Malaria

http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

Checking the Rosetta At Home website today (no new data supplied recently !)  and I got to reading. . . my very own version of the 'time sink'. . . .   and I got to thinking:   Malaria and it's pesky mosquito link are so ubiquitous. . .   there MUST be a purpose in nature for this disease.  The active attacks of malaria - do they heat the body to repel some other threat?  Are the painful joints telling you something about your body you should be addressing/amending?  And of course,  somewhere in the biosphere/living planet/Gaia there is a cure for this and associated trail of body imbalances.


May 18, 2011
Journal post from David Baker

A recent issue of Nature describes an exciting approach we are taking with collaborators to fight Malaria. The title of the paper is "A synthetic homing endonuclease-based gene drive system in the human malaria mosquito" and the PDF is available at my lab web site. The idea is to use enzymes which cut within critical genes in mosquitos to greatly reduce the number of malaria parasite infected mosquitos. There are still many issues that must be overcome for this strategy to be used against malaria in the real world, but this paper is an important first proof of concept of the strategy.

Just when I'd like to rant...

about a bunch of things - along comes another Truth Out e-mail that covers it all and more. . .if I can only figure out how I pasted it all in last time :)  . . .  wow that was easy

Wednesday 07 September 2011 The Price of 9/11 Joseph E. Stiglitz, Project Syndicate: "The September 11, 2001, terror attacks by Al Qaeda were meant to harm the United States, and they did, but in ways that Osama bin Laden probably never imagined. President George W. Bush's response to the attacks compromised America's basic principles, undermined its economy, and weakened its security. The attack on Afghanistan that followed the 9/11 attacks was understandable, but the subsequent invasion of Iraq was entirely unconnected to Al Qaeda - as much as Bush tried to establish a link. That war of choice quickly became very expensive - orders of magnitude beyond the $60 billion claimed at the beginning - as colossal incompetence met dishonest misrepresentation." Read the Article Obama Transition Team Member Explains Why Administration Chose Not to Prosecute Torture David Swanson, War Is a Crime: "If you can think back all the way to January 2009, back when wars were ending, Guantanamo was closing, the Pentagon was getting oversight, employees were going to have free choice, the rich would start paying taxes, the air would be getting cleaner, and so forth, you'll recall that the Obama transition team was acting super populist and high-tech. They had questions from ordinary people for the President Elect submitted on their website and voted up or down. The top question at the end of the voting had come from Bob Fertik of Democrats.com and it was this: 'Will you appoint a Special Prosecutor - ideally Patrick Fitzgerald - to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush Administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping?' (Bob Fertik, New York City) Not only was the answer no, but it had to be inferred because President Change U. Wish refused to answer the question.... However, we now have an account from someone involved in the decision process way back when." Read the Article Qaddafi Loyalists Fled to Niger by Convoy, US Affirms Patrick J. McDonnell and Paul Richter, The Los Angeles Times: "More than a dozen high-ranking loyalists of Moammar Kadafi made a desert getaway into neighboring Niger, US officials said Tuesday, but there was no indication that the former Libyan leader or his sons had escaped. 'We're confident that Kadafi didn't get out,' said Jalal Gallal, a spokesman for Libya's transitional government. News that as many as 250 vehicles carrying members of Kadafi's inner circle, including his security chief, had crossed Monday into Niger added a dramatic twist to the manhunt for the strongman who ruled Libya for more than four decades. However, the Associated Press reported late Tuesday that a spokesman for Niger's president said that only three cars had crossed into Niger, ferrying one member of Kadafi's inner circle. There was no immediate explanation for the contradictory versions." Read the Article Defense Spending: The Worst Way to Make Jobs Dina Rasor, Truthout: "I see it coming. As President Obama gives his speech on how important it is for the government and the country to produce more jobs, and as the budget noose starts to tighten on all government programs, including the Department of Defense (DoD) this time, the DoD will flood the Congress with charts and statistics on how cutting the DoD will also cut important defense manufacturing jobs across the US. Each member of Congress will be notified about how many jobs will be cut for any given weapon system, and this is especially effective because the DoD has become the master of spreading weapon production contractor and subcontractor jobs across as many districts and states as possible to get the weapons funded in the first place.... As we drawdown troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the defenders of the DoD budget, which unfortunately includes the new Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, will want to transfer any money saved back into their favorite endeavor: weapons production." Read the Article Obama Jobs Plan to Include $300 Billion in Tax Credits, Spending Peter Nicholas, The Los Angeles Times: "President Obama on Thursday will roll out a jobs package that strives to lift the ailing economy through $300 billion worth of tax credits, school renovation projects, job training for the unemployed and a program to prevent teacher layoffs, according to a person familiar with the administration's plans. In his speech before a joint session of Congress, Obama also will ask lawmakers to renew the 2% payroll tax cut that was approved in December and to extend jobless benefits, said the person, who requested anonymity to talk more freely about White House internal deliberations.... Obama