Tag Archives: editing

A Crack in Creation – Jennifer A. Doudna & Samuel H. Sternberg

by Myrna Posted on June 23, 2017

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A Crack in Creation

Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution

Jennifer A. Doudna & Samuel H. Sternberg

Genre: Life Sciences

Price: $14.99

Publish Date: June 13, 2017

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Seller: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company


A trailblazing biologist grapples with her role in the biggest scientific discovery of our era: a cheap, easy way of rewriting genetic code, with nearly limitless promise and peril . Not since the atomic bomb has a technology so alarmed its inventors that they warned the world about its use. Not, that is, until the spring of 2015, when biologist Jennifer Doudna called for a worldwide moratorium on the use of the new gene-editing tool CRISPR—a revolutionary new technology that she helped create—to make heritable changes in human embryos. The cheapest, simplest, most effective way of manipulating DNA ever known, CRISPR may well give us the cure to HIV, genetic diseases, and some cancers, and will help address the world’s hunger crisis. Yet even the tiniest changes to DNA could have myriad, unforeseeable consequences—to say nothing of the ethical and societal repercussions of intentionally mutating embryos to create “better” humans.   Writing with fellow researcher Samuel Sternberg, Doudna shares the thrilling story of her discovery, and passionately argues that enormous responsibility comes with the ability to rewrite the code of life. With CRISPR, she shows, we have effectively taken control of evolution. What will we do with this unfathomable power?  

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A Crack in Creation – Jennifer A. Doudna & Samuel H. Sternberg

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Donald Trump Edits a Tweet

by MayaMcAlister Posted on February 17, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

At 4:32 pm, President Trump put up this tweet:

It was quickly deleted and 16 minutes later it was replaced with this:

Fascinating! Here are the edits Trump made:

  1. Changed “and many more” to the more specific @ABC and @CBS.
  2. Eliminated the ugly extra spaces after the parentheses.
  3. Capitalized the P in “people.”
  4. Removed “SICK!”

What can this mean? Did someone tell Trump that his tweet sounded like something Hitler might have written and he should probably revise it? No one has ever told him this before, so it seems unlikely this time too. Presumably he made these changes all on his own. Let’s do a little Kremlinology here:

  1. It’s obvious that Trump’s real enemies are CNN, NBC, and the Times. Then, later, he tossed in CBS and ABC. Was this to cover his tracks? Nah. He doesn’t care what us overeducated elitists think. More likely it’s because he decided his fans1 wouldn’t automatically fill in ABC and CBS, so he needed to be more explicit about it. After all, he wants his fans to distrust all the media they consume except for Fox, so it makes sense to be very clear about this.
  2. Eliminating the spaces is either because Trump has a love of neatness we’ve never seen before, or because they pushed his tweet over 140 characters. However, the tweet is only 123 characters long, so I guess it must have been a purely esthetic bit of editing.
  3. Hmmm. American people vs. American People. That’s a tough one. The latter is more Germanic, which might have appealed to him. In English, though, it’s also less literate. That might have appealed to him too. Or, maybe Trump just capitalizes stuff randomly and there’s nothing to this.
  4. This is the real chin scratcher. Did he think that SICK! was going too far? I can’t imagine why. And the one-word adjective at the end is standard Trump Twitter grammar. We do know that Trump is a germaphobe, so maybe he doesn’t even like typing the word. However, a quick search shows that he’s called several people sick in the past year (Karl Rove, Megyn Kelly, failing New York Times). So what is it? WHY DID DONALD TRUMP REMOVE THE WORD “SICK” FROM THIS TWEET???

Oh, and by the way, calling the press an enemy of the people really is pretty Hitleresque. Unfortunately, I have a feeling that an awful lot of Trump’s supporters might not consider that such a bad thing.

1As always, remember that his supporters are the audience for his tweets, not you or me.

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Donald Trump Edits a Tweet

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US Customs Agents Just Gave Airlines the Green Light to Ignore Trump’s "Muslim Ban"

by HollyMvxsckc Posted on February 4, 2017

Mother Jones

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(Reuters) – U.S. Customs & Border Protection has informed U.S. airlines that they can once again board travelers who had been barred by an executive order last week, after it was blocked nationwide on Friday by a federal judge in Seattle, an airline official told Reuters.

In a conference call at around 9 p.m. EST (0200 GMT), the U.S. agency told airlines to operate just as they had before the order, which temporarily had stopped refugees and nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. Individuals from those states who have proper visas can now board U.S.-bound flights, and airlines are working to update their websites to reflect the change, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly.

(Reporting By Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; Editing by Sandra Maler)

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US Customs Agents Just Gave Airlines the Green Light to Ignore Trump’s "Muslim Ban"

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Pope Francis Just Arrived For His First Visit to the United States

by LouellaBenjamin Posted on September 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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By Scott Malone and Philip Pullella

JOINT BASE ANDREWS, Md. (Reuters) – Pope Francis arrived on his first visit to the United States on Tuesday, bringing to Washington a message that its power and wealth should be made to serve humanity, and not the other way around.

