Nikon small world winners

October 4, 2011

The first prize in the Nikon Small World competition 2011 goes to Dr. Igor Siwanowicz of the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Martinsried, Germany for his portrait  of a Chrysopa sp. (green lacewing) larva (20x)

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Portrait of a Chrysopa sp. (green lacewing) larva (20x) by Igor Siwanowicz

But my favourite is this one which “only” got an honourable mention as an image of distinction by Debora Leite of University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, of a Sugarcane root cross section (20x) which reminds me of a fractal:

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Debora Leite University of São Paulo, Sugarcane root cross section (20x)

All the images can be seen here.

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Posted in Technology | 3 Comments »

Physics Nobel goes to Perlmutter, Schmidt and Riess

October 4, 2011

Staffan Normark has just announced that the Physics Nobel has been awarded half to Prof. Saul Perlmutter and half to Prof. Brian P Schmidt and Prof. Adam G Riess for work on the universe and supernovae. They discovered separately that the expansion of the universe was accelerating and not slowing down.

http://www.nobelprize.org/

The Press release is here:

“Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice…” *
What will be the final destiny of the Universe? Probably it will end in ice, if we are to believe this year’s Nobel Laureates in Physics. They have studied several dozen exploding stars, called supernovae, and discovered that the Universe is expanding at an ever-accelerating rate. The discovery came as a complete surprise even to the Laureates themselves.

In 1998, cosmology was shaken at its foundations as two research teams presented their findings. Headed by Saul Perlmutter, one of the teams had set to work in 1988. Brian Schmidt headed another team, launched at the end of 1994, where Adam Riess was to play a crucial role. ….. All in all, the two research teams found over 50 distant supernovae whose light was weaker than expected – this was a sign that the expansion of the Universe was accelerating. The potential pitfalls had been numerous, and the scientists found reassurance in the fact that both groups had reached the same astonishing conclusion.

…. For almost a century, the Universe has been known to be expanding as a consequence of the Big Bang about 14 billion years ago. However, the discovery that this expansion is accelerating is astounding. If the expansion will continue to speed up the Universe will end in ice.

The acceleration is thought to be driven by dark energy, but what that dark energy is remains an enigma – perhaps the greatest in physics today. What is known is that dark energy constitutes about three quarters of the Universe. Therefore the findings of the 2011 Nobel Laureates in Physics have helped to unveil a Universe that to a large extent is unknown to science. And everything is possible again.

None of the winners were among the Thomson Reuters predictions.

http://science.thomsonreuters.com/nobel/2011predictions/#physics

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Carbon trading greed drives land grab and eviction of 20,000 in Uganda

October 4, 2011

I take man-made carbon dioxide (3 – 4% of an atmospheric concentration of 0.04%) as being quite insignificant and essentially irrelevant for climate change.

But global warming ideology has led to the opportunistic development of the carbon trading  obscenity which funnels vast amounts of tax money into the sticky hands of a few developers and their parasitic politicians and bureaucrats. The UN (Kyoto protocol) and the EU (carbon trading) programs are particularly to blame. The frauds and scams connected with carbon trading do nothing for our climate but they encourage the greed which leads to the most obscene and despicable behaviour. I posted recently about the excesses in Honduras which led to the murder of 23 farmers. But I had missed this story which came out in the New York Times two weeks ago. 20,000 Ugandans have been evicted, houses burned and people killed to allow a UK company to plant forests and earn millions in selling the resulting carbon credits:

In Scramble for Land, Group Says, Company Pushed Ugandans Out 

KICUCULA, Uganda — According to the company’s proposal to join a United Nations clean-air program, the settlers living in this area left in a “peaceful” and “voluntary” manner. People here remember it quite differently. “I heard people being beaten, so I ran outside,” said Emmanuel Cyicyima, 33. “The houses were being burnt down.” Other villagers described gun-toting soldiers and an 8-year-old child burning to death when his home was set ablaze by security officers. “They said if we hesitated they would shoot us,” said William Bakeshisha, adding that he hid in his coffee plantation, watching his house burn down. “Smoke and fire.”

