It has been 50 years since scientists first created DNA in a test tube, stitching ordinary chemical ingredients together to make life's most extraordinary molecule. Until recently, however, even the most sophisticated laboratories could make only small snippets of DNA -- an extra gene or two to be inserted into corn plants, for example, to help the plants ward off insects or tolerate drought.

Now researchers are poised to cross a dramatic barrier: the creation of life forms driven by completely artificial DNA.

Scientists in Maryland have already built the world's first entirely handcrafted chromosome -- a large looping strand of DNA made from scratch in a laboratory, containing all the instructions a microbe needs to live and reproduce.

Synthetic DNA on the Brink of Yielding New Life Forms - washingtonpost.com

Human skin cells have been reprogrammed by two groups of scientists to mimic embryonic stem cells with the potential to become any tissue in the body.

The breakthrough promises a plentiful new source of cells for use in research into new treatments for many diseases.

BBC NEWS | Health | Skin transformed into stem cells

The New Scientist must hire someone to trawl through the arXiv in the hopes of getting the science news one step ahead of everyone else. Unfortunately, its record for distinguishing good science from bad science is not all that great, so I was pretty skeptical when I was pointed to an article on a new theory of everything™.
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The problem is that Lisi has ignored much of physics, where he adds normal numbers to vectors and other similar no-nos (imagine adding a speed to an energy and you have got exactly what Lisi has done). He has found that the chosen symmetry operations correspond to the symmetry groups of particles—not that surprising, considering the number of symmetry operations he has at his disposal—but he hasn't checked to see if the masses come out as found experimentally because he can't; once you put nonsense into a model, the only thing that comes out is nonsense.

oh well!!

Upon further review, surfer's new Theory of Everything severely deficient

While most of this is over my head. Is it possible that this could become the Grand Unified Theory we are all looking forward to?

Even if it isn't the pdf is very interesting.

Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything - Telegraph

By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
November 15, 2007

A comet that has delighted backyard astronomers in recent weeks after an unexpected eruption has now grown larger than the sun.

The sun remains by far the most massive object in the solar system, with an extended influence of particles that reaches all the planets. But the comparatively tiny Comet Holmes has released so much gas and dust that its extended atmosphere, or coma, is larger than the diameter of the sun.

Incredible Comet Bigger than the Sun

"If you're good, if you're any good at all, you put yourself in a situation where reality could come around and -- WHACK! -- knock you down. That's what you really are afraid of. If you don't have that, you're not playing science,"

"That lab was a strange, strange place. A lot of weird, weird, different kinds of people. The dean would look at it and say, 'That's a strange damn place.' I'd answer: 'Have you looked at me?' "

Much of the work was some variation of two basic LTP experiments. One involved isolating single neurons, which, using high-powered microscopes, were identified, then pinched with a clamp to hold them in place. This was exceptionally tedious. Researchers could go entire days without successfully clamping a single cell.

"There is so damned much housekeeping. The problem is, biology is a very horizontal science. You have this result over here, that one over there. None of it lines up."

One man's epic quest for understanding

On Sunday afternoon, Grove is unleashing a scathing critique of the nation's biomedical establishment. In a speech at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, he challenges big pharma companies, many of which haven't had an important new compound approved in ages, and academic researchers who are content with getting NIH grants and publishing research papers with little regard to whether their work leads to something that can alleviate disease, to change their ways.

There is only one section of this entire article that makes sense. It is the final question of the interview, where Grove discusses the problem of conformity in the biomedical sciences. With that, I agree...with the grant system the way it is, there really is no good place (at least where government money is concerned) for extreme innovation. However, I think that Grove seriously underestimates the complexity of drug design and misses a basic understanding of much of biomedical research. The reason why there are no "new" big therapies for diseases like Parkinsons is that research hasn't found a way to fix it yet. Its not that we are not trying hard enough. As well, although not every scientific paper published seems to have a direct line to therapies, they are all important. The human body, and even just a single human cell, is so complex that even after over 100 years of intense study, there are still hundreds of questions left about how basic cellular machinery works. Its not that the pharmaceutical companies are hording a bunch of great new drugs and are too lazy to getting around to testing them. Its just that all too often, a drug will work great until it gets to clinical trials, where the complexity of the body causes the drug not to work as well as it did in the mouse models. Until we understand *EVERY* pathway and machine within a cell and between cells and between organs, we will never be able to design drugs that will cure all the horrible diseases. He makes an analogy between designing computer chips and design of drugs, which I think is a poor analogy. Whereas he can open a computer, take it entirely apart, and put it back together (thus understanding every connection making that computer run), biomedical scientists are unable to do the same with the human body. They struggle to make sense of the human body by studying every organism that is ethical to work on, and try to draw parallels. Anyway, I wish I could have been at this talk to see the reaction of the crowd. Something tells me he didn't receive a standing ovation. While the funding system may need an overhaul in some people's opinion, innovation isn't entirely muted in the research community. The NIH do have grants for new investigators and new lines of research, and as well, the NSF funds science that is a bit more out of the box as well. I think Grove should have done a bit more research before unleashing on the biomedical research community. I am sure it must be frustrating to be diagnosed with a horrible disease such as Parkinsons, but instead of lashing out, perhaps his time would be better spent raising awareness and funds for the biomedical research community.

Intels Andy Grove roasts the biomedical industry

Scientists have shown how cannabis may trigger psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia.

A King's College London team gave healthy volunteers the active ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).

They then recorded reduced activity in an area of the brain which keeps inappropriate thoughts at bay.

this is particularly fascinating to me personally since it was cannabis which induced my first breakdown and i'm still feeling the consequences on my life 14 years later

BBC NEWS | Health | Cannabis 'disrupts brain centre'

Some animals are surprisingly sensitive to the plight of others. Chimpanzees, who cannot swim, have drowned in zoo moats trying to save others. Given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also deliver an electric shock to a companion, rhesus monkeys will starve themselves for several days.

Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior - New York Times

Emergence is the development of complex organized systems. Like intelligence in the field of AI, or agents in distributed artificial intelligence, emergence is a central concept in complex systems

Emergence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia