2001 anthrax attacks
The 2001 anthrax attacks known as Amerithrax from its FBI case name, occurred within the United States over the course of several weeks beginning on September 18, 2001, one week after the September 11 attacks. Letters were mailed containing anthrax spores to several news media offices and to Democratic Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, killing 5 people and infecting 17 others. A copycat hoax letter containing harmless white powder was opened by reporter Judith Miller in The New York Times newsroom. According to the FBI, the ensuing investigation became "one of the largest and most complex in the history of law enforcement". A major focus in the early years of the investigation was a bioweapons expert named Steven Hatfill, exonerated. Another suspect was Bruce Edwards Ivins who became a focus of investigation around April 4, 2005. Ivins was a scientist who worked at the government's biodefense labs at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland. On April 11, 2007, Ivins was put under periodic surveillance and an FBI document stated that "Bruce Edwards Ivins is an sensitive suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks."
On July 29, 2008, Ivins committed suicide with an overdose of acetaminophen. Federal prosecutors declared Ivins to be the sole culprit of the crime on August 6, 2008, based on DNA evidence leading to an anthrax vial in his lab. Two days Senator Chuck Grassley and Representative Rush D. Holt, Jr. called for hearings into the Department of Justice and FBI's handling of the investigation. On February 19, 2010, the FBI formally closed its investigation. In 2008, the FBI requested a review of the scientific methods used in their investigation from the National Academy of Sciences, which released their findings in the 2011 report Review of the Scientific Approaches Used During the FBI's Investigation of the 2001 Anthrax Letters; the report cast doubt on the government's conclusion that Ivins was the perpetrator, finding that the type of anthrax used in the letters was identified as the Ames strain of the bacterium, but that there was insufficient scientific evidence for the FBI's assertion that it originated from Ivins's laboratory.
The FBI responded by pointing out that the review panel asserted that it would not be possible to reach a definite conclusion based on science alone, said that a combination of factors led the FBI to conclude that Ivins had been the perpetrator. Some information is still sealed concerning Ivins's mental problems; the government settled lawsuits that were filed by the widow of the first anthrax victim Bob Stevens for $2.5 million with no admission of liability. The settlement was reached for the purpose of "avoiding the expenses and risks of further litigations", according to a statement in the agreement; the attacks followed a week after the September 11 attacks which had caused the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City, damage to The Pentagon in Arlington and the crash of an airliner in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The anthrax attacks came in two waves; the first set of anthrax letters had a Trenton, New Jersey postmark dated September 18, 2001. Five letters are believed to have been mailed at this time to: ABC News, CBS News, NBC News and the New York Post, all located in New York City and to the National Enquirer at American Media, Inc. in Boca Raton, Florida.
Robert Stevens, the first person who died from the mailings, worked at the Sun tabloid published by AMI, died on October 5, 2001, four days after entering a Florida hospital with an undiagnosed illness that caused him to vomit and be short of breath. Only the New York Post and NBC News letters were found. Scientists examining the anthrax from the New York Post letter said it appeared as a clumped coarse brown granular material looking like dog food. Two more anthrax letters, bearing the same Trenton postmark, were dated October 9, three weeks after the first mailing; the letters were addressed to two Democratic Senators, Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Patrick Leahy of Vermont. At the time, Daschle was the Senate Majority leader and Leahy was head of the Senate Judiciary Committee; the Daschle letter was opened by an aide, Grant Leslie, on October 15, the government mail service was shut down. The unopened Leahy letter was discovered in an impounded mailbag on November 16; the Leahy letter had been misdirected to the State Department mail annex in Sterling, because a ZIP code was misread.