According to a report released by the aid group Oxfam on Wednesday, more than 20,000 people say they were evicted from their homes here in recent years to make way for a tree plantation run by a British forestry company, emblematic of a global scramble for arable land.

“Too many investments have resulted in dispossession, deception, violation of human rights and destruction of livelihoods,” Oxfam said in the report. “This interest in land is not something that will pass.” As population and urbanization soar, it added, “whatever land there is will surely be prized.”

Across Africa, some of the world’s poorest people have been thrown off land to make way for foreign investors, often uprooting local farmers so that food can be grown on a commercial scale and shipped to richer countries overseas.

But in this case, the government and the company said the settlers were illegal and evicted for a good cause: to protect the environment and help fight global warming.

The case twists around an emerging multibillion-dollar market trading carbon-credits under the Kyoto Protocol, which contains mechanisms for outsourcing environmental protection to developing nations. The company involved, New Forests Company, grows forests in African countries with the purpose of selling credits from the carbon-dioxide its trees soak up to polluters abroad. Its investors include the World Bank, through its private investment arm, and the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, HSBC.

Read article 

That the New Forest Company is opportunistic and greedy is inevitable and understandable when the benefits of the carbon trading programs were flouted under their noses. That they were unaware of the methods used is not credible. The results of the carbon trading scams are becoming sick and despicable and the EU politicians and bureaucrats who administer such schemes cannot continue to hide behind their misplaced intentions to “save the globe” and their “rules”.

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Posted in Alarmism, Behaviour, Climate, European Union, Fraud, UN | Comments Off on Carbon trading greed drives land grab and eviction of 20,000 in Uganda

Storm in a Nobel tea-cup

October 4, 2011

Yesterday the party atmosphere for what was to be a week of celebrations at the Nobel Foundation was converted into a confused round of frantic phone calls and emergency meetings when it became known that the medicine prize winner Ralph Steinman had died last Friday. The media have been full of stories about the embarrassment this has caused and the chaos that ensued. Nevertheless the Foundation came to the decision  – fairly quickly and quite rightly in my opinion – that Steinman would retain the award.

But it does create a minor quandary for the Nobel Awards Committee. In future they will have to check that their award winners are alive at the time of making their decisions, but they will still have to maintain secrecy about the identity of the winners. Indirect checking through 3rd parties could probably lead to some identity leaks.

But I think this is a storm in a Nobel tea-cup. The solution is fairly simple as probability comes to their aid. Such occurrences as Ralph Steinman’s death some hours before the decision was finally taken are likely to be extremely rare. And they handled the unprecedented situation swiftly and quite well.  Moreover the Nobel Foundation could quite easily and simply clarify their award rules to be “that individuals known to have died before the decision shall not be considered”. The critical time is, I think, when the decision is made and not the time of the award announcement.

The Physics prize will be announced today.

In the Press:

Svenska Dagbladet – Reactions after Nobel prize blunder

Telegraph – Nobel jury left red faced by death of laureate

Herald Sun – Nobel jury caught off guard by death of laureate

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Greed for EU carbon trading credits leads to the murder of 23 Honduran farmers

October 3, 2011

The EU carbon trading fiasco continues and is characterised by greed and fraud. But it has now expanded to embrace the murder of 23 farmers by the developers who in their greed for EU carbon credit money had forcibly – and with the aid of the Honduran authorities and private militias – stolen the farmers’ lands.

Aguán farmers allegedly killed by private militias

Canada Free Press reports:

The deaths were facilitated by the “direct involvement of private security guards from some of the local companies who are complicit with police and military officials”

The reported killing of 23 Honduran farmers in a dispute with the owners of UN-accredited palm oil plantations in Honduras is forcing the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) executive board to reconsider its stakeholder consultation processes. In Brussels, the reported killings have triggered European policymakers into action, with Green MEP Bas Eickhout calling the alleged human rights abuses “a disgrace”

EurActiv carries the full story

… In July, a report by an International Fact Finding Mission was presented to the European Parliament’s Human Rights Sub-committee, alleging that 23 peasants, one journalist and his partner, had all been murdered in the Bajo Aguán region, between January 2010 and March 2011.