An Alitalia plane carrying the Argentine-born leader of the world’s 1.2 billion member Roman Catholic church touched down at Joint Base Andrews after a flight from Cuba.

Schoolchildren who gathered on the tarmac to welcome Francis cheered as the plane descended. “We love Francis, yes we do. We love Francis, how about you?” they chanted.

In a sign of the importance that the White House gives to the visit, President Barack Obama took the unusual step of traveling to the air base with his family to welcome Francis.

The two men meet again on Wednesday at the White House, after which the 78-year-old pope will parade past Washington’s major monuments before a crowd expected to reach tens of thousands.

The pontiff has electrified liberal-leaning U.S. Catholics with his shift in emphasis towards forgiveness and concern for the poor. He has dismayed some conservative followers with comments of concern over climate change and a pivot away from messages focused on the church’s ban on birth control and opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.

Francis was also expected to talk about immigration during his six-day visit, a top issue for him since his first days as pope in 2013.

He will make the first address by any pope to the U.S. Congress on Thursday, a speech to the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Friday and an open-air Mass in Philadelphia where 1.5 million people are expected to attend.

Francis spent four days in Cuba, where he urged a continued reconciliation between the Communist-run island and its superpower neighbor, building on a new detente he helped to broker earlier this year.

(Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton at Joint Base Andrews and Laila Kearney in Philadelphia; Writing by Alistair Bell; Editing by Mary Milliken and Grant McCool)

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Pope Francis Just Arrived For His First Visit to the United States

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Goldman Sachs to Summer Interns: Don’t Stay in the Office Overnight

by Tracee3261 Posted on June 17, 2015

Mother Jones

By Olivia Oran

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc has told its summer investment banking interns not to stay in the office overnight in a bid to improve working conditions for its junior staff.

The move, according to company sources and confirmed by a Goldman spokesman, illustrates how Wall Street banks are seeking to curb excessive hours worked by young employees who see internships and entry-level jobs as a chance for a lucrative investment banking career.

Goldman has told its new crop of summer banking interns they should be out of the office between the hours of midnight and 7 a.m. during the week.

Goldman and other banks have taken steps over the last several years to encourage junior employees, known as analysts and associates, to take time off in a profession notorious for all-nighters and 100-hour work weeks.

The moves came after the death of a Bank of America Corp intern in London in 2013 fueled concerns over working excessive hours. It was later revealed the intern died of natural causes.

Soon after, Goldman told its junior bankers to take Saturdays off and also formed a task force to address quality of life issues.

Bank of America said at the time it would recommend junior employees take off a minimum of four weekend days per month.

Wall Street summer interns are typically college juniors who work as analysts and business school students who serve as associates.

Goldman has more than 2,900 summer interns this year.

Goldman ranked as the top worldwide M&A adviser last year, according to Thomson Reuters data. The bank advised on 449 deals with a total value of $983.9 billion.

(Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

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Goldman Sachs to Summer Interns: Don’t Stay in the Office Overnight

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This Is Seriously One Of the Most Incredible Weather Videos I Have Ever Seen

by XAKDolores Posted on December 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in Slate and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A couple of months ago I posted an amazing time-lapse video called Stormscapes, showing storms and mesocylcones, created by photographer Nicolaus Wegner. It’s really worth watching; seeing those swirling, dark clouds forming vortices over the Midwest is terrifying and mesmerizing.

Wegner contacted me recently; after a year of storm chasing he put together another video, Stormscapes2, and it’s way, way better than the first one. In fact, I’d say it’s seriously one of the most incredible weather videos I have ever seen.

Make this hi-def, full screen, and crank the volume up, because holy yikes.

Wow.

From the opening sequence to the last frame, that’s magnificent. I was also really impressed by how Wegner let the music inspire the editing, and it really adds to the look and feel of the video.

The creepy oncoming storm sets the mood immediately, but then the double rainbow and crepuscular rays (shadows of clouds leaving long, dark shadows in the sky) converging on the horizon provide a brief interlude. Very brief.

Mesocyclones! Lightning! Exploding cumulonimbus clouds! Devil’s Tower! And then, at the end, one of my favorite kinds of clouds: bulbs of mammatus clouds hanging down. Those are really peculiar, and it’s not at all clear why they form. Their shape gives rise to their name, because they look like mammary glands. Seriously.

I’ve seen mammatus clouds just once, and it was unearthly. They’re harbingers of severe weather, and Wegner mentioned he got that sequence the day a series of tornadoes hit the town of Wessington Springs, South Dakota. The town was devastated, but due to the work of the National Weather Service, not a single person was killed. They predicted the conditions were ripe for tornadoes, issued a warning, and people were able to get to safety in time.

That’s amazing, but that’s science. We’ve learned so much about the weather that we can predict with pretty good accuracy where and when tornadoes can form, and get people to safety.

As I watch Stormscapes2, I’m in awe of the beauty of weather, but I’m also uplifted. We understand a lot of these phenomena very well, and the things we don’t understand, we learn. And when we learn, we make things better. We save people’s lives.

Science saves lives. That’s a pretty good thing to learn, too.

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This Is Seriously One Of the Most Incredible Weather Videos I Have Ever Seen

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