Biogeeks's topics - tribe.net

Single celled amoebas form slug...then mushroom like structure thingy...

blackegg — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 09:38:15 GMT

http://zool33.uni-graz.at/schmickl/Self-organization/Group_behavior/Slime_mold_behavior/slime_mold_behavior.html

""
Normally they move around as individual amoebas throughout their substrate, performing a simple random walk. But when the environmental situation worsens, they suddenly change their behavior and aggregate to a single multi-cellular body.

""

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

Under Laboratory Conditions (Video Series on Youtube)

blackegg — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 06:53:23 GMT

HAH! This should REALLY get this tribe humming!

(rolls eyes)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8fyQuxx00Q

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

new moderator for microscopy tribe

Jorie — Wed, 27 May 2009 18:36:22 GMT

Hi all. Sorry to invade, but I'm looking for someone to take over as moderator of the microscopy tribe. There hasn't been any activity there for a while, but it's such a lovely collection of photos I hate to kill it.

http://microphotos.tribe.net/

posted in Biogeeks - 2 replies

What the hell, I want one.

blackegg — Thu, 28 May 2009 07:19:47 GMT

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124207326903607931.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
In Attics and Closets, 'Biohackers' Discover Their Inner Frankenstein.....

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

Coffee is addictive.

blackegg — Mon, 04 May 2009 09:20:51 GMT

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2002052772_coffee03.html

Scientists find coffee really is addictive

By Angela Stewart

NEWARK, N.J. — Don't be surprised if missing that cup of morning coffee gives you a headache or makes it difficult to concentrate at work. It's all part of caffeine withdrawal, say Johns Hopkins University researchers who released a study that could result in the official classification of the condition as a mental disorder.

In the most comprehensive review and analysis of the effects of caffeine abstinence in humans published to date, the researchers conclude that as little as one small cup of coffee daily can produce caffeine addiction.

In general, the more caffeine consumed, the more severe withdrawal symptoms will be, with some people even reporting depression, nausea, vomiting or muscle pain.

posted in Biogeeks - 2 replies

New nucleotide could revolutionize epigenetics

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 09:05:07 GMT

Story:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-04/ru-nnc041609.php

The discovery of a new nucleotide in the mouse brain opens the door to a new domain of epigenetic DNA modification, SOURCE http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

Good Biology Related Websites?

blackegg — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 04:14:43 GMT

I've been visiting http://www.biologynews.net/ a lot lately.

posted in Biogeeks - 1 reply

Steven Johnson (Author)

blackegg — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:55:30 GMT

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Berlin_Johnson

"Steven Berlin Johnson (born June 6, 1968) is an American popular science author. He has worked as a columnist for magazines such as Discover Magazine, Slate, and Wired. He co-founded the early webzine Feed Magazine in 1995, and the Webby award winning, news discussion site Plastic.com in 2001. He is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University.
In 2006, he announced a new online service, Outside.in, which he described as "an attempt to collectively build the geographic Web, neighborhood by neighborhood".[1]

Johnson has published the following books:
Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate (1997)
Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software (2001)
Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life (2004)
Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter (2005)
The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How it Changed Science, Cities and the Modern World (2006)
The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America (2008)

I've read every one of his books and 5 out of 7 of them are great!

I love how he tackles a subject from every possible angle....every level.... micro to macro.
Molecular to socio-political. All discussing the same series of events in space-time.
At least his last two have attempted this.

Anyone else familiar with his work?

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

Is faith a selected trait?

hypusine — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 20:14:15 GMT

Interesting topic. I thought maybe I was being original, but someone beat me to it by a couple years. See today's NYT magazine (Robin Henig: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04evolution.t.html?ref=magazine) and my blog (http://blog.myspace.com/hypusine) for background if you're interested.

If there is a genetic basis for our propensity to ascribe supernatural causes to our world (sidestepping the question of their existence), one remaining issue is whether that propensity is an ancillary function of our brain's structure. Or has it been positively selected?

The article's informative and accessible. Recommended!

A.

posted in Biogeeks - 7 replies

Good 'biogeeks' themed books?

blackegg — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 02:37:25 GMT

Pretty self-explanatory.

I liked 'Being a Biologist' by Jan Janovy (sp?)
Lives of The Cell was good too.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek had a *few* memorable passages.

posted in Biogeeks - 4 replies

Plant Biotech Research Associate Position Available

bethanywexler — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 04:48:12 GMT

If you're looking for a job in plant biology and have some experience in working with DNA, RNA, PCR (but not TOO much experience, we aren't looking for a PhD), email me and I'll tell you more. There's a job opening for an RA I or II at a small company in the East Bay with great, fun people.

posted in Biogeeks - 1 reply

Any suggestions for good web 2.0 websites for scientists

Siouxanne — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 04:50:04 GMT

Hi Geeks,

do you have any suggestions for good websites for researchers in life sciences to blog, download protocols, present their research and collaborate with others? It seems that the internet is used for communication and networking in any kind of field (jobs, politics, hobbies), just science is under represented.

Susanne

posted in Biogeeks - 3 replies

MIT open courseware directory on Biology...

blackegg — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 02:41:02 GMT

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Biology/7-012Fall-2004/VideoLectures/

Special software is required to use some of the files in this section: .mp3, .rm, .rt, .smil.

An outline of lecture topics accompanies each video lecture, but the slides used in these videos are not available.

Streaming formats include subtitles.

These files are also available for download from iTunes® and YouTube™.

~Enjoy~

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

Inner Elbow Ecology...

blackegg — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 13:20:33 GMT

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/23/science/23gene.html

The crook of your elbow is not just a plain patch of skin. It is a piece of highly coveted real estate, a special ecosystem, a bountiful home to no fewer than six tribes of bacteria. Even after you have washed the skin clean, there are still one million bacteria in every square centimeter.

But panic not. These are not bad bacteria. They are what biologists call commensals, creatures that eat at the same table with people to everyone’s mutual benefit. Though they were not invited to enjoy board and lodging in the skin of your inner elbow, they are giving something of value in return. They are helping to moisturize the skin by processing the raw fats it produces, says Julia A. Segre of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

Dr. Segre and colleagues report their discovery of the six tribes in a paper being published online on Friday in Genome Research. The research is part of the human microbiome project, microbiome meaning the entourage of all microbes that live in people.

The project is an ambitious government-financed endeavor to catalog the typical bacterial colonies that inhabit each niche in the human ecosystem.

The project is in its early stages but has already established that the bacteria in the human microbiome collectively possess at least 100 times as many genes as the mere 20,000 or so in the human genome.

Since humans depend on their microbiome for various essential services, including digestion, a person should really be considered a superorganism, microbiologists assert, consisting of his or her own cells and those of all the commensal bacteria. The bacterial cells also outnumber human cells by 10 to 1, meaning that if cells could vote, people would be a minority in their own body.

Dr. Segre reckons that there are at least 20 different niches for bacteria, and maybe many more, on the human skin, each with a characteristic set of favored commensals. The types of bacteria she found in the inner elbow are quite different from those that another researcher identified a few inches away, on the inner forearm. But each of the five people Dr. Segre sampled harbored much the same set of bacteria, suggesting that this set is specialized for the precise conditions of nutrients and moisture that prevail in the human elbow.

Microbiologists believe that humans and their commensal bacteria are continually adapting to one another genetically. The precision of this mutual accommodation is indicated by the presence of particular species of bacteria in different niches on the human body, as Dr. Segre has found with denizens of the elbow.

Other researchers have found that most gut bacteria belong to just 2 of the 70 known tribes of bacteria. The gut bacteria perform vital services like breaking down complex sugars in the diet and converting hydrogen, a byproduct of bacterial fermentation, to methane.

The nature of the gut tribes is heavily influenced by diet, according to a research team led by Ruth E. Ley and Dr. Jeffrey I. Gordon of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. With the help of colleagues at the San Diego and St. Louis Zoos, Dr. Ley and Dr. Gordon scanned the gut microbes in the feces of people and 59 other species of mammal, including meat eaters, plant eaters and omnivores. Each of the three groups has a distinctive set of bacteria, they report Friday in Science, with the gut flora of people grouping with other omnivores.

Despite the vast changes that people have made to their diet through cooking and agriculture, their gut bacteria “don’t dramatically depart in composition from those of other omnivorous primates,” Dr. Gordon said.

This new view of people as superorganisms has emerged from the cheap methods of decoding DNA that are now available. Previously it was hard to study bacteria without growing them up into large colonies. But most bacteria are difficult to culture, so microbiologists could see only a small fraction of those present. Analyzing the total DNA in a microbial community sidesteps this problem and samples the genes of all bacterial species that are present.

The goals of the human microbiome project include analyzing the normal makeup of bacterial species in each niche on the human body. “The focus in microbiology has been on pathogenic bacteria, but we are trying to identify the commensal bacteria so that we can begin to understand what proteins they make and how they contribute to our health,” Dr. Segre said.

Another goal is to understand how pathogenic bacteria manage to usurp power from the tribes of beneficial commensals in the skin or gut, causing disease.

The lifetime of an individual bacterium in the human superorganism may be short, since millions are shed each day from the skin or gut. But the colonies may survive for a long time, cloning themselves briskly to replace members that are sacrificed. Just where these colonies come from and how long they last is not yet known. Dr. David A. Relman of Stanford University has tracked the gut flora of infants and finds their first colonists come from their mother. But after a few weeks, the babies acquired distinctive individual sets of bacteria, all except a pair of twins who had the same set. Dr. Relman said he was now trying to ascertain if the first colonists remain with an individual for many years.

Taking a broad spectrum antibiotic presumably wreaks devastation on one’s companion microbiome. If the microbiome is essential to survival, it is perhaps surprising that the drugs do not make more people ill. Dr. Relman said that perhaps there were subtle long-term consequences that had not yet been identified. Much the same set of bacteria recolonize the gut after a course of antibiotics, he said, suggesting that the makeup of the colony is important and that the body has ways of reconstituting it as before.

posted in Biogeeks - 1 reply

Study Tips? Advice from students farther down the pipeline than me?

blackegg — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 20:15:37 GMT

I'm trying to saturate my brain in Biology using every possible method!
...of course I rest sometimes as well.

I have a ten inch stack of notecards. I place the missed notecards close to the top so that I can review while the material is 'fresh'. That's about the extent of my study skills.

I'm finding it hard to break down the Monolith of Biology into bite-sized chunks.

Any advice?
Any suggestions on what concepts to focus on now that will come up in detail later?

We just covered Water, Carbon Compounds, The Cell, Metabolism, Photosynthesis, Cellular Respiration etc.

THE BASICS.

Does it all just depend on the teacher?
Should I just focus on the work in front of me without trying to place into a larger pattern?

thanks in advance,
Ben

posted in Biogeeks - 8 replies

Aneuploidy in cancer cells

Randy — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 03:34:13 GMT

Here's a brief bit from the BeBoBio Google Groups page:
http://groups.google.com/group/bebobio?hl=en

Last year (May 2007) I came across an interesting article in
Scientific American by Peter Duesberg arguing against the "mutation"
theory of cancer in favor of the "chromosomal" theory. Here's a link
to a current article on the same subject:
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/06/26_drugresistance...

The reason I'm posting this here, even though it's not directly
related to biomodeling, is that this seems to be an area in which
biomodeling or bio-informatics could be fruitful. Minimally, it seems
like a data mining approach to RNA profiles from individual cells from
the same tumor would yield some interesting information.

Something I'd be curious about in light of these two theories - Why are there spontaneous rejections
of tumors? I've seen these rejections in mouse models of cancer.
Another area of cancer research that isn't directly related to
biomodeling, but still interests me is the idea of "cancer stem
cells", the idea that only a small fraction of the cells in a tumor are capable
of regenerating the tumor. I came across an interesting link when I
was looking at a sequence analysis and data mining program called
"Gemini".

One of the researchers involved with Gemini is associated with the
Oncology Research Institute, which has a link to a short page talking
about their 5 broad based cancer platforms, well worth a quick
glance: http://www.ori.nus.edu.sg/research.html It includes
information about cancer stem cells and epigenetics.

Later, R.

posted in Biogeeks - 1 reply

Predictive in silico modeling of an entire organism

Randy — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 02:51:30 GMT

How soon do you think we'll be able to model an entire organism using computers, if ever?

I personally believe it will be soon, a matter of a few years at most.

I'm a layman interested in the subject, and have started a Google groups page devoted to general interest literature that is tangentially related to modeling an organism, or the "virtual worm, weed, and bug", to borrow a phrase from one of the files posted on the groups page.

Here's a link to the page: http://groups.google.com/group/bebobio?lnk=gschg&hl=en

Let me know what you think. Thanks! Randy

posted in Biogeeks - 8 replies

"Best" colleges for Biogeeks?

blackegg — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 12:31:58 GMT

Okay, I searched this tribe with a few different baits and couldn't find anything...

Feel free to 'shout out' the praises of your institution or old stomping grounds, whatever...

It'd be nice if there was a reliable list of Colleges that had thrown their hat in the ring as dedicated Biology seekers. Overall, you know?

Thanks in advance,
Benjamin

posted in Biogeeks - 12 replies

Can this be true?

Sizzle — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 01:05:26 GMT

http://www.rinf.com/news/nov05/lucifer-project.html
this "lucifer project " claimes that they are trying to turn jupiter into another smaller sun and start terraforming titian...
can they really do this?
http://www.mytv.it/player-cs-em.swf?key=C2D9CBB905B1DFE2"

posted in Biogeeks - 2 replies

San Diego Emergent Epistemology Salon

Jennifer — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 02:58:22 GMT

We're seeking members.

The Group: Meets in San Diego about twice a month to talk about the common theme in the ideas listed above... the “?” at the center.

The Goal: Good conversation and maybe insights worth bringing back to your research or business plans or political career or...

The Tone: We're hoping for a small group (5 – 10 people) that works at least as well as “a really thoughtful grad student seminar”.

---

The next meeting will be this Sunday (March 25, 2007) at 3PM with singularity flavored reading material with a possible follow up trip to a Vernor Vinge talk at 6PM if people are still game.

The reading for the 3PM meeting is

"Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk"
http://www.singinst.org/ourresearch/publications/artificial-intelligence-risk.pdf

It is an essay on the dangers and benefits of (succeeding at) building a general artificial intelligence. Of general theoretical interest is the discussion of the human reasoning biases that seem to lead many people to radically over estimate the degree to which they "understand intelligence".

Message me for more info :-)

--

If you're trying to get a feel for the salon and wondering if coming is likely to jingle your bells, here are some keywords. We aren't shooting for exhaustive coverage of this stuff, what we're aimed at is the common theme running through it all...

Cognitive Science
Lakoff
Cosmides & Tooby
Philosophy of Science
Kuhn - “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”
Structuralism
Piaget
Artificial Intelligence
Hofstadter - “Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid”
Eric Baum - “Manifesto for an Evolutionary Economics of Intelligence”
Bayesian Probability
Boltzmann Networks
Mitchell - “CopyCat”
Wolfram
Cellular Automata
Automated Theorem Proving
The Singularity
Kurzweil
Vinge
Yudkowsky
Evolution
Goodwin - “How the Leopard Changed Its Spots”
Dennett - “Darwin's Dangerous Idea”
Autocatalytic Chemistry
Margulis - “Symbiosis in Cell Evolution”
Economics
Adam Smith
Political Economy
Jane Jacobs
Cliometrics
Asimov's “Psychohistory”

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

IMPORTANT! Born again BRAINWASHES

♥ღSunnely ۞☆ƸӜƷ — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 04:23:46 GMT

TIME TO WAKE UP NOW!!

PLEASE POST THIS IN OTHER THREADS, EMAIL IT TO YOUR FRIENDS ALL OVER THE PLACE, EVERYWHERE - OR POST IN YOUR BLOG TO HELP SET PEOPLE FREE FROM CULTS AND POWERSEEKING ORGANISATIONS.. Its time that we all see through the techniques ----> how to brainwash people, and that we take control of our minds and our lives.. especially in these times..

No matter of religion or cultural belonging, NOR political - still, we have a right to KNOW what is a tool in our BRAIN, for others - that are aware of this technique, to use to manipulate us.. (I have myself been a tool in the hands of people trying to own me and brake down my own will..)

Peace and Love to all!

Read it ALL through - VERY IMPORTANT!!
For YOUR sake, your future, your LIFE..

Copied from:
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/fundamentalistbrainwashing06jun05.shtml

How Revivalist Preachers Work
(But it is not all about THEM so keep on reading PLEASE)

If you'd like to see a revivalist preacher at work, there are probably several in your city. Go to the church or tent early and sit in the rear, about three-quarters of the way back.

Most likely repetitive music will be played while the people come in for the service. A repetitive beat, ideally ranging from 45 to 72 beats per minute (a rhythm close to the beat of the human heart), is very hypnotic and can generate an eyes-open altered state of consciousness in a very high percentage of people.

And, once you are in an alpha state, you are at least 25 times as suggestible as you would be in full beta consciousness. The music is probably the same for every service, or incorporates the same beat, and many of the people will go into an altered state almost immediately upon entering the sanctuary. Subconsciously, they recall their state of mind from previous services and respond according to the post-hypnotic programming.

Watch the people waiting for the service to begin. Many will exhibit external signs of trance--body relaxation and slightly dilated eyes. Often, they begin swaying back and forth with their hands in the air while sitting in their chairs. Next, the assistant pastor will probably come out. He usually speaks with a pretty good "voice roll."

The "Voice Roll" Technique

A "voice roll" is a patterned, paced style used by hypnotists when inducing a trance. It is also used by many lawyers, several of whom are highly trained hypnotists, when they desire to entrench a point firmly in the minds of the jurors. A voice roll can sound as if the speaker were talking to the beat of a metronome or it may sound as though he were emphasizing every word in a monotonous, patterned style. The words will usually be delivered at the rate of 45 to 60 beats per minute, maximizing the hypnotic effect.

The Build-up Process: Inducing Altered States

Now the assistant pastor begins the "build-up" process. He induces an altered state of consciousness and/or begins to generate the excitement and the expectations of the audience. Next, a group of young women in "sweet and pure" chiffon dresses might come out to sing a song. Gospel songs are great for building excitement and involvement. In the middle of the song, one of the girls might be "smitten by the spirit" and fall down or react as if possessed by the Holy Spirit. This very effectively increases the intensity in the room. At this point, hypnosis and conversion tactics are being mixed. And the result is the audience's attention span is now totally focused upon the communication while the environment becomes more exciting or tense.

Assured Continuation: Fleecing the Flock

Right about this time, when an eyes-open mass-induced alpha mental state has been achieved, they will usually pass the collection plate or basket. In the background, a 45-beat-per-minute voice roll from the assistant preacher might exhort, "Give to God...Give to God...Give to God...." And the audience does give. God may not get the money, but his already-wealthy representative will.

Bonding by Fear and Suggestion

Next, the fire-and-brimstone preacher will come out. He induces fear and increases the tension by talking about "the devil," "going to hell," or the forthcoming Armegeddon.

In the last such rally I attended, the preacher talked about the blood that would soon be running out of every faucet in the land. He was also obsessed with a "bloody axe of God," which everyone had seen hanging above the pulpit the previous week. I have no doubt that everyone saw it--the power of suggestion given to hundreds of people in hypnosis assures that at least 10 to 25 percent would see whatever he suggested they see.

Testimony: Creating Community Spirit

In most revivalist gatherings, "testifying" or "witnessing" usually follows the fear-based sermon. People from the audience come up on stage and relate their stories. "I was crippled and now I can walk!" "I had arthritis and now it's gone!" It is a psychological manipulation that works. After listening to numerous case histories of miraculous healings, the average guy in the audience with a minor problem is sure he can be healed. The room is charged with fear, guilt, intense excitement, and expectations.

Miracles

Now those who want to be healed are frequently lined up around the edge of the room, or they are told to come down to the front. The preacher might touch them on the head firmly and scream, "Be healed!" This releases the psychic energy and, for many, catharsis results. Catharsis is a purging of repressed emotions. Individuals might cry, fall down or even go into spasms. And if catharsis is effected, they stand a chance of being healed. In catharsis (one of the three brain phases mentioned earlier), the brain-slate is temporarily wiped clean and the new suggestion is accepted.

For some, the healing may be permanent. For many, it will last four days to a week, which is, incidentally, how long a hypnotic suggestion given to a somnambulistic subject will usually last. Even if the healing doesn't last, if they come back every week, the power of suggestion may continually override the problem...or sometimes, sadly, it can mask a physical problem which could prove to be very detrimental to the individual in the long run.