More potent than the first anthrax letters, the material in the Senate letters was a refined dry powder consisting of about one gram of nearly pure spores. A series of conflicting news reports appeared, some claiming the powders had been "weaponized" with silica. Bioweapons experts who viewed images of the attack anthrax saw no indication of "weaponization". Tests by Sandia National Laboratories in early 2002 confirmed that the attack powders were not weaponized. At least 22 people developed anthrax infections. Five died of inhalational anthrax: Stevens. C. and two whose source of exposure to the bacteria is still unknown: Kathy Nguyen, a Vietnamese immigrant resident in the borough of the Bronx who worked in New York City, the last known victim Ottilie Lundgren, a 94-year-old widow of a prominent judge from Oxford, Connecticut. Because it took so long to identify a culprit, the 2001 anthrax attacks have been compared to the Unabomber attacks which took place from 1978 to 1995. Authorities believe that the anthrax letters
Carbon sequestration
Carbon sequestration is the process involved in carbon capture and the long-term storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide or other forms of carbon to mitigate or defer global warming. It has been proposed as a way to slow the atmospheric and marine accumulation of greenhouse gases, which are released by burning fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide is captured from the atmosphere through biological and physical processes. Artificial processes have been devised to produce similar effects, including large-scale, artificial capture and sequestration of industrially produced CO2 using subsurface saline aquifers, ocean water, aging oil fields, or other carbon sinks. Carbon sequestration is the process involved in carbon capture and the long-term storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide and may refer to: "The process of removing carbon from the atmosphere and depositing it in a reservoir." When carried out deliberately, this may be referred to as carbon dioxide removal, a form of geoengineering. Carbon capture and storage, where carbon dioxide is removed from flue gases such as co2 before being stored in underground reservoirs.
Natural biogeochemical cycling of carbon between the atmosphere and reservoirs, such as by chemical weathering of rocks. Carbon dioxide may be captured as a pure by-product in processes related to petroleum refining or from flue gases from power generation. CO2 sequestration includes the storage part of carbon capture and storage, which refers to large-scale, artificial capture and sequestration of industrially produced CO2 using subsurface saline aquifers, ocean water, aging oil fields, or other carbon sinks. Carbon sequestration describes long-term storage of carbon dioxide or other forms of carbon to either mitigate or defer global warming and avoid dangerous climate change, it has been proposed as a way to slow the atmospheric and marine accumulation of greenhouse gases, which are released by burning fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide is captured from the atmosphere through biological, chemical or physical processes; some artificial sequestration techniques exploit these natural processes, while some use artificial processes.
There are three ways. A wide variety of separation techniques are being pursued, including gas phase separation, absorption into a liquid, adsorption on a solid, as well as hybrid processes, such as adsorption/membrane systems; these above processes will capture carbon emitting from power plants, fuel burning industries and so on. Biosequestration or carbon sequestration through biological processes affects the global carbon cycle. Examples include major climatic fluctuations, such as the Azolla event, which created the current Arctic climate; such processes created fossil fuels, as well as limestone. By manipulating such processes, geoengineers seek to enhance sequestration. Peat bogs act as a sink for carbon due to the accumulation of decayed biomass that would otherwise continue to decay completely. There is a variance on how much the peatlands act as a carbon sink or carbon source that can be linked to varying climates in different areas of the world and different times of the year. By creating new bogs, or enhancing existing ones, the amount of carbon, sequestered by bogs would increase.
Reforestation is the replanting of trees on marginal crop and pasture lands to incorporate carbon from atmospheric CO2 into biomass. For this process to succeed the carbon must not return to the atmosphere from mass burning or rotting when the trees die. To this end, land allotted to the trees must not be converted to other uses and management of the frequency of disturbances might be necessary in order to avoid extreme events. Alternatively, the wood from them must itself be sequestered, e.g. via biochar, bio-energy with carbon storage, landfill or'stored' by use in e.g. construction. Short of growth in perpetuity, reforestation with long-lived trees will sequester carbon for a more graduated release, minimizing impact during the expected carbon crisis of the 21st century. Urban forestry increases the amount of carbon taken up in cities by adding new tree sites and the sequestration of carbon occurs over the lifetime of the tree, it is practiced and maintained on smaller scales, like in cities.
The results of urban forestry can have different results depending on the type of vegetation, being used, so it can function as a sink but can function as a source of emissions. Along with sequestration by the plants, difficult to measure but seems to have little effect on the overall amount of carbon dioxide, uptaken, the vegetation can have indirect effects on carbon by reducing need for energy consumption. Wetland soil is an important carbon sink. Compared to natural vegetation, cropland soils are depleted in soil organic carbon; when a soil is converted from natural land or semi natural land, such as forests, grasslands and savannas, the SOC content in the soil reduces with about 30–40%. This loss is due to the removal of plant material containing carbon, in terms of harvests; when the land use changes, the carbon in the soil will either increase or decrease, this change will continue until the soil reaches a new equilibrium. Deviations from this equilibrium can be affected by variated climate.