is under pressure from his Democratic base to submit a bold package that would put a real dent in the jobless rate - and revive his reelection prospects. To the extent he follows this advice, though, he risks alienating Republicans and even conservative Democrats who want to avoid anything that smacks of another expensive stimulus package." Read the Article Project "Censored 2012": Moving Beyond Media Reform Mickey Huff, Seven Stories Press: "That there is a crisis in journalism seems to be understood by many scholars and independent journalists, while many in the corporate media don't seem to notice, or at least don't mention it much. Further, they do not divulge much in terms of the challenges we face in the twenty-first century as the corporate media flood the airwaves with celebrity tales and misinformation. The overall so-called 'mainstream' reporting in the United States is the equivalent to fiddling while Rome burns. And make no mistake, the US is an empire, and we are in decay. We the People of these United States already stand at a very real precipice - the potential end of what has been deemed the Great American Experiment, the institutional embodiment of human freedom protected by government of, by, and for the people. Meanwhile, the corporate media fill so-called news time with faux-angst, Astroturf platforms, cult-of-personality disorders, and one manufactured irrelevant crisis after another in what appears to be a Herculean effort to avoid telling the public what is really going on at home and abroad...." Read the Article Toward Total Information Awareness Nancy Murray and Kade Crockford, Truthout and ACLU Massachusetts: "It is no secret that the CIA, FBI and the National Security Agency (NSA) bungled a multitude of opportunities to foil the 9/11 plot. There were no fewer than 12 intelligence reports in the three years preceding 9/11 that Osama bin Laden planned to use aircraft as weapons and crash them into buildings in Washington and New York City, information that was included in the president's daily intelligence brief. In addition to the 2004 report by the 9/11 Commission, the often astonishing list of intelligence failings that contributed to the success of the attacks has been exhaustively documented.... In his minority report to the Joint Intelligence Committee, Alabama Republican Sen. Richard Shelby urged agency leaders to be held accountable for the litany of failures. This was never done. Instead, well before the public was alerted to the extent of the multiple intelligence failures, the government embarked on a 'fix' that bore little relation to the actual shortcomings outlined in the reports...." Read the Article On the News With Thom Hartmann: Before Wildfires, Texas Gov. Rick Perry Cut Firefighter Program by 75 Percent, and More In today's On the News segment: President's job plan will cost $300 billion; Gov. Rick Perry cut state's volunteer firefighter program by 75 percent, cutting critical program to prevent wildfires; United States slips to No. 5 in world's top economies; new Pew reports that one in three Americans who grew up middle class have fallen out of that economic class today; and more. Watch the Video and Read the Transcript Did a Top GOP Staffer for Senator Grassley Cover Up Evidence of News Corp. Hacking in the US? Lee Fang, ThinkProgress: "A top investigator for the Senate Finance Committee, working under Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), may have had smoking gun evidence of News Corp's hacking activity. While News Corp's British subsidiaries have received the most media attention for systematically hacking the cell phone and personal records of private citizens, the public still has heard little of allegations relating to similar conduct perpetrated by News Corp against its American competitors. ThinkProgress has learned that not only did a sensitive tip come to Grassley's office about News Corp's cyber attacks against other American companies, but authorities may have failed to look into the matter partially because a staffer named Nick Podsiadly allegedly never followed through on his promise to the whistleblower." Read the Article Jim Hightower | Perry Tales: Rick Is Not Who He Says He Is Jim Hightower, Truthout: "Presidential wannabe Rick Perry is flitting all around the country - hither, thither and yon - spreading little 'Perry Tales' about himself and the many wonders he has worked as governor of Texas. His top Perry Tale is a creationist story about what he has modestly branded 'The Texas Miracle.' While the rest of the country is mired in joblessness, says the miracle worker, his state has added 1.2 million jobs during his 10-year tenure. I've built 'a job-creating machine,' the governor gushed during one of his recent flits across Iowa, and a Perry PR aide smugly added, 'The governor's job creation record speaks for itself.' Actually, it doesn't." Read the Article Is the Keystone Tar Sands Pipeline in America's Best "National Interest"? Elizabeth McGowan, InsideClimate News: "Barely two weeks ago, pro-pipeline contingents were claiming victory and anti-pipeline forces were fuming after the State Department declared that the project would cause minimal environmental harm. But now both sides are girding for the federal government's next step. It requires the State Department to take the lead in determining if Keystone XL is in the national interest. The $7 billion pipeline, a project of Alberta-based TransCanada, would travel 1,702 miles through six states.... The State Department has scheduled a series of eight September and October public meetings in the half-dozen states along Keystone XL's proposed route-Montana, South Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas-plus a final one Oct. 7 in Washington, DC. The department also will accept written comments through Oct. 9.... 'The State Department has committed to this national interest conversation being serious and we are going to take them at their word,' Danielle Droitsch of the Natural Resources Defense Council's international program told InsideClimate News. 'That means not taking a narrow view of what is in the national interest.'" Read the Article Plan Would Keep Small Force in Iraq Past Deadline Eric Schmitt and Steven Lee Myers, The New York Times News Service: "Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is supporting a plan that would keep 3,000 to 4,000 American troops in Iraq after a deadline for their withdrawal at year's end, but only to continue training security forces there, a senior military official said on Tuesday. The recommendation would break a longstanding pledge by President Obama to withdraw all American forces from Iraq by the deadline. But it would still involve significantly fewer forces than proposals presented at the Pentagon in recent weeks by the senior American commander in Iraq, Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, to keep as many as 14,000 to 18,000 troops there. The proposal for a smaller force - if approved by the White House and the Iraqi government, which is not yet certain - reflected the shifting political realities in both countries. It also reflected the tension between Mr. Obama's promise to bring all American forces home and the widely held view among commanders that Iraq is not yet able to provide for its own security." Read the Article Profit Motive Underlies Outbreak of Immigration Bills Brendan Fischer, Center for Media and Democracy: "While it has been reported that more immigrants behind bars means more income for ALEC member Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), less discussed has been how immigrant detention benefits commercial bail-bond agencies, an industry represented in ALEC through the American Bail Coalition.... An immigrant facing removal may remain incarcerated, benefiting the for-profit prison industry, or released on bond, often paying a commercial bail bondsman for their release. The for-profit bail bond industry's trade association, the American Bail Coalition (ABC), is an ALEC member and helped pass the ALEC anti-immigrant laws." Read the Article Nepal's Women Farmers Discard Imported Hybrid Seeds and Husband Local Varieties in Co-Op Seed Banks Sudeshna Sarkar, Inter Press Service: "Learning a lesson from crop failures attributed to climate change, Nepal's women farmers are discarding imported hybrid seeds and husbanding hardier local varieties in cooperative seed banks. 'I had a crop failure two years ago,' says Shobha Devkota, 32, from Jibjibe village in Rasuwa, a hilly district in central Nepal which is part of the Langtang National Park, a protected area encompassing two more districts, Nuwakot and Sindhupalchowk. 'The maize was attacked by pests, the paddy had no grain and the soil grew hard. I had a tough time trying to feed my three daughters and sending them to school.' Since her marriage 17 years ago, Shobha had been sharing farming chores with her husband Ram Krishna. However, when he left for Dubai four years ago to work as a security guard, farming became her responsibility entirely. Though she has never been to school and can only scrawl her name, Shobha and other women in the village who share similar backgrounds, are keenly aware of changing climate and its adverse impact on livelihoods." Read the Article Click here for more Truthout articles BUZZFLASH DAILY HEADLINES If you want to make crime a growth industry to create more jobs, just privatize prisons. It's happening across the nation. Heck, crime has been an institutional engine for a huge work force even in the public sector. Think of the hundreds of thousands of lawyers, judges, clerks, prison guards, police, parole officers, social workers etc. depending upon keeping people incarcerated. And then there's the construction industry that is hot footin' it to build new maximum security facilities. And the small towns now depleted of jobs that compete to "host" prisons to bring jobs to the community. But the real institutionalization of crime as a job creator is emerging full force with the privatization of jails. A corporation can't make a profit - let alone the issue of their accountability for how they treat prisoners - unless they have sufficient volume. In short, a privatized criminal incarceration system de facto creates the need for an ongoing source of criminals to meet the need for generating a profit based on economies of scale. It's no surprise that Rick Perry, then, has jumped on the prison privatization bandwagon, as detailed in a Mother Jones article, "Flush With Prison Industry Dollars, Rick Perry Pushed Privatized Prisoner Care." Of course, a lot of crime is based on multi-generational poverty, a condition which is exacerbated by our current severe economic downturn. That is why the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. It would be interesting to see what would result if we offered more jobs in the highest crime rate areas. But that's not bound to happen now or anytime soon. There's a lot of money to be made in crime by the many professions that depend upon the revolving door of "offenders" continuing at a nice pace, and much of that profit is increasingly being made by the growing for-profit prison industry. Mark Karlin Editor, BuzzFlash at Truthout The Koch Brother Tapes: Gov. Chris Christie Lets the Plutocracy Know That He's One of Them Read the Article at Mother Jones Whichever Party Runs the Government in the UK, Murdoch and BP Pull the Strings Read the Article at BuzzFlash Will Bunch: Ten Real Questions About 9/11 Read the Article at The Philadelphia Daily News McConnell Once Again Proves GOP Leadership Has Become a Cult Read the Article at Talking Points Memo For Rick Perry, It's Bush "Deja Vu All Over Again" Read the Article at BuzzFlash Arrests at Paul Ryan's "Town Hall" Event Read the Article at Politico Tea Party Michigan Governor Signs 48-Month Welfare Limit Read the Article at The Associated Press Click here for more BuzzFlash headlines ---------- Support Truthout with a tax-deductible donation by clicking here. 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Well, I really don't want to see the movie, but. . .

"Blogging is not writing, it's graffiti with punctuation."  lmao   it's a quote from the preview of "Contagion" which is looking just scary enough so I would never watch it.  heh heh - life is scary enough.