The Grey Area of Legitimacy

I'm not saying that legitimate healings do not take place. They do. Maybe the individual was ready to let go of the negativity that caused the problem in the first place; maybe it was the work of God. Yet I contend that it can be explained with existing knowledge of brain/mind function.

A Game in Which the Rules Keep Changing

The techniques and staging will vary from church to church. Many use "speaking in tongues" to generate catharsis in some while the spectacle creates intense excitement in the observers.

The use of hypnotic techniques by religions is sophisticated, and professionals are assuring that they become even more effective. A man in Los Angeles is designing, building, and reworking a lot of churches around the country. He tells ministers what they need and how to use it. This man's track record indicates that the congregation and the monetary income will double if the minister follows his instructions. He admits that about 80 percent of his efforts are in the sound system and lighting.

Powerful sound and the proper use of lighting are of primary importance in inducing an altered state of consciousnes--I've been using them for years in my own seminars. However, my participants are fully aware of the process and what they can expect as a result of their participation.

Six Conversion Techniques

Cults and human-potential organizations are always looking for new converts. To attain them, they must also create a brain-phase. And they often need to do it within a short space of time--a weekend, or maybe even a day. The following are the six primary techniques used to generate the conversion.

Isolation Intimidation, Deprivation and Indoctrination

The meeting or training takes place in an area where participants are cut off from the outside world. This may be any place: a private home, a remote or rural setting, or even a hotel ballroom where the participants are allowed only limited bathroom usage. In human-potential trainings, the controllers will give a lengthy talk about the importance of "keeping agreements" in life.

The participants are told that if they don't keep agreements, their life will never work. It's a good idea to keep agreements, but the controllers are subverting a positive human value for selfish purposes. The participants vow to themselves and their trainer that they will keep their agreements. Anyone who does not will be intimidated into agreement or forced to leave. The next step is to agree to complete training, thus assuring a high percentage of conversions for the organizations.

They will usually have to agree not to take drugs, smoke, and sometimes not to eat...or they are given such short meal breaks that it creates tension. The real reason for the agreements is to alter internal chemistry, which generates anxiety and hopefully causes at least a slight malfunction of the nervous system, which in turn increases the conversion potential.

The "Sell It By Zealot" Technique

Before the gathering is complete, the agreements will be used to ensure that the new converts go out and find new participants. They are intimidated into agreeing to do so before they leave. Since the importance of keeping agreements is so high on their priority list, the converts will twist the arms of everyone they know, attempting to talk them into attending a free introductory session offered at a future date by the organization. The new converts are zealots. In fact, the inside term for merchandising the largest and most successful human-potential training is, "sell it by zealot!"

At least a million people are graduates and a good percentage have been left with a mental activation button that assures their future loyalty and assistance if the guru figure or organization calls. Think about the potential political implications of hundreds of thousands of zealots programmed to campaign for their guru.

Be wary of an organization of this type that offers follow-up sessions after the seminar. Follow-up sessions might be weekly meetings or inexpensive seminars given on a regular basis which the organization will attempt to talk you into taking--or any regularly scheduled event used to maintain control. As the early Christian revivalists found, long-term control is dependent upon a good follow-up system.

Wearing Down Resistance

Alright. Now, let's look at the second tip-off that indicates conversion tactics are being used. A schedule is maintained that causes physical and mental fatigue. This is primarily accomplished by long hours in which the participants are given no opportunity for relaxation or reflection.

Increasing Tension

The third tip-off: techniques used to increase the tension in the room or environment.

Introducing Uncertainty About Identity

Number four: Uncertainty. I could spend hours relating various techniques to increase tension and generate uncertainty. Basically, the participants are concerned about being "put on the spot" or encountered by the trainers, guilt feelings are played upon, participants are tempted to verbally relate their innermost secrets to the other participants or forced to take part in activities that emphasize removing their masks. One of the most successful human-potential seminars forces the participants to stand on a stage in front of the entire audience while being verbally attacked by the trainers. A public opinion poll, conducted a few years ago, showed that the number one most-fearful situation an individual could encounter is to speak to an audience. It ranked above window washing outside the 85th floor of an office building.

So you can imagine the fear and tension this situation generates within the participants. Many faint, but most cope with the stress by mentally going away. They literally go into an alpha state, which automatically makes them many times as suggestible as they normally are. And another loop of the downward spiral into conversion is successfully effected.

Jargon

The fifth clue that conversion tactics are being used is the introduction of jargon--new terms that have meaning only to the "insiders" who participate. Vicious language is also frequently used, purposely, to make participants uncomfortable.

Lack of Humor: No Release, No Resistance

The final tip-off is that there is no humor in the communications...at least until the participants are converted. Then, merry-making and humor are highly desirable as symbols of the new joy the participants have supposedly "found."

Not Always a Bad Thing

I'm not saying that good does not result from participation in such gatherings. It can and does. But I contend it is important for people to know what has happened and to be aware that continual involvement may not be in their best interest.

Over the years, I've conducted professional seminars to teach people to be hypnotists, trainers, and counselors. I've had many of those who conduct trainings and rallies come to me and say, "I'm here because I know that what I'm doing works, but I don't know why." After showing them how and why, many have gotten out of the business or have decided to approach it differently or in a much more loving and supportive manner.

Many of these trainers have become personal friends, and it scares us all to have experienced the power of one person with a microphone and a room full of people. Add a little charisma and you can count on a high percentage of conversions. The sad truth is that a high percentage of people want to give away their power--they are true "believers"!

Cults: A Captive Course in Stockholm Syndrome

Cult gatherings or human-potential trainings are an ideal environment to observe first-hand what is technically called the "Stockholm Syndrome." This is a situation in which those who are intimidated, controlled, or made to suffer, begin to love, admire, and even sometimes sexually desire their controllers or captors.

But let me inject a word of warning here: If you think you can attend such gatherings and not be affected, you are probably wrong. A perfect example is the case of a woman who went to Haiti on a Guggenheim Fellowship to study Haitian Voodoo. In her report, she related how the music eventually induced uncontrollable bodily movement and an altered state of consciousness. Although she understood the process and thought herself above it, when she began to feel herself become vulnerable to the music, she attempted to fight it and turned away. Anger or resistance almost always assures conversion. A few moments later she was possessed by the music and began dancing in a trance around the Voodoo meeting house. A brain phase had been induced by the music and excitement, and she awoke feeling reborn.

The Only Hope of Immunity

The only hope of attending such gatherings without being affected is to be a Buddha and allow no positive or negative emotions to surface. Few people are capable of such detachment.

The US Marines as a Brainwashing Cult

Before I go on, let's go back to the six tip-offs to conversion. I want to mention the United States Government and military boot camp. The Marine Corps talks about breaking men down before "rebuilding" them as new men--as marines! Well, that is exactly what they do, the same way a cult breaks its people down and rebuilds them as happy flower sellers on your local street corner. Every one of the six conversion techniques are used in boot camp. Considering the needs of the military, I'm not making a judgement as to whether that is good or bad. IT IS A fact that the men are effectively brainwashed. Those who won't submit must be discharged or spend much of their time in the brig.

Steps in the Decognition Process

Once the initial conversion is effected, cults, armed services, and similar groups cannot have cynicism among their members. Members must respond to commands and do as they are told, otherwise they are dangerous to the organizational control. This is normally accomplished as a three-step ˜ Decognition Process.

Alertness reduction

Step One is alertness reduction: The controllers cause the nervous system to malfunction, making it difficult to distinguish between fantasy and reality. This can be accomplished in several ways. poor diet is one; watch out for Brownies and Koolaid. The sugar throws the nervous system off. More subtle is the "spiritual diet" used by many cults. They eat only vegetables and fruits; without the grounding of grains, nuts, seeds, dairy products, fish or meat, an individual becomes mentally "spacey." Inadequate sleep is another primary way to reduce alertness, especially when combined with long hours of work or intense physical activity. Also, being bombarded with intense and unique experiences achieves the same result.

Programmed Confusion
Step Two is programmed confusion: You are mentally assaulted while your alertness is being reduced as in Step One. This is accomplished with a deluge of new information, lectures, discussion groups, encounters or one-to-one processing, which usually amounts to the controller bombarding the individual with questions. During this phase of decognition, reality and illusion often merge and perverted logic is likely to be accepted.

Thought Stopping
Step Three is thought stopping: Techniques are used to cause the mind to go "flat." These are altered-state-of-consciousness techniques that initially induce calmness by giving the mind something simple to deal with and focusing awareness. The continued use brings on a feeling of elation and eventually hallucination. The result is the reduction of thought and eventually, if used long enough, the cessation of all thought and withdrawal from everyone and everything except that which the controllers direct. The takeover is then complete. It is important to be aware that when members or participants are instructed to use "thought-stopping" techniques, they are told that they will benefit by so doing: they will become "better soldiers" or "find enlightenment."

Thought Stopping Techniques

Marching
There are three primary techniques used for thought stopping. The first is marching: the thump, thump, thump beat literally generates self-hypnosis and thus great susceptibility to suggestion.

Meditation
The second thought stopping technique is meditation. If you spend an hour to an hour and a half a day in meditation, after a few weeks, there is a great probability that you will not return to full beta consciousness. You will remain in a fixed state of alpha for as long as you continue to meditate. I'm not saying this is bad--if you do it yourself. It may be very beneficial. But it is a fact that you are causing your mind to go flat. I've worked with meditators on an EEG machine and the results are conclusive: the more you meditate, the flatter your mind becomes until, eventually and especially if used to excess or in combination with decognition, all thought ceases. Some spiritual groups see this as nirvana--which is bullshit. It is simply a predictable physiological result. And if heaven on earth is non-thinking and non-involvement, I really question why we are here.

Chanting
The third thought-stopping technique is chanting, and often chanting in meditation. "Speaking in tongues" could also be included in this category.

All three-stopping techniques produce an altered state of consciousness. This may be very good if you are controlling the process, for you also control the input. I personally use at least one self-hypnosis programming session every day and I know how beneficial it is for me. But you need to know if you use these techniques to the degree of remaining continually in alpha that, although you'll be very mellow, you'll also be more suggestible.

True Believers and Mass Movements
Before ending this section on conversion, I want to talk about the people who are most susceptible to it and about Mass Movements. I am convinced that at least a third of the population is what Eric Hoffer calls "true believers." They are joiners and followers...people who want to give away their power. They look for answers, meaning, and enlightenment outside themselves.

Hoffer, who wrote "The True Believer", a classic on mass movements, says, "true believers are not intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but are those craving to be rid of unwanted self. They are followers, not because of a desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy their passion for self-renunciation!" Hoffer also says that true believers "are eternally incomplete and eternally insecure"!

I know this from my own experience. In my years of communicating concepts and conducting trainings, I have run into them again and again. All I can do is attempt to show them that the only thing to seek is the True Self within. Their personal answers are to be found there and there alone. I communicate that the basics of spirituality are self-responsibility and self-actualization. But most of the true believers just tell me that I'm not spiritual and go looking for someone who will give them the dogma and structure they desire.

Never underestimate the potential danger of these people. They can easily be molded into fanatics who will gladly work and die for their holy cause. It is a substitute for their lost faith in themselves and offers them as a substitute for individual hope. The Moral Majority is made up of true believers. All cults are composed of true believers. You'll find them in politics, churches, businesses, and social cause groups. They are the fanatics in these organizations.

Mass Movements will usually have a charismatic leader. The followers want to convert others to their way of living or impose a new way of life--if necessary, by legislating laws forcing others to their view, as evidenced by the activities of the Moral Majority. This means enforcement by guns or punishment, for that is the bottomline in law enforcement.

A common hatred, enemy, or devil is essential to the success of a mass movement. The Born-Again Christians have Satan himself, but that isn't enough--they've added the occult, the New Age thinkers and, lately, all those who oppose their integration of church and politics, as evidenced in their political reelection campaigns against those who oppose their views. In revolutions, the devil is usually the ruling power or aristocracy. Some human-potential movements are far too clever to ask their graduates to join anything, thus labeling themselves as a cult--but, if you look closely, you'll find that their devil is anyone and everyone who hasn't taken their training.

There are mass movements without devils but they seldom attain major status. The True Believers are mentally unbalanced or insecure people, or those without hope or friends. People don't look for allies when they love, but they do when they hate or become obsessed with a cause. And those who desire a new life and a new order feel the old ways must be eliminated before the new order can be built.

Persuasion Techniques
Persuasion isn't technically brainwashing but it is the manipulation of the human mind by another individual, without the manipulated party being aware what caused his opinion shift. I only have time to very basically introduce you to a few of the thousands of techniques in use today, but the basis of persuasion is always to access your right brain. The left half of your brain is analytical and rational. The right side is creative and imaginative. That is overly simplified but it makes my point. So, the idea is to distract the left brain and keep it busy. Ideally, the persuader generates an eyes-open altered state of consciousness, causing you to shift from beta awareness into alpha; this can be measured on an EEG machine.

"Yes Set"
First, let me give you an example of distracting the left brain. Politicians use these powerful techniques all the time; lawyers use many variations which, I've been told, they call "tightening the noose."

Assume for a moment that you are watching a politician give a speech. First, he might generate what is called a "yes set." These are statements that will cause listeners to agree; they might even unknowingly nod their heads in agreement. Next come the truisms. These are usually facts that could be debated but, once the politician has his audience agreeing, the odds are in the politician's favor that the audience won't stop to think for themselves, thus continuing to agree. Last comes the suggestion. This is what the politician wants you to do and, since you have been agreeing all along, you could be persuaded to accept the suggestion. Now, if you'll listen closely to my political speech, you'll find that the first three are the "yes set," the next three are truisms and the last is the suggestion.

"Ladies and gentlemen: are you angry about high food prices? Are you tired of astronomical gas prices? Are you sick of out-of-control inflation? Well, you know the Other Party allowed 18 percent inflation last year; you know crime has increased 50 percent nationwide in the last 12 months, and you know your paycheck hardly covers your expenses any more. Well, the answer to resolving these problems is to elect me, John Jones, to the U.S. Senate."

Embedded Commands
And I think you've heard all that before. But you might also watch for what are called embedded commands. As an example: On key words, the speaker would make a gesture with his left hand, which research has shown is more apt to access your right brain. Today's media-oriented politicians and spellbinders are often carefully trained by a whole new breed of specialist who are using every trick in the book--both old and new--to manipulate you into accepting their candidate.

The Power of NLP
The concepts and techniques of Neuro-Linguistics [Programming] are so heavily protected that I found out the hard way that to even talk about them publicly or in print results in threatened legal action. Yet Neuro-Linguistic training is readily available to anyone willing to devote the time and pay the price. It is some of the most subtle and powerful manipulation I have yet been exposed to. A good friend who recently attended a two-week seminar on Neuro-Linguistics found that many of those she talked to during the breaks were government people.

Interspersal Technique
Another technique that I'm just learning about is unbelievably slippery; it is called an interspersal technique and the idea is to say one thing with words but plant a subconscious impression of something else in the minds of the listeners and/or watchers.

Practical Examples
Let me give you an example: Assume you are watching a television commentator make the following statement: Senator Johnson is assisting local authorities to clear up the stupid mistakes of companies contributing to the nuclear waste problems." It sounds like a statement of fact, but, if the speaker emphasizes the right word, and especially if he makes the proper hand gestures on the key words, you could be left with the subconscious impression that Senator Johnson is stupid. That was the subliminal goal of the statement and the speaker cannot be called to account for anything.

Persuasion techniques are also frequently used on a much smaller scale with just as much effectiveness. The insurance salesman knows his pitch is likely to be much more effective if he can get you to visualize something in your mind. This is right-brain communication [E.g. generates emotions]. For instance, he might pause in his conversation, look slowly around your livingroom and say, "Can you just imagine this beautiful home burning to the ground?" Of course you can! It is one of your unconscious fears and, when he forces you to visualize it, you are more likely to be manipulated into signing his insurance policy.

Shock and Confusion
The Hare Krishnas, operating in every airport, use what I call shock and confusion techniques to distract the left brain and communicate directly with the right brain. While waiting for a plane, I once watched one operate for over an hour. He had a technique of almost jumping in front of someone. Initially, his voice was loud then dropped as he made his pitch to take a book and contribute money to the cause. Usually, when people are shocked, they immediately withdraw. In this case they were shocked by the strange appearance, sudden materialization and loud voice of the Hare Krishna devotee. In other words, the people went into an alpha state for security because they didn't want to confront the reality before them.

In alpha, they were highly suggestible so they responded to the suggestion of taking the book; the moment they took the book, they felt guilty and responded to the second suggestion: give money. We are all conditioned that if someone gives us something, we have to give them something in return--in that case, it was money. While watching this hustler, I was close enough to notice that many of the people he stopped exhibited an outward sign of alpha--their eyes were actually dilated.

Subliminal Programming
Subliminals are hidden suggestions that only your subconscious perceives. They can be audio, hidden behind music, or visual, airbrushed into a picture, flashed on a screen so fast that you don't consciously see them, or cleverly incorporated into a picture or design.

Most audio subliminal reprogramming tapes offer verbal suggestions recorded at a low volume. I question the efficacy of this technique--if subliminals are not perceptible, they cannot be effective, and subliminals recorded below the audible threshold are therefore useless. The oldest audio subliminal technique uses a voice that follows the volume of the music so subliminals are impossible to detect without a parametric equalizer. But this technique is patented and, when I wanted to develop my own line of subliminal audiocassettes, negotiations with the patent holder proved to be unsatisfactory.

My attorney obtained copies of the patents which I gave to some talented Hollywood sound engineers, asking them to create a new technique. They found a way to psycho-acoustically modify and synthesize the suggestions so that they are projected in the same chord and frequency as the music, thus giving them the effect of being part of the music. But we found that in using this technique, there is no way to reduce various frequencies to detect the subliminals. In other words, although the suggestions are being heard by the subconscious mind, they cannot be monitored with even the most sophisticated equipment.

If we were able to come up with this technique as easily as we did, I can only imagine how sophisticated the technology has become, with unlimited government or advertising funding. And I shudder to think about the propaganda and commercial manipulation that we are exposed to on a daily basis. There is simply no way to know what is behind the music you hear. It may even be possible to hide a second voice behind the voice to which you are listening.

The series by Wilson Bryan Key, Ph.D., on subliminals in advertising and political campaigns well documents the misuse in many areas, especially printed advertising in newspapers, magazines, and posters.

The big question about subliminals is: do they work? And I guarantee you they do. Not only from the response of those who have used my tapes, but from the results of such programs as the subliminals behind the music in department stores. Supposedly, the only message is instructions to not steal: one East Coast department store chain reported a 37 percent reduction in thefts in the first nine months of testing.

A 1984 article in the technical newsletter, "Brain-Mind Bulletin," states that as much as 99 percent of our cognitive activity may be "non-conscious," according to the director of the Laboratory for Cognitive Psychophysiology at the University of Illinois. The lengthy report ends with the statement, "these findings support the use of subliminal approaches such as taped suggestions for weight loss and the therapeutic use of hypnosis and Neuro-Linguistic Programming."

Mass Misuse of Subliminal Programming
I could relate many stories that support subliminal programming, but I'd rather use my time to make you aware of even more subtle uses of such programming.

I have personally experienced sitting in a Los Angeles auditorium with over ten thousand people who were gathered to listen to a current charismatic figure. Twenty minutes after entering the auditorium, I became aware that I was going in and out of an altered state. Those accompanying me experienced the same thing. Since it is our business, we were aware of what was happening, but those around us were not. By careful observation, what appeared to be spontaneous demonstrations were, in fact, artful manipulations. The only way I could figure that the eyes-open trance had been induced was that a 6- to 7-cycle-per-second vibration was being piped into the room behind the air conditioner sound. That particular vibration generates alpha, which would render the audience highly susceptible. Ten to 25 percent of the population is capable of a somnambulistic level of altered states of consciousness; for these people, the suggestions of the speaker, if non-threatening, could potentially be accepted as "commands."

Vibrato
This leads to the mention of vibrato. Vibrato is the tremulous effect imparted in some vocal or instrumental music, and the cyle-per-second range causes people to go into an altered state of consciousness. At one period of English history, singers whose voices contained pronounced vibrato were not allowed to perform publicly because listeners would go into an altered state and have fantasies, often sexual in nature.

People who attend opera or enjoy listening to singers like Mario Lanza are familiar with this altered state induced by the performers.

Extra-low Frequency Vibrations (ELFs)
Now, let's carry this awareness a little farther. There are also inaudible ELFs (extra-low frequency waves). These are electromagnetic in nature. One of the primary uses of ELFs is to communicate with our submarines. Dr. Andrija Puharich, a highly respected researcher, in an attempt to warn U.S. officials about Russian use of ELFs, set up an experiment. Volunteers were wired so their brain waves could be measured on an EEG. They were sealed in a metal room that could not be penetrated by a normal signal.