The decreasing of SOC content can be counteracted by increasing the carbon input, this can be done with several strategies, e.g. leave harvest residues on the field, use manure as fertilis
Sustainable energy
Sustainable energy is a principle in which human use of energy "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Sustainable energy strategies have two pillars: cleaner methods of producing energy and energy conservation. Sustainable energy technologies are deployed to generate electricity, to heat and cool buildings, to power transportation systems and machines; when referring to methods of producing energy, the term "sustainable energy" is used interchangeably with the term "renewable energy". In general, renewable energy sources such as solar energy, wind energy, geothermal energy, tidal energy, are considered to be sustainable energy sources. However, implementation of particular renewable energy projects, such as the damming of rivers to generate hydroelectricity or the clearing of forests for production of biofuels, sometimes raises significant sustainability concerns. There is considerable controversy over. Costs of sustainable energy sources have decreased immensely throughout the years, continue to fall.
Effective government policies support investor confidence and these markets are expanding. Considerable progress is being made in the energy transition from fossil fuels to ecologically sustainable systems, to the point where many studies support 100% renewable energy; the organizing principle for sustainability is sustainable development, which includes the four interconnected domains: ecology, economics and culture. Sustainability science is the study of environmental science; the concept of sustainable development was described by the World Commission on Environment and Development in its 1987 book Our Common Future. Its definition of "sustainability", now used was, "Sustainable development should meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."In its book, the Commission described four key elements of sustainability with respect to energy: the ability to increase the supply of energy to meet growing human needs, energy efficiency and conservation, public health and safety, "protection of the biosphere and prevention of more localized forms of pollution."
Various definitions of sustainable energy have been offered since which are based on the three pillars of sustainable development, namely environment and society. Environmental criteria include greenhouse gas emissions, impact on biodiversity, the production of hazardous waste and toxic emissions. Economic criteria include the cost of energy, whether energy is delivered to users with high reliability, effects on jobs associated with energy production. Socio-cultural criteria include the prevention of wars over the energy supply and long-term availability of energy; as no source of energy meets these criteria sustainable energy sources are sustainable only in comparison to other sources. The nonexistence of perfect energy sources means that promoting efficient use of energy is essential to sustainable energy strategies. Green energy is energy that can be extracted, and/or consumed without any significant negative impact to the environment; the planet has a natural capability to recover which means pollution that does not go beyond that capability can still be termed green.
It represents those renewable energy resources and technologies that provide the highest environmental benefit. The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency defines green power as electricity produced from solar, geothermal, biogas and low-impact small hydroelectric sources; when referring to sources of energy, the terms "sustainable energy" and "renewable energy" are used interchangeably, however particular renewable energy projects sometimes raise significant sustainability concerns. Renewable energy technologies are essential contributors to sustainable energy as they contribute to world energy security, reducing dependence on fossil fuel resources, providing opportunities for mitigating greenhouse gases. Various Cost–benefit analysis work by a disparate array of specialists and agencies have been conducted to determine the cheapest and quickest paths to decarbonizing the energy supply of the world, with the topic being one of considerable controversy on the role of nuclear energy. Among sources of renewable energy, hydroelectric plants have the advantages of being long-lived—many existing plants have operated for more than 100 years.
Hydroelectric plants are clean and have few emissions. Criticisms directed at large-scale hydroelectric plants include: dislocation of people living where the reservoirs are planned, release of significant amounts of carbon dioxide during construction and flooding of the reservoir. However, it has been found that high emissions are associated only with shallow reservoirs in warm locales, recent innovations in hydropower turbine technology are enabling efficient development of low-impact run-of-the-river hydroelectricity projects. Speaking, hydroelectric plants produce much lower life-cycle emissions than other types of generation. Hydroelectric power, which underwent extensive development during growth of electrification in the 19th and 20th centuries, is experiencing resurgence of development in the 21st century; the areas of greatest hydroelectric growth are the booming economies of Asia. China is the development leader; this growth is driven by much increased energy costs—especially for imported energy—and widespread desires for more domestically produced, clean and economical generation.
