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fuji-iri · 2 years ago

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rapid analysis of what some of the descriptions/footnotes possibly mean

usually i wouldn’t put this on my main account, but since the other blog i would post it on is a little more in-detail on average, i decided why not (i think you know which blog i’m referring to)

so yep! i read some of the footnotes and added some personal analysis as to what some of them could mean. i’m positive the song used in the new DRDT MV will be “bungaku shoujo insane,” based on the similarity of the thumbnail as well as some specific footnotes, so a lot of my analysis will be based on that song and its lyrics

anyways

[1] In this situation, it is better to use full names over nicknames. Exclude our protagonist—he is not "that person." not sure what this means yet. we’ll have to see.

[2] Other examples include Drosophilia melanogaster and E. coli. don’t know if this is intentional, but drosophila is misspelled. (they wrote it as “drosophilia”) either way, both are often used in school experiments in order to develop a further understanding of genetics and genetic material (and how it’s transferred).

[3] From Title 17 of the United States Code. referring to copyright laws in the United States. the reference may be more apparent in the released MV, similarly to some other footnotes—after all, the original “Bungaku Shoujo Insane” video has some moments where they simply show excerpts from famous texts. this may be one of them that’s featured specifically in the DRDT version of the MV

[4] The practice of avoiding the number four; it is most common in East Asia. This superstition arises from the fact that the number four can be read similar to the word "death" in multiple languages. self-explanatory.

[5] As the translation has been intentionally botched in many parts, it should not be considered accurate. this could be a separate author’s note to one of the texts referenced in the MV—we’ll have to see.

[6] (Prayer) no idea but i don’t feel like searching the bible for this one /hj (i think there might be a prayer written in text in the MV though)

[7] Seven is considered an auspicious number in many Western cultures. Let's just skip it. also self-explanatory.

[8] 'Tut, tut, child!' said the Duchess. 'Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it. excerpt from Alice in Wonderland. don’t know how important that’ll be in the future—could be referenced directly in the MV?

[9] no respect for the classics smh hold on let me see if there’s a lyric mocking classic literature-

[10] The Roman numeral for 10 is X. imagine there’s an X with a footnote and it’s just this

[11] I admit to lying. There is no one named OOOOO OOOOO. I am, and always have been, an only child. a lot of theories about this, but regardless of whether or not this statement is true, it could be a reference to diana chiem, arturo’s sister, david himself even (i’ll explain later), etc. either way, this footnote seems to be more about one of the characters in the DRDT cast than anything

[12] "Majority rule" is known to be the fairest method of making decisions for a group. That's why murderers never complained when we voted for them to die. just a random question, but you know what a majority vote is? /ref this may also be a reference to this lyric:

rough translation + wiki info: to be, or not to be—i have no idea! but let’s decide, with a democratic method!

[13] 正 character that’s often used to represent something that’s “correct,” “right,” or “just,” speaking from experience. additionally, it’s sometimes used as tally marks in a few eastern countries (china, japan, etc)

[14] Hint: word length of 256 Hamlet’s soliloquy, which starts with “to be, or not to be—that is the question,” is exactly 256 words (at least, according to this source). Additionally, this soliloquy is also referenced in one of the lyrics in this song (see [12]—the first line is actually one of the more well-known Japanese translations of “to be or not to be.” additionally, a few lines from the text are actually shown in the MV at that point), so that may be what it’s referring to

[15] “Ignorance is bliss" is an idiom used to say that it is better to remain ignorant about certain harsh truths, in order to avoid causing oneself stress. The expression comes from a 1742 Thomas Gray poem ("Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College": "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." might be a stretch, but possibly a reference to this lyric?

(rough translation: things like the meanings(?) behind art, you’d be happier not knowing) (note: the word used for “art” here encompasses all types of media, which include dance, writing, etc.)

i feel like this is specifically referring to how it’s better to be ignorant of the meanings behind certain actions and words, than to be aware of the dark implications behind them. this is a stretch though. do what you will with it but i think this is referring to one of the characters and their actions + true meanings behind them *cough* david *cough*

[16] While it was originally intended to serve as a military march, today it is most commonly recognized for it's association with circuses and tomfoolery. the exact song that this footnote refers to is Julius Fučík’s “Entrance of the Gladiators.” This is a song that’s featured in Bungaku Shoujo Insane, and it can be heard in the interludes—in fact, this footnote is what pointed me to Bungaku in the first place

[17] Not a real word. Can't be found in any dictionary. this might be an actual translation footnote of the song, since it’s definitely not unheard of to have words in japanese that don’t have an english translation and/or words that don’t actually exist. whether that’s actually in the lyrics i don’t know but i’ll have to look into it

[18] A/N: soz not very good at drawing flowers lol!!! i find it weird how this one specifically has A/N (author’s note)

[19] A dialogue between two individuals that serves as a discussion of moral and philosophical issues. this is known as a socratic dialogue. not sure how this is important yet

[20] It is considered by many to be outdated, providing little-to-no insight on human nature. unfortunately i don’t know what this is referring to, but it will likely be made clear in the mv. my first thought was actually the enlightenment documents, since a lot of those discuss the inherent nature of humanity and how it’s “regulated” by society and government—but i’ve never heard it being called outdated, so that’s kind of a stretch.

someone said it could be an excerpt from one of Sigmund Freud’s works, which honestly, would make total sense-

[21] Deriving from the Latin phrase "Et cetera" : meaning "and other (similar) things", "and so forth", or "and the rest (of such things)" : abbreviated to etc., etc, et cet., &c. or &c

also pretty self explanatory. however, i have no idea how this fits in the MV

[22] The rest is silence.

no idea about this one.

anyways if you have suggestions please feel free to reblog with them 🫠 i have no idea what’s going on and tbh 90% of this is me trying to grasp at straws

#drdt #danganronpa despair time #despair time #i think y’all know who i am #especially now that i’ve posted this #but eh. it’s fine #it was obvious from the beginning anyways because of the way i type ghshghdh

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memoamp · 1 year ago

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Vivian Tang (she/her) - UCI '23

Career Goal: Army Medical Officer/Physician

Major/Minor: Biological Sciences Major/Psychology Minor

Introduction: Hello! My name is Vivian, but everyone usually just calls me Viv! I recently graduated from UCI with a degree in Biological Sciences and am currently working as a phlebotomist as well as studying for the MCAT. I really, really love cats and spend a good chunk of my day either watching or making cat videos on TikTok with my lovely kitty Bao Bao! /ᐠ.ㅅ.ᐟ\ᵐᵉᵒʷˎˊ˗ I am also a very active person and go to the gym almost every day, so if you have any questions regarding fitness or exercising, I’m more than happy to give you some advice or pointers for you! :’))

Involvements: During undergrad, I was involved in MEMO as Co-PR and Social Chair for two years! I was also a research assistant for the Rose Lab on campus which experiments on Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies) and studies how aging and diet is correlated to one another. Since this lab is biology and film/media based, I had the chance to create educational documentary videos of our findings and present our data uniquely like a nature documentary instead of a presentation. Outside of school, I worked at a family clinic starting out as a front/back MA until I got my phlebotomy license to draw blood. I currently still work at the same family clinic but as a phlebotomist instead! Extracurriculars: My favorite extracurricular that I look forward to every week during school was MEMO gen meetings! This was a chance for me to interact with all of my friends and build new friendships with others who also show up! The big/little and family programs allow for you to build these connections and I highly recommend that you join them during the school year. Right now, I am currently studying for the MCAT, which is a long and arduous period for me since I'm diving deep into subjects and mentally preparing myself for this 7+ hour test. However, I know at the end of the day, everything will be worth it!

What kind of advice would you be giving? Get involved early no matter what it may be: organizations on campus or volunteering at your local hospital. Try to build connections with those you are surrounded with because this will be the best way for you to network between like-minded individuals! And most importantly, don't be afraid of the unknown! I joined MEMO my freshman year of college and didn't really have friends at the beginning. However, when you keep showing up to gen meetings or to social events, you will start to build these connections with those around you! Fast forward to today, I've met so many of my current friends through MEMO and hope that you can also do the same throughout your undergrad into post-grad years!

Best piece of advice you've received? This goes out to my Army doctor/mentor Dr. Flick. One time when we were having a conversation over the phone about the hardships of balancing Army med and civilian life, he told me "you can only blossom where you are planted." I thought that this was a beautiful representation of what my life would be like in the future because nothing is set when being on active duty. I could be in California one day and in another country the next. But no matter what, being adaptable and malleable in all circumstances allows for you to grow as an individual and blossom into your fullest potential.

Preferred method(s) of communication: Email, Facebook Messenger, Instagram

#uci #biological sciences #medicine #physician #army medical officer #research #phlebotomy #psychology

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dead-set-goat · 2 years ago

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Accidentally recreated chromatin condensation in embroidered form-

Yeah, the thread broke ::(

I was making a patch of Drosophila melanogaster’s karyotype, what’s more iconic than their karyotype (besides ours pfff) when refrencing anything related to hereditary(besides the peas)(perhaps I shouldn’t be using so many ��besides”, I guess I enjoy nullifying my own arguments). Thinking it’s a good way to show off umm appreciation for genetics without resorting to doing a DNA molecule patch (which I WILL make even if it’s so on the nose[I mean. This century DNA is the symbol of biology!],,,guys, something about it’s imagery as a child. And the knowledge of this mysterious concept know as genes changed something in me as a child. isn’t it amazing how all life runs on basically the same code? Heard of the RNA world hypothesis? Been on my mind for so long, always wanted to dedicate an art piece to it)

Oh and. Yeah if it wasn’t obvious, this year we are studying genetics FINALLY!! AND ACTUALLY!! Ffffffffuck yeah. I just think it’s really really really cool. Basically the coolest. So yeah, it’s on my mind… tho my ocs and stuffs always drawn inspiration from genetics, it’s not as if it’s anything new in my art/content lol.

#what am I even saying?????#idk I’ll stop. this could be the>#the good night post #:>#🦞chat #biology #ACTUALLY. IM NOT GOING TO SLEEP. BLASTING THAT KE$HA TO STAY AWAKE

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kmsherrard · 4 years ago

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In praise of roller coaster rides

“...the thousand concurring accidents of such an audacious enterprise….”

-Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Despite what teachers of high school science classes solemnly intone, this business of doing science is the least straightforward endeavor that can possibly be imagined. This was brought home to me in a series of unfortunate events that unfolded this week.

At first, it seemed to be that rare triumph where my simple test of a straightforward prediction actually yielded a clear positive result, instead of the more typical back-to-the-drawing board head-scratcher. If this were a story, that the protagonist was a protein named Diaphanous could serve as a hint that the plot would not prove as solid as one might hope. (Like many genes first discovered in fruit flies, Diaphanous evokes the appearance of animals lacking a functional version of that protein).

The backstory: Lately, my research has been on how stress fibers remodel to accommodate the movements of migrating cells. But as I work on cells in intact tissues, namely the rind of follicular cells that envelops the developing cluster of cells that give rise to a fruit fly egg, I like to consider the natural experiments that unfold in the course of normal development. For example, these follicle cells migrate for a time, going round and round like hamsters running on a wheel, but then they stop and do other things, like flatten out and secrete the eggshell. They still have stress fibers—these are long contractile bundles of a similar composition to muscle, that help attach the cells to the fibrous surface outside them. But these later-stage stress fibers are much stouter and of somewhat different composition.

I had already established that the stress fibers in the migrating cells depend on an unusual partner, amusingly called DAAM, to form. The more typical protein to help build stress fibers is DAAM’s cousin Diaphanous, but I’d done experiments depleting Diaphanous that clearly showed it was not needed in this case. When I depleted DAAM, though, the stress fibers got really wispy. Oddly enough, I’d noticed that in the much later stages, after the cells stopped migrating, had stress fibers unaffected by loss of DAAM.

So the experiment I wanted to do next was to deplete Diaphanous in the later stages. This was not completely straightforward to execute, though, because I had to avoid depleting it too early. I’d already seen that this caused cells to have trouble with their normal round of cell divisions. It’s a common problem in this sort of work that it can be harder to study later processes if you mess things up before they have begun to happen. The solution makes use of the dazzling array of tissue-specific drivers of gene expression that have been invented for fruit flies. They allow you to drive expression of a gene at specific times and places, targeting particular processes you want to study. To keep a gene from being expressed, you can use something called RNAi, which basically makes a cell chop up the instructions for making a protein sent from the DNA so that protein does not get produced.

In short, I needed a driver that acted late in the follicle cells but not early. Our lab did not have such a driver, since we study the earlier stages. But we’d read a paper with some very clever experiments that made use of just such a late driver, one called Cy2. We requested the fly stock from one of the paper’s authors and she promptly mailed it off to us. Fly researchers are awesomely generous. It’s a tradition that goes back to the earliest days of the field over a century ago to share reagents this way.

Chapter the First: Quarantine. The flies arrived and had to be put in quarantine, out of an abundance of caution concerning the possible introduction of mites into our hundreds of lab stocks. In practice, this consists of isolating the vials on the top of the lab refrigerator. All stocks that arrive from elsewhere must be taken through quarantine, save those from the renowned and very reliably mite-free Bloomington stock center. It meant a delay to the start of my planned experiment, until I could obtain 3rd instar larvae and wash them, a rather amusing exercise on which I have previously posted.