Puharich then beamed ELF waves at the volunteers. ELFs go right through the earth and, of course, right through metal walls. Those inside couldn't know if the signal was or was not being sent. And Puharich watched the reactions on the technical equipment: 30 percent of those inside the room were taken over by the ELF signal in six to ten seconds.

When I say "taken over," I mean that their behavior followed the changes anticipated at very precise frequencies. Waves below 6 cycles per second caused the subjects to become very emotionally upset, and even disrupted bodily functions. At 8.2 cycles, they felt very high...an elevated feeling, as though they had been in masterful meditation, learned over a period of years. Eleven to 11.3 cycles induced waves of depressed agitation leading to riotous behavior.

[note from Ken Adachi:: Joe Vialls reported that the CIA and Air Force employed this technique using large dish transmitters beaming down from the back cargo ramps of C135 cargo planes to incite opposing tribal factions in Rwanda to become enraged and engage in mindless slaughter and barbarism]

The Neurophone
Dr. Patrick Flanagan is a personal friend of mine. In the early 1960s, as a teenager, Pat was listed as one of the top scientists in the world by "Life" magazine. Among his many inventions was a device he called the Neurophone--an electronic instrument that can successfully programm suggestions directly through contact with the skin. When he attempted to patent the device, the government demanded that he prove it worked. When he did, the National Security Agency confiscated the neurophone. It took Pat two years of legal battle to get his invention back.

In using the device, you don't hear or see a thing; it is applied to the skin, which Pat claims is the source of special senses. The skin contains more sensors for heat, touch, pain, vibration, and electrical fields than any other part of the human anatomy.

In one of his recent tests, Pat conducted two identical seminars for a military audience--one seminar one night and one the next night, because the size of the room was not large enough to accommodate all of them at one time. When the first group proved to be very cool and unwilling to respond, Patrick spent the next day making a special tape to play at the second seminar. The tape instructed the audience to be extremely warm and responsive and for their hands to become "tingly." The tape was played through the neurophone, which was connected to a wire he placed along the ceiling of the room. There were no speakers, so no sound could be heard, yet the message was successfully transmitted from that wire directly into the brains of the audience. They were warm and receptive, their hands tingled and they responded, according to programming, in other ways that I cannot mention here.

Technological Tools for Mass Manipulation
The more we find out about how human beings work through today's highly advanced technological research, the more we learn to control human beings. And what probably scares me the most is that the medium for takeover is already in place. The television set in your livingroom and bedroom is doing a lot more than just entertaining you.

Before I continue, let me point out something else about an altered state of consciousness. When you go into an altered state, you transfer into right brain, which results in the internal release of the body's own opiates: enkephalins and Beta-endorphins, chemically almost identical to opium. In other words, it feels good...and you want to come back for more.

Recent tests by researcher Herbert Krugman showed that, while viewers were watching TV, right-brain activity outnumbered left-brain activity by a ratio of two to one. Put more simply, the viewers were in an altered state...in trance more often than not. They were getting their Beta-endorphin "fix."

To measure attention spans, psychophysiologist Thomas Mulholland of the Veterans Hospital in Bedford, Massachusetts, attached young viewers to an EEG machine that was wired to shut the TV set off whenever the children's brains produced a majority of alpha waves. Although the children were told to concentrate, only a few could keep the set on for more than 30 seconds!

Most viewers are already hypnotized. To deepen the trance is easy. One simple way is to place a blank, black frame every 32 frames in the film that is being projected. This creates a 45-beat-per-minute pulsation perceived only by the subconscious mind--the ideal pace to generate deep hypnosis.

The commercials or suggestions presented following this alpha-inducing broadcast are much more likely to be accepted by the viewer. The high percentage of the viewing audience that has somnambulistic-depth ability could very well accept the suggestions as commands--as long as those commands did not ask the viewer to do something contrary to his morals, religion, or self-preservation.

The medium for takeover is here. By the age of 16, children have spent 10,000 to 15,000 hours watching television--that is more time than they spend n school! In the average home, the TV set is on for six hours and 44 minutes per day--an increase of nine minutes from last year and three times the average rate of increase during the 1970s.

It obviously isn't getting better...we are rapidly moving into an alpha-level world--very possibly the Orwellian world of "1984"--placid, glassy-eyed, and responding obediently to instructions.

A research project by Jacob Jacoby, a Purdue University psychologist, found that of 2,700 people tested, 90 percent misunderstood even such simple viewing fare as commercials and "Barnaby Jones." Only minutes after watching, the typical viewer missed 23 to 36 percent of the questions about what he or she had seen. Of course they did--they were going in and out of trance! If you go into a deep trance, you must be instructed to remember--otherwise you automatically forget.

In Closing
I have just touched the tip of the iceberg. When you start to combine subliminal messages behind the music, subliminal visuals projected on the screen, hypnotically produced visual effects, sustained musical beats at a trance-inducing pace . . . you have extremely effective brainwashing. Every hour that you spend watching the TV set you become more conditioned. And, in case you thought there was a law against any of these things, guess again. There isn't! There are a lot of powerful people who obviously prefer things exactly the way they are. Maybe they have plans for...?

Modified for WWW distribution May 27/95 by Dynamic Living Media
May be freely copied and reproduced complete with all graphics.
Neither the editor nor the publisher know the current whereabouts of Dick Sutphen. Please conduct searches for the author through the usual channels.

Related

Rick Ross Institute on Brainwashing and Coersion/Conversion Techniques
www.rickross.com/brainwashing.html

More about MIND CONTROL:
http://educate-yourself.org/mc/

posted in Biogeeks - 1 reply

Dogs Sniffing Cancer

Arm — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 05:52:13 GMT

My sister told me yesterday about dogs being able to detect cancer/tumors in humans via smell. In any case it is a very entertaining story. Whatcha think?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0112_060112_dog_cancer.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/01/12/health/webmd/main1204680.shtml

Scientific Journal (BMJ though)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15564265&itool=iconfft&query_hl=4&itool=pubmed_docsum

posted in Biogeeks - 1 reply

bioneurofeedback- brainwave technology for advancing social evolution

Mysterese — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 23:10:04 GMT

www.biocybernaut.com

Future Applications Index
Mood Maps
Virtual Reality Implications

Individual and Cultural Implications of Brain Activity
Mapping and Training
James V. Hardt, Ph.D.

"Feedback changes any system to which it is added. From engineering we know that adding feedback to a mechanical or electronic system endows the system with new and often surprising properties. When American culture received the first televised feedback from the cultural activity known as war [Vietnam, 1970s], the culture was rapidly changed by that feedback in ways that surprised the government.

When individuals receive Brain Activity Feedback, they can change in ways which give them greater objectivity, increased self-honesty, greater self-responsibility, more choices, and a degree of freedom from cultural conditioning, all of which changes can have surprising consequences, and beneficial consequences. With appropriate Brain Activity Training, individuals can improve their skills and their abilities, and they can learn both how to have new desirable experiences [happiness, vigor, contentment] and how to stop having undesirable old experiences [like anxiety, depression, paranoia].

Indeed, people can learn how to change the core dimensions of their personality, by changing their brain activity, just as a computer's basic characteristics can be changed by loading a new operating system. By changing their brain activity, people can change their behavioral characteristics and they can learn how to regulate almost any process in their minds and their bodies. An individual with such a range of capabilities is far outside the range of the cultural norms.

The appearance of such individuals, even in small numbers, will have an enormous impact on established cultural values and cultural institutions, and will rapidly redefine our cultural beliefs about what is possible and desirable, and what is normal. A culture of consciously self-regulating individuals will bear little resemblance to any culture as we know it, and it is beyond our current abilities to fully imagine.

We know from physics that harmonic oscillators brought into resonance will exhibit "emergent properties", which are new properties which cannot be observed or inferred by study of the individual oscillators. As the oscillations in different regions of a person's brain are aided by feedback in coming into resonance, there will be emergent properties of mind. As brain scientists who are using this powerful new tool of brain activity feedback, we must prepare to accept as real, to carefully study, and to communicate to our culture about these emergent properties, these paranormal abilities which we will be assisting our trainees to develop. And beyond the individual paranormal mind skills, there will also be new collective mind abilities.
..."

Dr. James Hardt
www.Biocybernaut.com

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

Bioenergetics?

robster — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 04:31:55 GMT

I just heard recently of a relatively new(?) field called Bioenergetics, when I was researching a combined college degree of physics and plants. It's something that seems roughly defined, the best description I've found is "the study of energy investment and flow through living systems. Studying everything including cellular respiration and the production of ATP".

Apparently it's some sort of sub-set of the field of "energetics", which seems to be a study of energy in systems in general. It takes the first four laws of thermodynamics, and adds to it.

Has anybody else heard of this? It sounds fascinating. I'm thinking of going back to school; my main interests are math, physics, and plant biology. This seems like the perfect thing for these interests!

Apparently, the term is also used to describe some sort of psychotherapy thing....but I'm not interested in that.

Anybody happen to have any info on earning a college degree towards these areas of study? It seems fascinating. Anything would help! Thanks!

posted in Biogeeks - 2 replies

Cure for Aids?

Wed, 08 Feb 2006 23:13:54 GMT

Preliminary test results...

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=37218

http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_3482712

http://www.bloggernews.net/2006/02/imagine-world-without-aids.html

Thoughts anyone?

posted in Biogeeks - 6 replies

cancer research in industry-- I'm looking for a position..

brent — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 22:26:18 GMT

hi all, not to "spam" too much but I will probably post this elsewhere as well, but the bottom line is I'm trying hard to get into an industrial research position in cancer. I have a ph.d. in cancer biology (from univerisity of Arizona) , and have done 1 postdoc at the university of colorado health sci center. the postdoc was in neurodegeneration, but focusing on apoptosis which is what I'd say my 'specialty" is; so even though I didnt' stay in cancer I studied similar signalling pathways as I did for cancer. I wanted to get back into cancer research, though, so after ~2 yrs of the postdoc I became a research associate in a lab that was doing breast cancer research (still at UCHSC). unfortunately that lab moved to TX and also I just came to realize I really didn't want to stay in academia.

I've had four on site interviews now: Centocor (part of J&J in PA), Telik (san fran), Astra Zeneca (boston) and Southern Research Institue (AL). I know its not entirely this, but I feel like part of the reason I make the short list of on site but then dont get the hire is lack of industrial experience.. so I'm in the catch 22 of needing industrial experience but no one will hire me to GET said experience. I'm not blaming "them".. I realize, too, unfortunately, that I'm not daily immersed in cancer research anymore (I'm currently working at a small biotech doing protein purification; something I chose to do while I look for a cancer job so as to expand my skill set) and so I feel like the longer I'm away from cancer research I'll probably not be as "sharp" on interviews. I try to keep up but its hard being on "the outside" and reading journals; its a lot different than being daily immersed in thinking about cancer.

sorry to blab. I hope if someone reads this and is working in industry (specifically cancer research) they might contact me so I can get my resume to them, and any tips on how to 'break in" to an industry job, post-ph.d.... (I have applied sporadically to industry post-docs and am looking at them more seriously but this far haven't gotten an interview for one, and frankly would prefer to not have to do another postdoc, but its starting to be where my overwhelming motivation is to get back into cancer research, whatever my "title" is...

thanks so much for any thoughts, feedback, networking, etc,
Brent
bdb777 at hotmail dot com

posted in Biogeeks - 2 replies

Nano forum at the Exploratorium

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 04:43:56 GMT

Okay, here's a great way to join the discourse about nanotechnology and should be a fun event. It is free and dinner is served, but you have to register:

http://www.exploratorium.edu/nanoscape/forums.html

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

anyone have access to a SEM?

Chili_Bonbons — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 15:59:42 GMT

I need to have a couple of pics taken of this rock layer/egg shell thing I have to determine what exactly it is...a friend was going to help me out and then his work got a new SEM that only "special people" in their lab could use..but as of yet, nobody has figured out how to work their new million dollar toy.

Can anyone help me out? (sf bay area)

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

Biotech @ North Carolina?

Wed, 22 Mar 2006 00:31:05 GMT

NC Biotech Research Campus
http://www.localtechwire.com/article.cfm?u=13541

The North Carolina RTP area is focusing alot its funding towards the growth of research while San Francisco launched itself as the self-proclaimed hub for stem cell research with the UCSF Stem Cell Institute. Also, San Francisco inadvertently began the biotech industry via Genentech. Aside from Boston, what other areas of the country or world do you feel is making such efforts for biotech growth?

posted in Biogeeks - 3 replies

earth day quiz

ericsiemer — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 18:22:29 GMT

this only takes a few minutes and gives you an idea of how much impact you are having on the planet:

http://www.earthday.net/footprint/index.asp

posted in Biogeeks - 5 replies

Biochemistry, future purposes and interesting subject/ Come and visit my tribe Biochemistry

Prall — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 01:03:09 GMT

What do you think Biochemistry could do for the manhood?
Are you interested in the future investigations of biochemistry? Why?
As the whole "cloning" theme semms to be a controverse discussed theme:
What do you think of cloning creatures (plants or animals)
What do you think is cloning and what are the (dis)advantages of cloning compared to classical plant/animal breeding ?

posted in Biogeeks - 1 reply

Visible traits controlled by a single gene.

Jennifer — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 03:07:08 GMT

Over at nodalpoint ( http://nodalpoint.org/ ) I saw a link to an paper ( http://www.hubmed.org/display.cgi?uids=16444273 ) where a team tracked down the specific mutation that accounts for the dry / wet earwax phenotypes. Sweet.

It made me wonder about other traits in humans that can be observed with a trivial test control by plain old mendelian genetics. I've heard of some (like tongue curling and attached earlobes) but I've also heard that some of them are urban legends. This study claims to be the only time a visible trait has ever been tracked down to the level of an identified DNA polymorphism.

What others have people heard of? How much *solid* evidence is there?

posted in Biogeeks - 1 reply

What's your favorite tool for visualizing a phylogeny?

Jennifer — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 18:42:00 GMT

Our lab is having trouble getting a phylogeny of hundreds of bacteriophage to look pretty in a paper. If the root is at one end and the branches at another then it's ginormous to the point of being uninformative.

Anybody have a favorite piece of software for making trees of descent look nice?

posted in Biogeeks - 1 reply

"intelligent falling"

ericsiemer — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 23:58:00 GMT

this is a bit old, but i just found it. and the funny thing to me is that ive actually tried to use this comparison in discussions about evolution with creationists. unfortunately, i do not have the wit of theonion, and creationists dont heed logic.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512

posted in Biogeeks - 5 replies

Biochemistry, future purposes and interesting subject/ Come and visit my tribe Biochemistry

Prall — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 22:43:22 GMT

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

Drug Delivery Systems

Thu, 24 Nov 2005 05:24:11 GMT

Any suggestions on where to learn about different drug delivery systems (ie. how each of them work, what's currently/most used in the pharmaceutical industry, where's the future going?) THANKS!

posted in Biogeeks - 2 replies

Consciousness = Information Integration?

avmaier — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 19:09:57 GMT

http://www.sci-con.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=188

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

correlated mutations

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 23:27:49 GMT

does anyone know a good way to detect correlated mutations between two different protein families, implying that they might interact?

posted in Biogeeks - 3 replies

Bioengineering / FEA Tribe

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 04:01:53 GMT

If anyone is interested....

http://tribes.tribe.net/bioengr

http://fea.tribe.net/

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

New Tribe: "Botanical Conservation and Research"

Cynorkis — Thu, 24 Nov 2005 19:59:16 GMT

Hi, check out this new tribe if you are interested in protecting plant biodiversity, participate in rare plant propagation or restoration, scientific research, or grassroots conservation efforts.

Thanks,

Cynorkis

-----------------------------------------------------------
Botanical Conservation and Research

This is a forum for individuals interested in understanding and protecting the Earth's botanical diversity. Discuss scientific research, conservation efforts or organizations, rare plant or ecosystem restoration, systematics, funding resources, conferences, and academic institutions.

Keywords: Botany, plants, mycology, bryology, ecology, conservation biology, evolution, horticulture, flowers, pollination, seeds, soil, forests, wetlands, deserts, montane, tropical, temperate, earth.

posted in Biogeeks - 1 reply

BLAST results database (BioSQL?)

gadbermd — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 18:24:56 GMT

Anyone out there know of software that will store BLAST results in a SQL database (MySQL preferably)? The idea is to archive results then be able to re-run the search at a later date and look for "new and interesting" hits in the NCBI database. BioSQL has a schema that will sort of adapt to this, but I was wondering if anyone has already gone down this path. It will be for a fairly large number of sequences so automation is going to be necessary.

Thanks!
Mike

posted in Biogeeks - 4 replies

Bioengineering Tribe

Wed, 16 Nov 2005 14:14:57 GMT

http://tribes.tribe.net/bioengr

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

Need a term paper idea.

OverDaHype — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 23:10:12 GMT

Hi - I am taking a cell bio course and am writing a paper whose topic has to do with recent (since 1995) medical advances in the treatment of a particular illness from a cell bio perspective.

Can anybody suggest an illness or advance where much progress has been made recently? Perhaps one where the developement created a major paradigm shift in how the disease was viewed. Something where I can show marked a marked evolution in the treatment of the disease overall?

No, I'm not trolling for term paper writers, I can do my own research, just a topic idea. Any suggestions would be great!

Thanks,
Andreas

posted in Biogeeks - 15 replies

I Need Help - Microarrays, etc.

Arm — Thu, 28 Apr 2005 03:17:20 GMT

Hello,

What other means is/are there for measuring, monitoring genetic expression besides microarray analysis?

Also, is anyone familiar with the histone code, or to be even more esoteric: H2Az? Please let me know.

posted in Biogeeks - 9 replies

Announcing MacResearcher.com

dnaboy76 — Thu, 06 Oct 2005 06:36:38 GMT

The MacResearcher team is proud to announce the official launch of MacResearcher.com (http://www.macresearcher.com), the ultimate online resource and community for the Mac-loving scientist. MacResearcher offers articles, news, and reviews as well as a diverse selection of forums for community interaction. In the true spirit of community MacResearcher allows and encourages all members to step up to the digital soap box and submit content for publication on the MacResearcher.com main page. If your an Xgrid guru, a digital gene hacker, algorithm architect, or Powerbook toting physicist, MacResearcher offers you the platform to share your arcane knowledge with the über-intelligent world of MacResearchers. MacResearcher.com is for MacResearchers by MacResearchers, so If you'd like to add a feature to the site, run a MacResearcher blog, or host an open-source software project, MacResearcher can accommodate you.

Head over to http://www.macresearcher.com now for the latest news, tips, and tricks. All forms of feedback are welcome. Thank you for taking the time to read our announcement.

Sincerely,

MacResearcher.com Team

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

Any Plant Biologists Out There?

Jason — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 17:58:34 GMT

I'm just starting my search for career options. I would love to be in the field getting my hands dirty living the adventure.

any advice from those further down the road?

Jason

posted in Biogeeks - 1 reply

job search

Meka — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 09:07:15 GMT

Hello,
I'm a Molecular Biologist with 6 years professional research experience looking for a research position in or around Seattle. (Recently relocated.)
Please contact me if you have or know of a position for me.
I am looking preferably for a Tech II position.
I am scrupulous, accurate, fast, hard working and I love my science.

Biotech, med microbiology or molecular biology are all suitable.

Molecular techniques:
DNA/RNA purification and quantification,
plasmid purification (small and large scale),
RT-PCR,
primer design,
analytical gel electrophoresis,
gel purification, and sequencing of PCR products.
Construction / cloning plasmid and retroviral vectors (recomb DNA work)
Transiently and stably transfect retroviral producer cell lines.
Cell culture
DNA Sequencing
ELISA
Blood Processing
Immuno-precipitation
SDS-Page/Western Blotting
antibody purification
Liquid chromatography
cytogenetic techniques
fractional distillation

Have undergraduate degree.

Thanks,
Meka

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

SPARKS

MMelnicki — Sat, 16 Jul 2005 03:56:27 GMT

hello?! I'm a bit upset that this tribe isn't getting as much activity as some of the sillier ones I've subscribed to (dealing with "let's go drinking together" mindset -- yech!)

My computer broke two nights ago and, feeling overwhelmed by the inability to reach out to the world, I read a book. I stayed up all night reading E.O. Wilson's "Naturalist" (autobiography). It made me feel like I need to get in touch with the other young biologists that have a spark in their eyes.

