Wednesday, June 11, 2003

Biology, Evolution and the Global Brain Howard Bloom writes: A past issue of Telepolis carried a chapter from Peter Russell's book, The Global Brain Awakens. In this excerpt, Russell predicted the coming of a worldwide intelligence networked by computer web. It might come as a surprise to the British computer scientist, experimental biologist, and physicist to discover that the researchers and theoreticians who specialize in evolution would sneer at the fundamental assumptions underlying this vision. The reason for the evolutionary community's contempt? A concept called individual selection. An idea which has provided powerful new ways of looking at human behavior since it was first codified roughly 30 years ago. But a concept which since then has partially degenerated from an intellectual lens to a set of blinders. This article will expose the shaky roots of individual selectionism. And it will summarize one model- my own- which could provide a missing bridge between the skeptics - evolutionary scientists - and the believers-computer specialists who envision a planet pulsating with shared information. A planet, as Russell puts it, which has grown a global nervous system. (06/11/03) Confess and Comply All student pilots are taught that one of the dangers of flying small planes is to fail to accept the possibility that you might be lost. The rule is know by the acronym CCCC. If you are lost: Climb, Communicate, Confess and Comply. You can't begin to find your way, until you confess that you are lost. ... John Horvath writes: It definitely hasn't been Canada's year. In terms of public health, the country seems to move from crisis to crisis. The SARS epidemic had left its mark, as the authorities try their best to offset the stigma associated with the disease. In addition to this, West Nile virus has once again reared its ugly head. A highly infectious disease spread by mosquitoes, it caused fear and panic in the eastern part of the country last year, including the suburbs of big cities like Montreal. It appears to be inexorably making its way westward; signs of it have already been found in the nation's capital, Ottawa. And now, in the western province of Alberta, authorities have confirmed the existence of BSE, better known as Mad Cow disease. (06/11/03) Oil Industry in Ruins New York Times: Iraq -- It was only three hours into the workday, but Mr. Leaby's frustrations started, as they do every morning, when he arrived around 8 to the lone refurbished office in a complex of buildings so thoroughly ransacked that birds dart through the upper stories. Employees of South Oil, Iraq's leading oil producer before the war, are now idle because looting has brought most of the company to a standstill. "The other day, there was looting and sabotage at the North Rumaila field," Mr. Leaby said. "The day before that, at the Zubayr field. For three months, I've been talking, talking, talking about this, and I'm sick of it." This is now the state of the Iraqi oil industry, custodian of the world's third largest oil reserves — an estimated 112 billion barrels — and the repository of hope for the United States-led alliance and the Iraqi people themselves. Money from oil, the Bush administration has said repeatedly, will drive Iraq's economic revival, which in turn will foster the country's political stability. Many Iraqis agree. Yet from the vast Kirkuk oil field in the north to the patchwork of rich southern fields around Basra, Iraq's oil industry, once among the best-run and most smartly equipped in the world, is in tatters. ... Once a sprawling industrial site on a narrow branch of the Shatt al Arab waterway, Garmat Ali is now a ruin. Looting and arson have gnawed rows of hulking warehouses down to their steel skeletons. Not only small machine parts, but also water pumps and filters, which weigh tons, have been stripped away. Even the flagstones have been peeled off the sidewalks. "When we made our first site visit 12 days ago, it was as if the place was crawling with ants," said James Baker, the site manager of Kharafi National, a Kuwaiti construction company working at Garmat Ali. "Everyone was running out with a piece of something." (06/11/03) Lactose Intolerance Normal San Francisco Chronicle -- Some of the most provocative new findings about the origins and worldwide spread of the human species are coming from studies of the history books packed inside nearly every cell of our bodies. Genes speak volumes about our beginnings in Africa an estimated 130,000 to 200,000 years ago, our divergence into distinct populations of hunter- gatherers and farmers, our migration into Europe and Asia, and finally our settling in the Americas, perhaps 30,000 years ago. Such studies even offer an evolutionary reason for why some of us can't tolerate milk. Being lactose-intolerant in adulthood once was the normal state of affairs for humans, who needed to digest milk only during infancy. Then, the domestication of animals and the advent of dairy farming in Europe, about 12, 000 years ago, gave a survival advantage to those few adults who happened to be genetically equipped to turn cow milk protein into nourishment. The possibility of year-round milk production gave a powerful edge to those with the lactase gene. Even if just 2 percent more members of a given generation survived to reproduce and passed the lactase gene on to their offspring, it would be enough to explain how the gene became so widespread in certain populations today. "It's a nice philosophical story," said Dr. Leena Peltonen-Palotie, chair of medical genetics at the University of Helsinki in Finland and a leading researcher in the field. "Our concept of disease is very shortsighted. Lactose intolerance was considered an abnormal trait, but when we finally figured out the genetic variant, it turned out to be the ancient, original form of the human gene." (06/11/03) Stressed as a Baby, Stressed as an Adult CNN Health -- The way a mother cares for her baby can determine how stressed out the child will be as an adult because her nurturing can permanently change the way the infant's genes operate, new studies on rats suggest. The studies, presented Sunday at a conference on the fetal and infant origins of adult disease, found that baby rats who were licked by their mothers a lot turned out to be less anxious and fearful as adults and produced lower levels of stress hormones than those who were groomed less. The scientists found that the mothers' licking caused the baby's brain to crank up a gene involved in soothing the body in stressful situations. Several human studies have found an association between a mother's nurturing and the future mental health of her children. The rat research, led by Michael Meaney, a professor of medicine at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, for the first time rigorously tested whether it really is the mother's behavior that makes the difference and showed what happens in the brain of the offspring to produce the adult characteristics. (06/11/03) Bush Agrees to Protect Forests, Except ... New York Times: Environment -- The Bush administration said today that it would reinstate a Clinton-era rule that prohibits building roads in 58.5 million acres of protected national forests. But the administration wants to allow governors to seek exemptions from the rule, which environmental groups said would open the way for logging and drilling on millions of acres. The administration also said that this month, as part of a legal settlement, the federal government would seek an exemption from the so-called roadless rule in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, North America's only coastal temperate rainforest. Officials said they were also considering an exemption for the Chugach National Forest near Anchorage. This would free up some of the nation's most pristine forested lands for roads and further development. ... environmental groups said the exemption for the governors provided a loophole for the timber industry and rendered the roadless rule meaningless, and gave the green light to 50 timber sales in the Tongass alone. (06/11/03) 5:51:02 AM

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