a plunging neckline and tight outfit but they stopped her for questioning because she was so alluring and her story about why she was in South America just fell apart.

‘She actually became quite aggressive and was taken away for more detailed questioning by two female officers and that’s when the drugs were found hidden in the plastic breast and buttock implants.

‘The extremely pure cocaine crystals were found moulded into the implants that she was wearing…’

Commenters almost everywhere seem to agree it was a nutty attempt to sneak the drugs through – by making this babe look even more curvaceous. I would think that NOT attracting attention makes more sense than focusing the eyeballs of customs coppers on her bosom and butt.

Click to enlarge

Three years ago, Edge collaborated with The Serpentine Gallery in London in a program of “table-top experiments” as part of the Serpentine’s Experiment Marathon . This live event was featured along with the Edge/Serpentine collaboration: “What Is Your Formula? Your Equation? Your Algorithm? Formulae For the 21st Century.”

Hans Ulrich Obrist, curator of the Serpentine, invited Edge to collaborate in his latest project, The Serpentine Map Marathon, produced in conjunction with DLD, Digital – Life – Design… The multi-dimensional Map Marathon featured non-stop live presentations by over 50 artists, poets, writers, philosophers, scholars, musicians, architects, designers and scientists.

Click here – to see images from that collaboration.

Thanks, Cornelia

Mexican Marine on guard outside a Veracruz police station
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

An entire municipal police force in Mexico has been disbanded as part of a campaign to root out corruption and improve security in the face of drug-related violence.

More than 900 officers in Veracruz-Boca del Rio are losing their jobs. The Mexican navy is taking over responsibility for law enforcement.

The move comes three months after 35 bodies were found dumped on a main road in the municipality, which includes part of the city of Veracruz…

Veracruz state governor Javier Duarte de Ochoa said the decision to disband the force was part of a national programme to reform the police.

“All those who belong to the now defunct Veracruz-Boca del Rio force can join the police again once they have past the tests of trustworthiness demanded by the national system of public security,” he said.

He did not say how long the navy would be in charge of policing the municipality, which is home to around 600,000 people and includes wealthy residential districts and popular tourist areas…

Corruption and infiltration of the police by criminals are among the biggest challenges Mexico faces in its fight against the cartels, says the BBC’s Ignacio de los Reyes in Mexico City.

As well as using troops to confront the gangs militarily, President Felipe Calderon has stressed the need to reform the police and judiciary as part of his strategy to restore public security.

More than 40,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in Mexico since December 2006, when Mr Calderon began deploying the military to fight the gangs.

Anyone out there feel like spending your holiday in Mexico?