I just finished my first year of a Ph.D. program at Berkeley, and despite being surrounded by really smart people, I haven't met too many people that are enamored by their work. Most of the kids here picked a lab to join because the clock was ticking, and not because a particular group was studying something they were in love with...

So, I'd love to hear about what makes your heart flutter in biology!! (And if you're at berkeley, write me and let's have tea.)

As for me, it's photosynthesis -- I recently started a photosynthesis tribe.

posted in Biogeeks - 15 replies

New tribe: idsux

lorne — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 04:22:45 GMT

Hate what the Intelligent Design folks are up to? Tell us about it:

http://tribes.tribe.net/idsux

Cheers!

- Lorne

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

wired article: "Faked Research Results on Rise?"

mella — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 17:13:26 GMT

http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,68153,00.html

posted in Biogeeks - 3 replies

Biostat help

missbitzy — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 21:32:54 GMT

I'm working on my dissertation proposal and am having trouble identifying a good statistical measure for sample size of non-imbred lines for genetic analysis. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

feeling silly: genetics shorthand question

mella — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 23:06:32 GMT

Today I came across an oligo sequence given as 5'-GCG ACT ATA GCG ITI TGG AA-3'

I'm blanking on what exactly "I" is shorthand for right now. (I seem to remember it's any purine or pyrimidine or something of the sort; it's been too long...)

Can someone clue me in please?

posted in Biogeeks - 8 replies

Recommend an ELISA resource to me, please.

juliahw — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 23:18:39 GMT

I'm currently doing some ELISA development work. I am looking for either:
1. A good resource on ELISAs such as a book or manual or,
2. A training course covering all aspects of ELISAs.
Can you recommend anything? Thanks.
-Julia

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

Molecular Diagnostics

Tue, 03 May 2005 20:29:29 GMT

Wondering if there is anyone out there with experience or an opinion about the emerging field of molecular diagnostics.

Mostly, I'm interested in associating genetic variation with complex disease phenotypes, i.e. using SNP data. But, there are also other ways to do diagnostics...just wondering about other people's experiences.

What do you think about the field as a viable enterprise? How do you think tailoring medicine to specific genotypes will influence disease treatments.

posted in Biogeeks - 3 replies

Harmonic Frequency Technologies

kisshu — Sat, 09 Apr 2005 19:21:26 GMT

Dr. Morris Fishbein (1889-1976) originally studied to be a clown. Realizing he could make more money as a doctor, he entered medical school (where he failed anatomy), then barely graduated. He never treated a patient in his life.

Why is he so important? Because he became head of the AMA, a position that he used to enrich himself and crush legitimate therapies out of existence. He appeared to be motivated solely by money and power.

As head of the AMA (and editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association from 1924-1949), he decided which drugs could be sold to the public based only how much advertising money he could extort from drug manufacturers, whom he required to place expensive ads in the JAMA. There were no drug-testing agencies, only Fishbein. It was irrelevant if the drugs worked.

Fishbein was a shakedown artist. Yet, today, there is a Morris Fishbein Center for the History of Science and Medicine at the University of Chicago.

The AMA, a State-backed guild which today has a near-stranglehold on the medical profession, was founded in 1847 merely as a social and scientific organization. Its original purpose was totally appropriate. It was in their private (and the public's) interest for practitioners to get together to trade knowledge, and, for all the outward seriousness of the organization, to have some fun. The original purpose always seems to get lost, though. Some members always want to use the State to reduce the supply of practitioners (which increases income) and eliminate competition (which also increases income, and, much more seriously, reduces innovation). This happened with he AMA, which is why it is now a danger to the health of the American people.

In 1900, while attending the annual AMA convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, three doctors came up with the always-destructive but all-too-human idea of using the AMA as a front, in order to form a closed corporation for their financial benefit. A constitution, bylaws and a charter were created which appeared to give the members of the AMA a say in the activities of the corporation, whereas in reality the three directors had complete control. These three formed smaller political machines in every state, which they controlled through the main corporation.

In 1924, not surprisingly (perhaps inevitably) one of the directors became involved in a scandal and had to resign. He appointed Fishbein to take his place. Fishbein ultimately took control of the AMA, and by 1934 owned all of the stock. In his new position he was able to assume dictatorial control of the state licensing boards and made it as difficult as he could for any doctor who did not join. He, and the three doctors who formed the corporation, were little more than extortionists, ones who made millions by using the power of the State.

The AMA, which started out as a legitimate organization, rapidly became crooked. And Fishbein was the main cause.

The worst of Fishbein's sins was his destruction of Royal Rife. Royal Raymond Rife

I don't know if Royal Raymond Rife was legitimate or not. I believe the evidence leans towards his being a once-in-a-century genius.

He was born in 1888 in Elkhorn, Nebraska, and died in 1971, at age 83. He grew up with a passion for microscopes, microbiology, and electronics.

He was brilliant. There can be no doubt about that. He invented technology still used today in optics, electronics, radiochemistry, biochemistry, ballistics, and aviation. Some of his many inventions included a heterodyning ultraviolet microscope, a microdissector, and a micromanipulator. He studied at John Hopkins, received 14 major awards, and was honored with an honorary doctorate from the University of Heidelberg. He worked for Zeiss Optics, the US government, and several private employers, the most notable of them being Henry Timkin, who made millions manufacturing roller bearings.

Most people have never heard of Rife.

By 1920, Rife had built the world's first microscope that was strong enough for the him to see a virus (he sometimes had to painfully adjust his microscope for up to 24 hours to get the specimen into focus). By 1932, after 12 years and five microscopes, he perfected his technology and had constructed the largest and most powerful of them, which he called his "Universal Microscope." It had almost 6,000 different parts and could magnify objects 61,000 times their normal size. With this two-foot-tall, 200-pound microscope, Rife became the first to see a live virus, and until recently, his microscope was the only one which could do this.

Modern electron microscopes, although more powerful than Rife's invention, instantly kill the viruses they are focused upon. Rife's microscope left the viruses alive, so they could be studied.

Rife's genius was first introduced to the public in the San Diego Union newspaper in 1929, and was followed by an article in Popular Science in 1931. Articles describing his great scientific breakthroughs appeared in the established scientific press in for the first time in late 1931 in Science magazine, as well as California and Western Medicine.

In 1944, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC, published a detailed article about Rife in their national journal, with his microscope the focus of it. But what was revealed to their readers was not only Rife's microscope, but how he was able to destroy disease-causing pathogens.

As far back as 1920, Rife had identified a virus that he believed caused cancer. He called it the "BX virus." He made over 20,000 unsuccessful attempts to transform normal cells into tumor cells. He failed until he irradiated the virus, caught it in a porcelain filter, and injected in into lab animals. Using this technique, he created 400 tumors in a row.

He began subjecting this virus to different radio frequencies to see if it was affected by them. He discovered what he called the "Mortal Oscillatory Rate" (MOR) of the virus. He successfully cured cancer in his 400 experimental animals before he decided to run tests on humans.

What Rife was doing was using resonance to kill the virus. Everything vibrates at different frequencies. If the resonance is correct, it can be used to shatter, just as a singer can use it to break a wineglass. By finding the proper resonance, Rife was able to shatter the virus. This is why he called it the Mortal Oscillatory Rate.

Rife claims he also discovered the frequencies which destroyed herpes, polio, spinal meningitis, tetanus, influenza, and many other dangerous, disease-causing organisms. All told, there were over 50 infectious diseases that he apparently discovered cures for.

How did Rife do this? He painstakingly obtained the MORS by tuning the dial of the frequency generator while observing the sample pathogen under his microscope. When a frequency was discovered that destroyed a particular microorganism, its dial position was marked. The actual frequencies were determined later after his experiments. What he did, he apparently did intuitively and unwittingly, and it is doubtful he completely understood the theoretical method he utilized. For one thing, there was at that time no theory to explain what he was doing. (In doing research for this article, I have come to the conclusion that Rife was so far advanced over currently available theories that he could not explain what he was doing.)

In the summer of 1934, one of Rife's close friends, Dr. Milbank Johnson, along with the University of Southern California, appointed a Special Medical Research Committee to bring 16 terminally cancer patients from Pasadena County Hospital to Rife's San Diego Laboratory and clinic for treatment. The team included doctors and pathologists assigned to examine the patients - if they were still alive - after 90 days.

Some of the other scientists and doctors Rife worked with were: E.C. Rosenow, Sr. (longtime Chief of Bacteriology, Mayo Clinic); Arthur Kendall (Director, Northwestern Medical School); Dr. George Dock; Alvin Foord (pathologist); Rufus Klein-Schmidt (President of USC); R.T. Hamer (Superintendent, Paradise Valley Sanitarium); Whalen Morrison (Chief Surgeon, Santa Fe Railway); George Fischer (Childrens Hospital, N.Y.); Edward Kopps (Metabolic Clinic, La Jolla); Karl Meyer (Hooper Foundation, S.F.); and M. Zite (Chicago University).

At first, the patients were given three minutes of the appropriate frequency every day. The treatment consisted of the patients standing next to one of Rife's generators, which irradiated them. It was much the same as standing in front of a large fluorescent light. The researchers soon learned this was too much of the treatment. Suspecting the human body needed more time to dispose of the dead toxins, they reduced the time to three minutes every third day.

After the 90 days of treatment, the committee concluded that 14 of the patients had been completely cured. After the treatment was adjusted, the remaining two of the patients responded within the next four weeks. The total recovery rate using Rife's technology was 100%. The treatment was painless, and the side effects, minimal, if any. Except for building the generators, the total cost was a little electricity (today, the cost of treating a cancer patient averages $300,000 were person. That's a lot of money, and the cancer industry is big business.)

Rife wrote in 1953, "Sixteen cases were treated at the clinic for many types of malignancy. After three months, 14 of these so-called hopeless cases were signed off as clinically cured by the staff of five medical doctors and Dr. Alvin G. Foord, M.D., pathologist for the group."

In 1937 Rife and some colleagues established a company called Beam Ray. They manufactured fourteen of Rife's "frequency instruments." Dr. James Couche, who was present at the clinic, used one of Rife's machines with great success for 22 years, long after the AMA had banned it.

Then, to Rife's, and the nation's great misfortune, Fishbein heard about Rife's frequency machine.

Fishbein sent an attorney to make a token attempt to buy out Rife. Rife refused. Although no one knows the exact terms of the offer, it was probably similar to the one Fishbein made to Harry Hoxsey for his herbal cancer remedy (which Fishbein, in court, had to admit worked on skin cancer):

Fishbein and his associates would receive all profits for nine years and Hoxey would receive nothing. Then, if they were satisfied that it worked, Hoxsey would begin to receive 10% of the profits. When Hoxsey refused, Fishbein used his political connections to have Hoxsey arrested 125 times in a period of 16 months. The charges (based on practicing without a license) were always thrown out of court, but Fishbein harassed Hoxsey for 25 years. The only good thing that came out of it is that the scandal forced Fishbein to resign.

Fishbein then offered Phil Hoyland, an investor in Beam Ray and an electrical engineer who had helped build the frequency instruments, legal assistance in an attempt to steal the company from Rife and the other investors. A lawsuit ensued.

The trial of 1939 put an end to the proper scientific investigation of Rife's frequency machine. Rife, who was not as resilient as Hoxsey, became unglued. Unable to cope with the savage and unfair attacks in court, he crumbled, turned to alcohol, and became an alcoholic. This, even though he won the case. Unfortunately, the legal bills bankrupted Beam Ray, and it closed down. Fishbein used his power within the AMA to halt any further investigation of Rife's work.

In 1950 Rife joined up with John Crane, who was an electrical engineer. They worked together for ten years, building more advanced frequency machines. But in 1960 the AMA closed them down. Crane was imprisoned for three years and one month, even though fourteen patients testified as to the effectiveness of the machine (the forewoman of the jury was an AMA doctor). Rife died in 1971, from a combination of alcohol and Valium. He had spend the last one-third of his life as an alcoholic.

What happened to all of those who had supported Rife? By 1939 most of them were denying they ever knew him, even though 44 of them had honored Rife on November 20, 1931 with a banquet billed as "The End to All Diseases" at Dr. Milbank's Pasadena estate.

Arthur Kendall, who worked with Rife on the cancer virus, accepted almost a quarter of a million dollars to suddenly "retire" in Mexico. This was a huge amount of money during the Depression. Dr. George Dock was silenced with an enormous grant, along with the highest honors the AMA could bestow. Everyone except Dr. Couche and Dr. Milbank Johnson gave up Rife's work and went back to prescribing drugs. Johnson died in 1944.

The medical journals, supported almost entirely by drug company advertising revenues and controlled by the AMA, refused to publish any paper by anyone on Rife's therapy. Generations of medical students graduated without hearing of Rife's breakthroughs in medicine.

And what happened to Rife's decades of meticulous evidence of his work, including film and stop-motion photographs? Parts of his instruments, photographs, film, and written records were stolen from his lab. No one knows who was behind it. No one was never caught.

Rife's documentation for the cancer clinic was lost when he lent them to Dr. Arthur Yale a few years later. Barry Lynes, who reintroduced Rife's work to the public in 1986, in his book The Cancer Cure that Worked, wrote, "Documents show the clinic existed and succeeded in curing cancer. And doctors who continued treating seriously ill people with success because of what the frequency instrument accomplished in 1934 tell the real story, as do signed reports from cured cancer patients in later years."

While Rife attempted to reproduce his missing data, his virus microscopes were vandalized. Pieces of his Universal Microscope were stolen. Earlier, arson had destroyed the multi-million dollar Burnett Lab in New Jersey, just as the scientists there were preparing to announce confirmation of Rife's work. But the last blow came later, when police illegally confiscated the remainder of Rife's 50 years of research.

Fortunately, his death was not the end of his electronic therapy. A few humanitarian doctors and engineers attempted to reconstruct his frequency machines and keep his work alive.

But do these modern machines work? I don't know. Modern reseachers are trying to replicate the life's work of what may been one of the greatest geniuses in history.

If you'll look at the reviews of Lynes' book at Amazon.com., there are people who swear by Rife's machines. A doctor I know (who lives outside the US and wishes to remain anonymous) told me, "I have a feeling the Rife machines that are now available to us do not have the correct frequencies...the machines I've experienced have limited settings and transmit a general range of frequencies." But she uses something similar, specifically the LISTEN and the much more advanced BEST machines, invented by James Clark.

She told me several of her case histories, one of which I will reproduce here: "[I was treating] a nine-weeks-old baby that was blue and dying...doctors couldn't find anything wrong with her. I found Ross River fever (mosquito transmitted) and the baby began to respond within two hours of giving her the frequencies, and went on to make a full recovery, just after one treatment. The parents did demand a blood test for the baby to confirm the Ross River virus - which it was! There was nothing the doctors could have done about it. I used to think that somehow the electromagnetic frequency gave the body the right information to deal with the virus. We now know how this works - due to Sharry Edwards, (another practitioner in the States I've studied with, who uses low-frequency sound for healing). She has access to great lab equipment, and last year applied the frequencies representing various parasite, bacteria and viruses to blood containing these pathogens. Under a special high-powered microscope, she observed that the frequency shattered the "mask" - the protein DNA that the pathogen would cloak itself with - and expose the invader to the immune system, would would immediately attack and destroy."

This is essentially what Rife discovered over 80 years ago. We are 80 years behind where we should be, because of one despicable man, Morris Fishbein, who used the State to halt the advance of medicine, and to line his own pockets.

The LISTEN and BEST machines are legal in the US...but not totally. Said this doctor:

"Practitioners in the States do not use the 'imprinting' facility of the machines - that is, broadcasting the frequency. Since this broadcasting is not permitted by your laws, the device is added to the machine when we buy them."

In other words, it is illegal in the US to use the machines to attempt to cure disease. The proper parts aren't even on the machine. It's illegal for a doctor to even suggest such a cure is possible.

There are other instruments (and other inventors) who, past and present, have discovered the same thing Rife did. Gaston Naessons, Hulda Clark and Antoine Priore have invented similar instruments. All suffered persecution at the hands of the State. Are they legitimate? All I can say is that they had an enormous amount of support from their patients.

What would have happened if Rife had suceeded, and Fishbein had failed? If what Rife was doing actually worked, there would be a lot of people who would have not died of cancer. A lot of the medical profession would have ceased to exist. It certainly didn't take a doctor to operate Rife's machines.

Scientists and researches could have devoted more time and money to things we are far behind on, like growing organs and limbs. The hundreds of billions of dollars that has flowed to the unholy alliance of the AMA, FDA, drug industry and the State, would have never been.

The cure for these problems? Remove the State backing from the AMA and FDA, and unleash the power and creatively of the free market. Many people have been brainwashed into thinking the State protects them. The truth is the exact opposite.

and this.....

The Rife Story

Hope this history helps put these discoveries in perspective...

Imagine, for a moment, that you have spent more than two decades in painfully laborious research-- that you have discovered an incredibly simple, electronic approach to curing literally every disease on the planet caused by viruses and bacteria . Indeed, it is a discovery that would end the pain and suffering of countless millions and change life on Earth forever. Certainly, the medical world would rush to embrace you with every imaginable accolade and financial reward imaginable. You would think so, wouldnt you?

Unfortunately, arguably the greatest medical genius in all recorded history suffered a fate literally the opposite of the foregoing logical scenario. In fact, the history of medicine is replete with stories of genius betrayed by backward thought and jealously, but most pathetically, by greed and money.

In the nineteenth century, Semmelweiss struggled mightily to convince surgeons that it was a good idea to sterilize their instruments and use sterile surgical procedures. Pasteur was ridiculed for years for his theory that germs could cause disease.
Scores of other medical visionaries went through hell for simply challenging the medical status quo of day, including such legends as Roentgen and his X-rays, Morton for promoting the 'absurd' idea of anaesthesia, Harvey for his theory of the circulation of blood, and many others in recent decades including: W.F. Koch, Revici, Burzynski, Naessens, Priore, Livingston-Wheeler, and Hoxsey.

Orthodox big-money medicine resents and seeks to neutralize and/or destroy those who challenge its beliefs. Often, the visionary who challenges it pays a heavy price for his 'heresy.'

So, you have just discovered a new therapy which can eradicate any microbial disease but, so far, you and your amazing cure aren't very popular. What do you do next? Well, certainly the research foundations and teaching institutions would welcome news of your astounding discovery. Won't they be thrilled to learn you have a cure for the very same diseases they are receiving hundreds of millions of dollars per year to investigate? Maybe not, if it means the end of the gravy train. These people have mortgages to pay and families to support. On second thought, forget the research foundations.

Perhaps you should take your discovery to the pharmaceutical industry; certainly it would be of great interest to those protectors of humanity, right? But remember, you have developed a universal cure which makes drugs obsolete, so the pharmaceutical industry just might be less than thrilled to hear about your work. In fact, the bigshots might even make it certain that your human disease-ending technology never sees the light of day, by preventing it from becoming licensed by the regulatory agencies.

Now, assuming your amazing cure is an electronic instrument, the only cost of using it is electricity. And it is absolutely harmless to patients, who can recover without losing their hair, the family home, and their life savings. So, with your technology, there is no longer any reason for people with cancer to pay over $300,000 per patient -- to become deathly ill from chemotherapy, radiation treatments, and the mutilation of surgery. It sounds like you won't find many friends and support among practicing oncologists, radiologists, and surgeons, doesnt it?

You might try the hospitals and big clinics. But how thrilled are they going to be about a therapy administered in any doctor's office; which reverses illness before the patient has to be hospitalized? Thanks to you, the staffs of these institutions will essentially be out of work.

Well then, how about the insurance companies? Surely, they would be delighted to save the expense of hospitalization - at least the companies which haven't invested in hospitals, where the staff is now sitting around waiting for someone to break a leg or be in a car accident...and the ones who don't lose policyholders as a result of your invention...and the companies which aren't trying to divest their pharmaceutical stock. Oh well, forget the insurance companies, too.

It looks like you just might have a little problem with the medical establishment, no?

Probably the only friends you'll have will be the patients and those progressive doctors who see change as an opportunity, rather than a threat to their established money-making monopoly. Those people will love you. But they don't call the shots.

What follows, now, is the story of exactly such a sensational therapy and what happened to it. In one of the blackest episodes in recorded history, this remarkable electronic therapy was sabotaged and buried by a ruthless group of men. It has re-emerged in the underground medical/alternative health world only since the mid-80's. This is the story of Royal Raymond Rife and his fabulous discoveries and electronic instruments.

If you have never heard of Rife before, prepare to be angered and incredulous at what this great man achieved for all of us only to have it practically driven from the face of the planet. But, reserve your final judgement and decision until after you have read this.