The deaths were facilitated by the “direct involvement of private security guards from some of the local companies who are complicit with police and military officials,” the report said.

In some cases it cited “feigned accidents” in which peasants were run over by security guards working for two named palm oil businessmen. In other cases, the farmers were simply shot, or “disappeared”. 

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights will be holding a hearing into the report on 24 October, and a delegation of MEPs will be visiting the region between 31 October and 4 November.

But because of a three-year gap between the stakeholder consultation process and the biogas project approvals, the CDM board recently ruled that the project had met the criteria of its mandate.

And the gullible European politicians who have caused this mess are taking refuge behind their “rules”.  The global warming ideology which lies behind all the carbon trading scams has much to answer for.

“We are not investigators of crimes,” a board member told EurActiv. “We had to take judgements within our rules – however regretful that may be – and there was not much scope for us to refuse the project. All the consultation procedures precisely had been obeyed.”

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Posted in Alarmism, European Union, Fraud | 1 Comment »

Breaking! Nobel laureate Steinman died last Friday — and posthumous awards are not allowed.

October 3, 2011

UPDATE 2! Steinman will keep his award. 

 The Nobel foundation said in a statement:

The decision to award the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to the late Ralph Steinman shall remain unchanged, in keeping with the earlier announcement from the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet.

As announced earlier, Ralph Steinman – one of this year’s three Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine – died on September 30. This information reached the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet via the president of Rockefeller University, where Steinman worked, at 14.30 CET on October 3, 2011. Earlier the same day, at 11.30 CET, the Nobel Assembly had announced the 2011 Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine without knowing of Ralph Steinman’s death. 

The events that have occurred are unique and, to the best of our knowledge, are unprecedented in the history of the Nobel Prize. In light of this, the Board of the Nobel Foundation has held a meeting this afternoon. According to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, work produced by a person since deceased shall not be given an award. However, the statutes specify that if a person has been awarded a prize and has died before receiving it, the prize may be presented.

An interpretation of the purpose of this rule leads to the conclusion that Ralph Steinman shall be awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The purpose of the above-mentioned rule is to make it clear that the Nobel Prize shall not deliberately be awarded posthumously. However, the decision to award the Nobel Prize to Ralph Steinman was made in good faith, based on the assumption that the Nobel Laureate was alive. This was true – though not at the time of the decision – only a day or so previously. The Nobel Foundation thus believes that what has occurred is more reminiscent of the example in the statutes concerning a person who has been named as a Nobel Laureate and has died before the actual Nobel Prize Award Ceremony.

The decision made by the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet thus remains unchanged.

UPDATE!

Press release: It is with deep sadness and regret that the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has learned that Professor Ralph Steinman, one of this year´s three Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine, passed away on September 30. This message was conveyed by The President of The Rockefeller University, where Professor Steinman worked, at 2.30 pm (CET), Monday October 3, 2011, after the decision and announcement about this year´s Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine. Our thoughts are with Ralph Steinman´s family and colleagues.

The Nobel Assembly, consisting of 50 professors at Karolinska Institutet, awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Its Nobel Committee evaluates the nominations. Since 1901 the Nobel Prize has been awarded to scientists who have made the most important discoveries for the benefit of mankind.

BBC reports: In 1931, Erik Axel Karlfeldt was posthumously awarded the Nobel prize for literature, but the rules were changed in 1974. The Nobel Foundation states: “Work produced by a person since deceased shall not be considered for an award. If, however, a prizewinner dies before he has received the prize, then the prize may be presented.” This happened in 1996 when William Vickrey died between the announcement and the prize ceremony.

The issue is being discussed at the moment and a decision should be made by Tuesday.

=======================================

This morning Ralph M. Steinman was one of 3 scientists awarded the Nobel prize for medicine ”for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity“.

Swedish Radio has just announced that Prof. Steinman apparently passed away last Friday and the Nobel Awards committee was not aware of this when they announced the awards today. He died of cancer which he had been suffering from for the last 4 years. He passed away without knowing he had been awarded the prize.

The Nobel rules do not allow for posthumous awards and there is now some confusion as to whether Steinman will be a Nobel laureate or not.

