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Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
That’s the title of a talk to be given by Paul Gepts in the “Dr. Guillermo Soberón” Auditorium of the Centro de Ciencias Genómicas on the UNAM campus in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico. It’s at 5pm on 15 February. If anyone out there is planning to go, and would like to blog it for [...]
Against Monopoly
Readers are asked to submit suggestions on this draft for submission to USTR next Tuesday:
I base my comments on copyright, by referring to Section 8 of Article 1 of the Constitution which states:
“To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right [...]
Against Monopoly
Auction rate securities are again in the news, and they are still garbage, but some smell worse than others link here. Some actually have modest value but new ones are not being sold. What went wrong?
The first problem was that no one bothered to look at the underlying securities. When prospectuses were sought [...]
Mystery Rays from Outer Space
Leprosy is a fascinating disease for many reasons. Historical, because, well, it’s leprosy. Genetic, because the bacterium is apparently derived from a single clone that infected humans some 4000 years ago,1 and that has undergone “massive gene decay” in the process of becoming an obligate pathogen:
Thus, since diverging from the last [...]
bjoern.brembs.net
Björn Brembs
Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login – http://www.readwriteweb.com/archive…
14 hours ago
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Endre Sebestyen …
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Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
The independent review of Kew Gardens commissioned by Defra is just out. It has some very nice things to say about the Millennium Seed Bank, and quite rightly so.
The work of the Millennium Seed Bank (MSB) is particularly impressive, and the MSB has forged partnerships with more than 120 institutions in 54 countries. [...]
Dr Shock MD PhD
Meditation is different from rest or sleep. It’s a wakeful hypometabolic state with lowered sympathetic activity as opposed to the fight and flight reactions which requires an active sympathetic system. Parasympathetic activity is increased which is important for relaxation and rest. This increase of parasympathetic state is characterized by reduced heart rate, [...]
Against Monopoly
As being reported:
Search and advertising giant Google plans to build and test super fast fiber-optic broadband networks in a few communities around the U.S., promising up to a one gigabit per second service a hundred-fold increase over what most Americans currently can subscribe to.
Most are currently thinking about how it might affect [...]
Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
FAO’s online Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum) has just concluded its discussion on “Strengthening Food Security by Empowering Farmers to Contribute to Seed Biodiversity.” A proceedings and summary are available. There were about a dozen contributions. All very well informed, but nothing that was said struck me as particularly [...]
Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Food-based strategies are essential to tackle malnutrition and help vulnerable populations cope with environmental change. Genetic modification, crop diversification and soil management can improve access to vital micronutrients.
More research is needed to identify nutritious crop varieties and analyse indigenous and wild species for their nutritional content. In particular, maintaining genetic diversity within home [...]
Daniel Lemire
Almost all software I write for my research is open sourced. Some fellow researcher argued today that I risk reducing the gap between and my pursuers. Similarly, I should keep my data to myself (and avoid listing good sources of research data).
Here is my take on this issue.
Sharing can’t hurt the small fish. Almost [...]
bjoern.brembs.net
Björn Brembs
Pharyngulated! http://scienceblogs.com/pharyng…
1 hour ago
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Scienceroll
Nature.com just released an iPhone application that lets you read the publications in e-book format.
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Against Monopoly
Slashdot informs up that USTR will receive comments from anyone link here.
The most important feature of this is that we are invited to comment about the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. That is the most important feature of this “opportunity” to comment–that we should comment on something whose content has been kept secret from [...]
Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
This looks interesting. A PhD thesis has demonstrated that “a peasant-friendly policy combined with opportunities to buy freeholds” are “the two key reasons for … major agricultural developments”. That sounds about right. Without title to their land, which allows them to seek credit and to benefit from investment, and without policies that support [...]