So there the flies sat, two healthy vials with clearly written labels: Cy2/(Cyo); Dr/TM6b. This cryptic shorthand conveyed that along with the driver I’d asked for, the flies conveniently included markers on another chromosome, in case I wanted to build more things into the stock. Annoyingly, they were all senescent adults and developing pupal cases—ideal for surviving the mailing process, but the worst possible stage of colony development for obtaining sufficient larvae for my purposes. I would have to wait several weeks for the new generation to produce larvae I could wash.

In pre-covid times, I could have done the cross right away with existing males, dissecting the offspring on a quarantine-use microscope belonging to a neighboring lab. Normally we share a lot of equipment freely in our department. But the physical distancing requirements have temporarily stopped that sort of thing. And we can’t risk getting mites onto the equipment we use for all our normal work.

To shorten the waiting time (a frequent concern of fruit fly researchers, especially I would think those of us who work on adult rather than embryonic or larval structures, meaning our crosses must extend to the full 10+ days of development time beyond any stock-building that precedes it), I planned to wash enough larvae to siphon off a number of males for the experimental cross. To that end, I also began “blowing up” the stocks I would obtain the females from; I could virgin them ahead of time and have them all ready to go as soon as their husbands emerged from their pupal cases.

When you’re waiting to wash a quarantine stock, impatient for the experiment to begin, they seem to take longer to develop, much like a watched pot. The stock contained the mutation Tubby, which makes for shorter flies but a longer developmental time, so that was part of it. Also room temperature (on top of the fridge) slows development compared to the flies’ optimal temperature of 25 C (that’s 77 to your Fahrenheiters...and to be honest, most of us American scientists are very compartmentalized in their understanding of Celsius; outside of the lab context we speak it no better than the average U.S. citizen). So far, then, the slowness makes sense both physical and psychological. But why the quarantined flies should always produce their burst of 3rd instar larvae on a weekend day, and on the one weekend day I don’t pop into the lab, is more puzzling. But it is the rule, I have found.

I wasn’t going to let it happen this time. I watched them like a hawk (a mosquito hawk?) and sure enough, it was a Sunday when all the larvae began to wander. Wandering larvae is the other, more romantic name for the 3rd instar of Drosophila melanogaster, because they have at last eaten their fill of the mushy rotten fruit they have been burrowing through, and there is nothing else for them to do but come out into the light and air and begin to claim their inheritance as winged creatures of the sky. First, though, they must choose a spot in which to prepare their new bodies. Here in that lab, they climb around on the clean walls of the vial, above the caramel-colored dollop of food, fat, juicy larvae as big as a good-sized grain of rice, big enough to grasp gently in forceps and take through the three ritual baths, soapy water, ethanol, and salty water, that remove any lurking mites or mite eggs from their surfaces. After being placed in a fresh vial and wicked dry with a twist of Kimwipe (lab Kleenex), they will crawl around a bit more, mingling with their certified-mite-free compatriots. In a few more hours they will settle down, stop moving, and let their skins harden into bark. Inside that bark, they pretty much dissolve themselves, save for a few set-aside clusters of cells. They go on to rebuild their bodies into the adult form, complete with intricate jointed legs and multitudinously-faceted eyes and iridescent, cellophane-like wings over the course of about a week (at room temperature).

I spent several hours washing more larvae than usual to establish a clean stock, wanting to have plenty of extra males to father the experimental crosses. If I’d had access to the quarantine microscope, I could have selected extra male larvae—you can already distinguish males and females at this stage-- but it would not really have saved time. I played the numbers game instead. It was a Sunday afternoon, quietest time of the week in lab, and very peaceful. I took my time and changed the bath solutions often to make sure there wasn’t too much soapy water in the ethanol or too much ethanol in the final rinse. I wanted this all to go smoothly with no delays.

I put the now-lawful vial in the 25C incubator to develop, after carefully copying the genotype from the original handwritten labels: Cy2/(Cyo); Dr/TM6b. Incidentally, there are lots of markers of chromosomes, many going back to the original mutations described by early fly workers such as Calvin Bridges and Alfred Sturtevant. They let you follow with visible traits the invisible genes that you wish to follow through the generations. Various labs have their favorite markers, but some such as Cyo (which makes for curly wings) are ubiquitous, and Dr and TM6b were familiar to me as well. Dr (short for Dropped, I don’t know why) makes the eyes very slitted, and TM6b is a whole set of markers that comprises what is called a balancer chromosome: a chromosome that has been scrambled and rearranged so that even though it still has all its genes, they are in the wrong places. This means that none of the usual recombination between sister chromosomes that occurs when egg and sperm form can happen. The advantage to the researcher is that this keeps genes segregated in predictable places. Otherwise, all those markers would not be reliable indicators letting you keep track of the genes you put in place from one generation to another. TM6b can actually include various different markers, but one of them is Tb, easy to recognize in both the shorter larvae and pupal cases and to some extent discernible in adults as well.

Chapter the Second: Cross Purposes. Fast forward two weeks (you can—I sadly could not—this being November of 2020, I would certainly have appreciated the distraction). So I waited, none too patiently, for the new adults to emerge. Meanwhile, I tended the stocks I would virgin for females: two different RNAi lines for Diaphanous and one, a control, for its cousin DAAM which I already knew was not required for the later-stage stress fibers. I built up a collection of ladies in waiting, captured shortly after their eclosion and isolated in vials away from all male contact, so I could be sure their offspring would be the genotype I wanted. [A note about the term ‘eclosion’: one might be tempted to call the emergence of the adults from their pupal cases ‘hatching’, but that term is reserved for the larvae coming out their eggshell. You only hatch once, even in the doubled lifestyle of these metamorphosing beasties.]

Finally the washed flies began to eclose. All my usable Cy2 flies were in that one vial. I briefly knocked them out with carbon dioxide gas, used a fine paintbrush to separate the males, and added 3 males each to the three bevvies of expectant females. There were still a few males left, enough to establish the new stock of Cy2 for future use.

At last, more than a month after conceiving it, I’d begun the experimental cross. It would be two more weeks before I had the flies to dissect and the beginnings of an answer. Fly work involves a lot of waiting, and to cope with that we tend to have a lot of irons in the fire. All that juggling can be rather distracting. Sometimes, depending on how other experiments have gone in the interim, I’ve unfortunately moved on from the original urgency of a question by the time the flies are ready to examine. It’s a hazard of the work.

Though I did not yet realize it, I’d made two mistakes. First, I should have looked a bit more carefully at those Cy flies. Second, I should have done the proper control. Sure, crossing them to the DAAM flies was a pretty good control, but there was an even stricter one, that tested whether the driver stock alone had any effect (it should not, but you like to be sure). I should have crossed the Cy2 flies to what we call wild-type, a stock called w1118 that has white eyes, incidentally [link] the first fly mutant ever identified and the foundation of fly genetics.

I hadn’t wanted to use up any more of my precious males, and figured I could always do that control later, if the experiment turned out promising. A lot of us cut corners that way, and it isn’t necessarily less efficient. But sometimes it snarls you up and wastes your time instead of saving it, and makes you go through all sorts of contortions trying to make sense of your data with less information than you should have had.

Chapter the Third: The Experiment. I waited out that two weeks, pursuing other work and trying not to pay too much attention to the news. I wore my mask and stayed in touch with my loved ones over zoom and the like. I hung up bird feeders to entertain my cats and my family alike. I went on long walks by the lake. Time passed. At last the grand day arrived: my experimental flies had begun to eclose. I gassed them and tapped them out of the CO2 pad. Now here was a wrinkle I’d shoved to the back of my mind: those extra markers that I didn’t need, the Dr and TM6b. In a clean experiment I’d have gotten rid of them, but that would have required another couple generations. I’d wanted a quick provisional answer, in order to decide whether it was worth the time and trouble to do the more careful version of the experiment. So: would I dissect the TM6b-carrying flies, or the Dr-carrying flies? It had to be one or the other. The balancer chromosome carries a number of mutations so it would be more likely to do something weird to the cells I was interested in. Not that that was very likely, but I might as well be careful. Dr it was then: that only affected the eyes, as far as I knew. What were the chances it would mess up my experiment on stress fibers in follicle cells?

But none of the flies had Dr eyes. That was odd. I looked closer. Half of them sure looked like Tb flies, shorter and a bit chubbier, though you never want to depend on your ability to discern that marker in adults. The others, the longer ones? They did have some oddly short hairs on their dorsal thorax (around the back of the lower neck, if you want to be anthropomorphic about it), much shorter than the clipped ones you see with the marker Stubble. It kind of reminded me of a marker I’d seen once or twice. Well, that must be what these were; maybe the label had been written wrong.

Impatient to get the experiment done, I swept the short-haired flies into a fresh vial with a bit of yeast. The yeast was to encourage egg production (they’re called fruit flies or vinegar flies, but it’s really the yeast on the rotting fruit that they’re after). I added a few males which were there for the same end. You could say the way to a fine set of ovaries is through both the heart and the stomach. Two more days to go before the dissection. For good measure I put some plain-vanilla w1118 flies on yeast to serve as extra controls.

On the appointed day, I got out my fiercely pointed #55 forceps and began the dissection. I nearly messed up by dissecting the early stages by habit—the technique to do so destroys most of the older egg chambers—but luckily remembered what I was about it time, and switched to the method to optimize acquisition of undamaged later stages. I fixed for 15 minutes in 4% paraformaldehyde, rinsed three times in phosphate-buffered saline solution with Triton-X detergent, and added a stain that would label the filamentous actin, the principle component of stress fibers among many other cellular structures. I put it in the lab fridge (the one where no food is allowed!) to stain overnight. The next morning, early, I came in and rinsed off the stain and made slides. Then I went to the womb-like room where one of my favorite workhouse microscope lives, the renowned Nikon 800 laser scanning confocal microscope. I did the necessary 2020 ritual wipe-down of all surfaces with 70% ethanol, and fired her up.

And oh, it was beautiful. I was so disciplined; I began with the controls to set up the correct laser intensity and gain at which to collect all the images, so the brighter ones would not be out of the range of measurable brightness and everything could be properly quantified. But it was already clear from the what I saw on the computer screen as I centered examples, focused, and took images that the experimental egg chambers had strongly reduced stress fibers. I took lots of pictures, happy that for once my experiment had gone as planned and given me a clear answer.

Also, can I just say how much I love the stain Oregon Green phalloidin? The name itself is lovely: as a native of the Pacific northwest I find it so evocative: the green of deep cushiony moss and ferns and forests of hemlock and douglas firs; and phalloidin itself is a stain derived from mushrooms with which those forests are rife. (Phalloidin, now there’s a scary toxin: it binds so tightly to filamentous actin that it stops your heart. Unlike a lot of other toxins, it doesn’t make you nauseated, so you absorb it until it’s too late for any antidote. But that’s why it’s such a good stain. You just have to wear gloves, or wash your hands after pipetting it. And we all wash our hands so often nowadays it makes no never mind.) There’s red phalloidin, and far-red phalloidin, and even ultraviolet phalloidin (but most microscopes don’t have the right filter sets to light it up very well): but green phalloidin is the king as far as I’m concerned. So bright, and a short enough wavelength (only 488 nanometers, vs. 566 or 647) that it shows up structures the more finely. You can definitely see the difference: it’s sharp as can be.

So, I had the preliminary results I had hoped for: the Diaphanous flies had reduced stress fibers. It doesn’t actually happen to me all that often, that I get a clear answer, either what I predicted or the opposite which is almost as good in science. At least that’s progress, an increase in understanding. No, usually I stumble over these head-scratchers of outcomes. Interesting results, but interesting in a complicated way that require a lot more work to make sense of, if you ever do. It’s partly down to most of my experiments involving imaging with a microscope: you get a lot of unexpected information that way, if you keep your eyes open. But it’s also that I seem to be attracted to the sort of problem that does not yield neat answers—the way some people are attracted to overly hairy guys on motorcycles who are a bit too into mild-altering substances and petty crime. I think I’m the one to straighten them out, but usually I’m the one who gets burned. But this time I had prevailed!

This was just a start; of course I needed to replicate, do some more dissections, get more numbers, reach levels of statistical unassailibility. In particular, I didn’t have as many clear examples of the DAAM control as I needed. Also, I’d do the proper control, and maybe even un-double-balance that Cy2 stock to get rid of the pesky extra markers.

Chapter the Fourth: The morning after. Yeah, and now I’d better take the time to figure out what is going on with that marker that is not Dr. Because, unlikely as it was, wouldn’t it be a shame if it were somehow affecting my results? Worst-case scenario—because that’s how we self-questioning scientists have to operate, ever since the dawn of time or at least the Enlightenment—worst-case scenario, then, is this marker, whatever it is, is the thing responsible for the reduction in stress fibers. Oh, but that’s very unlikely, I tell myself. Besides, the DAAM controls didn’t have reduced stress fibers.

I looked at the original handwritten label, still on the vial of flies on top of the fridge in quarantine. Maybe that D might actually be a P. What was Pr? I’d never heard of it.