Geothermal energy can be harnessed
Artificial cell
An artificial cell or minimal cell is an engineered particle that mimics one or many functions of a biological cell. The term does not refer to a specific physical entity, but rather to the idea that certain functions or structures of biological cells can be replaced or supplemented with a synthetic entity. Artificial cells are biological or polymeric membranes which enclose biologically active materials; as such, liposomes, microcapsules and a number of other particles have qualified as artificial cells. Micro-encapsulation allows for metabolism within the membrane, exchange of small molecules and prevention of passage of large substances across it; the main advantages of encapsulation include improved mimicry in the body, increased solubility of the cargo and decreased immune responses. Notably, artificial cells have been clinically successful in hemoperfusion. In the area of synthetic biology, a "living" artificial cell has been defined as a synthetically made cell that can capture energy, maintain ion gradients, contain macromolecules as well as store information and have the ability to mutate.
Such a cell is not technically feasible yet, but a variation of an artificial cell has been created in which a synthetic genome was introduced to genomically emptied host cells. Although not artificial because the cytoplasmic components as well as the membrane from the host cell are kept, the engineered cell is under control of a synthetic genome and is able to replicate; the first artificial cells were developed by Thomas Chang at McGill University in the 1960s. These cells consisted of ultrathin membranes of nylon, collodion or crosslinked protein whose semipermeable properties allowed diffusion of small molecules in and out of the cell; these cells were micron-sized and contained cell, hemoglobin, magnetic materials and proteins. Artificial cells have ranged from hundred-micrometer to nanometer dimensions and can carry microorganisms, genes, drugs and peptides; the first clinical use of artificial cells was in hemoperfusion by the encapsulation of activated charcoal. In the 1970s, researchers were able to introduce enzymes and hormones to biodegradable microcapsules leading to clinical use in diseases such as Lesch-Nyhan syndrome.
Although Chang's initial research focused on artificial red blood cells, only in the mid-1990s were biodegradable artificial red blood cells developed. Artificial cells in biological cell encapsulation were first used in the clinic in 1994 for treatment in a diabetic patient and since other types of cells such as hepatocytes, adult stem cells and genetically engineered cells have been encapsulated and are under study for use in tissue regeneration. On December 29, 2011, chemists at Harvard University reported the creation of an artificial cell membrane. By 2014, self-replicating, synthetic bacterial cells with cell walls and synthetic DNA had been produced. In January of that year researchers produced an artificial eukaryotic cell capable of undertaking multiple chemical reactions through working organelles. In September 2018, researchers at the University of California developed artificial cells that can kill bacteria; the cells were engineered from the bottom-up — like Lego blocks — to destroy bacteria.
Membranes for artificial cells be made of simple polymers, crosslinked proteins, lipid membranes or polymer-lipid complexes. Further, membranes can be engineered to present surface proteins such as albumin, antigens, Na/K-ATPase carriers, or pores such as ion channels. Used materials for the production of membranes include hydrogel polymers such as alginate and thermoplastic polymers such as hydroxyethyl methacrylate-methyl methacrylate, polyacrylonitrile-polyvinyl chloride, as well as variations of the above-mentioned; the material used determines the permeability of the cell membrane, which for polymer depends on the molecular weight cut off. The MWCO is the maximum molecular weight of a molecule that may pass through the pores and is important in determining adequate diffusion of nutrients and other critical molecules. Hydrophilic polymers have the potential to be biocompatible and can be fabricated into a variety of forms which include polymer micelles, sol-gel mixtures, physical blends and crosslinked particles and nanoparticles.
Of special interest are stimuli-responsive polymers that respond to pH or temperature changes for the use in targeted delivery. These polymers may be administered in the liquid form through a macroscopic injection and solidify or gel in situ because of the difference in pH or temperature. Nanoparticle and liposome preparations are routinely used for material encapsulation and delivery. A major advantage of liposomes is their ability to fuse to organelle membranes. Many variations for artificial cell preparation and encapsulation have been developed. Vesicles such as a nanoparticle, polymersome or liposome are synthesized. An emulsion is made through the use of high pressure equipment such as a high pressure homogenizer or a Microfluidizer. Two micro-encapsulation methods for nitrocellulose are described below. In a high-pressure homogenizer, two liquids in oil/liquid suspension are forced through a small orifice under high pressure; this process divides the products and allows the creation of fine particles, as small as 1 nm.
