Eideard

Michael Morton in the middle

State District Judge Louis Sturns of Tarrant County will lead a court of inquiry into complaints of prosecutorial misconduct against former Williamson County prosecutor Ken Anderson, who won a murder conviction in 1987 against a defendant who spent 25 years in prison before he was exonerated by DNA evidence.

Michael Morton was convicted of fatally beating his wife in their Austin home in 1986. Attorneys say the wrongful conviction would not have happened if Anderson, who is now a Williamson County state district judge, had not deliberately withheld evidence that indicated Morton’s innocence.

“This is a historic moment for Texas justice,” said John Raley, the Houston lawyer who has worked pro bono on Morton’s case for seven years. “We are confident that Judge Sturns will handle this important case with the seriousness and probity demonstrated by Judge [Sid] Harle and [Texas Supreme Court Chief] Justice [Wallace] Jefferson…”

Last week, Harle recommended that Jefferson appoint such a court after he decided that there was probable cause to believe that Anderson should face charges of contempt of court, tampering with evidence and tampering with government records…

Morton contended during his 1987 trial that his wife’s killer must have entered their home after he left for work about 5:30 a.m. Anderson told the jury that Morton, who had no criminal history, beat his wife to death in a perverted rage because she denied him sex. Meanwhile, Morton’s lawyers say, Anderson was concealing evidence that pointed to the very scenario Morton described.

Morton was sentenced to life in prison but continued to maintain his innocence. Starting in 2005, he pleaded with the court to test DNA on a collection of evidence, including a bandanna found near his home shortly after the murder.

Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley fought the request for DNA testing, based on advice from Anderson. In 2010, though, a Texas court ordered the testing. The results showed Christine Morton’s blood on the bandanna mixed with the DNA of Mark A. Norwood, a felon who lived near the Mortons at the time.

A Williamson County grand jury indicted Norwood this month. Norwood’s DNA has also been identified on a pubic hair found at the scene of the similar murder in 1988 in Austin…

The Innocence Project probably could spend all their time in Texas and Illinois – and that would cover 99% of those convicted illegally of violent crimes. Do we have any states left where the justice system considers protecting the innocent as important as getting a high conviction rate?

 
Har!

Thanks, Ursarodinia

A prickly new arrival made its first public appearance at Perth Zoo yesterday. The Echidna Puggle, the latest breeding success at the zoo, was given a quick weigh and inspection by keepers, before being placed back in its nursery burrow where it will spend the next two to three months. The youngster weighed in at 526 grams and will continue to grow over the next three to four years before reaching the normal adult weight of around 4 kg.

The Puggle, named Kai (Nyoongar for surprise), weighed less than one gram when it hatched in September and spent the first two months of its life in its mother’s pouch. “Once the puggle’s spines started to emerge the mother deposited it in the nursery burrow,” Perth Zoo’s Australian Fauna Supervisor Arthur Ferguson said…

…“Once Kai leaves the nursery burrow, we will take a couple of small hairs for DNA sexing,” Mr Ferguson said “The previous five echidnas born at Perth Zoo were all females, so we are hoping that Kai is a male.” Echidnas are very difficult to breed in captivity. Perth Zoo began studying their secretive breeding habits and reproductive biology a few years ago…

The work undertaken with Short-beaked Echidnas may also help in conserving its endangered cousins, the Long-beaked Echidnas, which are facing extinction in the wild. Perth Zoo’s research provides a solid foundation for a captive breeding program to be established for Long-beaked Echidnas if required.

Delightful. And cuter than some humans.

Thanks, Ursarodinia

A metal thief was caught after leaving a can of Polish lager covered with his DNA on the roof of a church he was raiding.

Saulius Ciuzas, 39, stripped £10,000 worth of lead from the 12th century church but left a near full can of Lech beer on the roof of the church.

He made off with 13 strips of lead from St Peter and St Paul Church in Algarkirk, Boston, Lincs., but church warden Peter Wilson found the can the morning after the theft on April 24 this year, Lincoln Crown Court heard on Friday.