Of course, some may regard this as just an amusing piece of fiction. However, for those who are willing to do some investigating on their own, there will be mentioned several highly-respected doctors and medical authorities who worked with Rife as well as some of the remarkable technical aspects of his creation.

However, in the final analysis, the only real way to determine if such a revolutionary therapy exists is to experience it yourself. The medical literature is full of rigged 'double-blind' clinical research tests, the results of which are often determined in advance by the vested corporate interests involved.

If FDA and other regulatory and licensing procedures and guidelines are observed, it is your privilege to experiment with this harmless therapy. So let's now turn to the story of the most amazing medical pioneer of our century.

Royal Raymond Rife was a brilliant scientist born in 1888 and died in 1971. After studying at Johns Hopkins, Rife developed technology which is still commonly used today in the fields of optics, electronics, radiochemistry, biochemistry, ballistics, and aviation. It is a fair statement that Rife practically developed bioelectric medicine himself.

He received 14 major awards and honors and was given an honorary Doctorate by the University of Heidelberg for his work. During the 66 years that Rife spent designing and building medical instruments, he worked for Zeiss Optics, the U.S. Government, and several private benefactors. Most notable was millionaire Henry Timkin, of Timkin roller bearing fame.

Because Rife was self-educated in so many different fields, he intuitively looked for his answers in areas beyond the rigid scientific structure of his day. He had mastered so many different disciplines that he literally had, at his intellectual disposal, the skills and knowledge of an entire team of scientists and technicians from a number of different scientific fields. So, whenever new technology was needed to perform a new task, Rife simply invented and then built it himself.

Rife's inventions include a heterodyning ultraviolet microscope, a microdissector, and a micromanipulator. When you thoroughly understand Rife's achievements, you may well decide that he has the most gifted, versatile, scientific mind in human history.

By 1920, Rife had finished building the world's first virus microscope. By 1933, he had perfected that technology and had constructed the incredibly complex Universal Microscope, which had nearly 6,000 different parts and was capable of magnifying objects 60,000 times their normal size. With this incredible microscope, Rife became the first human being to actually see a live virus, and until quite recently, the Universal Microscope was the only one which was able view live viruses.

Modern electron microscopes instantly kill everything beneath them, viewing only the mummified remains and debris. What the Rife microscope can see is the bustling activity of living viruses as they change form to accommodate changes in environment, replicate rapidly in response to carcinogens, and transform normal cells into tumor cells.

But how was Rife able to accomplish this, in an age when electronics and medicine were still just evolving? Here are a few technical details to placate the skeptics...
Rife painstakingly identified the individual spectroscopic signature of each microbe, using a slit spectroscope attachment. Then, he slowly rotated block quartz prisms to focus light of a single wavelength upon the microorganism he was examining. This wavelength was selected because it resonated with the spectroscopic signature frequency of the microbe based on the now-established fact that every molecule oscillates at its own distinct frequency.

The atoms that come together to form a molecule are held together in that molecular configuration with a covalent energy bond which both emits and absorbs its own specific electromagnetic frequency. No two species of molecule have the same electromagnetic oscillations or energetic signature. Resonance amplifies light in the same way two ocean waves intensify each other when they merge together.

The result of using a resonant wavelength is that micro-organisms which are invisible in white light suddenly become visible in a brilliant flash of light when they are exposed to the color frequency that resonates with their own distinct spectroscopic signature. Rife was thus able to see these otherwise invisible organisms and watch them actively invading tissues cultures. Rife's discovery enabled him to view organisms that no one else could see with ordinary microscopes.

More than 75% of the organisms Rife could see with his Universal Microscope are only visible with ultra-violet light. But ultraviolet light is outside the range of human vision, it is 'invisible' to us. Rife's brilliance allowed him to overcome this limitation by heterodyning, a technique which became popular in early radio broadcasting. He illuminated the microbe (usually a virus or bacteria) with two different wavelengths of the same ultraviolet light frequency which resonated with the spectral signature of the microbe. These two wavelengths produced interference where they merged. This interference was, in effect, a third, longer wave which fell into the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. This was how Rife made invisible microbes visible without killing them, a feat which today's electron microscopes cannot duplicate.

By this time, Rife was so far ahead of his colleagues of the 1930's(!), that they could not comprehend what he was doing without actually traveling to San Diego to Rife's laboratory to look through his Virus Microscope for themselves. And many did exactly that.

One was Virginia Livingston. She eventually moved from New Jersey to Rife's Point Loma (San Diego) neighborhood and became a frequent visitor to his lab. Virginia Livingston is now often given the credit for identifying the organism which causes human cancer, beginning with research papers she began publishing in 1948.

In reality, Royal Rife had identified the human cancer virus first...in 1920! Rife then made over 20,000 unsuccessful attempts to transform normal cells into tumor cells. He finally succeeded when he irradiated the cancer virus, passed it through a cell-catching ultra-fine porcelain filter, and injected it into lab animals. Not content to prove this virus would cause one tumor, Rife then created 400 tumors in succession from the same culture. He documented everything with film, photographs, and meticulous records. He named the cancer virus 'Cryptocides primordiales.'

Virginia Livingston, in her papers, renamed it Progenitor Cryptocides. Royal Rife was never even mentioned in her papers. In fact, Rife seldom got credit for his monumental discoveries. He was a quiet, unassuming scientist, dedicated to expanding his discoveries rather than to ambition, fame, and glory. His distaste for medical politics (which he could afford to ignore thanks to generous trusts set up by private benefactors) left him at a disadvantage later, when powerful forces attacked him. Coupled with the influence of the pharmaceutical industry in purging his papers from medical journals, it is hardly surprising that few heave heard of Rife today.

Meanwhile, debate raged between those who had seen viruses changing into different forms beneath Rife's microscopes, and those who had not. Those who condemned without investigation, such as the influential Dr. Thomas Rivers, claimed these forms didn't exist.
Because his microscope did not reveal them, Rivers argued that there was "no logical basis for belief in this theory." The same argument is used today in evaluating many other 'alternative' medical treatments; if there is no precedent, then it must not be valid. Nothing can convince a closed mind. Most had never actually looked though the San Diego microscopes...air travel in the 1930's was uncomfortable, primitive, and rather risky. So, the debate about the life cycle of viruses was resolved in favor of those who never saw it (even modern electron microscopes show frozen images, not the life cycle of viruses in process).

Nevertheless, many scientists and doctors have since confirmed Rife's discovery of the cancer virus and its pleomorphic nature, using darkfield techniques, the Naessens microscope, and laboratory experiments. Rife also worked with the top scientists and doctors of his day who also confirmed or endorsed various areas of his work. They included: E.C. Rosenow, Sr. (longtime Chief of Bacteriology, Mayo Clinic); Arthur Kendall (Director, Northwestern Medical School); Dr. George Dock (internationally-renowned); Alvin Foord (famous pathologist); Rufus Klein-Schmidt (President of USC); R.T. Hamer (Superintendent, Paradise Valley Sanitarium; Dr. Milbank Johnson (Director of the Southern California AMA); Whalen Morrison (Chief Surgeon, Santa Fe Railway); George Fischer (Childrens Hospital, N.Y.); Edward Kopps (Metabolic Clinic, La Jolla); Karl Meyer (Hooper Foundation, S.F.); M. Zite (Chicago University); and many others.

Rife ignored the debate, preferring to concentrate on refining his method of destroying these tiny killer viruses. He used the same principle to kill them, which made them visible: resonance.

By increasing the intensity of a frequency which resonated naturally with these microbes, Rife increased their natural oscillations until they distorted and disintegrated from structural stresses. Rife called this frequency 'the mortal oscillatory rate,' or 'MOR', and it did no harm whatsoever to the surrounding tissues.

Today's Rife instruments use harmonics of the frequencies shown on the display screen. The wavelength of the actual frequency shown (770hz, 880hz, etc.) is too long to do the job.

This principle can be illustrated by using an intense musical note to shatter a wine glass: the molecules of the glass are already oscillating at some harmonic (multiple) of that musical note; they are in resonance with it. Because everything else has a different resonant frequency, nothing but the glass is destroyed. There are literally hundreds of trillions of different resonant frequencies, and every species and molecule has its very own.

It took Rife many years, working 48 hours at a time, until he discovered the frequencies which specifically destroyed herpes, polio, spinal meningitis, tetanus, influenza, and an immense number of other dangerous disease organisms.

In 1934, the University of Southern California appointed a Special Medical Research Committee to bring terminal cancer patients from Pasadena County Hospital to Rife's San Diego Laboratory and clinic for treatment. The team included doctors and pathologists assigned to examine the patients - if still alive - in 90 days.

After the 90 days of treatment, the Committee concluded that 86.5% of the patients had been completely cured. The treatment was then adjusted and the remaining 13.5% of the patients also responded within the next four weeks. The total recovery rate using Rife's technology was 100%.

On November 20, 1931, forty-four of the nation's most respected medical authorities honored Royal Rife with a banquet billed as The End To All Diseases at the Pasadena estate of Dr. Milbank Johnson.

But by 1939, almost all of these distinguished doctors and scientists were denying that they had ever met Rife. What happened to make so many brilliant men have complete memory lapses? It seems that news of Rife's miracles with terminal patients had reached other ears. Remember our hypothetical question at the beginning of this report: What would happen if you discovered a cure for everything? You are now about to find out....

At first, a token attempt was made to buy out Rife. Morris Fishbein, who had acquired the entire stock of the American Medical Association by 1934, sent an attorney to Rife with 'an offer you can't refuse.' Rife refused. We many never know the exact terms of this offer. But we do know the terms of the offer Fishbein made to Harry Hoxsey for control of his herbal cancer remedy. Fishbein's associates would receive all profits for nine years and Hoxey would receive nothing. Then, if they were satisfied that it worked, Hoxsey would begin to receive 10% of the profits. Hoxsey decided that he would rather continue to make all the profits himself. When Hoxsey turned Fishbein down, Fishbein used his immensely powerful political connections to have Hoxsey arrested 125 times in a period of 16 months. The charges (based on practice without a license) were always thrown out of court, but the harassment drove Hoxsey insane.

But Fishbein must have realized that this strategy would backfire with Rife. First, Rife could not be arrested like Hoxsey for practising without a license. A trial on trumped-up charges would mean that testimony supporting Rife would be introduced by prominent medical authorities working with Rife. And the defense would undoubtedly take the opportunity to introduce evidence such as the 1934 medical study done with USC. The last thing in the world that the pharmaceutical industry wanted was a public trial about a painless therapy that cured 100% of the terminal cancer patients and cost nothing to use but a little electricity. It might give people the idea that they didn't need drugs.

And finally, Rife had spent decades accumulating meticulous evidence of his work, including film and stop-motion photographs. No, different tactics were needed...

The first incident was the gradual pilfering of components, photographs, film, and written records from Rife's lab. The culprit was never caught.

Then, while Rife struggled to reproduce his missing data (in a day when photocopies and computers were not available), someone vandalized his precious virus microscopes. Pieces of the 5,682 piece Universal microscope were stolen. Earlier, an arson fire had destroyed the multi-million dollar Burnett Lab in New Jersey, just as the scientists there were preparing to announce confirmation of Rife's work. But the final blow came later, when police illegally confiscated the remainder of Rife's 50 years of research.

Then in 1939, agents of a family which controlled the drug industry assisted Philip Hoyland in a frivolous lawsuit against his own partners in the Beam Ray Corporation. This was the only company manufacturing Rife's frequency instruments (Rife was not a partner). Hoyland lost, but his assisted legal assault had the desired effect: the company was bankrupted by legal expenses. And during the Great Depression, this meant that commercial production of Rife's frequency instruments ceased completely.

And remember what a universal cure meant to hospitals and research foundations? Doctors who tried to defend Rife lost their foundations grants and hospital privileges.

On the other hand, big money was spent ensuring that doctors who had seen Rife's therapy would forget what they saw. Almost no price was too much to suppress it. Remember that, today, treatment of a single cancer patient averages over $300,000. It's BIG business.

Thus, Arthur Kendall, the Director of the Northwestern School of Medicine who worked with Rife on the cancer virus, accepted almost a quarter of a million dollars to suddenly 'retire' in Mexico. That was an exorbitant amount of money in the Depression.
Dr. George Dock, another prominent figure who collaborated with Rife, was silenced with an enormous grant, along with the highest honors the AMA could bestow. Between the carrots and the sticks, everyone except Dr. Couche and Dr. Milbank Johnson gave up Rife's work and went back to prescribing drugs.

To finish the job, the medical journals, support almost entirely by drug company revenues and controlled by the AMA, refused to publish any paper by anyone on Rife's therapy. Therefore, an entire generation of medical students graduated into practice without ever once hearing of Rife's breakthroughs in medicine.

The magnitude of such an insane crime eclipses every mass murder in history. Cancer picks us off quietly...but by 1960 the casualties from this tiny virus exceeded the carnage of all the wars America ever fought. In 1989, it was estimated that 40% of us will experience cancer at some time in our lives.

In Rife's lifetime, he had witnessed the progress of civilization from horse-and-buggy travel to jet planes. In that same time, he saw the epidemic of cancer increase from 1 in 24 Americans in 1905 to 1 in 3 in 1971 when Rife died.

He also witnessed the phenomenal growth of the American Cancer Society, the Salk Foundation, and many others collecting hundreds of millions of dollars for diseases that were cured long before in his own San Diego laboratories. In one period, 176,500 cancer drugs were submitted for approval. Any that showed 'favorable' results in only one-sixth of one percent of the cases being studied could be licensed. Some of these drugs had a mortality rate of 14-17%. When death came from the drug, not the cancer, the case was recorded as a 'complete' or 'partial remission' because the patient didn't actually die from the cancer. In reality, it was a race to see which would kill the patient first: the drug or the disease.

The inevitable conclusion reached by Rife was that his life-long labor and discoveries had not only been ignored but probably would be buried with him. At that point, he ceased to produce much of anything and spent the last third of his life seeking oblivion in alcohol. It dulled the pain and his acute awareness of half a century of wasted effort - ignored - while the unnecessary suffering of millions continued so that a vested few might profit. And profit they did, and profit they do.

In 1971, Royal Rife died from a combination of valium and alcohol at the age of 83. Perhaps his continual exposure to his own Rife frequencies helped his body endure abuse for so many years.

Fortunately, his death was not the end of his electronic therapy. A few humanitarian doctors and engineers reconstructed his frequency instruments and kept his genius alive. Rife technology became public knowledge again in 1986 with the publication of The Cancer Cure That Worked, by Barry Lynes, and other material about Royal Rife and his monumental work.

There is wide variation in the cost, design, and quality of the modern portable Rife frequency research instruments available. Costs vary from about $1200 to $3600 with price being no legitimate indicator of the technical competence in the design of the instrument or performance of the instruent. Some of the most expensive units have serious technical limitations and are essentially a waste of money. At the other extreme, some researchers do get crude results from inexpensive simple, unmodified frequency generators, but this is just as misguided as spending too much money. Without the proper modifications, the basic frequency generator gives only minimal and inconsistent results. Please recall that the actual destruction of the viruses and bacteria, etc. is not accomplished by the frequency displayed on these cheap generators, but by certain shorter harmonics of that particular frequency which are often blocked by the crudity of a cheap and rudimentary instrument itself.

This very problem led Rife to ultimately abandon the 'ray tube' design in favor of today's version. The newer technology applies the frequencies and their harmonics to the body through the use of hand-held, footplate, or stick-on electrodes. Proper frequency exposure and flushing of the body with large amounts of clean, pure water is critical to achieve the kind of results Rife got. These procedures are fully explained in the manuals of the best units on the market.

So, unless you would be satisfied with sporadic results for minor conditions, it is suggested you use only the highest quality equipment and only the proper, proven procedures in your personal research. If you do, you may discover that nothing can approach what can be achieved through the application of these safe, time-tested frequencies (many for over 65 years)- and all without drugs, surgery, or radiation.

One day, the name of Royal Raymond Rife may ascend to its rightful place as the giant of modern medical science. Until that time, his fabulous technology remains available only to the people who have the interest to seek it out. While perfectly legal for veterinarians to use to save the lives of animals, Rife's brilliant frequency therapy remains taboo to orthodox mainstream medicine because of the continuing threat it poses to the international pharmaceutical medical monopoly that controls the lives - and deaths - of the vast majority of the people on this planet.

posted in Biogeeks - 6 replies

Who says a woman can't be Einstein?

Thu, 21 Apr 2005 15:39:12 GMT

WHO SAYS A WOMAN CAN'T BE EINSTEIN?
Yes, men's and women's brains are different. But new research upendsthe old myths about who's good at what. A tour of the ever changing brain
By AMANDA RIPLEY RESEARCH BY COCO MASTERS;

Time Magazine Mar. 7, 2005 Issue
THERE WAS SOMETHING SELF-DESTRUCTIVE ABOUT Harvard University President Larry Summers' speech on gender disparities in January. In his first sentence, he said his goal as "provocation" (rarely a wise strategy at a diversity conference). He called for "rigorous and careful" thinking to explain the gender gap among top-tier tenured science professors. But he described his pet theory with something less than prudence. The most likely explanations, he said, are that
1) women are just not so interested as men in making the sacrifices required by high-powered jobs, 2) men may have more "intrinsic aptitude" for high-level science and 3) women may be victims of old-fashioned discrimination. "In my own view, their importance probably ranks in exactly the order that I just described," he announced. Cue the hysteria. The comments about aptitude in particular lingered, like food poisoning, long after the conference ended. For weeks, pundits and professors spouted outrage and praise, all of which added
up to very little. Then came the tedious analysis of faculty-lounge politics at Harvard, as if anyone outside Cambridge really cared.

The rest of us were left with a nagging question: What is the latest science on the differences between men's and women's aptitudes, anyway? Is it true, even a little bit, that men are better equipped for scientific genius? Or is it ridiculous--even pernicious--to ask such a question in the year 2005?

It's always perilous to use science to resolve festering public debates. Everyone sees something different--like 100 people finding shapes in clouds. By the time they make up their minds, the clouds have drifted beyond the horizon. But scientists who have spent their lives studying sex differences in the brain (some of whom defend Summers and some of whom dismiss him as an ignoramus) generally concede that he was not entirely wrong. Thanks to new brain-imaging technology, we know there are indeed real differences between the male and the female brain, more differences than we would have imagined a decade ago. "The brain is a sex organ," says Sandra Witelson, a neuroscientist who became famous in the 1990s for her study of Albert Einstein's brain. "In the last dozen years, there has been an exponential increase in the number of studies that have found differences in the brain. It's very exciting."

But that's just the beginning of the conversation. It turns out that many of those differences don't seem to change our behavior. Others do--in ways we might not expect. Some of the most dramatic differences are not just in our brains but also in our eyes, noses and ears--which feed information to our brains. Still, almost none of those differences are static. The brain is constantly changing in response to hormones, encouragement, practice, diet and drugs. Brain patterns fluctuate within the same person, in fact, depending on age and time of day. So while Summers was also right that more men than women make up the extreme high--and low--scorers in science and math tests, it's absurd to conclude that the difference is primarily because of biology--or environment. The two interact from the time of conception, which only makes life more interesting.

Any simplistic theory is "doomed to fail," says Yu Xie, a sociology professor at the University of Michigan. Xie's research on women in the sciences was cited by Summers in his statement, and Xie has spent every day since trying to explain the intricacy of human behavior to reporters. "I don't exclude biology as an explanation," he says. "But I know biological factors would not play a role unless they interacted with social conditions."

Unless one appreciates that complexity, it would be all too easy to look at the latest research on the brain and conclude, say, that men may not in fact make the best university presidents. For example, studies show that men are slightly more likely to say things without realizing how their actions will affect others. And as men age, they tend to lose more tissue from a part of the brain located just behind the forehead that concerns itself with consequences and self-control.
Generally speaking, the brain of a female is more interlinked and—if one assumes that a basic requirement of the post is to avoid dividing the faculty into two sweaty mobs--may be better suited for the kind of cautious diplomacy required of a high-profile university leader. Of course, to borrow a line from Summers, "I would prefer to believe otherwise."

Now that scientists are finally starting to map the brain with some accuracy, the challenge is figuring out what to do with that knowledge. The possibilities for applying it to the classroom, workplace and doctor's office are tantalizing. "If something is genetic, it means it must be biological. If we can figure out the biology, then we should be able to tweak the biology," says Richard Haier, a psychology professor who studies intelligence at the University of California at Irvine. Maybe Summers' failure was not one of sensitivity but one of imagination.