This technique uses a patented Microfluidizer to obtain a greater amount of homogenous suspensions that can create smaller particles than homogenizers. A homogenizer is first used to create a coarse suspension, pumped into the microfluidizer under high pressure; the flow is split into two streams which will react at high velocities in an in
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Francisco and has been in publication since March/April 1993. Several spin-offs have been launched, including Wired UK, Wired Italia, Wired Japan, Wired Germany. Condé Nast's parent company Advance Publications is the major shareholder of Reddit, an internet information conglomeration website. In its earliest colophons, Wired credited Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan as its "patron saint." From its beginning, the strongest influence on the magazine's editorial outlook came from techno-utopian cofounder Stewart Brand and his associate Kevin Kelly. From 1998 to 2006, Wired magazine and Wired News, which publishes at Wired.com, had separate owners. However, Wired News remained responsible for republishing Wired magazine's content online due to an agreement when Condé Nast purchased the magazine.
In 2006, Condé Nast bought Wired News for $25 million. Wired contributor Chris Anderson is known for popularizing the term "the Long Tail", as a phrase relating to a "power law"-type graph that helps to visualize the 2000s emergent new media business model. Anderson's article for Wired on this paradigm related to research on power law distribution models carried out by Clay Shirky in relation to bloggers. Anderson widened the definition of the term in capitals to describe a specific point of view relating to what he sees as an overlooked aspect of the traditional market space, opened up by new media; the magazine coined the term "crowdsourcing", as well as its annual tradition of handing out Vaporware Awards, which recognize "products and other nerdy tidbits pitched and hyped, but never delivered". The magazine was founded by American journalist Louis Rossetto and his partner Jane Metcalfe, along with Ian Charles Stewart, in 1993 with initial backing from software entrepreneur Charlie Jackson and eclectic academic Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab, a regular columnist for six years, wrote the book Being Digital, founded One Laptop per Child.
The founding designers were John Plunkett and Barbara Kuhr, beginning with a 1991 prototype and continuing through the first five years of publication, 1993–98. Wired, which touted itself as "the Rolling Stone of technology", made its debut at the Macworld conference on January 2, 1993. A great success at its launch, it was lauded for its vision, originality and cultural impact. In its first four years, the magazine won two National Magazine Awards for General Excellence and one for Design; the founding executive editor of Wired, Kevin Kelly, was an editor of the Whole Earth Catalog and the Whole Earth Review and brought with him contributing writers from those publications. Six authors of the first Wired issue had written for Whole Earth Review, most notably Bruce Sterling and Stewart Brand. Other contributors to Whole Earth appeared in Wired, including William Gibson, featured on Wired's cover in its first year and whose article "Disneyland with the Death Penalty" in issue 1.4 resulted in the publication being banned in Singapore.
Wired cofounder Louis Rossetto claimed in the magazine's first issue that "the Digital Revolution is whipping through our lives like a Bengali typhoon," yet despite the fact that Kelly was involved in launching the WELL, an early source of public access to the Internet and earlier non-Internet online experience, Wired's first issue de-emphasized the Internet and covered interactive games, cell-phone hacking, digital special effects, military simulations, Japanese otaku. However, the first issue did contain a few references to the Internet, including online dating and Internet sex, a tutorial on how to install a bozo filter; the last page, a column written by Nicholas Negroponte, was written in the style of an email message but contained fake, non-standard email addresses. By the third issue in the fall of 1993, the "Net Surf" column began listing interesting FTP sites, Usenet newsgroups, email addresses, at a time when the numbers of these things were small and this information was still novel to the public.
Wired was among the first magazines to list the email address of its contributors. Associate publisher Kathleen Lyman was brought on board to launch Wired with an advertising base of major technology and consumer advertisers. Lyman, along with Simon Ferguson, introduced revolutionary ad campaigns by a diverse group of industry leaders—such as Apple Computer, Sony, Calvin Klein, Absolut—to the readers of the first technology publication with a lifestyle slant; the magazine was followed by a companion website, a book publishing division, a Japanese edition, a short-lived British edition. Wired UK was relaunched in April 2009. In 1994, John Battelle, cofounding editor, commissioned Jules Marshall to write a piece on the Zippies; the cover story broke records for being one of the most publicized stories of the year and was used to promote Wired's HotWired news service. HotWired spawned websites Webmonkey, the search engine HotBot, a weblog, Suck.com. In June 1998, the magazine launched a stock index, the Wired Index, called the Wired 40 since July 2003.
