judge order dna tests on texas sect children

the 416 children taken from the Texas community, "Yearning for Zion," a fundamentalist church of the jesus christ of latter day saints, will undergo dna tests in order to determine which parents each child belongs to.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7355779.stm

my question is, in this type of community, don't the children belong to ALL of the parents???
it appears that this tragic case will not be resolved any time soon.

Art Imitates Life in High-tech Seoul (posted by Esther)

.........genetic testing a now luxury?

From Australia's The Age:

"There's everything for the sleek geek in this city's hotels, writes Christina Pfeiffer.

Seoul's booming luxury hotel market is being driven less by international visitors than by the city's 10 million technology-savvy residents. Many Koreans live in small apartments with extended family, so inner-city weekends away are highly appealing.

To meet the demand, the five-star hotel chains, known here as super-deluxe, have colonised the city in the past few years.

Some hotels are going to great lengths to create environments and services to attract tech-savvy city dwellers. High-speed internet, flat-screen displays and fitness clubs equipped with the latest exercise gear are becoming standard.

The Samsung-owned Shilla Hotel offers a mobile phone in every guest room (guests pay for calls) among its high-tech refinements. Television volumes are linked to the in-room phones and automatically decrease when the phones are engaged; bathroom lights brighten gradually (handy for late-night visits) and toilets have an array of comfort features.

Wireless services extend to the hotel's sculpture garden. And there is an anti-ageing clinic offering state-of-the-art programs including genetic and heavy-metal contamination testing."

more at:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/seoul/hightech-luxury/2008/04/03/1206851076987.html

Genetic Design

One of our readings this week dealt with the hereditary possibilities of artistic talent. This is an uncertain topic, but some artists are certainly fascinated with genetics! I ran into these designs written by Ludvine Lechat for the program NodeBox, which is a python based graphics experimentation environment:

This project, actually a postgraduate program at Transmedia called 'Graphic Cellular Domestication' generates images, (instead of canvases, Lechat calls them 'tissues') which are compositions of heirarchies of 'cell' graphics, based on some basic genetic flavored algorithms.
But these images, based on Lechat's work, are more interesting to me. Maybe us:

Since NodeBox also has animation/interactivity capabilities, The author of the 'Evolution' library has extended graphic cellular domestication to include graphic evolution, genetic recombination, and natural (or mathematical) selection. I like this guy:

You can watch movies of this in action by following the link:

Creatures pit their strengths against each other in the arena. Here, they get to fly around, flock together, hunt down enemies, struggle for survival. In the example below, the Docole is pitted against three of the Timude species, which is kind of a long and boring match because the predator is way to dumb to catch any of Timude, and the Timude are way to weak to fight the Docole. What you get is a lot of running around in circles.

There are a number of other genetically (or more or less, survival of the fittest) inclined, wonderful games available. For example, if you have a PC, a maternal drive, and an interest in genetic experiments, i suggest checking out Creatures 1 or 2.
In these games you bred and spliced creatures, and could (using the 'genetics kit') create and edit your own genomes, and then watch them in action. Because they evolved, large communities formed around them, exchanging genomes, duplicating/distributing ideal 'types' and writing more nutritious versions of the fruits and vegetables in the world. Which also reproduced, but i'm not sure how much evolution went on in the agricultural side of the game...
Another game that mac users are anticipating the release of is: SPORE by Maxis, the same company which developed Sim City and 'the sims'.

DNA BASED COMPUTERS, what? SCIENTISTS WRITE CODE INTO LIVING ORGANISMS (posted by Lale)

My zine will be on this topic but till then...

"DNA computing is a form of computing which uses DNA, biochemistry and molecular biology, instead of the traditional silicon-based computer technologies. DNA computing, or, more generally, molecular computing, is a fast developing interdisciplinary area. R&D in this area concerns theory, experiments and applications of DNA computing."-Wikipedia. that was vague.