I went to the master compendium of fruit fly genetics, FlyBase.org, and looked up Pr. Purple, an eye color gene on the first chromosome. I was looking for a gene on the third chromosome, so that couldn’t be it. I tried a different approach: I DuckDuckWent (DuckDuckGoed doesn’t sound right; if you haven’t heard of it, it’s a more private alternative to Google) images of Drosophila markers. There was that classic poster I’ve seen hanging in various labs, of the most common markers. And there was that marker I’d been reminded of, with the very short hairs. Sn it was called. Could that be my marker? It would have to be some pretty bad handwriting, to make an S look like a D; r to n is easier to imagine.

I went back to FlyBase and looked up Sn. It was the gene Singed. Like if you got to close to the outdoor fire pit on the patio (a way to safely hang out with your friends outdoors even during the Chicago winter), and singed your eyebrows most of the way off (and no, I haven’t done that yet). Also on the first chromosome, though. But look here, this is interesting: Singed is an actin-bundling protein. I read further down the page that summarized the work of dozens or hundreds of researchers over the decades. Yes, it was expressed in the ovaries, and yes, it was known to affect stress fibers. That would be worrying if it were my marker. Lucky it’s not.

I wasn’t getting anywhere. I tried yet another method, going to the webpage for the Bloomington stock center. It’s very well organized, and they have a page showing the details of all the balancer stocks they keep. There ought to be a clue here, for any marker that a researcher could assume another lab would recognize. I go down the list to the TM6b stocks, and find it. Pri, aka Pr, for Prickly. Causes short thoracic bristles. That’s my guy.

Back on FlyBase, I learn that Prickly is one of the classic mutants discovered in the early days of fly research. And this is weird: it has not been annotated. That is, nobody has figured out what gene it is a mutation of, let alone what biological processes it participates in or what tissues it’s expressed in (this matters because if it’s not active in the follicle cells, my experiment would still be valid). They could; it’s a straightforward enough task given that the whole genome is sequenced, but apparently it’s not one that anyone’s found worthwhile. So all we know is it makes very short, deformed bristles that look to me a lot like those of Sn.

Okay, now I am getting worried. What are the chances that this is NOT a protein that affects something like actin bundling and therefore messes up stress fibers? Maybe I had only seen what I wanted to see with the DAAM control. That’s a hazard of doing science, because it’s a hazard of being human. That’s why controls are so important. I consider my experiment in this new and harsher light. Maybe the Diaphanous results are just a phantom of wish fulfillment, summoned by this Prickly hitchhiker I’d never meant to take along for the ride.

I’d already begun the proper control that would answer this question, but meanwhile, while I wait for those flies to emerge, is there anything else I can do? Maybe I should dissect those formerly scorned Tubby flies; at least they lack Prickly. But according to the list at Bloomington, that particular stock has a number of other mutations on its TM6b chromosome, including one called Bri. Bri is a twin of Pri in more ways than one: it also causes very short bristles, and is also unannotated so we have no idea what protein it makes or when or where it acts in the body. Without asking the researchers who sent me the flies, I had no way of knowing if Bri was in there or not.

It would be a bit awkward quizzing them about their flies. We all tend to overdo the shorthand in labeling our stocks, and don’t always remember all the extra mutations lurking there. It’s tripped me up before, when I uncovered interacting mutations I hadn’t known to worry about until they unhinged my crosses. Don’t get me started on vermillian eye color: it’s a real bear. Either way, I’d have to check the controls and unbalance the stock to have a real answer, so probably better not to pester them.

I can’t resist having a quick peek at the TM6b flies though; I’ll be dissecting them tomorrow and should know by Sunday or Monday if the Diaphanous results are evaporating or not...that is, if Bri or something else is not further muddying the waters. A positive result would be definitive; a negative one will require further research. Well, either one will require further research, but one will be more cheerful and the other more like putting nails in a coffin of my hopes one more time. And that, my friends, is what it’s like to do science. (At least I get to see more Oregon green on the confocal, though).

Epilogue. What lessons can we draw from this (mis)adventure, this stomach-churning roller coaster ride of thrills and doubts that is my life in science?

1. Do the proper controls from the beginning. (Although that would have cut out the thrills as well as the doubts, so to be honest, I’m not totally on board with this one).

2. Take the time to look at the flies you are about to cross, and make sure they have the markers you expect. Harder, probably unrealistically hard, is to make sure they don’t have the markers you don’t expect. That would require a Rumsfeldian level of perceiving unknowns unknowns.

3. Remember the limitations of shorthand for conveying a genotype, which like the face we present to the world is invariably far more complex than there is room enough and time to write out.

4. Murphy’s law reigns supreme in this world of ours. What were the chances that the unwanted marker I’d thought I could ignore for a first-pass experiment would turn out to be a different marker I’d never heard of that might affect stress fibers in my cells? Still, it made for a good story, which I haven’t come across in all this interminable slog of an Autumn.

#drosophila #science #research #lab work

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scifigeneration · 7 years ago

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Reconstructing life at its beginning, cell by cell

After 13 rapid divisions a fertilized fly egg consists of about 6,000 cells. They all look alike under the microscope. However, each cell of a Drosophila melanogaster embryo already knows by then whether it is destined to become a neuron or a muscle cell -- or part of the gut, the head, or the tail. Now, Nikolaus Rajewsky's and Robert Zinzen's teams at the Berlin Institute of Medical Systems Biology (BIMSB) of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association (MDC) have analyzed the unique gene expression profiles of thousands of single cells and reassembled the embryo from these data using a new spatial mapping algorithm. The result is a virtual fly embryo showing exactly which genes are active where at this point in time. "It is basically a transcriptomic blueprint of early development," says Robert Zinzen, head of the Systems Biology of Neural Tissue Differentiation Lab. Their paper appears as a First Release in the online issue of Science.

"Only recently has it become possible to analyze genome-wide gene expression of individual cells at a large scale. Nikolaus recognized the potential of this technology very early on and established it in his lab," says Zinzen. "He started to wonder whether -- given a complex organized tissue -- one would be able to compute genome-wide spatial gene expression patterns from single-cell transcriptome data alone." BIMSB combines laboratories with different backgrounds and expertise, emphasizing the need of bringing computing power to biological problems. It turns out the institute had not only the perfect model system -- the Drosophilaembryo -- to address Rajewsky's question, but also the right people with the right expertise, from physics and mathematics to biochemistry and developmental biology.

"The virtual embryo is much more than merely a cell mapping exercise," says Nikolaus Rajewsky, head of the Systems Biology of Gene Regulatory Elements Lab, who enjoyed returning to fly development 15 years after studying gene regulatory elements in Drosophila embryos during his post-doctoral time at the Rockefeller University. Using the interactive Drosophila Virtual Expression eXplorer (DVEX) database, researchers can now look at any of about 8,000 expressed genes in each cell and ask, "Gene X, where are you expressed and at what level? What other genes are active at the same time and in the same cells?" It also works with the enigmatic long non-coding RNAs. "Instead of time-consuming imaging experiments, scientists can do virtual ones to identify new regulatory players and even get ideas for biological mechanisms," says Rajewsky. "What would normally take years using standard approaches can now be done in a couple of hours."

Breaking the synchronicity of the first cell divisions

In their paper, the MDC researchers describe a dozen new transcription factors and many more long non-coding RNAs that have never been studied before. Also, they propose an answer to a question that has puzzled scientists for 35 years: How does the embryo break synchronicity of cell divisions to develop more complex structures?

In a process called gastrulation, distinct germ layers form and cells become restricted with regard to which tissues and organs they may differentiate into. "We believe that the Hippo signaling pathway is at least partly responsible for setting up gastrulation," says Rajewsky. The pathway controls organ size, cell cycles and cell proliferation, but had never been implicated in the development of the early embryo. "We not only showed that Hippo is active in the fly, but we could even predict in which regions of the embryo this would lead to a different onset of mitosis and therefore break synchronicity. And that is just one example for how useful our tool is to understand mechanisms that have escaped traditional science."

Project underwent a tough gestation period

When the researchers started creating the virtual embryo, they did not know whether it would be possible. A key pillar of their eventual success is the Drop-Seq technology, a droplet-based, microfluidic method that allows the transcriptional profiling of thousands of individual cells at low cost. This technique had been newly set up in the Rajewsky lab by Jonathan Alles, a summer student.

However, the fly embryos needed to be selected precisely at the onset of gastrulation. Philipp Wahle, a PhD student in Robert Zinzen's lab, hand-picked about 5,000 of them before dissociating them into single cells. "I was convinced this would give us a large and completely unique data set. This was a great motivation for me," says Wahle. That laborious process created a new challenge. "You need to collect over several sessions to have enough material for a sequencing run," says Christine Kocks, who led the single-cell sequencing team. It was composed of Jonathan Alles, Salah Ayoub and Anastasiya Boltengagen, who jointly with computational scientist Nikos Karaiskos optimized the droplet-based sequencing. "So we had to find a way to stabilize the transcriptomes in the cells," added Kocks. "Finally, based on his earlier work with C. elegans embryos, Nikolaus suggested using methanol." The new single-cell fixation method was published in BMC Biology in May 2017.

As the data got better and better, Nikos Karaiskos, a theoretical physicist and computational expert in Rajewsky's lab, took on the challenge of spatially mapping such a large number of cells to their precise embryonic position. None of the existing approaches in the field of spatial transcriptomics was suitable to reconstruct the Drosophila embryo. "It was a reiterative process to filter the data, see what is inside and try to map it. It changed many times along the way," says Karaiskos. There was a lot of back and forth between members of the computer lab and wet lab -- exchanges that are a defining characteristic of the BIMSB. "I had to question my work all the time, see where it was lacking and develop something better." He came up with a new algorithm called DistMap that can map transcriptomic data of cells back to their original position in the virtual embryo.

Navigating unchartered territory

The construction of the virtual embryo allowed Karaiskos to readily predict the expression of thousands of genes, an almost impossible task by traditional experimental means. Philipp Wahle, supported by Claudia Kipar, validated these predictions by visualizing the gene expression profiles at the bench with a traditional approach: In situ hybridization allows visualizing patterns of gene expression with colorful dyes that are visible under the microscope. "At this stage, a single layer of cells surrounds the entire fly embryo," says Wahle. "This makes it very accessible, thus enabling you to compare the computational data with imaging."

It is the first time that it has been possible to look at the about 6,000 cells of the embryo individually, assess their gene expression profiles -- and understand what determines their behavior in the embryo. "The most important technological advance of this study is that we don't lose the spatial information that is required to understand how embryonic cells act in concert," say the scientists. "This really is unchartered territory and requires new bioinformatics approaches to make sense of the collected data. This worked beautifully in our collaboration, not least because of the unique make-up of the Rajewsky lab, which integrates wet lab and computational approaches." One major advantage is that both groups are not only interested in technology but have specific biological questions that motivate them, says Rajewsky. "Robert has a deep understanding of early development. We can do single-cell sequencing runs and have the computational power to develop the tools that help us actually understand the underlying gene regulatory interactions."

The groups are already planning follow-up projects. One example would be to map the cells at different time points to see how they work together to form organs and tissues. Another would be to check whether the mapping approaches are applicable to more complex tissues.

#science #biology #developmental biology #genetics #cellular biology

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sciencespies · 5 years ago

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Flies fall for optical illusions just like us, despite millions of years of evolution

https://sciencespies.com/nature/flies-fall-for-optical-illusions-just-like-us-despite-millions-of-years-of-evolution/

Flies fall for optical illusions just like us, despite millions of years of evolution

Sometimes our eyes play tricks on us, and sometimes, we play tricks on them. Optical illusions have entranced neuroscientists for decades, but these false messages have probably been going on much longer than we’ve been studying them.

New research has found the eyes of fruit flies are just as easily fooled by static visual patterns with high contrast, seeing motion where there is none.

For an invertebrate with compound eyes (which, close up, look kind of like an optical illusion themselves), that’s a remarkable similarity, and it exists even after millions of years of divergent evolution.

Close up of a fruit fly eye. (Callista Images/Image Sources/Getty Images)

“The last common ancestor of flies and humans lived half a billion years ago, but the two species have evolved similar strategies for perceiving motion,” says neuroscientist Damon Clark from Yale University.

“Understanding these shared strategies can help us more fully understand the human visual system.”

Combining behavioural measurements, genetic silencing, and neural imaging, the team has concluded that fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster), like vertebrates, perceive illusory motion in stationary images because they hold the same basic brain circuitry as us – ours is just more complex.

Traditionally, it was thought that fly eyes and human eyes arose quite differently in evolution, but recent genetic research has found the same underlying genetic basis for the eye in all animal phyla.

Subsequently, some scientists have argued that there was only one original eye, which then branched off into various different forms over millions and millions of years.

And the similarities are still clear to see. Previous research on optical illusions has shown non-human primates, cats, and fish can all be tricked into seeing motion where there is none. But it’s never been shown on a creature as evolutionarily distant from us as the fruit fly.

Which is a shame, because fruit flies have small brains that allow scientists to closely examine the activity of neurons.

“It was exciting to find that flies perceive motion in static images the same way we do,” says Clark.

Mostly because it’s given us a glimpse at what’s going on in our own brains. No one’s really sure what it is about optical illusions that overrule the most reasonable parts of our brains.

Some evidence suggests we see motion in these static images because the pictures generally have a higher contrast, which our brains process faster, presenting data to the brain in an order that generates an illusion of motion (black → dark gray → white → light gray → black).