Phil Howes, prosecuting, said: “Next to where the lead had been removed was a Lech beer can. It was upright and still had liquid in it. The can was linked to Ciuzas because his DNA was found on it.”

Lithuanian migrant Ciuzas lived 40 miles away in Lincoln but was tracked down and arrested…

He was jailed for 12 months after he was found guilty of the lead theft.

Tidying up after stealing includes a lot more than fingerprints on the chimney nowadays.

Looks great full-screen, ~11 minutes and worth every second

Thanks, Ursarodinia

Anyone mind if I pick some ganja from the field next door?

The CIA organised a fake vaccination programme in the town where it believed Osama bin Laden was hiding in an elaborate attempt to obtain DNA from the fugitive al-Qaida leader’s family, a Guardian investigation has found.

As part of extensive preparations for the raid that killed Bin Laden in May, CIA agents recruited a senior Pakistani doctor to organise the vaccine drive in Abbottabad, even starting the “project” in a poorer part of town to make it look more authentic, according to Pakistani and US officials and local residents.

The doctor, Shakil Afridi, has since been arrested by the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) for co-operating with American intelligence agents…

The vaccination plan was conceived after American intelligence officers tracked an al-Qaida courier, known as Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti, to what turned out to be Bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound last summer. The agency monitored the compound by satellite and surveillance from a local CIA safe house in Abbottabad, but wanted confirmation that Bin Laden was there before mounting a risky operation inside another country…

Pakistani intelligence became aware of the doctor’s activities during the investigation into the US raid in which Bin Laden was killed on the top floor of the Abbottabad house. Islamabad refused to comment officially on Afridi’s arrest, but one senior official said: “Wouldn’t any country detain people for working for a foreign spy service?”

The doctor is one of several people suspected of helping the CIA to have been arrested by the ISI, but he is thought to be the only one still in custody…

I love the outrage from sleazy Pakistan bureaucrats when their purported standards are breached. We’re supposed to accept the myth of inviolable comradeship from Ferengis who would sell their nation to the highest bidder in any war fought with gold pieces. And also the second-high bidder, the third, etc…

U.S. forces administered Muslim religious rites for Osama bin Laden aboard the USS Carl Vinson, pictured, on Monday in the Arabian Sea, a senior defense official said.

The official, who discussed the matter on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, declined to specify the methods of identification, but two Obama administration officials said DNA evidence confirmed the death.

The officials claimed the DNA evidence provides a match with 99.9% confidence…

The U.S. is believed to have collected DNA samples from bin Laden family members in the years since the 9/11 attacks that triggered the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan. It was unclear whether the U.S. also had fingerprints or some other means to identify the body on site…

The body was photographed before being buried at sea, although no images have been released by the Obama administration.

The U.S. official who disclosed the burial at sea said it would have been difficult to find a country willing to accept the remains. Obama said the remains had been handled in accordance with Islamic custom, which requires speedy burial…

Burial at sea also removes any focal point, access for worship by nutballs still devoted to Bin Laden’s murderous ideology.

It was not clear Monday whether the Obama administration intended to release its photos of bin Laden’s body.

In July 2003, when U.S. forces killed Saddam Hussein’s sons, Odai and Qusai, in a gunbattle in northern Iraq, the U.S. military released graphic after-death photographs in an effort to prove to Iraqis that they were dead.

I think most rational people know that jihadists aren’t especially interested in scientific proof. Evidence rarely means little to True Believers.

Scientists have identified a clutch of subtle genetic changes that have shaped our minds and bodies into the unique form that sets humans apart from chimpanzees and the rest of the animal kingdom…

The findings offer up the humbling conclusion that the secret of human success may owe more to what we lost along the path of evolution, rather than anything we gained.

When the human genome was first deciphered more than a decade ago, some scientists expected to find extra genes that explained why humans had an intellectual edge over their closest living relatives and other species. But since diverging from chimpanzees around seven million years ago, it turns out that our human ancestors lost several hundred snippets of DNA, which together led to traits that are uniquely human, the researchers claim.