The fortune of the magazine and allied enterprises corresponded to that of the dot-com bubble. In 1996, Rossetto and the other participants in Wired Ventures attempted to take the company public with an IPO; the initial attempt had to be withdraw
Mycoplasma laboratorium
Mycoplasma laboratorium is a designed synthetic species of bacterium derived from the genome of Mycoplasma genitalium. This effort in synthetic biology is being undertaken at the J. Craig Venter Institute by a team of 20 scientists headed by Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith and including DNA researcher Craig Venter and microbiologist Clyde A. Hutchison III. Mycoplasma genitalium was chosen as it was the species with the smallest number of genes known at that time. On May 21, 2010, Science reported that the Venter group had synthesized the genome of the bacterium Mycoplasma mycoides from a computer record and transplanted it into an existing cell of Mycoplasma capricolum that had its DNA removed; the team used M. mycoides instead of M. genitalium. The new bacterium was viable—that is, capable of replicating billions of times—but not speaking, a synthetic life form, it is estimated that the synthetic genome cost US$40 200 man-years to produce. Despite the controversy, Venter's company Synthetic Genomics has secured over $110 million in investment capital and inked a $300 million deal with Exxon Mobil to design algae for diesel fuel.
Mycoplasma genitalium was chosen as it was the species with the smallest number of genes known at that time. Mycoplasma is a genus of bacteria of the class Mollicutes in the division Tenericutes, characterised by the lack of a cell wall due to its parasitic or commensal lifestyle. In molecular biology, the genus has received much attention, both for being a notoriously difficult-to-eradicate contaminant in mammalian cell cultures, for its potential uses as a model organism: the second published complete bacterial genome sequence was that of Mycoplasma genitalium, which has one of the smallest genomes of any free-living organism; the M. pneumoniae genome sequence was published soon afterward and was the first genome sequence determined by primer walking of a cosmid library instead of the whole-genome shotgun method. This species was chosen as a model for the minimal cell project, catalog the entire protein content of a cell. Pelagibacter ubique has the smallest known genome of any free living organism and is one of the smallest self-replicating cells known.
It is the most numerous bacterium in the world and, along with other members of the SAR11 clade, are estimated to make up between a quarter and a half of all bacterial or archaeal cells in the ocean. However, this species was identified only in 2002 by rRNA sequences and was sequenced in 2005, being an hard to cultivate species which does not reach a high growth density, several newly discovered species have fewer genes than M. genitalium, but many essential genes that are missing in Hodgkinia cicadicola, Sulcia muelleri, Baumannia cicadellinicola and Carsonella ruddi may be encoded in the host nucleus as these endosymbionts are acquiring an organelle-like status in a similar way to mitochondria and chloroplasts. The team started with the bacterium M. genitalium, an obligate intracellular parasite whose genome consists of 482 genes comprising 582,970 base pairs, arranged on one circular chromosome. They systematically removed genes to find a minimal set of 382 genes that can sustain life.
This effort was known as the Minimal Genome Project. The team intends to synthesize chromosome DNA sequences consisting of these 382 genes. Once a version of the minimal 382-gene chromosome has been synthesized, it is intended to be transplanted into a M. genitalium cell to create Mycoplasma laboratorium. The resulting Mycoplasma laboratorium bacterium is expected to be able to replicate itself with its man-made DNA, making it the most synthetic organism to date, although the molecular machinery and chemical environment that would allow it to replicate would not be synthetic. In December 2003, the team had reported a fast method of synthesizing a genome from scratch, producing the 5386-base genome of the bacteriophage Phi X 174 in about two weeks. However, the genome of Mycoplasma laboratorium is about 50 times larger. In January 2008, the team reported to have synthesized the complete 582,970 base pair chromosome of M. genitalium, with small modifications so that it won't be infectious and can be distinguished from the wild type.
They named this genome Mycoplasma genitalium JCVI-1.0. The team had demonstrated the process of transplanting a genome from one Mycoplasma species to another in June 2007. In May 2010 they showed that they were able to synthesize the 1,078,809 base pair genome of Mycoplasma mycoides from scratch and transplant it into a Mycoplasma capricolum cell; the new genome took over the cell and the new organism multiplied. The new organism, Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0, was nicknamed Synthia. M. genitalium was not used. Quicker growth means quicker experiments. On Oct 6, 2007, Craig Venter announced in an interview with UK's The Guardian newspaper that the same team had synthesized a modified version of the single chromosome of Mycoplasma genitalium chemically; the chromosome was modified to eliminate all genes which tests in live bacteria had shown to be unnecessary. The next planned step in this minimal genome project is to transplant the synthesized minimal genome into a bacterial cell with its old DNA removed.