Other evidence attributes the effect to the tiny, involuntary jerks our eyes make when they are examining something. Both could very well be true at the same time.

Because we already know so much about Drosophila brains, the researchers were able to put the fruit flies to the test, and then use neural imaging to understand the results.

When flying near a stationary image with illusory motion, like the one below, the fruit flies turned towards the picture, which indicates they were seeing sustained movement.

(Illusion credit to A. Kitaoka; illustrated by R. Tanaka)

In the fruit fly brain, motion is detected first by direction-selective neurons T4 and T5, and these respond to sharp contrast edges.

When the authors abolished these elementary motion detector neurons, the illusion of motion disappeared.

Further neural imaging revealed T4 and T5 were working in opposite directions. By turning off just one of these neurons, the authors had the fruit flies turning in the opposite direction to what they would have done if both neurons were active.

This suggests there’s a small imbalance between these motion detectors and how the flies do or don’t respond to the stimulus.

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“When we adapted human observers to moving light edges or dark edges,” the authors explain, “we could manipulate the magnitude and direction of their percepts as well, suggesting that mechanisms similar to the fly’s may also underlie this illusion in humans.”

Therefore, they argue, there’s something in the architecture of our brains that’s driving this illusion of motion, and this could help explain why high contrast and micro movements of the eye in certain directions have become culprits in the illusion as well.

The study was published in PNAS.

#Nature

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gethealthy18-blog · 5 years ago

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Benefits of Hydroxyapatite for Teeth and More

New Post has been published on https://healingawerness.com/news/benefits-of-hydroxyapatite-for-teeth-and-more/

Benefits of Hydroxyapatite for Teeth and More

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If you’ve been a Wellness Mama reader for a while, you probably know that I’m fascinated by dental health. The conventional advice is to use fluoride toothpaste to harden teeth (and prevent cavities) and to use a whitening toothpaste to deal with yellowing teeth. But I was not convinced that this was the only (or best) way to go with protecting my family’s dental health.

Then I discovered the benefits of hydroxyapatite, which is a material that can white and strengthen teeth. Fast forward a few years, and I decided to use hydroxyapatite as an ingredient in my own line of natural toothpaste. Since the name sounds so unusual, I thought it was worth explaining the benefits of this elaborate-sounding mineral and why I chose to include it.

Let’s dive in!

What Is Hydroxyapatite?

Though the name is daunting to pronounce, it’s actually a very simple material. Hydroxyapatite (HAp) is a calcium phosphate that makes up human teeth and bones. Pure hydroxyapatite is white, which is why healthy teeth appear white.

Lab-created hydroxyapatite (nano-hydroxyapatite — n-HAp) has a hexagonal structure and ratio of calcium to phosphate that is identical to human bone and teeth. So, unlike some materials that are made in a lab, n-HAp is as good as natural hydroxyapatite.

Hydroxyapatite is also the most stable form of calcium phosphate, which means that it is unlikely to succumb to decomposition processes like oxidation. This is one reason that it has been researched and used for a variety of medical uses.

Benefits of Hydroxyapatite

Hydroxyapatite is an interesting material. According to a 2019 study, it has many benefits which make it a helpful material for medical and dental uses.

Biocompatible & Bioactive – As mentioned earlier, hydroxyapatite is biologically identical to the material that human bones and teeth are made from. Because of this hydroxyapatite is not harmful to human tissue. It also has a biological effect, meaning it will help bones and teeth grow.

Osteoconductive – Hydroxyapatite also is osteoconductive, meaning bone can grow onto the surface of hydroxyapatite, aiding in repairing hard tissue in the body.

Non-Toxic – Hydroxyapatite is also non-toxic and does not cause inflammation. On the other hand, fluoride can be harmful.

Anti-microbial – HAp is also antimicrobial, which can help fight infection and bacteria in the mouth, according to a 2018 study.

Researchers have known for a long time that HAp had these benefits. But with the advancement in nanotechnology, it has become easier to make n-HAp in the lab, making it more available for use.

Uses of Hydroxyapatite

Because of HAp’s many chemical benefits, it has been researched and used in both expected and unexpected uses.

Bone and Tooth Surgery

Because HAp is what teeth and bones are made from, it makes sense that it could help repair them. But what’s really interesting is that it can be used to help the body accept implants. It does this by coating the implant. This coating makes the body believe the implant is already part of the body.

Research published in 2006 backs up these uses. It also shows that HAp can help bone regrow, so it can help repair broken bones.

A ten-year review published in 1999 discovered that HAp is completely safe and continues to be a very effective way to help implants survive in the body.

Dental Health

Demineralization of the teeth can occur for several reasons including acidic foods and drinks, lack of adequate saliva, and excess plaque. Hydroxyapatite makes up about 97 percent of tooth enamel and 70 percent of dentin (the layer under the enamel), so replenishing this material is a great way to help support healthy teeth. When used in toothpaste, nano-hydroxyapatite fils in gaps in the tooth, strengthening it.

A 2014 review found that n-HAp toothpaste has a “remarkable remineralizing effect” on teeth — significantly better than fluoride.

The review notes that n-HAp also adheres to plaque and bacteria, making them less problematic for teeth and that n-HAp helps ease sensitivity.

According to a 2009 study, HAp can even help whiten teeth. Researchers conclude that it’s a great alternative to bleaching agents. Considering yellow teeth are a result of demineralizing, it makes sense that remineralizing could help improve the white appearance of teeth.

My whitening toothpaste contains hydroxyapatite for whitening and remineralizing teeth as well as aloe and green tea to fight bacteria and bad breath. We worked long and with a team of researchers and product scientists to develop a formula even better than my homemade toothpaste recipes.

Environmental Uses

The main uses of hydroxyapatite have been medical and dental, but there is some research into other uses for this material.

Air filters made with a combination of hydroxyapatite and 2 other chemicals can help absorb and decomposing carbon monoxide (CO) in the air.

Air quality (especially indoors) is a major concern for health-conscious families (including mine!), so this research is welcome.

Additionally, it can help to remove fluoride in the environment by adsorbing it. Adsorbing is different than absorbing. Adsorbing means that the fluoride attaches to the hydroxyapatite as a thin film around the outside. This helps remove the fluoride from the environment. Considering fluoride may have surprisingly negative effects (like causing acne!), I’m always looking for new ways to cut down on exposure.

Is Hydroxyapatite Safe?

Both the 2019 study and the 10-year review mentioned earlier found that there is no concern about safety with HAp when used in the ways explained above. However, when used as a supplement it may cause side effects such as headache, dry mouth, frequent urination, fatigue, flushing or sweating, and stomach discomfort.

Good thing we all know not to swallow our toothpaste!

My family uses hydroxyapatite in our toothpaste to help remineralize and whiten our teeth naturally and we have had a great experience with it.

Hydroxyapatite: Bottom Line

The technical name for this material makes it a bit scary but it’s far from harmful!

HAp is a safe and effective ingredient in natural toothpaste (what I use it for) but also can be used for medical and environmental uses.

Even when made in a lab, it is safe, effective, and bioactive.

It can actually directly help bone and teeth remineralize and regrow in some instances.

If you are looking for an alternative to fluoride toothpaste that actually works, I highly recommend using a hydroxyapatite toothpaste like the one from Wellnesse.

This article was medically reviewed by Dr. Lauren Jefferis, board-certified in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics. As always, this is not personal medical advice and we recommend that you talk with your doctor or work with a doctor at SteadyMD.

Sources:

Dan, P., Sundararajan, V., Ganeshkumar, H., Gnanabarathi, B., Subramanian, A. K., Venkatasubu, G. D., … Mohideen, S. S. (2019). Evaluation of hydroxyapatite nanoparticles – induced in vivo toxicity in Drosophila melanogaster. Applied Surface Science, 484, 568–577. doi: 10.1016/j.apsusc.2019.04.120

Seyedmajidi, S., Rajabnia, R., & Seyedmajidi, M. (2018). Evaluation of antibacterial properties of hydroxyapatite/bioactive glass and fluorapatite/bioactive glass nanocomposite foams as a cellular scaffold of bone tissue. Journal of Laboratory Physicians, 10(03), 265–270. doi: 10.4103/jlp.jlp_167_17

Zhang, Y., Xu, H. H. K., Takagi, S., & Chow, L. C. (2006). In-situ hardening hydroxyapatite-based scaffold for bone repair. Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Medicine, 17(5), 437–445. doi: 10.1007/s10856-006-8471-z

Petit, R. (1999). The use of hydroxyapatite in orthopaedic surgery: A ten-year review. European Journal of Orthopaedic Surgery & Traumatology, 9(2), 71–74. doi: 10.1007/bf01695730

Pepla, E. (2014). Nano-hydroxyapatite and its applications in preventive, restorative and regenerative dentistry: a review of literature. Annali Di Stomatologia. doi: 10.11138/ads/2014.5.3.108

Dabanoglu A, A. (2009). Whitening effect and morphological evaluation of hydroxyapatite materials. American Journal of Dentistry.

Nasr-Esfahani, M., & Fekri, S. (2012). Alumina/TiO2/hydroxyapatite interface nanostructure composite filters as efficient photocatalysts for the purification of air. Reaction Kinetics, Mechanisms and Catalysis, 107(1), 89–103. doi: 10.1007/s11144-012-0457-x

Pandi, K., & Viswanathan, N. (2014). Synthesis of alginate bioencapsulated nano-hydroxyapatite composite for selective fluoride sorption. Carbohydrate Polymers, 112, 662–667. doi: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2014.06.029

Source: https://wellnessmama.com/427859/hydroxyapatite/

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genetics2019 · 6 years ago

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Day x. March 29, 2019.

It’s crazy to think that the work I have been doing in my CSL placement has come to an end. Time flies!

As my BIO 2133 course is also coming to an end, I’ve made many connections between the ideas presented in class and with some of the things I have witnessed or done in the lab.

From my very first post, Day 0, I talked about what makes a good model organism in genetics research. On Day 1, my first real day working in the lab, I mentioned the ways in which chromosomes are represented on labels, using semicolons and slashes. I was able to recognize different phenotypes of Drosophila melanogaster. I even got my first taste of lab maintenance. In my case, it was taking care of flies. On Day 2, I learned even more about fruit fly phenotypes and genotypes.

Skipping ahead, on Day 4, I set some goals for myself. I reached the majority of them!

✓ I hope to continue to improve my skills handling the flies and using a microscope.

✓ I want to become more efficient while performing virgin collections.

✓ Over the next few days that I am in the lab, my goal is to learn how to perform assays.

✓ I hope to learn how to dissect select parts of the fruit fly.

▶︎ I want to learn how to make different kinds of fruit fly food.

▶︎ My ultimate goal is to successfully complete a fruit fly dissection and isolate the fruit fly’s brain.

I never got a chance to learn how to make fruit fly food. I was too busy improving my skills while handling flies, using the microscope, and collecting and recognizing virgin fruit flies. I successfully completed two assays and I learned a little bit about dissecting fruit flies, too! As for my ultimate goal, I certainly needed more practice dissecting the brain of a fruit fly. It was really difficult!

On Day 6 and Day 10, I completed assays mentioned above. This was my first taste of real research while working in the lab. I wouldn’t be surprised if my future career involved research similar to the work I did in the Kim Lab. Without a doubt, I’ll be using the skills I practiced with the microscope in the future.

Overall, I really enjoyed this experience. This CSL placement has taught me a lot, even if I know more about flies now than I thought I would ever want to know!

#flyingaway

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caredogstips · 8 years ago

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In accolade of the humble fruit fly

Drosophila, the hard-working fruit fly widely used in genetics investigate, is a lot more like us than we might care to think. Time we got to know the little pest

In a series of areas in the Fly Facility of the Department of Genetics at Cambridge University, around 5m return wings are kept in test tube at any given point in time. Theyre stored at different temperatures to adjudicate running durations of life cycle at 25 C, its about 10 dates; at jug temperatures as long as five weeks.

Out in the wild, “they dont have” pest quite so likable to human needs as the humble pomace fly. It may have spent the summer feasting on the contents of your return container, but not until your assembled plums and peaches were starting to canker. But while gastronomic predisposition are typical to be applauded in a run, the drosophila, to present it its official title, has more going for it than good table manners.

For the past century, it has also acted the crucial serve of a science and medical search tool. Today, its often the first stop in research into a wide range of human illnesses, including Alzheimers disease, Huntingtons disease, spastic paraplegia, cancer and obesity. By compared to mice and dogs, let alone apes and humans, its massively inexpensive and easy-going working in cooperation with and there is little chance of sucking dissent from even the most radical anti-vivisectionist.

In many respects its position as a crucial search tool is a historical accident. Between 1910 and 1915, the pioneering American geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan worked on Drosophila melanogaster in his renowned Fly Room at Columbia University and been demonstrated that genes provide the basis for chromosomal inheritance, for which he won a Nobel prize winner. It was a critical breakthrough, but there was no particular reason that it had to be made via the fruit fly. Yet ever since then, the tiny drosophila has been at the vanguard of genetic research. In the 1920 s, another American geneticist, Hermann J Muller, has showed that radioactivity leads to genetic mutation in fruit wings. The reason were careful about exposure to x-rays is no tiny portion due to Mullers work.