Ralph M. Steinman was born in 1943 in Montreal, Canada, where he studied biology and chemistry at McGill University. After studying medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA, USA, he received his MD in 1968. He has been affiliated with Rockefeller University in New York since 1970, has been professor of immunology at this institution since 1988, and is also director of its Center for Immunology and Immune Diseases.

Portrait of Professor Ralph M. Steinman

Professor Ralph M. Steinman 1943 - 2011

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Posted in Medicine, Nobel Prize, Sweden | 1 Comment »

Acquired, hereditary epignetic codes could evolve faster than genetic mutations

October 3, 2011

Lamarckism  – after the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) – is the idea that an organism can pass on characteristics that it has acquired during its lifetime to its offspring (soft inheritance). Publication of Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection, and Mendelian genetics led to the general abandonment of the Lamarckian theory of evolution in biology. Despite this abandonment, interest in Lamarckism has recently increased, as several studies in the field of epigenetics have highlighted the possible inheritance of behavioral traits acquired by the previous generation.

Hard inheritance is the passing down of the constant nucleotide sequence of DNA which only changes by rare random mutation. The very slowness of this rate of mutation – and since mutations are usually not beneficial – has been a problem in explaining the variation and diversity observed in particular species. The variations observed in modern humans and which have presumably been generated within just the last 50,000 to 100, 000 years are difficult to explain by natural selection alone especially since there have only been some 5,000 generations available for this diversity to have been established.

A mechanism has long been sought for soft inheritance where environmental influences can be brought into play. Epigenetic mechanisms leave DNA sequence unaltered but can affect DNA by preventing the expression of genes.

A new paper in Science provides some further evidence that the epigenome may well be the hereditary “carrier” of environmental effects but may also cause much more rapid change than genetic mutations.

Science Daily: A “hidden” code linked to the DNA of plants allows them to develop and pass down new biological traits far more rapidly than previously thought, according to the findings of a groundbreaking study by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. The study, published September 16 in the journal Science, provides the first evidence that an organism’s “epigenetic” code — an extra layer of biochemical instructions in DNA — can evolve more quickly than the genetic code and can strongly influence biological traits. ……..

…. Now that they have shown the extent to which spontaneous epigenetic mutations occur, the Salk researchers plan to unravel the biochemical mechanisms that allow these changes to arise and get passed from one generation to the next.

They also hope to explore how different environmental conditions, such as differences in temperature, might drive epigenetic change in the plants, or, conversely, whether epigenetic traits provide the plants with more flexibility in coping with environmental change.

“We think these epigenetic events might silence genes when they aren’t needed, then turned them back on when external conditions warrant,” Ecker said. “We won’t know how important these epimutations are until we measure the effect on plant traits, and we’re just now to the point where we can do these experiments. It’s very exciting.”

Read Article

R. J. Schmitz, M. D. Schultz, M. G. Lewsey, R. C. O’Malley, M. A. Urich, O. Libiger, N. J. Schork, J. R. Ecker.Transgenerational Epigenetic Instability Is a Source of Novel Methylation Variants. Science, 2011; DOI:10.1126/science.1212959

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Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded – half to Beutler and Hoffman and half to Steinman

October 3, 2011

The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded today and the 3 winners are in the field of immunology.

The prize was divided, one half jointly to Bruce A. Beutler and Jules A. Hoffmann “for their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity” and the other half to Ralph M. Steinman “for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity“.

The Thomson Reuter predictions – this time – missed the mark.

Official press release here. 

Summary

This year’s Nobel Laureates have revolutionized our understanding of the immune system by discovering key principles for its activation.

Scientists have long been searching for the gatekeepers of the immune response by which man and other animals defend themselves against attack by bacteria and other microorganisms. Bruce Beutler and Jules Hoffmann discovered receptor proteins that can recognize such microorganisms and activate innate immunity, the first step in the body’s immune response. Ralph Steinman discovered the dendritic cells of the immune system and their unique capacity to activate and regulate adaptive immunity, the later stage of the immune response during which microorganisms are cleared from the body.