LESSON 1: FUNCTION OVER FORM

SCIENTISTS HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR SEX differences in the brain since they have been looking at the brain. Many bold decrees have been issued. In the 19th century, the corpus callosum, a bundle of nerve fibers that connects the two hemispheres of the brain, was considered key to intellectual development. Accordingly, it was said to have a greater surface area in men. Then, in the 1980s, we were told that no, it is larger in women--and that explains why the emotional right side of women's brains is more in touch with the analytical left side. Aha. That theory has since been discredited, and scientists remain at odds over who has the biggest and what it might mean. Stay tuned for more breaking news.

But most studies agree that men's brains are about 10% bigger than women's brains overall. Even when the comparison is adjusted for the fact that men are, on average, 8% taller than women, men's brains are still slightly bigger. But size does not predict intellectual performance, as was once thought. Men and women perform similarly on IQ tests. And most scientists still cannot tell male and female brains apart just by looking at them.

Recently, scientists have begun to move away from the obsession with size. Thanks to new brain-imaging technology, researchers can get a good look at the living brain as it functions and grows. Earlier studies relied on autopsies or X rays--and no one wanted to expose children or women, who might be pregnant, to regular doses of radiation.

The deeper you probe, the more interesting the differences. Women appear to have more connections between the two brain hemispheres. In certain regions, their brain is more densely packed with neurons. And women tend to use more parts of their brain to accomplish certain tasks. That might explain why they often recover better from a stroke, since the healthy parts of their mind compensate for the injured regions. Men do their thinking in more focused regions of the brain, whether they are solving a math problem, reading a book or feeling a wave of anger or sadness.

Indeed, men and women seem to handle emotions quite differently. While both sexes use a part of the brain called the amygdala, which is located deep within the organ, women seem to have stronger connections between the amygdala and regions of the brain that handle language and other higher-level functions. That may explain why women are, on average, more likely to talk about their emotions and men tend to compartmentalize their worries and carry on. Or, of course, it may not.

"Men and women have different brain architectures, and we don't know what they mean," says Haier. By administering IQ tests to a group of college students and then analyzing scans of their brain structure, Haier's team recently discovered that the parts of the brain that are related to intelligence are different in men and women. "That is in some ways a major observation, because one of the assumptions of psychology has been that all human brains pretty much work the same way," he says. Now that we know they don't, we can try to understand why some brains react differently to, say, Alzheimer's, many medications and even teaching techniques, Haier says.

Even more interesting than the brain's adult anatomy might be the journey it takes to get there. For 13 years, psychiatrist Jay Giedd has been compiling one of the world's largest libraries of brain growth. Every Tuesday evening, from 5 o'clock until midnight, a string of children files into the National Institutes of Health outside Washington to have their brains scanned. Giedd and his team ease the kids through the MRI procedure, and then he gives them a brain tour of their pictures--gently pointing out the spinal cord and the corpus callosum, before offering them a copy to take to show-and-tell.

Most of the kids are all business. Rowena Avery, 6, of Sparks, Nev., arrived last week with a stuffed animal named Sidewalk and stoically disappeared into the machine while her mom, dad and little sister watched. In preparation, she had practiced at home by lying very still in the bathtub. Her picture came out crystal clear. "The youngest ones are the best at lying still. It's kind of surprising," Giedd says. "It must be because they are used to hiding in kitchen cabinets and things like that."

Among the girls in Giedd's study, brain size peaks around age 11 1/2. For the boys, the peak comes three years later. "For kids, that's a long time," Giedd says. His research shows that most parts of the brain mature faster in girls. But in a 1999 study of 508 boys and girls, Virginia Tech researcher Harriet Hanlon found that some areas mature faster in boys. Specifically, some of the regions involved in mechanical reasoning, visual targeting and spatial reasoning appeared to mature four to eight years earlier in boys. The parts that handle verbal fluency, handwriting and recognizing familiar faces matured several years earlier in girls.

Monkeys are among our most trusted substitutes in brain research. This week a study in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience shows that stage of life is also important in male and female rhesus monkeys. In a sort of shell game, young male monkeys proved better at finding food after they saw it hidden on a tray--suggesting better spatial memory. But they peaked early. By old age, male and female monkeys performed equally well, according to the study, which was led by Agnès Lacreuse at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. All of which suggests that certain aptitudes may not be that different between males and females. It just depends on when you test them. (We'll have more to say about those monkeys in just a bit.)

LESSON 2: THE SEGREGATION OF THE SENSES

SO HOW DO WE EXPLAIN WHY, IN STUDY after study, boys and men are still on average better at rotating 3-D objects in their minds? As for girls and women, how do we explain why they tend to have better verbal skills and social sensitivities?

The most surprising differences may be outside the brain. "If you have a man and a woman looking at the same landscape, they see totally different things," asserts Leonard Sax, a physician and psychologist whose book Why Gender Matters came out last month. "Women can see colors and textures that men cannot see. They hear things men cannot hear, and they smell things men cannot smell." Since the eyes, ears and nose are portals to the brain, they directly affect brain development from birth on.

In rats, for example, we know that the male retina has more cells designed to detect motion. In females, the retina has more cells built to gather information on color and texture. If the same is true in humans, as Sax suspects, that may explain why, in an experiment in England four years ago, newborn boys were much more likely than girls to stare at a mobile turning above their cribs. It may also help explain why boys prefer to play with moving toys like trucks while girls favor richly textured dolls and tend to draw with a wider range of colors, Sax says.

Likewise, women's ears are more sensitive to some noises. Baby girls hear certain ranges of sound better. And the divergence gets even bigger in adults. As for smell, a study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience in 2002 showed that women of childbearing age were many times more sensitive than men to several smells upon repeated exposure. (Another study has found that heterosexual women have the most sensitive smell and homosexual men have the least.)

Rest assured, Sax says: none of that means women are, overall, better than men at perception. It just means the species is internally diverse, making it more likely to survive. "The female will remember the color and texture of a particular plant and be able to warn people if it's poisonous. A man looking at the same thing will be more alert to what is moving in the periphery," he says. "Which is better? You need both."

LESSON 3: NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE BRAIN

UNTIL RECENTLY, THERE HAVE BEEN TWO groups of people: those who argue sex differences are innate and should be embraced and those who insist that they are learned and should be eliminated by changing the environment. Sax is one of the few in the middle--convinced that boys and girls are innately different and that we must change the environment so differences don't become limitations.

At a restaurant near his practice in Montgomery County, Md., Sax spreads out dozens of papers and meticulously makes his case. He is a fanatic, but a smart, patient one. In the early 1990s, he says, he grew alarmed by the "parade" of parents coming into his office wondering whether their sons had attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Sax evaluated them and found that, indeed, the boys were not paying attention in school. But the more he studied brain differences, the more he became convinced that the problem was with the schools. Sometimes the solution was simple: some of the boys didn't hear as well as the girls and so needed to be moved into the front row. Other times, the solution was more complex.

Eventually, Sax concluded that very young boys and girls would be better off in separate classrooms altogether. "[Previously], as far as I was concerned, single-sex education was an old-fashioned leftover. I thought of boys wearing suits and talking with British accents," he says. But coed schools do more harm than good, he decided, when they teach boys and girls as if their brains mature at the same time. "If you ask a child to do something not developmentally appropriate for him, he will, No. 1, fail. No. 2, he will develop an aversion to the subject," he says. "By age 12, you will have girls who don't like science and boys who don't like reading." And they won't ever go back, he says. "The reason women are underrepresented in computer science and engineering is not because they can't do it. It's because of the way they're taught."

So far, studies about girls' and boys' achievements in same-sex grammar schools are inconclusive. But if it turns out that targeting sex differences through education is helpful, there are certainly many ways to carry it out. Says Giedd: "The ability for change is phenomenal. That's what the brain does best." A small but charming 2004 study published in Nature found that people who learned how to juggle increased the gray matter in their brains in certain locations. When they stopped juggling, the new gray matter vanished. A similar structural change appears to occur in people who learn a second language. Remember that new research on spatial memory in rhesus monkeys? The young females dramatically improved their performance through simple training, wiping out the gender gap altogether.

In a recent experiment with humans at Temple University, women showed substantial progress in spatial reasoning after spending a couple of hours a week for 10 weeks playing Tetris, of all things. The males improved with weeks of practice too, says Nora Newcombe, a Temple psychologist who specializes in spatial cognition, and so the gender gap remained. But the improvement for both sexes was "massively greater" than the gender difference. "This means that if the males didn't train, the females would outstrip them," she says.

Of course, we already manipulate the brain through drugs--many of which, doctors now realize, have dramatically different effects on different brains. Drugs for improving intelligence are in the works, says Haier, in the quest to find medication for Alzheimer's. "We're going to get a lot better at manipulating genetic biology. We may even be better at manipulating genetic biology than manipulating the environment."

Until then, one solution to overcoming biological tendencies is to consciously override them, to say to yourself, "O.K., I may have a hard time with this task, but I'm going to will myself to conquer it." Some experiments show that baby girls, when faced with failure, tend to give up and cry relatively quickly, while baby boys get angry and persist, says Witelson at Ontario's Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University. "What we don't know is whether that pattern persists into adulthood," she says. But in her experience in academia, she says she knows of at least a couple of brilliant women who never realized their potential in science because they stopped trying when they didn't get grants or encountered some other obstacle. "It's much better," she says, "for people to understand what the differences are, act on their advantages and be prepared for their disadvantages."

LESSON 4: EXPECTATIONS MATTER

WE HAVE A TENDENCY TO MAKE TOO MUCH of test-score differences between the sexes (which are actually very small compared with the differences between, say, poor and affluent students). And regardless of what happens in school, personality and discipline can better predict success when it comes to highly competitive jobs.

One thing we know about the brain is that it is vulnerable to the power of suggestion. There is plenty of evidence that when young women are motivated and encouraged, they excel at science. For most of the 1800s, for example, physics, astronomy, chemistry and botany were considered gender-appropriate subjects for middle-and upper-class American girls. By the 1890s, girls outnumbered boys in public high school science courses across the country, according to The Science Education of American Girls, a 2003 book by Kim Tolley. Records from top schools in Boston show that girls outperformed boys in physics in the mid-19th century. Latin and Greek, meanwhile, were considered the province of gentlemen--until the 20th century, when lucrative opportunities began to open up in the sciences.

Today, in Iceland and Sweden, girls consistently outperform boys in math and physics (see box). In Sweden the gap is widest in the remote regions in the north. That may be because women want to move to the big cities farther south, where they would need to compete in high-tech economies, while men are focused on local hunting, fishing and forestry opportunities, says Niels Egelund, a professor of educational psychology at the Danish University of Education. The phenomenon even has a name, the Jokkmokk effect, a reference to an isolated town in Swedish Lapland.

Back in the States, the achievement gap in the sciences is closing, albeit slowly. Female professors have been catching up with male professors in their publishing output. Today half of chemistry and almost 60% of biology bachelor of science degrees go to females. Patience is required.

Next, Summers may want to take up the male question. In all seriousness. Why do so many more boys than girls have learning disorders, autism, attention-deficit problems and schizophrenia? Why are young men now less likely to go to college than women are? And what to make of a 2003 survey that found eighth-grade girls outperforming boys in algebra in 22 countries, with boys outscoring girls in only three nations? If we're not careful, the next Einstein could find herself working as a high-powered lawyer who does wonders with estate-tax calculations instead of discovering what the universe is made of. --With reporting by Nadia Mustafa and Deirdre van Dyk/New York and Ulla Plon/Lulea

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

Poll: 'sex' vs 'gender'

MissMellie — Sat, 26 Mar 2005 13:14:45 GMT

OK, I'm asking you all because this question has come up several times...

When putting together a technical paper, in referring to whether a subject is male or female, do you use the word 'sex' or the word 'gender'? What is your reasoning for your choice?

Ex. "Body mass, gender, and reproductive status of each subject will be recorded."

I have used 'gender' only to be questioned by reviewers who think 'sex' is the appropriate word, and when I've used 'sex' there are inevitably comments that 'gender' is actually the word I want. I've asked people in my department and they are evenly split but no one can give a definitive reason for their choice.
Thoughts? Comments?

posted in Biogeeks - 3 replies

What's next after the lab?

bethanywexler — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 01:02:39 GMT

I love science in theory...but I'm getting sick of being a lab rat. I have a BS in biology and don't think I want to get a PhD in it....then I would just be in my office writing grants and working all night on my computer. Has anyone left the lab for a cool/interesting/inspiring science job? I'd love to hear ideas. I would like to try to find something where I can be creative and work with other people...but still be connected to biology.

posted in Biogeeks - 12 replies

New Tribe: "Polymaths: Universal Humans"

Tue, 22 Mar 2005 20:18:11 GMT

A polymath (also known as a polyhistor) is a person who excels in multiple fields, particularly in both arts and sciences. The most common term for this is Renaissance man. Other terms for this are Homo universalis and Uomo Universale which in Latin and Italian respectively is translated as "Universal Man". Many notable polymaths lived during the European Renaissance period, and a rounded approach to education was typical of the ideals of the humanists of the time. A gentleman or courtier of that era was expected to speak several languages, play a musical instrument, write poetry and so on, thus fulfilling the Renaissance ideal. During the Renaissance, Baldassare Castiglione, in his The Book of the Courtier, wrote a guide to being a polymath. On the other hand "polymath" may be applied more strictly, taking Leonardo da Vinci or Goethe as prime examples, and requiring a universality of approach. A polymath may not necessarily be classed as a genius, which is a more debatable classification; and certainly a genius may not display the breadth to qualify as a polymath. Albert Einstein is a prime example of a genius who was not a polymath.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath

posted in Biogeeks - 1 reply

Mouse Brain

Wed, 16 Mar 2005 17:27:22 GMT

Just passin' along.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml
Scientists to make 'Stuart Little' mouse with the brain of a human
By James Langton in New York
(Filed: 06/03/2005)

It will look like any ordinary mouse, but for America's scientists a tiny animal threatens to ignite a profound ethical dilemma.

In one of the most controversial scientific projects ever conceived, a group of university researchers in California's Silicon Valley is preparing to create a mouse whose brain will be composed entirely of human cells.

Researchers at Stanford University have already succeeded in breeding mice with brains that are one per cent human cells.

In the next stage they plan to use stem cells from aborted foetuses to create an animal whose brain cells are 100 per cent human.

Prof Irving Weissman, who heads the university's Institute of Cancer/Stem Cell Biology, believes that the mice could produce a breakthrough in understanding how stem cells might lead to a cure for diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease.

The group is waiting for a key American government-sponsored report, due this month, that will decide just how much science can blur the distinction between man and beast.

Last week, however, the university's ethics committee approved the research, under certain conditions. Prof Henry Greely, the head of the committee, said: "If the mouse shows human-like behaviours, like improved memory or problem-solving, it's time to stop."

He accepted that the project might seem "a little creepy", but insisted: "It's not going to get up and say 'Hi, I'm Mickey'. Our brains are far more complicated."

Biologists know such creatures as "chimeras", after the mythical Greek monster that was part-lion, part-goat and part-serpent.

Prof Weissman said that there was no way of knowing whether the "human-mice" would develop any human characteristics until after they were born. In previous experiments, pigs with human blood have been developed at a clinic in Minnesota. Last year, the University of Nevada produced sheep whose livers were 80 per cent human and could one day be used for transplants.

An inquiry into laying down rules for research using stem cells from human embryos was launched last summer by America's National Academies of Science. The government-sponsored report, said to be in draft form, will govern stem cell research in the private sector. It comes at a time of growing confusion in America over the limits of stem cell research.

President George W Bush halted government-funded research during his first term of office but several states, including California, have since passed laws that allow support for stem cell projects from local taxes.

At hearings in Washington last October, Prof Weissman argued strongly against a ban on "chimera mice". He believes that the mice would behave like any others, but said that he would monitor the experiment closely and destroy them at the slightest suggestion of human-like brain patterns.

Supporters of stem cell research at Stanford University include the actor Michael J Fox, who suffers from Parkinson's disease. Fox provided the voice for Stuart Little, Hollywood's version of the "human mouse, who talks, has human parents and lives in a New York apartment.

Opponents of Prof Weissman's work accept that his mice are unlikely to show such obvious human traits, but voice concerns that the brain cells would begin to organise themselves in a way that was more human than mouse. There is growing unease over whether human stem cells could migrate to other parts of the animals, creating human sperm or eggs in their reproductive systems.

Should two such "chimera mice" mate, it could lead to the nightmarish scenario of a human embryo trapped in a mouse's womb. William Cheshire, a neurology professor from the Mayo Clinic in Florida and a Christian activist, has called for a ban on any research that destroys a human embryo to create a new organism.

"We must be careful not to violate the integrity of humanity or of animal life, he said. "Research projects that create human-animal chimeras risk disturbing fragile ecosystems, endanger health and affront species integrity.

In a recent article for the conservative Weekly Standard magazine, Wesley Smith, a consultant for the Centre for Bioethics and Culture warned that "biotechnology is becoming dangerously close to raging out of control.

He wrote: "Scientists are engaging in increasingly macabre experiments that threaten to mutate nature and the human condition."

posted in Biogeeks - 5 replies

PPARgamma and the tight junction genes

Tue, 01 Mar 2005 17:53:23 GMT

I am puzzled by a batch of data I have. Does anyone know of a cascade link between PPARgamma activation and the claudins, E-cadherin, occludin, ZO-1,2 and 3?
I am aware of the NFkB regulation but can't see how this would impinge on the expression of the above
As per usual, I feel like molecular biology is missing something rather large.......

posted in Biogeeks - 12 replies

The Journey of Man

jenn_b — Wed, 17 Mar 2004 22:03:23 GMT

Can anyone give me their thoughts on The Journey of Man by Spencer Wells? I'm interested in reading it. I saw him speak last Monday, and it was a great story. I'd like to know more about the populations they sampled and the markers they tracked.

posted in Biogeeks - 2 replies

Graduate study opinions

Daniel — Fri, 11 Mar 2005 16:58:43 GMT

I still have a few years before I graduate with my B.S, but my field of study currently is biochemistry. My goals originally included getting my PharmD and perhaps doing research, but I realized that a realistic goal of research with a PharmD was limited to clincal studies. I want the laboratory research type of work. That and I heard it is easier to get into a Graduate school than it is to get accepted into a PharmD program. Less competion, PhD work you don't have to deal with all the budding pharmacists.

So my goal changed to getting a Masters in Pharmacology. My sister (doing her research project for a PhD in Virology), told me if I can get into Grad school, just do the PhD, it is just a bit longer and not much harder (find that hard to believe), but anyhow she convinced me to plan for the PhD. Now I got to thinking and checking out the field, and figured a Pharmacology degree might be pretty specialized. I see that you can get a job doing drug research with a PhD in biochemistry or other related fields. (microbiology?)

Anyhow, I was thinking of doing a degree in a related field: Physiology. Any thoughts on this? Pros or cons?

As a side, I want to get involved in Neuological research, developing neuropharmeceuticals would be nice, but isn't a concrete thing. I just want to contribute to the field in some way, and not be limited to finding relieve for migrane sufferers. So would a being a physiologist be a good thing for a career in neurobiology/chemistry?

posted in Biogeeks - 4 replies

Project Management jobs in UK?

Fri, 18 Feb 2005 04:11:56 GMT

Global development or discover - gene therapy is also a speciality.
If anyone knows anyone/thing, please let me know

posted in Biogeeks - 2 replies

my book More Than Human is now out!

mez — Wed, 09 Mar 2005 16:31:04 GMT

http://www.morethanhuman.org

As some of you know, I spent a good chunk of the last two years working on a book. Well, it’s out! The book is titled “More Than Human” and it’s a non-fiction look at the potential to use biotechnology to make people stronger, smarter, and longer lived.

You can read about what's going on with the book, including recent reviews, upcoming bookstore events, and happenings in my blog at http://www.morethanhuman.org

Here's a description of the book:

More Than Human is about our growing power to alter our minds, bodies, and lifespans through technology. Over the last 5-10 years scientists and doctors have learned an incredible amount about how to enhance memory, improve physical performance, rewrite our genes, alter the rate of aging, and even how to connect our brains directly with computers and robots. This is not science fiction - this is the research happening in labs around the world right now, research that's restored sight to blind men and women, created mice that live to the age of 200 in "human years", and given the paralyzed the ability to control computers just by thinking about it.

More Than Human takes the reader into the labs where this is happening to understand the science of human enhancement. It also steps back to look at the big picture. How will these technologies affect society? What will they do to the economy, to politics, and to human identity? What social policies should we enact to regulate, restrict, or encourage the use of these technologies?

Ultimately More Than Human concludes that we should embrace, rather than fear, the power to alter ourselves - that in the hands of millions of individuals and families, it stands to benefit society more than to harm it.