But some of the mutations that Muller grew, such as pilots with legs coming out of their premiers, subsequently played into the postwar period of atomic paranoia, acquainted George Langelaans short story The Fly, which was constructed into a film first in the 50 s and then remade by David Cronenberg in the 1980 s.

Jeff Goldblum mid-mutation in David Cronenbergs 1986 cinema The Fly. Image: Sportsphoto Ltd/ Allstar

In the tale and the films, research scientists mutates into a wing, an idea thats shaking precise since we are experience ourselves as being so altogether differences between moves, with their strange the organizations and massive, honeycombed leaders and plainly creepy practices. This deep-seated nervousnes about runs has led to some famed misunderstands of biology. The most appalling speciman was in 2008, when Sarah Palin, extending for vice-president in the US presidential elections, told an audience that their money was going to is planned that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Concepts like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.

Despite Palins clueless doubts, one of the reasons that operates have become important to much genetic and medical investigate in its relationship with humans is that they tolerate a impressive genetic similarity to us. The sci-fi fear of a flys otherness may well be based, somewhere direction down, on its unsettling closeness to us.

It was Michael Ashburner, the godfather of fruit fly research at Cambridge, who first established that of the genes that in their mutant anatomy campaign diseases in humen cystic fibrosis being one example around 75% have very similar equivalents in return hovers. When Ashburner started out in the 1970 s, runs were maintained in milk bottles in a temporary laboratory on the outskirts of Cambridge. As an expression of the results of his foundational act, which includes his classic book Won For All: How the Drosophila Genome Was Sequenced , Cambridge has become arguably the worlds passing centre of fruit fly research.

Its Fly Facility is run by one of Ashburners former PhD students, Simon Collier, who showed me around the labs and fly storage of the facility. Hes been working with fruit operates for 25 years and in that time hes come to know and realize many of their obscured to most human observers characteristics.

If you take a tube of runs and left open here you notice that they have practices, he alleges. The males courtroom the females. They follow the females and put one wing out and it vibrates. Theres a person in Leicester whos experimented this and what theyre doing is producing a kind of love song.

Apparently, the females are not looking for a long-term affair and, certainly, theyre likely in their short life span to have multiple spouses. The question with this for geneticists is that they store semen so paternity is a disputed issue. To counter the embarrassment of this brazen immorality, geneticists tend to work with innocent females.

How can they tell? I ask.

The look in their seeing, Collier says drily.

A colourised SEM micrograph, amplified 70 epoches. of the head of a fruit fly, evidencing compound seeing. Photograph: Tom Hartman/ Getty Images

He shows me a magnification of a onu of fruit operates that have been knocked out by carbon dioxide. Theyre still blinking but essentially stationary. He points out the differences between males( a bit smaller) and females and shows that young wings virgins if you like are pale and unpigmented.

He explains that for study determinations special chromosomes have been developed that enable geneticists to draw exactly what genes have been inherited. With mouse, for example, its necessary to check gene by gene whats been inherited, which moves genetic study much more time-consuming and costly.

Because the fruit flys life cycle is so short and they procreate so fast( sexually maturity is reached within eight epoches of incubating ), drosophila are ideal subjects for its further consideration of inherited traits, including genetic aberrations, over many generations.

Still, to the amateur, even one slightly more versed in the exigencies of scientific research than Sarah Palin, theres something intensely counterintuitive about doing genetic research on wings. For one thing, theyre so small. Doesnt that make it a whole lot trickier?

Collier shakes his head. Its fairly simple if you want to look at the fruit flys genome. You exactly place them in a tube and squish them up and do some simple DNA extraction. Whats more complex is becoming the other route implanting genetic substance into them.

He takes me to a special lab where this procedure is carried out. They take the tent-fly larvae and strip the eggs off their eggshells by putting them in bleach. Then with a long and highly fine needle, the relevant genetic material is introduced into the posterior of the eggs where the germline cells are located.

Drosophila melanogaster gaze quality variants, picturing grey and cherry-red. The grey seeing gene is sex-linked. Picture: Alamy

Given that an egg is about 0.5 mm in length( about the dimensions of the a particle of sand ), and the DNA administered into it is about the capacity of a millionth of a drop of ocean, you can see how delicate an operation it is. It takes about six months to master the instant motor skills necessary to do the job.

Usually half the embryos will survive that procedure, enunciates Collier. And we are in a position reproduction from them and examine them.

But study what exactly? And to what end?

Collier innovates me to two colleagues who are active in fruit fly research, a reader in genetics announced Cahir OKane and Damian Crowther, a director of neuroscience the investigations and change at the pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, who still holds links to the Fly Facility.

We go out to lunch and talk fruit operates. I expect Crowther first of all why “hed left” academic study to go into industry.

The story I tell, he alleges, is pals, and perhaps even adversaries, would ever insert me as, This is Damian, hes the tent-fly guy. In my occasion, Ive been a registrar in neurology and a research scientist in many areas I didnt conclude fly person certainly summarized me up.

OKane resembled the detail and both men agree that fly investigate has not made them either health professionals or social acknowledgment they speculate their work warrants.

What seems to matter most, to its implementation of professional appreciation at the least, is what is known as rendition, that is, passing the findings of fly research into productive contributions to medical applications for humen. There is little doubt that hovers study does contribute, in a wider appreciation of biological understanding of how all organisms piece, but also in specific examples of human illnes. However, its not easy to become direct links.

Its problematic, for obvious grounds, to lead from run tests to human experiments; there often needs to be a whole scope of happening stagecoaches in which other scientists take over and, unavoidably, take the spotlight and accreditation.

I cant tell you that theres a drug that Ive tested on return flies[ with an artificially created version of Alzheimers disease] thats benefited the fruit fly thats then gone on to benefit the human, articulates Crowther.

But, he excuses, Alzheimers commits the overproduction of proteins that species plaque in the brain that destroys neurons. So you can oblige frameworks of runs that raise these proteins, get their own plaque and succumb, he shows, and you are able to measure various ways of preventing the plaque formations.

Fruit wings dont naturally develop Alzheimers, although they have all the genetics of the Alzheimers pathway in their brain.

You have to give them human equivalent genes and push it really hard to get them to have Alzheimers in three weeks, shows Crowther.

Life hertz stages of the pomace fly, Drosophila sp, presenting larva, pupa, adult male( dark abdomen) and adult female. Image: Ed Reschke/ Getty Images

Instead of thinking of pilot research as a direct route to medical breakthroughs, its better to see it, Crowther quarrels, as a style of doing quick and dirty research. He believes that because its so cheap, it should be used in a multiplicity of ways that might spot the direction to most productive routes of research. And whenever there is drugs that have already been measured on humans and have passed safety requirements but have failed in their efficacy with the targeted disorder, they could be retargeted by first testing them on flies.

The contemplating around really bad maladies like engine neurone malady, Huntingtons disease, is if you can get anything to work in a cell culture replicated in an animal, thats the beginning as long as its safe of promptly get it to patients, remarks Crowther.

OKane is especially suspicious of overblown claims for translation. For him, the allure of the fruit fly is that it is a organism that rewards analyse in a larger context.

Im interested in it because I think its a great arrangement for finding out how living things in general can work. I conceive by understanding the principles of how tent-flies labour you are able to make better prophecies for humans. The better you understand how “were working” the most rational you can be about trying to pattern rehabilitations; I imagine even without directing your work towards therapy, you are able to speculate more intelligently about cares five or 10 years down the line.

It has been said , not least by Collier, that more know anything about the biology of the drosophila than any other animal on Earth. For speciman, we know that fruit moves have a kind of built-in compass in their mentalities that allows a sense of direction. As all animals need to know how they move, its not unreasonable to assume that its a way of universal computation.

Another study to demonstrate that male fruit moves that are rejected by a female teammate are more inclined to drown their anguishes in food spiked with alcohol than male fruit tent-flies that have succeeded in copulated. Again, a mentality chemical that governs the wings stomach and is predictive of their thirst for alcohol has an equivalent that has been linked to alcohol uptake in humans.

In another consider, this time at Oxford, it was found that fruit operates are capable of what are liable to be worded intelligent deliberation. Rather than doing solely impulsive decisions, they take time to react when will come forward with a difficult choice.

In other terms, once again their behavior could be described as human-like. It seems that the common ingredient in both human and operate action is a gene announced FOXP, which is closely linked to cognitive developed as humen. Pilots with defective FOXP take longer to arrive at policy decisions, just as flaws in the human type of FOXP have been correlated with low-toned intelligence.

It is this long and valuable history of consider of the drosophila that should guarantee its continued involvement in genetic investigate. But much of what has been very successful about working with operates is now being be repeated in human stem cell research, which has the added advantage of being species-relevant. This was the other is why Crowther moved into the private sector: the competition from stem cells meant that he found it increasingly difficult to get fruit fly-based experiment funded.

The fly is yesterdays person, he mentions, yesterdays engineering. For me, stem cells are the next fruit fly.

OKane searches fairly glum at the prospect and argues that there have been queries over the future of pomace fly study ever since he started his laboratory 25 years ago. But he maintains that the work hes done in inherited spastic paraplegia would have taken 10 times longer to perform with mouse. OKane has grown to appreciate the rich biological and social development of fruit flies in the time hes been working with them.

The more you look at their behavior, he says, the more sophisticated you realise they are. Even in aggressivenes, how a male pomace fly behaves in a fight is dependent on his previous experience of fighting with other male and female what the other males previous know-how of fighting is. Its amazing to be considered all the machinery thats involved to be able to do that. Undoubtedly were more sophisticated, because were studying them, theyre not analyse us.

For the time being, until some over-ambitious genetics professor does manage to mutate into a run, thats the practice the relationship should be pursued. And both humans and return wings, it is about to change, can drink to that.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

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makingscipub · 5 years ago

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Moral Dilemmas in Science Journalism about Genetics Research: The case of gene drives

Guest post by Rebecca Hardesty, Ph.D.

Rebecca Hardesty is a postdoctoral scholar in science education and communication at UC San Diego in its Division of Biological Sciences and the Teaching + Learning Commons.

***

The New York Times Magazine rang in the New Year with a featured piece by Jennifer Kahn recounting the promises and perils of one of the newer advances in genetics research: the gene drive. As someone who has worked alongside biologists of various stripes for the past six years as a social scientist and modest historian of genetics, I found this article particularly striking. On the face of it, the journalist presented a compelling account of: a) the gap in understanding between the geneticists and general audiences; b) how gene drives could support the eradication of malaria; and c) the moral dilemmas associated with this kind of research. However, this story is more than just a well-researched and provocative piece – it is a paradigmatic example of what accepted science journalism is, and has been, for the last fifty years.

The standards this genre of journalism upholds support journalists writing informative and thought-provoking accounts of scientific advances. However, they also privilege reporting that abstracts biological work from the historical context which informs its significance. Even more significantly, this sort of journalism continues to uphold the view that scientists are always a bit removed from ordinary life and its accompanying moral concerns. This is not to take away from the article or the accuracy of its information on gene drives. However, I bring up this particular article as means of showing how the conventions of science journalism skew what goes on in actual scientific practice.

I encourage you to read the article itself, but I will relay the information it presents on gene drives as a means of first showing how the ethical issues the author identifies are understandable. Then I will show that they are not concerns specific to gene drives, but ones that have pervaded reporting on genetics research since the 1970s with little change.

About Gene Drives

Kahn begins with a surreal account of “Science Speed Dating,” an event that people in the entertainment industry attended in the summer of 2018 to learn about science so that its cinematic depictions were somewhat accurate. It was at this event a UC Irvine biologist, Anthony James, presented his work on mosquito-borne diseases, including malaria. In his research, James uses gene drives. Gene drives are a genetic engineering technology that changes the likelihood of a particular gene variant being transmitted throughout the population of a species. Gene drives are fairly flexible as a technique and one can use them add, delete, or modify genes. In the context of malaria research, in 2015, James and his laboratory genetically modified mosquitoes to resist the parasite that causes malaria.[1]

However, as Kahn shows, gene drives are still in their infancy and have not been tested outside of laboratory settings. And this is for good reason. They have the potential to fundamentally disrupt the genetic evolution of a species. This is because, when a gene drive works properly, it affects not only the current generation of an organismic population, but all of its subsequent generations. The Hollywood framing of Kahn’s piece makes a lot of sense.

This technology immediately conjures up narratives of science-gone-wrong where a group of well-meaning scientists accidentally create mosquitoes that spread especially virulent forms of the diseases they carry. Or perhaps an entire ecosystem is affected in unforeseen and horrible ways because of a seemingly innocuous modification to one species. There are also the predictable storylines of this technology being weaponized or used to wipe out an entire species. This is not a new trope in science fiction. For example, the Mass Effect video game trilogy contains a species which was involuntarily genetically modified to limit the number of live births, and this gene was propagated to all future generations of the alien race.

Kahn continues by recounting the rocky road gene drives have had gaining trust and acceptance from activists and general audiences. Significantly, the author highlights the comments that came out of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity in 2018 in which activists “compared gene drives to the atomic bomb” (Kahn, 2020). While the activists frame gene drives in a highly-charged way, it is not dissimilar to Kahn’s own framing of this genetic engineering technology as an immediate moral dilemma. Nor is this a new way of conceiving of the morality associated with genetics research. Part of my own research has focused on journalistic work on disease-oriented genetics research. To highlight the persistence of this approach to science journalism, I will take as a comparative example the April 1971 Time magazine special issue, “The New Genetics: Man into Superman.”