"Scientists have written a message into the DNA of a living organism, a breakthrough they believe could lead to a new era of organic computers capable of healing themselves if damaged. The researchers encoded Einstein's most famous equation and most prolific year into the genome of one the hardiest strains of bacteria in the world, Bacillus subtilis. The characters "E=MC^2 1905!" were then read from the bacterium at a later date by analysing its genetic sequence."- from the guardian, see rest of article HERE.

HERE is another simple and vague description of DNA based computing at howstuffworks.com

DNA computing is an extremely new field of science beginning in the early 90's (Adleman's experiments in 1994). The first DNA based computer could solve problems with up to only 9 variables for the answer, just in 2000 the biggest breakthrough was one which could solve problems with up to 20 variables.

In 2003 another breakthrough in DNA computing was made, read HERE.

More to come soon!

LECTURE ON SYNTHETIC DNA CREATION (posted by Lale)

This video is kind of lengthy and the guy (Craig Venter) is not that great a speaker in my opinion but if you were in the lab all the time you'd probably be the same. Take what you can from it, its pretty incredible. Actually the whole collection of lectures in this series is amazing.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO VIDEO!

enjoy. (also, check out the lecture video about Memes, non-physical "viral" organisms composed entirely of information.)

America's first 'test tube' twins turn 25 (posted by Esther)

Heather Tilton and her brother, Todd Tilton II, are ordinary siblings with an extraordinary message. The first twins born in America through in vitro fertilization, they want people to know that their parents’ refusal to take “no” for an answer is as relevant today as it was when they were conceived in a laboratory 25 years ago this month.

“We’re here to extend the message that there is hope,” said Todd Tilton, who appeared with his sister on TODAY on Tuesday.

“Throughout our lives, the message of ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way’ has resonated,” added Heather Tilton, who works for a New York financial firm.

With them was their mother, Nan Tilton, 56, who had been told that she and her husband, Todd Tilton, Sr., would never have children and should quit trying. She was 30 years old in 1982 and the couple had been married for eight years and been trying to conceive for six.

But her fallopian tubes were blocked and his sperm count was low, and even after five surgeries between the two of them, their chances of conceiving were still virtually zero.

“We tried every technique and were told we would never have a child,” she told TODAY’s Ann Curry. That news was, she said, “absolute heartbreak.”

more of the article and an interview : http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/23898180/?GT1=43001

Earlier puberty & the causes?

Although still a matter of much controversy - it seems like females are reaching puberty sooner than in times past - why? An article from Britain's Daily Mail summarizes some of the hypotheses out there:

So what is the cause of precocious puberty? While experts aren't able to give a single explanation, numerous theories exist.

One is that improved nutrition is a factor, as the onset of puberty is believed to be linked to physical size.

Another theory is that the epidemic of childhood obesity is to blame: heavier girls begin their periods earlier due to an increase of the puberty-triggering hormone leptin, which is stored in fat cells.

"There is a relationship between childhood nutrition and the age that people pass through puberty,' says Mark Bellis, Professor of Public Health at Liverpool's John Moores University.

"Having a calorie-rich diet in childhood, and being obese, brings the age of puberty down."

Modern social conditions have also been touted as a contributory factor - with research suggesting that children from broken homes experience earlier puberty as the stress of a family breakdown alters the balance of growth hormones.

The arrival of a stepfather in the family home produces new and unfamiliar pheromones, chemicals which are believed to hasten the arrival of puberty.

"Single-parent families and divorce cause stress that can also change the age of puberty a little, too," says Mark Bellis.

Early puberty has even been linked to watching too much television - Italian researchers found that children who watched three hours of TV a day produced less of the sleep hormone melatonin, low levels of which play an important role in the timing of puberty.

The content of today's television may also be to blame, with young children subjected to increasingly sexualised programmes from an early age. Research has shown that watching such images produces increased hormones.

Another theory is that exposure to chemicals in the environment - which mimic the effects of hormones - is causing the drop in puberty age and disrupting the normal timing of sexual maturation.

Here are some links to articles concerning specific hypotheses:

Environmental pollutants
Obesity
TV