In ditching these chunks of DNA, our ancient ancestors lost facial whiskers and short, tactile spines on their penises. The latter development is thought to have paved the way for more intimate sex and monogamous relationships. The loss of other DNA may have been crucial in allowing humans to grow larger brains.

Intriguingly, hardly any of the lost DNA was from genes, which make the proteins that are the building blocks of life. Instead, the missing DNA came from areas of the genome that regulate where and when certain genes are active…

Read the rest of this entry »

The quest to generate replacement tissue in the lab faces questions over mature cells whose DNA is “reprogrammed” so that they grow with youthful vigour into new cells.

Cellular reprogramming last year emerged as the new frontier in the heavily promoted search to grow cells to replenish heart, liver, muscle or other tissue damaged by disease, age or accident.

In 2010, scientists announced they had been able to wipe out the DNA programming of mature (also called adult) cells, yielding versatile stem cells that would be the raw material for organ-specific cells.

That announcement sparked great excitement. These reverse-engineered cells seemed to look and act as an alternative to stem cells from human embryos — a miraculously potent but controversial and limited source.

But a new study, published in Nature on Thursday, suggests the hoped-for substitute, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), does not become a completely blank slate, as thought. Instead, peripheral parts of their code are riddled with indelible marks, “a consistent pattern of reprogramming errors,” its authors said.

“Embryonic stem cells are considered the gold standard for pluripotency,” said lead researcher Joseph Ecker of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, referring to the ability of stem cells to form different types of cells found in the body…

The researchers found that the transformation from adult to stem cell was invariably incomplete or inadequate, leaving telltale “hotspots” in the DNA code.

Moreover, these reprogramming quirks were passed on when iPSCs were then coaxed into a more specialised cell type…

The new work added to previous research that shows iPSCs are indeed different from embyronic stem cells.

Science discovers more – and moves on. Ideologues, demagogues, who consider themselves somehow ordained to pass judgement on knowledge as “good or bad” will continue to march backwards into their particular historic dead-end.

The next hydrangea you grow could literally save your life. With the help of the Department of Defense, a biologist at Colorado State University has taught plant proteins how to detect explosives. Never let it be said that horticulture can’t fight terrorism…

It only took a small engineering nudge to deputize a plant’s natural, evolutionary self-defense mechanisms for threat detection. “Plants can’t run and hide,” says June Medford, the biologist who’s spent the last seven years figuring out how to deputize plants for counterterrorism. “If a bug comes by, it has to respond to it. And it already has the infrastructure to respond.”

That would be the “receptor” proteins in its DNA, which respond naturally to threatening stimuli. If a bug chews on a leaf, for instance, the plant releases a series of chemical signals called terpenoids — “a cavalry call,” Medford says, that thickens the leaf cuticle in defense…

It all started in 2003 with a DARPA program to grow circuitry. Back then, Medford heard about a program from the far-out Pentagon research arm called Biological Input/Output Systems, geared to produce “rational design and engineering of genetic regulatory circuits, signal-transduction pathways and metabolism.”

The program was essentially a call for computer-designed receptors. “I was a plant biologist,” Medford recalls, “I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we put it all together, like Reese’s peanut butter and chocolate.’”

That led to a $2 million grant from Darpa, with the Office of Naval Research kicking in another million. But by far the biggest benefactor to Medford’s research is the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which last year gave her a $7.9 million grant to get the bomb-sniffing ferns from the lab to the real world…

Eventually, Medford expects to bring the bomb-detecting plants to market through genetically modified seedlings. Whatever it costs, it’s got to be less than the $100,000 to $200,000 that a backscatter “junk scanner” can run.

Since it appears any green plant can be modified to suit the purpose, eventually – consider the potential for mutual support between anti-terror aspidistra and medical marijuana! The possibilities are endless. If not vegan.