Disconnects between Scientists and the Media

I came across this Time magazine special issue when I was reviewing the transcripts of a meeting of the Salk Institute’s Council for Biology in Human Affairs that took place in Cold Spring Harbor on June 11 and 12, 1971. During this meeting, founding members of the Salk Institute, as well as external members of the Council, met to discuss several things. These included the recent developments in genetics research, how the public might respond to them, and how to inform the public about the significance of these developments. The conveners were particularly concerned with cloning, reimplantation, prenatal genetic diagnosis, and gene therapy.

The Council was split on whether the public was sufficiently educated on genetics research to make informed decisions about domains of life that the recent advances could, one day, affect. Some members were particularly concerned that the public’s lack of understanding would lead them to fear this branch of biological research and group it in with ongoing chemical warfare research that resulted in the gases being used in Vietnam, or even the kind of research in physics that lead to the atomic bomb in World War II. This issue of fear and public trust was set aside after the Council members referred to this Time magazine issue as evidence for why they did not need to engage in future efforts to educate general audiences. I tracked down this issue and was surprised to see that this was not the reassuring set of articles I assumed they were. In fact, they painted quite an alarming portrait of geneticists.

The cover of this issue shows human figures consumed by red DNA double helices against a dark background. The color palette is similar to radiation warning posters and signs used during the Cold War. The New York Times Magazine article has similarly disturbing imagery. In this case, it is an enormous black fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) with glowing red eyes that would not be out of place in a Giger-inspired horror film. While these were fruit flies that James, the biologist, modified to have fluorescent eyes, the magazine could have chosen to feature a less sinister fly with green or blue eyes. Still eye-catching, but less demonic.

Portrait of the Scientist as Outside Everyday Life

Textually, the Times magazine and the New York Times Magazine articles start with embedding their discussions of genetics research in fictional portrayals of moral dilemmas in science. The Times piece begins with a quote from Dr. Zhivago which, in the context of the article, brings together fears of communism, nuclear war, and science’s ability to change the nature of life,

“Reshaping life! People who can say that have never understood a thing about life—they have never felt its breath, its heartbeat—however much they have seen or done. They look on it as a lump of raw material that needs to be processed by them, to be ennobled by their touch. But life is never a material, a substance to be molded. If you want to know, life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly renewing and remaking and changing and transfiguring itself” (Pasternak, 1957).

While Kahn does not draw on the still-relevant quote from Dr. Zhivago, her early introduction of the “Science Speed Dating” as well as use of the voices of television producers, gives weight to the fictionalized version of science. Even though Hollywood isn’t a litmus test, as Kahn says, for how people outside of the sciences and the entertainment industry will evaluate gene drives, media representation is influential.

By using the cinematic version of genetics research as a contrast with biologists’ statements about their technical work, it does not make them more relatable. For the majority of people, fictional depictions of science are much more familiar than scientists own descriptions of what they do. And along with these depictions comes the sensationalized versions of the moral issues that are associated with technological advances.

Contributing to the depiction of biologists and geneticists as apart from the familiar and everyday, both articles show researchers operating outside of ordinary life. The Times magazine article uses quotes from researchers abstractly speculating about the moral implications of genetics research in their other work, which was not representative of academic sentiments at that time. One example is Robert Sinsheimer proclaiming that because of their increased understanding of genetics, scientists now understand the origin of life and have the ability to design humanity’s future (Time, 1971, p. 53). The article continues by reflecting on the potential genetic damage caused by the radiation from the atomic bombs used in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. It then quotes Theodosius Dobzhansky’s ethical dilemma,

“If we enable the weak and the deformed to live and to propagate their kind,” he says, “we face the prospect of a genetic twilight. But if we let them die or suffer when we can save or help them, we face the certainty of a moral twilight” (Time, 1971, p. 53).

This is a portrayal of scientists abstractly and coldly speculating about how they ought to dictate who lives and dies. The New York Times Magazine article is not sensationalistic; however, it shows scientists divorced from mundane concerns or responsibilities. In one photograph, Valentino James, a biologist at UC San Diego, stands imposingly in front of a refrigerated storage unit. In a vignette, researchers casually work all Christmas day debating the ethical and safety ramifications that their research may produce. While this goes by quickly, it does paint a portrait of scientists being removed from everyday concerns like holiday cooking, dealing with relatives, needing to take a vacation, childcare, or spending time with family.

In Kahn’s article, scientists are defined by their work, not the human feelings and drives that motivate us all to act as we do. Having spent years working alongside biologists, there is always a rich story to be told about how they care about involving their students in their research, their concerns about teaching (even if they are research faculty), why their work matters to them. Relatedly, it is usually compelling to hear why they chose to stay in academia as opposed to pursuing more lucrative (and possibly less stressful) careers in industry. There are also humanizing little stories to be told of how an experiment went wrong in a surprising way, how a lab decided on cleaning duties, or that meeting where the whole lab debated about where in their conference room they ought to hang a painting.

Not only would it be nice to hear these stories, science journalism needs them to revise the portrait of the scientist as an eccentric researcher who is unlike you or me.

Reconceiving Scientific Dilemmas

Finally, I want to take a step back and look at the context of these two articles. Half of the Time magazine issue was devoted to news and anxieties about the Vietnam war, the Middle East, continuing fallout from WWII, socialist uprisings, and disapproval of president Nixon. The New York Times Magazine issue had a similar tone. There was a focus on the US’s involvement in foreign conflict, changes in the Middle East’s political landscape, and there was also an article devoted to WWII and another focused on concerns about the Republican party. While much as changed in the world, much has remained the same. This includes the structure of both these articles and the way in which they are pitched. Both focus on the grand moral concerns concerning genetics research when there are more immediate issues such as:

How can this work, which requires national and international collaboration and successful communication, occur?

How can the significance of health-focused research be communicated to diverse and, potentially, justifiably skeptical audiences?

How can we support the development of clear ethical guidelines that protect genetic information while still allowing it to be shared across research groups?

While the recent New York Times Magazine article is, in my opinion, fantastic and highlights the excellent work at the University of California, it is time to rethink science journalism’s preoccupation with the most abstract and extreme moral issues associated with scientific research. Not only are they not particularly urgent issues, focusing on them occludes the realities of genetics research. Two of which are: being able to do small modifications consistently in a controlled setting is different than doing large-scale modifications to a genetically diverse species in the wild – and biologists know this. Second, there needs to be a massive and coordinated effort between researchers, governments, and industry to pull off something like eradicating malaria by genetically modifying mosquitoes. This would be a possibly unprecedented act of international communication and coordination.

With all this in mind, I’d like to see more on the following challenges of gene drives: a) the difficulties communicating between researchers in different sub-specialties; b) the challenges of industry/governmental/academic collaborations; and c) issues of recruitment for diverse human genetic material.

They’re not as flashy, but these are pressing dilemmas.

References

Kahn, J. (2020, January 8). The Gene Drive Dilemma: We Can Alter Entire Species, but Should We? Retrieved from https://ift.tt/2ZYqab9

Man into Superman. (1971). Time, 97(16). Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=53806187&site=ehost-live

Footnote

[1] See “’Gene drive’ mosquitoes engineered to fight malaria” in Nature news : https://www.nature.com/news/gene-drive-mosquitoes-engineered-to-fight-malaria-1.18858

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adultdirtypicsycst433-blog · 6 years ago

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24 Hours to Improving Cam Whores

“One is just not born, but instead results in being, a lady.”

Simone de Beauvoir, The next Sex (1949)

In nature, male and woman are distinct. She-elephants are gregarious, he-elephants solitary. Male zebra finches are loquacious – the females mute. Woman inexperienced spoon worms are two hundred,000 moments more substantial than their male mates. These striking differences are biological – nevertheless they result in differentiation in social roles and talent acquisition.

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Alan Pease, writer of a guide titled “Why Adult males Don’t Pay attention and girls Can’t Examine Maps”, believes that Women of all ages are spatially-challenged when compared with Adult men. The British organization, Admiral Insurance plan, done a examine of 50 % one million statements. They observed that “Ladies had been almost 2 times as very likely as Males to possess a collision in a vehicle park, 23 p.c far more likely to strike a stationary car, and fifteen percent more likely to reverse into One more automobile” (Reuters).

Nonetheless gender “distinctions” are frequently the results of bad scholarship. Contemplate Admiral insurance’s details. As Britain’s Automobile Affiliation (AA) properly pointed out – women motorists are likely to make extra small journeys all around towns and searching facilities and these contain Regular parking. As a result their ubiquity in specific styles of claims. Pertaining to Women of all ages’s alleged spatial deficiency, in Britain, women are outperforming boys in scholastic aptitude tests – which includes geometry and maths – considering that 1988.

Within an Op-Ed revealed because of the Ny Situations on January 23, 2005, Olivia Judson cited this example

“Beliefs that Guys are intrinsically much better at this or which have consistently brought about discrimination and prejudice, after which they’ve been proved to generally be nonsense. Women of all ages had been assumed to not be planet-course musicians. But when American symphony orchestras introduced blind auditions while in the 1970’s – the musician performs behind a display screen in order that his or her gender is invisible to Individuals listening – the amount of women supplied Careers in professional orchestras greater. Equally, in science, studies from the ways that grant programs are evaluated have demonstrated that Ladies are more likely to get funding when These reading through the programs don't know the sex from the applicant.”

On another wing of your divide, Anthony Clare, a British psychiatrist and author of “On Guys” wrote:

“In the beginning from the 21st century it can be hard to avoid the summary that Adult males are in really serious trouble. Throughout the globe, made and establishing, antisocial habits is basically male. Violence, sexual abuse of youngsters, illicit drug use, alcohol misuse, gambling, all are overwhelmingly male things to do. The courts and prisons bulge with men. In regards to aggression, delinquent habits, hazard having and social mayhem, Adult men earn gold.”

Males also mature later, die earlier, tend to be more susceptible to infections and many forms of most cancers, are more likely to be dyslexic, to have problems with a host of psychological well being Conditions, including Notice Deficit Hyperactivity Condition (ADHD), and to dedicate suicide.

In her e book, “Stiffed: The Betrayal from the American Male”, Susan Faludi describes a crisis of masculinity subsequent the breakdown of manhood models and work and household buildings in the last five decades. While in the movie “Boys don’t Cry”, a teenage Woman binds her breasts and functions the male in the caricatural relish of stereotypes of virility. Being a man is merely a state of intellect, the movie indicates.

But Exactly what does it really necessarily mean being a “male” or a “female”? Are gender id and sexual Choices genetically decided? Can they be decreased to 1’s sex? Or are they amalgams of biological, social, and psychological things in frequent interaction? Are they immutable lifelong features or dynamically evolving frames of self-reference?

In the aforementioned Big apple Occasions Op-Ed, Olivia Judson opines:

“Several sex distinctions are usually not, hence, the results of his owning a person gene although she has another. Instead, These are attributable to the way individual genes behave if they discover themselves in him rather than her. The magnificent difference between male and feminine eco-friendly spoon worms, as an example, has nothing at all to accomplish with their getting various genes: Every single inexperienced spoon worm larva could go In either case. Which sexual intercourse it results in being depends upon whether it satisfies a feminine throughout its 1st three months of life. If it meets a female, it gets to be male and prepares to regurgitate; if it doesn’t, it gets woman and settles right into a crack on the sea flooring.”

Yet, specific traits attributed to at least one’s intercourse are certainly superior accounted for via the requires of one’s setting, by cultural variables, the entire process of socialization, gender roles, and what George Devereux known as “ethnopsychiatry” in “Simple Difficulties of Ethnopsychiatry” (University of Chicago Push, 1980). He proposed to divide the unconscious in to the id (the element which was generally instinctual and unconscious) and the “ethnic unconscious” (repressed materials that was as soon as aware). The latter is mostly molded by prevailing cultural mores and features all our defense mechanisms and a lot of the superego.

So, how can we inform whether or not our sexual position is generally inside our blood or in our brains?

The scrutiny of borderline scenarios of human sexuality – notably the transgendered or intersexed – can generate clues as to the distribution and relative weights of biological, social, and psychological determinants of gender identification formation.

The outcomes of a review conducted by Uwe Hartmann, Hinnerk Becker, and Claudia Rueffer-Hesse in 1997 and titled “Self and Gender: Narcissistic Pathology and Individuality Components in Gender Dysphoric Sufferers”, published within the “Intercontinental Journal of Transgenderism”, “suggest important psychopathological features and narcissistic dysregulation in a considerable proportion of sufferers.” Are these “psychopathological elements” basically reactions to fundamental physiological realities and improvements? Could social ostracism and labeling have induced them in the “clients”?

The authors conclude:

“The cumulative evidence of our research … is consistent with the watch that gender dysphoria is actually a dysfunction of your sense of self as has actually been proposed by Beitel (1985) or Pffflin (1993). The central problem in our patients is about identity plus the self generally speaking along with the transsexual want is apparently an try at reassuring and stabilizing the self-coherence which in turn can cause a further destabilization In the event the self is currently much too fragile. Within this perspective your body is instrumentalized to make a perception of identification plus the splitting symbolized inside the hiatus involving the rejected system-self and also other elements of the self is more between very good and terrible objects than amongst masculine and feminine.”