You can read more at http://www.morethanhuman.org

If the above looks good to you, then I'm asking YOUR help to make the book a success! There are five things you can do to help:

1) BUY THE BOOK!

Click here to buy a copy of my book.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=morethanhuman1-20&path=tg/detail/-/0767918436

The more you buy, the higher I’ll rate on Amazon and possibly on other lists. The higher I rank, the more other people will buy the book!

2) BUY RELATED BOOKS!

If you buy related books on Amazon, people who look at those books will see a link to More Than Human! So if you’ve been thinking about buying any of the following books, buy them now!

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=morethanhuman1-20&path=tg/detail/-/0316172324/

Collapse by Jared Diamond
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=morethanhuman1-20&path=tg/detail/-/0670033375/

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=morethanhuman1-20&path=tg/detail/-/0393317552

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=morethanhuman1-20&path=tg/detail/-/076790818X/

The Ancestor’s Tale by Richard Dawkins
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=morethanhuman1-20&path=tg/detail/-/0618005838/

or any of Amazon’s best selling popular science books
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=morethanhuman1-20&path=tg/new-for-you/top-sellers/-/books/75

3) SUBMIT A REVIEW TO AMAZON!

Once you’ve read the book (or now if you’ve read it already), go back to the Amazon page and write up a review. Don't feel obliged to make it a 5 star review. Users can sniff out phoney reviews. Just write what you honestly think.

4) POST TO YOUR BLOG!

If you have a blog, including a livejournal, post a link to the Amazon page for my book to your blog. That’ll cause the book to pop up on sites that track which books are being most discussed and most linked to in the blogosphere. (Like Technorati's BookTalk: http://www.technorati.com/live/products.html )

5) FORWARD THIS MAIL!

If you know others who you think would be interested in the book, tell them about it or forward this mail! Especially if they're people I don't know.

Thank you all for your help. With your help and a little luck, More Than Human may get out there in front of a lot of people.
mez

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

San Fran biotech companies?

YankeeDyke — Sun, 08 Aug 2004 01:03:39 GMT

Hi there...

I'm moving out to San Fran area sometime between now and the first of the year, and I was wondering which biotech companies in the area have a good reputation and which I should avoid?

Thanks
G.

posted in Biogeeks - 13 replies

Seattle Mol Bio

Meka — Fri, 21 Jan 2005 08:41:10 GMT

Hi
I just moved to Seattle and have a similar question as previously posed.
What are the decent biotech companies to work for, and how lucrative are decent jobs at the UNI here?

I'm looking for a Research Tech position in a nice friendly lab with people who love their work, and a boss who doesn't mind what time you get in, what colour your hair is and what you believe in so long as the work gets done and gets done well.
Areas: mol bio, virology, microbiology, genetics, biotech
(background mol bio with a degree in med micro/med biotech)

What sort of $ can I expect to ask for (with 6 years experience and a B.Sc.)? I come from a non-for-profit lab in Wisconsin, so I'm used to a pretty low pay.

Thanks,
Meka

posted in Biogeeks - 2 replies

Biotech Question--anyone??

Mon, 13 Dec 2004 10:54:27 GMT

Maybe someone here can answer a quick employment related question. I'm exploring moving from academia to a biotech company. My question regards CV/resume format.

I know a standard resume shouldn't exceed about 1-1,5 pages. But I get the feeling positions seeking Research Scientists still want somewhat of a CV type document--meaning longer and including publications.

With publications, there's no way to keep a CV to two pages.

Anyone have any direct experience with this issue? I'd be greatly appreciative.

Merci.

posted in Biogeeks - 6 replies

SF: Frog Relocation Volunteers needed Nov.13/14/15

Francesca — Fri, 12 Nov 2004 20:19:35 GMT

http://sanfrancisco.tribe.net/listing/485b1d56-2e72-4290-b20f-1dc799e659e5?r=10535

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

breedster.com - population biology fun

Fri, 07 May 2004 01:03:41 GMT

If you need an invite to get in - let me know.

There are aspects of cooperative behavior, genetics, communicative diseases, etc.

http://breedster.drunkmenworkhere.org/faq.php

posted in Biogeeks - 11 replies

BIOTECH UNION

antihero — Wed, 03 Nov 2004 23:23:00 GMT

HELLO,

THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE ACTUALLY EMPLOYED IN SCIENTIFIC FIELDS (ie biotech) WE SHOULD FORM AN UNION, GET OURSELVES BETTER BENEFITS AND PAY.

THAT WOULD ROCK.

posted in Biogeeks - 2 replies

nature's mind

kekala — Sun, 17 Oct 2004 21:44:20 GMT

Anybody interested in ideas about the role of biological minds in their own evolution or in new theories about the mind/matter interface is welcome to check out my book at
www.differentway.net/naturesmind

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

New tribe: Transgenic Art

mella — Mon, 11 Oct 2004 19:49:44 GMT

greenfluorescentbunny.tribe.net

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

New Person

Sat, 09 Oct 2004 22:56:42 GMT

Hello Biogeeks,

I recently joined tribe.net and this group.

As a kid, someone gave me a book on African animals and it contained a picture of a bird picking meat out from between a crocodile's teeth. Ever since, I have had a deep fascination with symbioses. Does anyone know of any books on this subject that fit the following criteria:
- written in the last 15 years
- deep and broad information
- well-written (enjoyable, thoughtful and accessible to someone with a high-school level of biology)
- under $50
?

I found some OK examples in the biomedical library at university. These, however, seemed either too technical and not broad enough (focusing on specific types of symbiosis for university-level biology students, for example), or they dated back to the 70's and didn't have enough depth.

Regards and thanks in advance,

Tim

posted in Biogeeks - 2 replies

Science Daily News

Maria — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 18:38:35 GMT

Hi,

I used to enjoy going to www.sciencedaily.com/ to get a daily dose of what's new in science - especially biology. But in the last month or so, the site has had a major overhaul. Now, I'm having trouble finding news. All the links now seem to point to commercial sites with products for sale or some other kind of agenda. Perhaps the press releases are just hidden? and I can't find them for the clutter up front? Has anyone else had success or failure looking for news?

posted in Biogeeks - 4 replies

Tropical Ecology

Sun, 08 Aug 2004 15:02:18 GMT

Hi there,
I just moved to Panama to work for the Smithsonian Tropical Research Intstitute on Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal. Are there any tropical Ecologist in this tribe that are interested in information exchange about just anything to do with tropical ecology?

posted in Biogeeks - 2 replies

West Nile in California & Arizona

Ann — Sat, 14 Aug 2004 05:01:31 GMT

Hi,

Check this out:

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/westnile/surv&control04Maps.htm

Why so many cases in CA and AZ?

-A.

posted in Biogeeks - 2 replies

Amgen and Immunex

michelle — Sat, 13 Mar 2004 04:44:03 GMT

Hi there, I am writing a paper for school on the Amgen/Immunex merger. As mergers go this seems to have been pretty successful. Amgen appear to have integrated Immunex in to its organization maximising revenues and yet not disrupting research at Immunex's site.
Reports I have read show that analysts were initially skeptical of Amgen making this acquisition thinking it was not financially viable.
Does anyone have any opinions on whether this was a success or not?

posted in Biogeeks - 2 replies

Baby Superman?

dotemdot — Tue, 29 Jun 2004 16:59:29 GMT

Doctors discover a toddler muscle man
By Linda A. Johnson, Associated Press
June 23, 2004

Somewhere in Germany is a baby Superman, born in Berlin with bulging arm and leg muscles. Not yet 5, he can hold seven-pound weights with arms extended, something many adults cannot do. He has muscles twice the size of other kids his age and half their body fat.

DNA testing showed why: The boy has a genetic mutation that boosts muscle growth.

The discovery, reported in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine, represents the first documented human case of such a mutation.

Many scientists believe the find could eventually lead to drugs for treating people with muscular dystrophy and other muscle-destroying conditions. And athletes would almost surely want to get their hands on such a drug and use it like steroids to bulk up.

The boy's mutant DNA segment was found to block production of a protein called myostatin that limits muscle growth. The news comes seven years after researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore created buff "mighty mice" by "turning off" the gene that directs cells to produce myostatin.

"Now we can say that myostatin acts the same way in humans as in animals," said the boy's physician, Dr. Markus Schuelke, a professor in the child neurology department at Charite/University Medical Center Berlin. "We can apply that knowledge to humans, including trial therapies for muscular dystrophy."

Given the huge potential market for such drugs, researchers at universities and pharmaceutical companies already are trying to find a way to limit the amount and activity of myostatin in the body. Wyeth has just begun human tests of a genetically engineered antibody designed to neutralize myostatin.

Dr. Lou Kunkel, director of the genomics program at Boston Children's Hospital and professor of pediatrics and genetics at Harvard Medical School, said success is possible within several years.

"Just decreasing this protein by 20, 30, 50 percent can have a profound effect on muscle bulk," said Kunkel, who is among the doctors participating in the Wyeth research.

Muscular dystrophy is the world's most common genetic disease. There is no cure and the most common form, Duchenne's, usually kills before adulthood. The few treatments being tried to slow its progression have serious side effects.

Muscle wasting also is common in the elderly and patients with diseases such as cancer and AIDS.

"If you could find a way to block myostatin activity, you might slow the wasting process," said Dr. Se-Jin Lee, the Johns Hopkins professor whose team created the "mighty mice."

Lee said he believes a myostatin blocker also could suppress fat accumulation and thus thwart the development of diabetes. Lee and Johns Hopkins would receive royalties for any myostatin-blocking drug made by Wyeth.

Dr. Eric Hoffman, director of Children's National Medical Center's Research Center for Genetic Medicine, said he believes a muscular dystrophy cure will be found, but he is unsure whether it will be a myostatin-blocking drug, another treatment or a combination, because about a dozen genes have some effect on muscles.

He said a mystotatin-blocking drug could help other groups of people, including astronauts and others who lose muscle mass during long stints in zero gravity or when immobilized by illness or a broken limb.

Researchers would not disclose the German boy's identity but said he was born to a somewhat muscular mother, a 24-year-old former professional sprinter. Her brother and three other close male relatives all were unusually strong, with one of them a construction worker able to unload heavy curbstones by hand.

In the mother, one copy of the gene is mutated and the other is normal; the boy has two mutated copies. One almost definitely came from his father, but no information about him has been disclosed. The mutation is very rare in people.

The boy is healthy now, but doctors worry he could eventually suffer heart or other health problems.

In the past few years, scientists have seen great potential in myostatin-blocking strategies.

Internet marketers have been hawking "myostatin-blocking" supplements to bodybuilders, though doctors say the products are useless and perhaps dangerous.

Some researchers are trying to turn off the myostatin gene in chickens to produce more meat per bird. And several breeds of cattle have natural variations in the gene that, aided by selective breeding, give them far more muscle and less fat than other steer.

http://www.dailycamera.com/bdc/nation_world_news/article/0,1713,BDC_2420_2984793,00.html

posted in Biogeeks - 1 reply

U.S. bioterrorism research leaps past defensive tactics

Robert — Thu, 10 Jun 2004 01:16:15 GMT

U.S. bioterrorism research leaps past defensive tactics

Scientists now able to explore creating genetically engineered superbugs, plus the means to mass-produce and spread them

By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER

The Bush administration is ramping up bioterrorism research that will press beyond traditional defenses against natural biowarfare germs to explore genetically engineered superbugs, as well as the means to mass-produce and disseminate them.

After spending almost $10 billion on biodefense research, defense scientists say broader studies of bioterror threats are needed to weigh the chances of certain attacks, tell U.S. intelligence what to look for and shore up defenses.

A classified presidential directive and other documents offer a roadmap for the new research as part of the first effort at coordinating all federal biodefense research since the October 2001 anthrax attacks by mail.

"Mother Nature has created a number of nasty pathogens," said Gerald Parker, head of science-based threat analysis and re-

sponse for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. "But we have to be worried about the future, too, and worry about comprehensive threats."

"As a country, that's a set of areas that could stand to have more investment," agreed Pat Fitch, chief of the chemical and biological national security program at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.

The rapid spread and dropping costs of basic biotechnology raise the specter that terrorists eventually will tinker with naturally deadly germs to make them more virulent, impervious to drugs or tough to detect. But is it a real threat? Is it likely enough that the United States needs to develop special vaccines, antidotes and detectors to thwart it?

"You don't want to spend most of your money on a threat that no one can (deliver on) unless they have a weapons program that is just massive," said Livermore's Fitch.

"It's just such a hard nut to crack," he said.

So is slowing the spread of bioweapons worldwide, and arms-control advocates worry the secrecy of the Bush administration's plans could hamstring the 1972 global ban in bioweapons development. They say biologists in China, Russia and rogue nations will gain a new argument for secretly studying new germs and delivery methods under the rubric of biodefense.

"If any other country set forth a program like this, U.S. intelligence undoubtedly would call it an offensive program," said Edward Hammond, head of the Sunshine Project, a group in Austin, Texas, that tracks bioweapons and biodefense issues.

"Our enemy now is not the Russians or Saddam. It's biotech itself. It's imagining what we can do to fight the technology," he said. "If you generate that mentality, it's sort of no-holds barred."

Three experts in biological arms control recently published an essay questioning the Department of Homeland Security's plans for biothreat-assessment research, to be based at the Army's Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md., but likely to use scientists and labs nationwide, Lawrence Livermore among them.

Milton Leitenberg, a veteran arms control advocate and senior scholar at the University of Maryland's Center for International and Security Studies, wrote the essay, and it was signed by retired Ambassador James Leonard, chief negotiator of the Biological Weapons Convention for the Nixon administration, and by Richard Spertzel, a former Army bioweapons scientist and chief U.N. bioweapons inspector in Iraq after the first Gulf War.

The critique was triggered by a February presentation to military officers about the Homeland Security Department's new National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center. Among research thrusts, it tasked scientists to study how to "acquire, grow, modify, store, stabilize, package (and) disperse" bioweapons and to run computer simulations of large-scale production.

It called for "red teaming" operations, in which scientists would figure out how to execute terrorist attacks.

The Department of Homeland Security's Parker said scientists need answers to biothreat questions even about the six Class A threat agents. The toxin produced by Clostridium botulinum is the most poisonous substance known, lethal in microgram quantities in food, water or the air.

But scientists aren't sure how much terrorists would have to produce from germ's seven different serotypes to create mass casualties in a U.S. city. That probably means lab studies on animals to gauge effects on humans, Parker said.

"That piece of information may be necessary to help bound the problem, to understand whether a terrorist would need to develop a cupful or several hundred kilograms," he said.

Leitenberg said gene-splicing germs or testing animals with clouds of pathogens alone don't necessarily worry him.

"All of these taken together, that's something to worry about," he said.

From 1969, when the United States ended its offensive bioweapons program, until at least the mid-1980s, the Defense Department considered those activities outlawed by the Biological Weapons Convention.

The 1972 treaty forbids development, manufacture and stockpiling of germs "for hostile purposes." At the insistence of the United States and the former Soviet Union, the treaty does not mention "research" and allows biological work that is "prophylactic, protective or for peaceful purposes." That created a gray area for biodefense because it employs many of the same scientific techniques and equipment used to develop bioweapons.

Lacking unambiguous proof, nations judge intentions by inference: Does a suspect nation have large fermenters, dryers or milling machines? Are its scientists splicing new genes into pathogens? Do they have aerosol chambers for releasing clouds of germs and exposing vaccinated animals to highly virulent pathogens? Are they studying delivery methods?

The United States has accused eight nations of running bioweapons programs, based largely on evidence of genetic engineering of pathogens and possession of equipment for studying production and delivery methods. Looking at the administration's new biodefense strategy, other nations may make the same judgment of the United States, bolstering arguments by their own defense scientists for more aggressive biological research.

If we found these things elsewhere in countries we were suspicious of, we would not say they had a necessary biodefense program, said Leitenberg.

During the Clinton administration, the CIA, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency launched several classified, code-name projects that pushed into the gray zone: the making of a Soviet-era biological bomblet and studies of gene shuffling to produce deadlier germs (Clear Vision); building a small anthrax factory out of commercial off-the-shelf parts (Project Bacchus); the development of a vaccine-resistant superstrain of anthrax (Project Jefferson.)

Some of the projects, first reported by the New York Times in September 2001, were never cleared by the Clinton White House.

The answer, say critics of the administration's biodefense plans, is transparency and oversight. By opening biodefense facilities and their research to public scrutiny, dangerous or unnecessary work is less likely to occur, and the defensive nature of the work will be clear to other nations.

Livermore's Fitch said his scientists already publish as much of their research as possible, and Parker said the new research effort will go further, with internal and external review panels approving both open and classified work.

"We will not violate the law, we will be compliant," he said. "To the maximum extent possible, this will be a transparent program unless we anticipate it will reveal a vulnerability."

Contact Ian Hoffman at ihoffman@angnewspapers.com .

http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82~1865~2199592,00.html

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

Fundamental limitations on 21st century biotechnology

divedi — Thu, 03 Jun 2004 09:05:36 GMT

"All important substrate emergences, or phase transitions, appear to require both primarily bottom up, and secondarily top down control processes."

"Genetically engineered humans," redesigned for increased performance, now appear to be the "atomic vacuum cleaners" of the 1950's—fantasies that will never come to pass, for a host of complex reasons."

"We are stuck with our genetic legacy code, and we won't be able to significantly reengineer it until we move to an entirely new computational substrate."

"It appears that the era of genetic exploration in human organisms is largely over."

"In summary, biology, while it will still yield a host of socially valuable benefits in coming decades, is essentially a saturated substrate. We will gain a host of new knowledge from the biological sciences, but we won't use that information to redesign humans, in any significant biological sense. There won't be time or reason to do so.

Infotech, not biotech, now appears to be the constrained developmental future for local intelligence."

http://www.singularitywatch.com/biotech.html

posted in Biogeeks - 1 reply

Networks and Memory

dotemdot — Thu, 27 May 2004 15:37:51 GMT

Small world networks key to memory

10:02 26 May 04

Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.

If you recall this sentence a few seconds from now, you can thank a simple network of neurons for the experience. That is the conclusions of researchers who have built a computer model that can reproduce an important aspect of short-term memory.

The key, they say, is that the neurons form a "small world" network. Small-world networks are surprisingly common. Human social networks, for example, famously connect any two people on Earth - or any actor to Kevin Bacon - in six steps or less.

Properties like this have made them the focus of much research. It turns out that regardless of the size of these networks, any two points within them are always linked by only a small number of steps.

Now it looks as if working memory, which allows short-term recall of fleetingly remembered information such as phone numbers, relies on the same property. This type of memory resides in an area at the front of the brain called the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in learning, planning and many higher cognitive functions.

Electrical bursts

The late Patricia Goldman-Rakic of Yale University School of Medicine and others have suggested that neurons in this region might be able to switch between two stable states, a property called bistability.

When storing a memory, neurons would participate in self-sustaining bursts of electrical activity. When not involved in memory storage, the neurons become quiet.

Just how the brain controls this behaviour has puzzled neuroscientists. The prefrontal cortex is home to a wide variety of neurons with different properties, such as response to different chemical signals and the ability to activate or inhibit neighbouring neurons. So researchers have resorted to equally complex computer models.

Now a team at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, has reproduced the behaviour with the simplest of networks - by connecting it together to form a small world. "The philosophical conclusion is that connectivity matters," says team member Sara Solla. "Our model uses only a simple caricature of neurons, yet this network shows this working memory-like behaviour."

Activating pulse

Solla and colleagues Alex Roxin and Hermann Riecke began by creating a model of simple neurons that when activated would activate their neighbours for a brief period.

This simple network behaved in a simple way: an activating pulse travelled through the network and then disappeared at the fringes. They then added short cuts to connect distant parts of the network: the key to a small world.

They found that when 10 to 20 per cent of the neurons participated in short cuts, the network formed self-sustaining loops of activity. For example, region A would activate B through a short cut that would similarly trigger C. Finally, a short cut from C sparked A again, completing the loop. Intriguingly, a second strong activating pulse would shut the whole system down again. "So we get bistability," says Solla.

The new work may be an important step towards a theory of how the brain works. "What I really like about this system is how simple it is," says John White, a biomedical engineer at Boston University. "That means it might be possible to move from computer models to a rigorous mathematical description, which would really advance the field."

Philip Cohen

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99995012

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

Hey, Is that Turtle holding a GPS?

dotemdot — Mon, 03 May 2004 23:35:26 GMT

Deep cover: Sea creatures' surprising defenses
Scientists wowed by species' adaptations, survival skills

Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer
Monday, May 3, 2004

"Now, what's the one thing we have to remember about the ocean?" the father fish asks little Nemo in the film "Finding Nemo."