The next day the Canadian bioethics group, ETC Group issued a
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American newspaper based in New York City with worldwide influence and readership. Founded in 1851, the paper has won more than any other newspaper; the Times is ranked 17th in the world by circulation and 2nd in the U. S; the paper is owned by The New York Times Company, publicly traded and is controlled by the Sulzberger family through a dual-class share structure. It has been owned by the family since 1896. G. Sulzberger, the paper's publisher, his father, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. the company's chairman, are the fourth and fifth generation of the family to helm the paper. Nicknamed "The Gray Lady", the Times has long been regarded within the industry as a national "newspaper of record"; the paper's motto, "All the News That's Fit to Print", appears in the upper left-hand corner of the front page. Since the mid-1970s, The New York Times has expanded its layout and organization, adding special weekly sections on various topics supplementing the regular news, editorials and features.
Since 2008, the Times has been organized into the following sections: News, Editorials/Opinions-Columns/Op-Ed, New York, Sports of The Times, Science, Home and other features. On Sunday, the Times is supplemented by the Sunday Review, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Magazine and T: The New York Times Style Magazine; the Times stayed with the broadsheet full-page set-up and an eight-column format for several years after most papers switched to six, was one of the last newspapers to adopt color photography on the front page. The New York Times was founded as the New-York Daily Times on September 18, 1851. Founded by journalist and politician Henry Jarvis Raymond and former banker George Jones, the Times was published by Raymond, Jones & Company. Early investors in the company included Edwin B. Morgan, Christopher Morgan, Edward B. Wesley. Sold for a penny, the inaugural edition attempted to address various speculations on its purpose and positions that preceded its release: We shall be Conservative, in all cases where we think Conservatism essential to the public good.
We do not believe that everything in Society is either right or wrong. In 1852, the newspaper started a western division, The Times of California, which arrived whenever a mail boat from New York docked in California. However, the effort failed. On September 14, 1857, the newspaper shortened its name to The New-York Times. On April 21, 1861, The New York Times began publishing a Sunday edition to offer daily coverage of the Civil War. One of the earliest public controversies it was involved with was the Mortara Affair, the subject of twenty editorials in the Times alone; the main office of The New York Times was attacked during the New York City Draft Riots. The riots, sparked by the beginning of drafting for the Union Army, began on July 13, 1863. On "Newspaper Row", across from City Hall, Henry Raymond stopped the rioters with Gatling guns, early machine guns, one of which he manned himself; the mob diverted, instead attacking the headquarters of abolitionist publisher Horace Greeley's New York Tribune until being forced to flee by the Brooklyn City Police, who had crossed the East River to help the Manhattan authorities.
In 1869, Henry Raymond died, George Jones took over as publisher. The newspaper's influence grew in 1870 and 1871, when it published a series of exposés on William Tweed, leader of the city's Democratic Party—popularly known as "Tammany Hall" —that led to the end of the Tweed Ring's domination of New York's City Hall. Tweed had offered The New York Times five million dollars to not publish the story. In the 1880s, The New York Times transitioned from supporting Republican Party candidates in its editorials to becoming more politically independent and analytical. In 1884, the paper supported Democrat Grover Cleveland in his first presidential campaign. While this move cost The New York Times a portion of its readership among its more progressive and Republican readers, the paper regained most of its lost ground within a few years. After George Jones died in 1891, Charles Ransom Miller and other New York Times editors raised $1 million dollars to buy the Times, printing it under the New York Times Publishing Company.
However, the newspaper was financially crippled by the Panic of 1893, by 1896, the newspaper had a circulation of less than 9,000, was losing $1,000 a day. That year, Adolph Ochs, the publisher of the Chattanooga Times, gained a controlling interest in the company for $75,000. Shortly after assuming control of the paper, Ochs coined the paper's slogan, "All The News That's Fit To Print"; the slogan has appeared in the paper since September 1896, has been printed in a box in the upper left hand corner of the front page since early 1897. The slogan was a jab at competing papers, such as Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal, which were known for a lurid and inaccurate reporting of facts and opinions, described by the end of the century as "yellow journalism". Under Ochs' guidance, aided by Carr