Freud, Kraft-Ebbing, and Fliess instructed that we've been all bisexual to a particular Real Life Cam Sex degree. As early as 1910, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld argued, in Berlin, that absolute genders are “abstractions, invented extremes”. The consensus nowadays is always that just one’s sexuality is, generally, a psychological construct which demonstrates gender function orientation.

Joanne Meyerowitz, a professor of history at Indiana College as well as editor with the Journal of American Heritage observes, in her not too long ago released tome, “How Sexual intercourse Transformed: A Background of Transsexuality in The usa”, the quite this means of masculinity and femininity is in regular flux.

Transgender activists, suggests Meyerowitz, insist that gender and sexuality depict “unique analytical types”. The The big apple Moments wrote in its critique in the e-book: “Some male-to-woman transsexuals have intercourse with Adult males and connect with themselves homosexuals. Some woman-to-male transsexuals have intercourse with Gals and get in touch with themselves lesbians. Some transsexuals connect with them selves asexual.”

So, it really is all from the thoughts, you see.

This would be getting it too significantly. A considerable body of scientific proof factors to your genetic and Organic underpinnings of sexual behavior and Tastes.

The German science journal, “Geo”, described just lately that the males in the fruit fly “drosophila melanogaster” switched from heterosexuality to homosexuality since the temperature while in the lab was elevated from 19 to 30 levels Celsius. They reverted to chasing girls as it absolutely was decreased.

The brain structures of homosexual sheep are distinct to Those people of straight sheep, a study carried out not long ago by the Oregon Overall health & Science College as well as U.S. Section of Agriculture Sheep Experiment Station in Dubois, Idaho, discovered. Related discrepancies ended up identified in between gay Guys and straight types in 1995 in Holland and in other places. The preoptic place of your hypothalamus was greater in heterosexual Adult men than in each homosexual men and straight Ladies.

According an short article, titled “When Sexual Advancement Goes Awry”, by Suzanne Miller, released inside the September 2000 difficulty with the “Environment and I”, several health-related conditions give rise to sexual ambiguity. Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), involving abnormal androgen manufacturing by the adrenal cortex, ends in blended genitalia. Somebody with the whole androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS) provides a vagina, exterior female genitalia and operating, androgen-creating, testes – but no uterus or fallopian tubes.

People with the rare 5-alpha reductase deficiency syndrome are born with ambiguous genitalia. They appear at first to become ladies. At puberty, this sort of someone develops testicles and his clitoris swells and becomes a penis. Hermaphrodites have both ovaries and testicles (each, in most cases, alternatively undeveloped). In some cases the ovaries and testicles are merged into a chimera named ovotestis.

These types of people have the chromosomal composition of a woman together with traces with the Y, male, chromosome. All hermaphrodites have a large penis, nevertheless hardly ever produce sperm. Some hermaphrodites build breasts for the duration of puberty and menstruate. Not many even get Expecting and give birth.

Anne Fausto-Sterling, a developmental geneticist, professor of clinical science at Brown University, and creator of “Sexing the Body”, postulated, in 1993, a continuum of 5 sexes to supplant The present dimorphism: males, merms (male pseudohermaphrodites), herms (genuine hermaphrodites), ferms (woman pseudohermaphrodites), and ladies.

Intersexuality (hermpahroditism) can be a purely natural human condition. We have been all conceived Along with the probable to develop into either intercourse. The embryonic developmental default is woman. A series of triggers in the to start with months of pregnancy areas the fetus on the path to maleness.

In uncommon circumstances, some Ladies Have got a male’s genetic make-up (XY chromosomes) and vice versa. But, in the vast majority of scenarios, on the list of sexes is clearly chosen. Relics of your stifled sex stay, though. Girls possess the clitoris being a style of symbolic penis. Adult men have breasts (mammary glands) and nipples.

The Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 edition describes the formation of ovaries and testes Consequently:

“Inside the younger embryo a pair of gonads create which have been indifferent or neutral, displaying no indication whether or not they are destined to acquire into testes or ovaries. There's also two different duct systems, certainly one of which might establish into the feminine program of oviducts and relevant equipment and the opposite in the male sperm duct program. As development of your embryo proceeds, either the male or the feminine reproductive tissue differentiates inside the at first neutral gonad in the mammal.”

Nonetheless, sexual Tastes, genitalia and in many cases secondary sex attributes, for instance facial and pubic hair are 1st order phenomena. Can genetics and biology account for male and woman conduct patterns and social interactions (“gender identification”)? Can the multi-tiered complexity and richness of human masculinity and femininity come up from less difficult, deterministic, constructing blocks?

Sociobiologists would have us think so.

For illustration: the fact that we're mammals is astonishingly typically disregarded. Most mammalian families are made up of mom and offspring. Males are peripatetic absentees. Arguably, high rates of divorce and beginning away from wedlock coupled with rising promiscuity simply reinstate this natural “default method”, observes Lionel Tiger, a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University in New Jersey. That a few quarters of all divorces are initiated by Gals tends to aid this look at.

On top of that, gender identification is decided through gestation, claim some scholars.

Milton Diamond of the University of Hawaii and Dr. Keith Sigmundson, a practising psychiatrist, analyzed the A great deal-celebrated John/Joan case. An unintentionally castrated regular male was surgically modified to search woman, and elevated as a lady but to no avail. He reverted to being a male at puberty.

His gender identification appears to are already inborn (assuming he was not subjected to conflicting cues from his human setting). The situation is extensively described in John Colapinto’s tome “As Nature Built Him: The Boy Who Was Lifted as a woman”.

HealthScoutNews cited a analyze published inside the November 2002 concern of “Boy or girl Progress”. The scientists, from City University of London, identified that the extent of maternal testosterone for the duration of pregnancy influences the habits of neonatal girls and renders it far more masculine. “Significant testosterone” ladies “get pleasure from routines usually considered male conduct, like twiddling with trucks or guns”. Boys’ behavior remains unaltered, according to the study.

However, other Students, like John Funds, insist that newborns undoubtedly are a “blank slate” in terms of their gender identity is anxious. This really is also the prevailing perspective. Gender and intercourse-role identities, we have been taught, are entirely fashioned in a means of socialization which ends because of the 3rd yr of daily life. The Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 edition sums it up Therefore:

“Like a person’s notion of her or his sexual intercourse purpose, gender identification develops by means of parental case in point, social reinforcement, and language. Dad and mom train sexual intercourse-correct habits to their small children from an early age, which habits is reinforced as the child grows more mature and enters a wider social planet. As the kid acquires language, he also learns incredibly early the distinction in between “he” and “she” and understands which pertains to him- or herself.”

So, which happens to be it – nature or nurture? There isn't any disputing The truth that our sexual physiology and, in all likelihood, our sexual Choices are identified from the womb. Men and women are different – physiologically and, Consequently, also psychologically.

Society, by its brokers – foremost among that happen to be family, friends, and teachers – represses or encourages these genetic propensities. It does so by propagating “gender roles” – gender-distinct lists of alleged attributes, permissible behavior styles, and prescriptive morals and norms. Our “gender identity” or “sex function” is shorthand to the way we use our purely natural genotypic-phenotypic endowments in conformity with social-cultural “gender roles”.

Inevitably as being the composition and bias of such lists adjust, so does the that means of staying “male” or “woman”. Gender roles are consistently redefined by tectonic shifts within the definition and performing of standard social units, including the nuclear family along with the office. The cross-fertilization of gender-connected cultural memes renders “masculinity” and “femininity” fluid concepts.

One particular’s sex equals just one’s bodily machines, an aim, finite, and, usually, immutable inventory. But our endowments is often put to many makes use of, in different cognitive and affective contexts, and matter to varying exegetic frameworks. Rather than “sexual intercourse” – “gender” is, therefore, a socio-cultural narrative. Equally heterosexual and homosexual Males ejaculate. Both equally straight and lesbian Girls climax. What distinguishes them from each other are subjective introjects of socio-cultural conventions, not aim, immutable “facts”.

In “The New Gender Wars”, published in the November/December 2000 issue of “Psychology Currently”, Sarah Blustain sums up the “bio-social” design proposed by Mice Eagly, a professor of psychology at Northwestern College along with a previous student of his, Wendy Wooden, now a professor on the Texas A&M University:

“Like (the evolutionary psychologists), Eagly and Wood reject social constructionist notions that every one gender discrepancies are developed by lifestyle. But on the problem of where they come from, they response in a different way: not our genes but our roles in Culture. This narrative concentrates on how societies respond to the basic biological variances – Gentlemen’s energy and women’s reproductive abilities – And the way they stimulate men and women to follow specific designs.

‘In the event you’re investing plenty of time nursing your child’, explains Wooden, ‘Then you really don’t have the chance to dedicate huge quantities of time for you to developing specialised abilities and fascinating jobs outside of the house’. And, provides Eagly, ‘if Females are billed with caring for infants, what occurs is women are more nurturing. Societies need to make the Grownup program get the job done [so] socialization of girls is organized to give them encounter in nurturing’.

In keeping with this interpretation, given that the environment alterations, so will the assortment and texture of gender dissimilarities. At a time in Western nations when female reproduction is amazingly low, nursing is totally optional, childcare solutions are many, and mechanization lessens the necessity of

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kathleenseiber · 6 years ago

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Does sugar dampen sweet tooth to cause overeating?

New research with fruit flies suggests how a high-sugar diet can promote overeating and obesity.

After researchers fed fruit flies a high-sugar diet, the flies’ taste neurons triggered a molecular chain-reaction that hampered their ability to taste sweets, which in turn fueled overeating and obesity.

Further, eating sugar caused the taste changes, not the metabolic consequences of obesity or the sweet taste of food.

Some research suggests that one reason people with obesity overeat is because they don’t enjoy food—especially sweets—as much as lean people do. But it’s not understood if obesity itself or eating certain foods causes taste changes, or how those changes affect appetite and obesity.

For clues, researchers turned to Drosophila melanogaster—fruit flies.

The fly findings are significant because if people respond similarly to sugar, researchers are closer to understanding how too much sugar contributes to overeating and obesity. And, because these are molecular changes, it supports the idea that overeating is at least partly beyond our control.

More sugar, less taste

While it’s impossible to measure fruit flies’ “enjoyment” of food, they certainly ate more on the high-sugar diet, says principal investigator Monica Dus, assistant professor of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at the University of Michigan.

And yes—fruit flies do become obese, says Christina May, first author of the study and a doctoral student in Dus’s lab. Flies and humans share other surprising similarities: Both love sugar and fat and produce dopamine upon eating it, and their brain cells use many of the same proteins and molecules humans do, for the same things.

The researchers tested their findings in several ways. First, they fed flies that were genetically obese but never ate a sweet diet, and their taste didn’t change. However, when they fed sugar equivalent to a cookie to flies unable to store fat, they stayed thin but still lost the ability to taste sweets.

“That’s really amazing because it tells you their ability to taste sweets changed because of what they’re eating, not because they’re becoming obese,” May says.

To find out if the sugar or the sweet taste of food caused taste changes, the researchers fed flies a diet similar to artificially sweetened diet soda. Only the files eating real sugar lost their sweet-tasting ability.

“We know it’s something specific about the sugar in the diet that’s making them lose their taste,” Dus says.

Taste and overeating

The researchers identified the molecule O-GlcNAc transferase, a sugar sensor located in the flies’ taste buds that keeps track of how much sugar is in the cells. OGT has previously been implicated in obesity-related conditions like diabetes and heart disease in humans.

They also manipulated flies’ taste cells so that even on a high-sugar diet they wouldn’t lose taste, and those flies didn’t overeat despite loads of sweets.

“This means the changes in taste, at least in flies, are pretty important to drive overconsumption and weight gain,” Dus says. “Do changes in taste also play a role in the overconsumption that we see when humans and other animals find themselves in food environments high in sugar?”

Study coauthor Anoumid Vaziri, a doctoral student in Dus’ lab, says the findings “not only shed light on sugar-diet-dependent neural mechanisms of overeating and obesity, but provide a platform to study the underlying molecular mechanisms that drive changes in neural activity.”

Added sugars

So what’s this mean for people who are overweight, dieting, or feel addicted to sugar? It’s possible that in the long-term, a drug or other intervention that corrects dietary sweetness and preserves the sweet taste sensation could someday help curb obesity and the associated chronic diseases. But that is years away, May says.

More importantly, if humans respond the same way as the flies, the research suggests that changing the amount of sugar in the diet can help regulate our food intake, Dus says. Much of the sugar we eat is hidden in processed food, and it’s important to keep it to a minimum, she adds.

“I think if you try to keep added sugars out of your diet, you’ll probably be totally fine, you won’t have problems with changing taste and overeating,” May says. “All of us try to avoid the added sugars. That’s important.”

Dus says that future research will examine sweets’ impact on the brain’s reward circuits to learn what causes overeating, and how sugar changes the brain on a molecular level.

The study appears in Cell Reports.

Source: University of Michigan

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kwbroom · 7 years ago

Video

vimeo

Distributed Information Processing in Biological and Computational Systems from CACM on Vimeo.

Co-author Saket Navlakha discusses "Distributed Information Processing in Biological and Computational Systems," (cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/1/181614) his Review Article in the January 2015 Communications of the ACM.

