Its coming in April but if you haven't on your PVR's set Nova on PBS to series record, make sure you do. Always excellent programs.
Watched both episodes of this last night. It was very well done. Not a lot of new info but some beautiful pictures. The one thing that's been ringing in my head all day is our galaxy, the milky way is made up of 100 billion stars, and the universe has over 100 billion galaxies... so they said basically there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on earth.
Within a day of uniting egg and sperm using in vitro fertilization, nuclear DNA is removed from the embryo and implanted into a donor egg, whose own nucleus has been removed and discarded.
The resulting embryo inherits nuclear DNA, or genes, from both its parents but mitochondrial DNA from a second “mother“ who donated the healthy egg. In humans, about 37 genes are found in the mitochondria – the rest of the more than 20,000 known genes are in the DNA found in the nucleus.
For critics like Josephine Quintavalle of campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics that makes it “a step too far in meddling with the building blocks of human life.”
“No matter how small the contribution from the egg of the donor woman, the fact remains that an attempt is being made to create a three-parent child,” she said.
I wonder if they could get around this by using a de-nucleated somatic cell from the father. Then there would only be two "parents". The obvious scientific issue would then be if the transplanted nucleus is sufficient for embryogenesis, or does it require maternal cytoplasmic factors. Pretty sure others have already shown that the later is not required
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I wonder if they could get around this by using a de-nucleated somatic cell from the father. Then there would only be two "parents". The obvious scientific issue would then be if the transplanted nucleus is sufficient for embryogenesis, or does it require maternal cytoplasmic factors. Pretty sure others have already shown that the later is not required
That is rather peculiar, and a good question. I can hunt down one of my genetics proffs, want me to do it?
Ok, before I e-mail my proff and likely make a fool out of myself, it is stated in the article that a donor egg is used, not a somatic cell. I believe that somatic cytosolic means are not optimal for consistent positive results to appear. This is so much like cloning, but it is not quite. Message me if you want me to figure something out, like if myou wanted to know if somatic cells (in general) would provide a means of healthy development. If maternal somatic cells are viable, I don't see why paternal somatic cells would be inviable.
Fireball caught by many cameras in the midwest last night.
Crazy that 4 or 5 of them streaked across the same patch of sky one after another!
On a serious note, these fireball videos (including the one last year over Alberta and Saskatchewan) just put another nail in the coffin of the UFO dreamers.
It is an example of a sighting that, even though it lasts only a few seconds, is witnessed by hundreds of people over a large geographic area including video recordings from dozens of independent incidental sources.
Yet I am to believe that some 'guy' is able to witness an extraterrestrial craft with no other independent corroboration even though it can last upwards of minutes. I don't think so.
Crazy that 4 or 5 of them streaked across the same patch of sky one after another!]
If you watch the timecode in the top part of the screen you can see that it's just the same one over and over again.
Nevertheless, not unusual for a meteor to break up into several pieces in the upper atmosphere. From what I've been hearing, it's pretty likely that this one hit the ground somewhere and I'm sure there's an army of meteorite hunters out there looking for it right now.
SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is going to offer it's data collected by the Allen Telescope Array in California.
Quote:
Jill Tarter says technology has enabled nonscientists to help search for extraterrestrial life.
When the setiQuest site is fully developed, even kids will be able to search data
Tarter: More people combing data means a greater possibility of finding signs of life
This is mind boggling:
Quote:
All of the SETI searching over the past 50 years is equivalent to examining one 8-ounce glass of water from the Earth's oceans -- a lot of human effort, but not a lot of exploration.
SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is going to offer it's data collected by the Allen Telescope Array in California.
I think SETI has been doing something like this for years. I used to have an application on my desk-top that sorted SETI data. SETI was using the computing power of computers all over the world.