The discoveries of the three Nobel Laureates have revealed how the innate and adaptive phases of the immune response are activated and thereby provided novel insights into disease mechanisms. Their work has opened up new avenues for the development of prevention and therapy against infections, cancer, and inflammatory diseases.

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Posted in Medicine, Nobel Prize, Science, Sweden | 3 Comments »

Time for the 2011 Nobel prize announcements: Medicine today

October 3, 2011

UPDATE!

The Literature Nobel will be announced on Thursday 6th October.

Starting today with the prize for physiology or medicine the Nobel prize winners for 2011 will be announced over the next 10 days.

The schedule for the announcements is:

  • October 3rd: Physiology or medicine
  • October 4th: Physics
  • October 5th: Chemistry
  • ??October 13th??  October 6th : Literature (According to tradition, the Swedish Academy has not yet set the date for its announcement of the Nobel Prize in Literature)
  • October 7th: Peace
  • October 10th: Economic sciences (Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel
The Thomson-Reuters predictions for the possible winners of the medicine /physiology prize to be announced today are:
  • Robert L. Coffman Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer, Dynavax Technologies, Berkeley, CA USA 
    WHY: with Timothy R. Mosmann, for their discovery of two types of T lymphocytes, TH1 and TH2, and their role in regulating host immune response
  • Brian J. Druker JELD-WEN Chair of Leukemia Research, and Director, OHSU Knight Cancer Institute, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland OR USA 
    WHY: with Nicholas B. Lydon and Charles L. Sawyers for their development of imatinib and dasatinib, revolutionary, targeted treatments for chronic myeloid leukemia
  • Robert S. Langer David H. Koch Institute Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA USA 
    WHY: with Joseph P. Vacanti, for their pioneering research in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine
  • Nicholas B. Lydon Founder, Granite Biopharma, LLC, Jackson Hole, WY USA; Co-founder and Director, AnaptysBio, San Diego, CA USA; and Co-founder and Director, Blueprint Medicines, Cambridge, MA USA 
    WHY: with Brian J. Druker and Charles L. Sawyers for their development of imatinib and dasatinib, revolutionary, targeted treatments for chronic myeloid leukemia
  • Jacques F. A. P. Miller Emeritus Professor, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research and the University of Melbourne, Parkville, Melbourne, Australia 
    WHY: for his discovery of the function of the thymus and the identification of T cells and B cells in mammalian species
  • Timothy R. Mosmann Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and Michael and Angela Pichichero Director in the David H. Smith Center for Vaccine Biology and Immunology, University of Rochester Medical Center, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY USA 
    WHY: with Robert L. Coffman, for their discovery of two types of T lymphocytes, TH1 and TH2, and their role in regulating host immune response
  • Charles L. Sawyers Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Chair in Human Oncology and Pathogenesis, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY USA. Also, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator 
    WHY: with Brian J. Druker and Nicholas B. Lydon Charles L. Sawyers for their development of imatinib and dasatinib, revolutionary, targeted treatments for chronic myeloid leukemia
  • Joseph P. Vacanti John Homans Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School; Surgeon-in-Chief and Chief of the Department of Pediatric Surgery and Director of the Laboratory for Tissue Engineering and Organ Fabrication, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA USA 
    WHY: with Robert S. Langer, for their pioneering research in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine

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Posted in Science, Sweden | 1 Comment »

Wikileaks cable reveals the fraud that is the Kyoto protocol

October 1, 2011

Prof. Dr. Ottmar Edenhofer is the Co-Chair of Working Group III of the IPCC – deputy director and chief economist of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Researck (PIK). PIK is somewhat notorious for being a scientific institution where all their results are governed and constrained by political correctness. Only results which support global warming dogma are ever published by PIK. It is also the institution which is home for the sea level alarmist Stefan Rahmstorf.

But last year even a high priest such as Ottmar Edenhoffer was forced to admit:

“But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy.  Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this.  One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy.  This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”

It becomes increasingly apparent that climate policy has very little to do with science and everything to do with creating and tapping into vast flows of money. And now courtesy of the Wikileaks cable releases we learn:

Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Fraud, India, Natural Phenomena, Scientific Fraud | 1 Comment »

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