Reply: "It's not safe."

"That's my boy."

Real-life sea creatures aren't simply passive victims of oceanic threats; rather, they can fight back, so to speak. For every whale that beached itself after being confused by boating noise, or every marine mammal or sea turtle killed by reckless fishermen or boaters, countless others survive, thanks to their natural defenses -- defenses of which scientists were ignorant until recently.

The latest issue of the journal Nature reports on a variety of cunning ways that sea creatures evade oceanic dangers.

As sailors and divers know, it's easy to get lost in the vast ocean. But according to a study by biologists in North Carolina and Florida, sea turtles find their way to distant points with "pinpoint accuracy" thanks to a built-in brain "map" attuned to variations in the local terrestrial magnetic field.

For decades, scientists have studied how animals find their way around the land, sea and sky. Bacteria possess grain-sized magnetic "compasses," night-flying birds recognize certain constellations, and dung beetles navigate nocturnally by monitoring the orientation of light waves from the moon.

However, it's one thing for an animal to possess a built-in "compass" and another thing to possess a built-in "map."

When scientists place birds inside a planetarium, the birds tend to fly toward specific stars on the planetarium wall; if the scientists rotate the stellar display by 180 degrees, the birds fly in the opposite direction. In other words, these birds possess a built-in "compass" that orients them within a given frame of reference, like the planetarium. However, they don't possess a built-in "map" that orients them toward the actual stars in the sky.

Sea turtles are smarter, map-wise. They rely on a phenomenon discovered several centuries ago -- local variations in Earth's magnetic field. A magnetic compass ideally points toward the magnetic North Pole, which migrates over time and is fairly close to the geographical North Pole. But as any hiker or prospector knows, compasses sometimes point in odd directions because of local variations in the magnetic field, caused by, say, iron-rich ores inside a mountain.

At sea, such magnetic anomalies often drove early sailors off course, even to their deaths on rocky coastlines. Soon, though, sailors realized they could turn magnetic anomalies to their advantage by mapping the locations with extreme precision. On maps of the global magnetic field, certain anomalies are as distinct as highway interchanges are on road maps.

Likewise, the green sea turtle, or Chelonia mydas, navigates using a built-in "map that is at least partly based on geomagnetic cues," reports biologist Kenneth J. Lohmann and his colleagues at the University of North Carolina and the University of Central Florida.

They demonstrated this by temporarily removing young green sea turtles from the coastal feeding grounds near Melbourne, Fla., and placing them inside a circular basin filled with water from the city water supply. The scientists surrounded the basin with electrical coils that generated harmless magnetic fields.

Result: the turtles swam southward when exposed to a magnetic field equivalent to that at a point 337 kilometers (209 miles) to the north of the turtle pool. By contrast, they swam northward when exposed to a magnetic field equivalent to that at a point 337 kilometers to the south of the pool.

"These results indicate that juvenile turtles have a magnetic map sense that helps them navigate to specific targets," the Lohmann paper says. They note that other researchers have previously shown that "juvenile and adult turtles will return to particular coastal feeding sites with pinpoint accuracy after displacement and long migrations."

While the turtles magnetically wend their way through a sea with few signposts, killer whales must travel through a sea of noise. Another study in the current issue of Nature suggests that the whales are uttering significantly longer "calls" to be heard above the rumble.

Like movie stars pursued by camera-clicking paparazzi, whales are increasingly pestered by boats of whale-watching tourists. The average number of vessels pursuing killer whales, Orcinus orca, off Washington state quintupled between 1990 and 2000, according to a report by cetacean experts Andrew D. Foote and A. Rus Hoelzel of the University of Durham in England and Richard W. Osborne of the Whale Museum in Friday Harbor, Wash.

All those boats generate noise. The whales apparently don't like it because the racket makes it harder for them to hear each other's acoustic signals. In a Hollywood movie they might retaliate by eating the whale- watchers right down to their sunglasses and digital cameras. Yet in reality, these "killers" are a pretty noble sort as seagoing leviathans go -- "highly social, living in matrilocal (mother-centered) pods whose membership is stable over decades," as Foote, Osborne and Hoelzel note.

Rather, like a refined mom who slightly raises her voice to be heard over her squealing kids, a killer whale reacts to racket by lengthening the duration of her undersea calls, typically by about 15 percent. Commercial whale-watching "is associated with considerable boat engine noise -- there is typically a fleet of 72 commercial vessels and an average of 22 (noncommercial) boats following a (killer whale) pod during daylight hours," the Foote team notes in Nature.

As our final case study in the cunning of sea creatures, consider the humble northern Atlantic cod. These fish were once mainstays of the New England and eastern Canadian diets and economies.

From the early 1960s to the early 1990s, though, the north Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua, endured one of the great environmental catastrophes of modern times -- a 99.9 percent population plunge, "a rate of decline almost unmatched among living terrestrial and aquatic species," biologist Jeffrey A. Hutchings of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia says in a Nature editorial. It accompanies a research article by Esben M. Olsen of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenberg, Austria, and six colleagues in Norway and Newfoundland.

The cause: overfishing.

Tragic though it is, the cod overfishing has given evolutionary biologists a chance to answer a fascinating question: How does a life form change its genes, body or behavior in order to survive while squeezing through the bottleneck of near-annihilation?

By the late 20th century, cod fishermen grew accustomed to hauling in nets full of fish that were significantly smaller and younger, and that reproduced at an earlier age, than those captured by their great-grandfathers.

This makes evolutionary sense: The fish's chances of survival rose because the species' gene pool modified enough to allow many of them to reproduce at an earlier age, before they were caught and eaten. The genetic change occurred because the North Atlantic fishermen indirectly and unwittingly "selected" the smaller, younger-maturing fish for survival by preferentially overfishing the heavier, later-maturing fish, the scientists propose.

In other words, human exploitation of a species doesn't just lower its numbers; it can also alter its genetics. This is perhaps "the most enduring contribution" of Olsen and his colleagues' research: their evidence that "the potential for fishing to generate evolutionary change within harvested (fish) populations can no longer be seriously discounted," Hutchings says.

E-mail the author at kdavidson@sfchronicle.com.

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

Career Thoughts

Space***Wrangler — Thu, 29 Apr 2004 21:10:36 GMT

Hi
I have 20 years experience as a tech of various sorts and a BSEE (engineering).I am very interested in biology and medicine.My question is where are the jobs? I am trying to figure out my best options and the related education venues.My choices are between medical imaging, medical engineering,medical informatics or biochem related.How do you get trained in medical informatics.It seems like to do the PACS and DICOM stuff maybe an R.T and perhaps Oracle certification may be the ticket, but this is unclear.Anybody know anything helpful on these subjects? Thanks for any suggestions.

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle

dotemdot — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 15:26:03 GMT

Look, Moms: no dad!
Mice born in Japan from female genes only

Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Science Writer
Thursday, April 22, 2004

Scientists in Japan have demonstrated for the first time how mammals can reproduce without a male, leading to the birth of apparently healthy baby mice by mixing two sets of female genes inside an egg.

Experts said it will be a long time before men are relegated to the role of bystanders in human reproduction. But the latest experiments suggest that laboratory tricks can essentially eliminate the need for fertilization -- at least in mice.

Two female mice were created in the experiments at Japan's Tokyo University of Agriculture. One of the mice, named "Kaguya," has been raised to adulthood, has mated normally and has given birth to a litter of pups free of any obvious birth defects. The results are reported today in the journal Nature.

Female-only reproduction is common in the insect and reptile worlds, but there is no evidence yet that it can happen in humans or other primates. Among the many practical hurdles: One of the sets of female-derived mouse genes came from a very early-stage egg not readily found in an adult human.

Still, the experiments hint at the distant possibility that two women might be able to produce a biologically fatherless child in a technology- assisted form of virgin birth.

In this scenario, eggs would be surgically removed from each woman, altered and combined in a laboratory dish to produce an embryo that could be implanted in one of the women and carried to term. Each female parent would contribute equally to the child's genetic makeup, and the absence of male chromosomes would result in daughters only.

That would be different from cloning, in which the child would have genes identical to those of only one adult.

Medical experts cautioned that such scenarios will remain science fiction for the foreseeable future. Given the high risk of failures and birth defects, they warned that experiments such as those carried out in the mice would be unethical even to consider trying in humans.

Still, the mouse experiments raise some intriguing possibilities for same- sex couples hoping for alternatives to sperm donors and the controversies of cloning.

Female reproduction without a male, known as parthenogenesis, raises its own ethical dilemmas, but "if the option were available, many lesbian couples would want to explore the possibility," said Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights in San Francisco.

She noted that lesbians and gay men might want children biologically related to them for the same reasons as heterosexual couples, despite the acceptance of adoption and other alternative family forms. One critical factor, she added, is that a biologically unrelated parent may have less legal standing in the event of a breakup.

But she compared the prospect of engineering same-sex reproduction to visions of colonizing Mars: "Not a realistic possibility," she said, "but something that will provoke a number of interesting conversations."

The experiments in Japan were designed to reveal the mysterious biology of "genetic imprinting," in which seemingly identical DNA sequences in male and female genes function differently depending on biochemical signals or "imprints" that come along with the DNA.

In mice as well as people, fertilization of the egg by the sperm produces an embryo with one set of genes from the mother and one from the father. Previous studies have shown that an unfertilized egg can be induced to replicate, but it survives only for a short time.

That's because the male and female genomes carry complementary biochemical cues -- a signaling system that allows the male genes to influence the activity of the female genes and vice versa.

Just how this works has long been a mystery. The Japanese experimenters tracked it to just two critical genes, known as IGF-2 and H19, working in concert with biochemical "enhancers" of gene expression.

In essence, the female genome carries a chemical roadblock that keeps the enhancers from reaching their target. The scientists eliminated the roadblock, combining the genes from a mature egg with those taken from an early-stage egg that had been altered to mimic the activity of the male.

David Magnus, an associate professor of pediatrics, medicine and philosophy at Stanford who serves as co-chair of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, said the new research is important as "a very first step in a long process of trying to understand why it is that mammals don't allow parthenogenetic development while other organisms do."

He said he worries that such techniques will be tried prematurely in humans. Beyond the obvious appeal to some same-sex couples, he said, "I am concerned because in general with reproductive technology we have a tendency to rush these things to market. I'm very worried this is something that might be tried long before it's really ready."

There are no specific legal prohibitions against it, he added, as long as any doctors involved act in what they consider to be the interests of the couple. Magnus said legislation may be needed to prevent renegade labs from conducting irresponsible experiments.

Other experts said they were more intrigued by the fundamental biological revelations, in particular how a subtle tweaking of just two genes led to vast changes in the expression of more than 1,000 other genes -- changes that somehow led to the birth of apparently normal offspring.

A commentary in Nature that accompanied the study called it "amazing that altering the expression of just two imprinted genes can have a ripple effect on the rest of the genome."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/04/22/MNGHD692EA1.DTL

posted in Biogeeks - 2 replies

Union of Concerned Scientists

Justine — Fri, 19 Mar 2004 19:32:40 GMT

Hi, I just came across this and found it really interesting, and refreshing. It's the Union of Concerned Scientists: Citizens and Scientists for Environmental Solutions. Thought I'd post the link in case anyone is interested.

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/rsi/index.html

posted in Biogeeks - 5 replies

Reminder - biogeeks social

beakerworld — Tue, 23 Mar 2004 23:58:41 GMT

Just a reminder that you can have a chance to meet other biogeeks. Details below, or see the listing above for complete details. See you there! Andrew
--------------------------------------------------------------
Calling all BioGeeks! Get offline and meet your fellow geeks at Zeitgeist, 199 Valencia St. (Valencia @ Duboce), SF, on Wednesday March 24, 2004, starting at 6 PM. There's lots of seating on the patio, a BBQ, and $10 happy hour pitchers.

posted in Biogeeks - 6 replies

Biotech Students?

blank — Sat, 27 Dec 2003 20:51:12 GMT

Any biotech students here?

If so.. I'm wondering what you think of it, why did you choose biotech and what aspect of it do you want to pursue? What school do you go to and what sort of classes are you taking? And anything else you might have to say about it, let's hear it :)

J.

posted in Biogeeks - 24 replies

Intelligent Design Creationism

Greg — Mon, 16 Feb 2004 12:26:55 GMT

Is any body here up on all the Intelligent Design Creationism stuff? Michael Behe? Philip Johnson? William Dembski? ..and that whole camp?

Feel free to voice your opinions below, of course....but I'm posting this also to try and find if there's anyone who IS up on this topic that'd be interested to help in information gathering (on the web and in journals) for a website countering the claims of IDC. Let me know if you're interested....it should be a fun project...

posted in Biogeeks - 4 replies

Meiosis in Primitive Protists

Fri, 13 Feb 2004 19:37:22 GMT

So, I started doing research with one of my professors this semester on the aforementioned subject line. We are basically studying where meiosis diverged in the evolutionary scheme of things by using PCR to isolate genes that are known for meiosis. I was wondering if you guys knew anything about this or had any suggestions on where I might learn more.
Aubrey

posted in Biogeeks - 2 replies

favorite book on evolution?

Annalee — Sat, 18 Oct 2003 22:51:22 GMT

What's your favorite book that deals with evolutionary biology? I'm a big fan of Matt Ridley (The Red Queen; Nature via Nurture), Stephen Jay Gould and Joan Roughgarden. And I think Richard Dawkins sucks! His work in The Selfish Gene seems entirely designed to excuse loutish behavior by calling it genetic.

posted in Biogeeks - 11 replies

moa and bird evolution

Heather — Mon, 17 Nov 2003 18:17:47 GMT

moa: did it evolve from a volant ancestor or bypass wings altogether (maintaining little vestigial wing structures but never developing flight)? anyone up on this? I have heard evidence from both sides but was wondering if there is any new information.

posted in Biogeeks - 9 replies

a tale of 2 farms

Da Mystik Homeboy — Wed, 22 Oct 2003 08:30:57 GMT

While I was in brazil over the summer, I was staying with a woman that was an agronomist who was doing some work with the organization MST (Landless Workers Movement [a growing movement in latin america]) around Rio De Jainero.

She was trying to get a seed bank set up to protect the genetic diversity in local crops against the growing trend towards gmo farming. I've wondered what the big deal about GMO is exactly, and here is what I found out:

GMO farming is intensive farming taken to the next level. In traditional farming a lot of knowledge is known about the inputs, timing, and harvesting of the crop, depending on the species. Currently, large companies like AMD will pitch an "integrated solution" to farming. What that basically means is a genetic franchise. Farmers license [like software] one time use seeds, along with all nessecary inputs: fertilizer, pesticides, machinery, etc. etc.- a completely uniform process for the crop, and abandon all genetic diversity and knowledge that is required for traditional farming. In Europe and the United States, fewer and fewer farmers know about how to rear crops from the ground up. This trend is going into the rest of the world as well. Why do the farmers do this? Because the supermarkets won't carry any produce except those that meet their exact specs of shape, color, shelf life, etc. etc.

A couple of months before this, I visited a permaculture farm in Marin County. Their model had a high intial investment, but was rich in exploiting knowledge about crops: co-planting techniques, use of topology, whole ecosystem crops... Everything organic and non-gmo Very intensive but also very ecological. Their yield was order of magnitudes more than intensive farming. However, due to market constraints, there are very few permaculture farms in existence that will actually sustain a profit.

What role do you think guys think genetic engineering plays in questions of sustainable farming? Does GMO nessecarily mean hyperindustrial, or can it find it's place in harmony with the ecosystem?

posted in Biogeeks - 4 replies

apoptosis musing

Da Mystik Homeboy — Sun, 19 Oct 2003 05:16:39 GMT

So one of the things that have always fascinated me about higher life is that at some point, fully cooperating multi-cellular life arose from single celled life. This cooperation was so successful that cells will sacrifice themselves- apoptosis- to maintain emergent order.

Got me thinking about lifespans of individual organisms and all the fashionable theories on aging. More specifically, telomeric decay and seeming "life fuses". Wonder if as above, so below: does an organism apoptosis occur to keep a higher emergent order? :)

posted in Biogeeks - 31 replies

east meets west?

Da Mystik Homeboy — Sun, 19 Oct 2003 05:29:49 GMT

Okay, so I've always been kind of on the "spooky" side of life, with an interest in qi, prana, and all the "subtle" bodies documented in chinese and indian medicine. The history of both these medical traditions is fairly interesting.

Chinese herbology was developed through a kind of <a href="http://www.aabhealth.com/chinesemed.htm">ancient form</a> of high throughput screening.

Yet from a "western" biological perspective, genes and proteins never collide with accupuncture, qi gong... With the exception of a small but growing "green medicine" movement/schools in china. If anyone has more info on this, I'd love to hear it.

So what do you guys think? Are there concrete directions to take to merge designer proteins with triple burner therapy?

posted in Biogeeks - 1 reply

GM _me_ -- yes or no?

Steve — Fri, 19 Dec 2003 02:00:26 GMT

Dear Santa:

These are the genetic modifications I want for Christmas (or Hanukah, Eid Al Fitr, or Drexler's birthday, if you prefer):

1. All necessary vitamins to be synthesized "on board". No more vitamin deficiency metabolic stress for me, thanks.

2. Photosynthetic skin to produce sugars via sunlight and "waste" CO2. I promise to be Extra Good if I can have a form of chlorophyll that uses green photons as well as the usual red and blue. DME?

3. New Teeth. I did it once, but I want to do it again. Tetracycline contamination, you see. These choppers won't last me another twenty years. Hate the dentistry, not the dentists.

4. Alternate Myosin musle protein expression. Sci Am article a few years back had a nice piece on this. Genetic Muscle Dope.

5. Cellulose digestion capability for emergencies.

6. The ability to more easily assimilate vegetable proteins like beans. Lower my methane output....

These GM requests are the most reasonable ones I can come up with. No new _major_ _genetic_ breakthroughs required (to my amateur's awareness), but interactions are hard to predict, and I'm not sure my hardware can mount all the new features, especially the digestive mods. I'd hate for you to have to go surgical since you're usually in such a hurry. I was hoping to pack it all into one shot.

Steve, the Yuletide Sleestak Elf
________________________________________________________________

Any good comments as to feasibility or ideas for mods?

Its not like I'm asking for immortality, xray vision, or a bullet proof chest....

posted in Biogeeks - 1 reply

GM food -- yes or no?

Annalee — Tue, 04 Nov 2003 00:01:01 GMT

I'm wondering what folks here think about GM foods and the fact that they've been introduced into the U.S. market without the public being informed in a thorough way. A recent U.S. survey revealed that almost half the people polled believed they'd never eaten a GMO. Given that nearly 75 percent of processed foods contain some GM products, it's clear that people are ill-informed.

Should GM food be banned? Regulated? Perhaps we should only eat GM plants and not animals? (Whenever I think of GM animals I think of the "chickie nobs" in Margaret Atwood's new novel -- these are creatures engineered by some grad students who turn chickens into little flesh blobs with holes in the top where you pour food in.)

posted in Biogeeks - 5 replies

Announcing a new THst tribe: MetaBrain Growth Process

neurobionetics — Tue, 02 Dec 2003 08:43:08 GMT

Join it at: http://MetaBrainGrowthProcess.tribe.net

MetaBrain Growth Process tribe is dedicated to the exploration of processes to extend human cognition into alternative substrates.

From cyborg components for theraputic and augmentative ends to the ultimate goal of moving sentient entities into faster, more powerful, and more durable hardware (~5,000 ave. lifespan estimates) in a safe and effective manner, this tribe is intended as a center for discussion, networking, and collaborative effort.

(If you enjoy this topic, you should find the various other Transhumanist tribes of interest.)

posted in Biogeeks - 0 replies

Male Nematode Utility

jason_s — Thu, 06 Nov 2003 20:16:38 GMT

You know, every so often, just when I think I've got this whole gender idea in a nice little box, something just comes along and well...

http://www.salon.com/tech/wire/2003/11/06/worms/index.html

These are the days of miracle and wonder and don't cry baby don't cry...

posted in Biogeeks - 1 reply

stem cells

Annalee — Sat, 25 Oct 2003 00:21:12 GMT

Charlie pointed out an excellent op-ed in the Washington Post today:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9348-2003Oct23.html?referrer=emailarticle

Basically the author argues that Bush is morally reprehensible because his position on stem cells is incoherent and not based on scientific evidence. He points out a recent study in Nature demonstrating that adult stem cells are virtually useless for the kinds of therapies for which fetal stem cells are ideally suited. This would mean that very little research into stem cell therapies can be done until the Bushies are willing to admit that blastocytes don't have souls.

posted in Biogeeks - 9 replies