--- TRANSCRIPT

00:00-00:10 When you hear the words "distributed computing", do you think of this? Or this?

00:10-00:19 Both are collections of independent information processors, passing data to each other through a network.

00:19-00:28 What can these natural systems teach us about computers? And what can computer science tell us about the natural world?

00:28-00:40 Join me in San Diego as I talk with Savet Navlakha about Distributed information processing in biological and computational systems.

00:40-00:50 [Intro graphics/music]

00:50-00:58 The Salk Institute is situated by the sea, in an area famous for its natural beauty.

00:58-01:13 It's a fitting place for Dr. Navlakha. Here, he examines how the natural world solves problems, reaches decisions, and coordinates responses -- behaviors also central to distributed computing systems.

01:13-01:20 His work started, as with so much in biology, with Drosophila melanogaster -- the common fruit fly.

01:20-01:50 DR. NAVLAKHA: It's long been known that cells, during this developmental process, some of them become these sensory cells where they have little bristles coming out of their head... And this pattern that forms is what's called a maximal independent set... It serves the basis of a lot routing algorithms, a lot of clustering algorithms... And so developing algorithms based on how the fruit fly was solving this problem led to improved algorithms for this very fundamental distributed computing problem.

01:50-01:57 The fruit fly's developing cells communicate with each other using what Dr. Navlakha and co-author Ziv Bar-Joseph call the "Beeping" model.

01:57-02:19 DR. NAVLAKHA: O.K., so this is an extremely simple and restricted setting, where I have no idea necessarily how many neighbors I have, I don't even know who is actually beeping, all I know is if somebody around me has beeped... And what's been shown is that this maximal independent set problem can actually be solved even within this very restricted environment.

02:19-02:30 But the beeping model is only one that's employed both in nature and computer science. In their paper, Drs. Navlakha and Bar-Joseph identify three others.

02:30-02:42 First is the "stone-age model", where a node initiates events only after it receives signals beyond a certain threshhold. It's how both neurons and network traffic balancers work.

02:42-03:00 Then there's "population protocol". Like a group of friends calling each other to make a dinner date, each node talks to only one partner per step -- but partners change frequently. This communication method is used by flocking birds and TCP-based networks alike.

03:00-03:08 Finally, some biological systems communicate using "shared memory", much like writing bits to a hard drive.

03:08-03:29 DR. NAVLAKHA: If you think of DNA as shared memory, then you have specific proteins that are leaving marks on the DNA... And one of the classic results in distributed computing is that any algorithm that you can solve using a message-passing algorithm... that problem can also be solved via shared-memory algorithm.

03:29-03:59 But biological and computer systems are similar in ways beyond how they pass messages. They also both vary in their topology, from densely connected cliques... to weakly connected modules... to collections of nodes only barely connected. Each topology is a tradeoff between speed and robustness. These structures have a lot to teach us -- and in fact, nature has taught computer science quite a lot already.

03:59-04:14 DR. NAVLAKHA: Genetic algorithms came from biology; deep learning and neural networks originally came from how we thought the brain was working; non-negative matrix factorization; ant colony optimization; these are all ideas that have come from biology.

04:14-04:20 At the same time, computer science gives us special insight into the natural world.

04:20-04:37 DR. NAVLAKHA: And if you think of biology as also trying to solve computational problems, then we have really good frameworks and models to understand what different constraints are in place, and what you can do given those constraints to solve a problem.

04:37-04:47 Find out more in this month's Communications of the ACM, in the review article, "Distributed information processing in biological and computational systems".

04:47-05:02 [Outro and credits]

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bettinalibby58-blog · 7 years ago

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Effective ways to Pick Mama From The Bride-to-be Outfits That Flatter The Body system.

The tale of pair of 5-year-old boys off Kentucky, one white and one black, is actually educating individuals about ethnological tranquility. Consequently, the domestic mama who supplies a lowest of 3 round-trip flights per week and a minimum required of pair of hrs from tasks a full week delivers a service with a market value from approximately $5,096 every year. On a number of celebrations I had Len Jr. to see his mama which, once, threatened to dedicate self-destruction. Nevertheless, I can not reject that when I'm absurd, or even splitting jokes at a party, I'm a great deal like my mommy. She was actually also under the control from Margaret of Anjou, her mama in law, whom Anne had earlier thought about merely in terms of a satanic she-wolf. In 1998, Clinton was impeached as the outcome from accusations of sexual indiscretion along with a youthful women White Home intern. You could possibly also address this as a transitional stage as well as wear a combo of red and also white. Although a lot of the time-honored meanings responsible for white colored flowers are still made use of today, there are actually various other definitions. A brand-new mom should have every solution to remainder while the new baby is resting, and has to rely intensely on the dad along with other family/community assistance. Due to the fact that of their hate, they are actually a lot more racist in comparison to any kind of various other group and numerous from all of them want to mess up white females. I would certainly possess additionally acquired the charming monster fly jeans by White Stag also however unfortunately they didn't have my measurements. The better half showers as well as places her unclean panties in the hinder and then I take a shower and odor her panties. White roses additionally stand for puppy love, that makes all of them a lot more ideal for relationship. Although, this moment there was a card along with a white colored plume hanging on the walk and also these phrases were written. On every springtime they bring in a celebration to Rhea, that was considered the mom of the lords. Modern white metal rings are often actually a lot yellower in comparison to grandma's under the rhodium plating. My natural mama learnt eventually that my mommy had certainly never gotten a degree off university, which my dad had certainly never earned a degree from high school. One means in order to get something every mom requires: say to attendees that there is going to be actually a pool, and the price from entrance is actually a pack of baby diapers. This is actually completely appropriate for a working individual or a mom with children to choose a cleaning agency. Mama I have actually informed you that when I meet the right lady, befit-paulineblog.Info you shall be the 1st one to know," I addressed her when she began referring to me acquiring a great female as a wife. In researching a set from fruit product flies, Drosophila melanogaster, which typically possess red eyes but through which there were actually some with white colored eyes, he noticed that from the white-eyed flies current were male. Both Eco-friendly as well as White Tara symbolize the compassion without ending of the siren that labors continuously only to relieve our suffering. I could right now hasten well-maintained my house in a portion from the amount of time it used to have me to keep it cleaned up and that is really cleaner then it was when I was actually devoting hours cleansing. This way you stay away from upseting the bridegroom's mommy by calling the new partner straight. Given that he possesses issues along with dark women or even given that he merely takes place to be actually enticed to this certain female, I calmly ask on my own if he is actually dating a white colored woman. For stubborn fragments or places that I could not reach out to, I just utilize high tension air in a spray can easily to goof well-maintained.

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davedimartino · 8 years ago

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New This Week 11.17.08

Conspicuously missing from this week's list of hot new music releases is the latest album by up-and-coming pop star Kanye West--whose long-awaited new album 808s & Heartbreak is, not to worry, coming next week!

Why has it taken so long? Experts agree that West's recent pronouncement that he will "go down as the voice of this generation" might be one very significant reason!

According to one informed observer, the press has yet again blown the lovable West's innocent claims well out of proportion! Because West, whose devotion to higher education has played a part in the nomenclature of all his previous works, made that statement in reference to the petri dish he was holding in his right hand! And it contained a hearty colony of drosophila melanogaster--or common fruit fly--all of whom strongly feel West to be the dandiest vocalist they've heard in their entire lives! But no one reported that, did they?

Sorry, Kanye--but once again, the press wins and you lose! Can't wait to hear the new album, though!

Beyonce: I Am…Sasha Fierce (Music World/Columbia) A boldly titled album--after all, at least some percentage of Beyonce fans will refuse to purchase it because of its confusing title--but as always, a masterwork beyond reproach! It's a great time in music history for all of us: While Kanye West proclaims himself the voice of a generation, the much more attractive Beyonce announces that her career role model is Barbra Streisand and she is aching to play the title role in the inevitable upcoming Wonder Woman movie! Heck, aren't we all? Deemed by the label as "her most personal, reflective and revelatory collection to date," this record coincidentally arrives prior to the singer's starring role in the films Cadillac Records and Obsessed! Clearly she is going down as the voice of this generation! Do you think there will be a fistfight?

Nickelback: Dark Horse (Roadrunner) In many ways the voice of a generation, Nickelback represents everything that is great about today's record business! They sell tons of records, they are loved by fans and loathed by critics--and if you ran into 'em in a bar you would avoid eye contact with them in case they were panhandling! For a band with their sales track record, naming a new album after former Beatle George Harrison's less-than-successful former record label might seem a bold move; as would, for that matter, actually being from Canada! But with Mutt Lange's sterling production, such great tracks as "If Today Was Your Last Day," and a legacy that is spoken of with hushed, respectful whispers in parts of Alabama and Cleveland, this is clearly the Nickelback record of a lifetime! Maybe even a mammal's!

David Cook: David Cook (19 Recordings/RCA) Holy triple threat! First Beyonce, then Nickelback, and now the winner of this year's American Idol competition? Why doesn't everyone else just give up? So let's compare this album to the one released last week by Idol arch-rival David Archuleta! Both are by guys named David, both are by guys who made their careers on a TV show, and both are being released in the compact disk and digital download format! Additionally, when removed from their protective cases and bundled with fishing tackle into cylindrical lots of 50, both would hit the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean at the same time if released from a fishing boat simultaneously! My vote? Heck, they're both the voice of a generation!

Dido: Safe Trip Home (Arista) For the longest time during the recent presidential election I was waiting for somebody somewhere to make the inevitable "take the `L' out of Palin" joke, but tragically, it was not to be! I think precisely the opposite when it comes to Dido! Frankly I'm glad she's back--word is that posing for this album's cover shot was fraught with difficulty! With the assistance of producers Jon Brion, her brother Rollo, and the remarkably named Citizen Cope, Dido's made a third album that may come to speak for an entire generation! Plus, the CD comes with four Dido postcards! Count me in!

Mudvayne: The New Game (Epic) While some of us remember with affection the Golden Age of Mudvayne--when its members wore makeup and called themselves Chud, Guug, Rud, and Spug and passports were perhaps predictably hard to come by--there's no denying that this rockin' combo from Peoria are the voice of a new generation! Intriguingly, their former "tough" exterior is roundly rebuffed with this latest album, which reportedly is devoted to the age-old game "Pin The Tail On The Donkey" and features such tracks as "A Cinderella Story" and their loving ode to the Burger King franchise, "Have It Your Way"! If they're in your town, invite 'em to a Sunday brunch with your pastor and start talking business!

The Doors: Live At The Matrix 1967 (Rhino) Long bootlegged but never sounding as good, these gigs--now finally available commercially--are an eye-opening and curiosity-satisfying glimpse into the Doors during the earliest stage of their career. Recorded in the course of four nights at San Francisco's Matrix, just a few months after the release of the group's first album, the band runs through much of that album's material and tracks soon to come, including "My Eyes Have Seen You," "People Are Strange" and even "Crawling King Snake." While fidelity isn't top notch, it's far better than anything released previously--and an excellent document of the band just stretching out and gigging rather than coping with the enormously legacy that would soon be theirs as the voice of a generation! Welcome and highly recommended but…no nudity!

Belle & Sebastian: The BBC Sessions (Matador) One of the best bands of the last decade, Belle & Sebastian have released a flood of superb albums, singles, EPs, vinyl LPs, and probably cassettes as well! This collection, which documents the group's BBC exploits since 1996, comes in regular and "deluxe" servings--single and double CD--and is the sort of thing you'd want to have in your house and perhaps even play on occasion. It's quite good! Featuring a batch of material that only the group's staunchest fans have likely heard, it's simply the best representation yet of the high standard that have made Belle & Sebastian the voice of their generation! I'd buy two!

Sammy Hagar: Cosmic Universal Fashion (Loud & Proud/Roadrunner) The charismatic Mr. Hagar was of course a longtime member of the less-interesting version of Van Halen--the one that recorded the famous For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, a disc from which this new effort takes nominal hints--at least initially! Featured guests include his former Halen buddy Michael Anthony, Matt Sorum, Billy Duffy, and a cadre of aging Republican senators fascinated by Hagar's "red rocker" nickname and his defiant classic "I Can't Drive 55"! In the world of David Lee Roth replacements, Hagar stands head and shoulders as the true voice of a generation!

Shontelle: Shontelligence (SRP/SRC/Universal) She's gorgeous, she's from the West Indies, and she uses only her first name! She's got a great hit called "T-Shirt"! No one knows if she likes Fleetwood Mac's "Rhiannon"! Her debut album features tracks with great names like "Plastic People" and "I Crave You"! Is it any wonder that those in her homeland of Barbados consider her the voice of a generation? Also, she's cute!

Il Divo: The Promise (Syco/Columbia) "We still get nervous about what the reaction will be like when we release something and how people will perceive the new record," confides Il Divo's Seb--but worry no more, Seb! It's the best Il Divo record yet! Featuring "The Winner Takes It All (Va Todo Al Ganador)" and "Amazing Grace," The Promise is a dream come true for an entire generation of Il Divo fans worldwide! Still, scattered accusations of their being a "better-groomed Nickelback" are alarming!

Blake Shelton: Startin' Fires (Warner Brothers Nashville) Reports are that this a great record, but here's a hint: If you live in LA, walking into a record store this week and telling clerks you're interested in Startin' Fires might be deemed problematic!

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