HoodedHawk

I must have missed something when I went to hear Michael Crichton give a talk a few months ago. I didn’t think he really hit on anything I took as controversial. He did touch on global warming, but I didn’t come away with the idea that he didn’t believe it was happening; at worst he thought it wasn’t happening as much as the “media hype”. He focused more on complexity and complex systems. I need to go back and listen to his talk again. Or, I can just read his talk, since a copy is on his website. I do know that while he mentioned his book a few times, he didn’t focus on it.

What made me think of this and resolve to find the time to read his book, “State of Fear”, (hey, I have a copy already) was something I read in Locus: “‘State of Fear’ – which denies the existence of global warming – received a journalism award from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists“. Sheesh! Global warming does exist, as any rational person will agree. There’s a big difference between denying the existence of global warming, and debating the amount of warming. The National Academy of Sciences states unequivocally in it’s report (see summary):

Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise. Temperatures are, in fact, rising. The changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of natural variability. Human-induced warming and associated sea level rises are expected to continue through the 21st century. Secondary effects are suggested by computer model simulations and basic physical reasoning. These include increases in rainfall rates and increased susceptibility of semi-arid regions to drought. The impacts of these changes will be critically dependent on the magnitude of the warming and the rate with which it occurs.

The Jan 12, 2006 issue of the journal Nature has a couple of interesting papers about generating embryonic stem cells, and a nice overview article. The image to the left here is a scan from a page in my notebook (click to enlarge). I couldn’t link directly to the graphic from Nature. For the overview (and the original graphic) see [1]; I’ll summarize here:

The “classical” way to produce embryonic stem (es) cells is to derive them from early “embryos”, or blastocysts, before they are implanted in a uterus. Fig A: The inner cells are removed and cultured into an es cell line. However, now the embryo is unable to implant.

Fig B: A new method [2] adapts a method used in IVF clinics for genetic diagnosis. A cell is removed from the 8-cell stage and used to create es cell lines. The 7-cell mass goes on (or could go on) to form a blastocyst and then implant.

One of the issues with both of the above methods is that the es cell lines produced are a mix of the two parents. A goal is to create a stem-cell line that is identical to a particular donor. At this point, only Nuclear Transfer (NT) (Fig C) can do this. However, the continuing ethical issue is that you again have to sacrifice the “embryo”. However, unlike the “classical” process, 99% of the blastocysts/embryos in NT fail – many at later stages putting the mother in danger. As an aside, when such an NT blastocyst is allowed to implant and grow, it is called “reproductive cloning”. Since 99% of the time such implants fail, the US National Academies have called for a ban on such “reproductive cloning”. [This is NOT a call for a ban on es cell line generation via this method.]

Fig D shows Alternative Nuclear Transfer (ANT). ANT was proposed by William Hurlbut, a member of President Bush’s Council on Bioethics. Meissner and Jaenisch [3] have shown a proof of technique for ANT. Basically, ANT relies on a modified nucleus (in this case the gene cdx2 is turned off) being used, which causes the resulting blastocyst to be unable to implant. However, even though the blastocyst can never implant, inner cells from the blastocyst can be used to derive es cells. This is proposed as a way to get by the ethical issue, since the blastocyst in ANT can never develop into an embryo due to the cdx2 mutation. However, it still bumps up against the issue of when life actually begins – which is not a scientific issue.

[1] Weissman, I.L., Nature 439, 145-148 (2006)
[2] Chung, Y. et al. Nature 439, 216-219 (2006)
[3] Meissner, A, & Jaenisch, R. Nature 439, 212-215 (2006)

Brandon’s school had their Winter Concert tonight; Brandon plays the viola. Some pictures are up (though he was hard to get since he was in the back row/corner), and I recorded most of the concert.

Brandon decided he wanted to put up a website about videogames, books for kids, etc. so I setup a blog for him. Not much there yet (unless you like Starwars Battlefront), but we’ll see how often he updates it. Hopefully more often than I update my own. :)

See: BrandonBoswell/brandon/.com

The boys and I attempted to go to the Navy History Museum at the Naval Shipyards in DC, but I got lost (who knew there was more than one 6th street in DC, and 50 S is actually 50 W – and turns into New York Ave)? No wonder I normally take the Metro in to DC (and I’ve been here > 5 years!). Anyway, we ended up close to the Library of Congress, and the Folger Shakespeare Library, so we stopped in the Folger. The Library itself is closed to the general public, but they do have a long corridor with some exhibits. One of the permanent exhibits is a First Folio of Shakespeare, from 1623. Turns out the Folger holds one-third of the existing copies of the First Folios of Shakespeare’s plays. One of them they keep on permanent display. I didn’t have a mono or tripod with me, but I took a couple of pictures. As a book collector, it was cool to be this close to the first printed edition of some of the greatest works in English. The kids were less impressed, at least until I told them it was almost 400 years old. Later in the day as Dylan was telling Kirsten about the visit, he mentioned “and we saw this really old book, like 100,000 years old”. Close enough.

We didn’t go into the Library of Congress (one Library a day for the kids). That’s for another trip.