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mapkinase (958129)

mapkinase
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Journal of mapkinase (958129)

"Buddhists"

Saturday March 15, @06:48PM
User Journal
Here we go. Adherents of the favorite religion of westerners throw rocks at police in Manhattan.

"Stop the killing in Tibet!" several hundred protesters shouted after the clash with police, who had tried to contain the crowd after some picketers began throwing the rocks.
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Hopefully next time I will be unwillingly dragged into debates about _my_ religion, Islam, and when I will be inevitably shoved in my face Buddhism this and Buddhism that, I will remember that.

Please remind me when did resident Muslims of USA (residents, not foreigners) last time throw rocks in demonstrations... Did they ever do that?

Genome of a Yoruban male sequenced

Friday February 15, @08:00AM
User Journal
Nature tells us that (I am hesitant to copy/paste it because of copyright issues), a San Diego biotech Illumina sequences complete genome of a male member of Yoruban tribe (Nigeria). This is first African genome sequenced. Unfortunately, the data has not been released yet. More of it comes in the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology conference in Marco Island, Florida Alas, the abstracts are not online yet.

"lark" or a "night-owl" is largely determined by genes

Tuesday January 29, @09:44AM
User Journal
BBC reports:
Dr Simon Archer, University of Surrey:

It now appears that virtually all cells in the body have their own ticking circadian clock, including skin cells
Original article:

Research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that skin cells can be used to measure the speed of a person's body clock.
Abstract:

Human beings exhibit wide variation in their timing of daily behavior. We and others have suggested previously that such differences might arise because of alterations in the period length of the endogenous human circadian oscillator. Using dermal fibroblast cells from skin biopsies of 28 subjects of early and late chronotype (11 "larks" and 17 "owls"), we have studied the circadian period lengths of these two groups, as well as their ability to phase-shift and entrain to environmental and chemical signals. We find not only period length differences between the two classes, but also significant changes in the amplitude and phase-shifting properties of the circadian oscillator among individuals with identical "normal" period lengths. Mathematical modeling shows that these alterations could also account for the extreme behavioral phenotypes of these subjects. We conclude that human chronotype may be influenced not only by the period length of the circadian oscillator, but also by cellular components that affect its amplitude and phase. In many instances, these changes can be studied at the molecular level in primary dermal cells.
Some (easy to play with) circadian oscillator models(search for "CircClock") could be found in BioModels Database. There are couple of open source command line "model players" to do the simulation:
Some models I tried have beautiful 24 hour cycle in them, but you can change reaction coefficients and see how it affects the period of model oscillations. It is very interesting to see how random changes of parameters by order of magnitude quite often do not break the oscillating character of the model.

One or six giraffe species?

Sunday December 23, @02:01PM
Education
BBC reports that

a report in BMC Biology uses genetic evidence to show that there may be at least six species of giraffe in Africa." ...

"Using molecular techniques we found that giraffes can be classified into six groups that are reproductively isolated and not interbreeding," David Brown, the lead author of the study and a geneticist at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), told BBC News.
Yet:

"The results were a surprise because although the giraffes look different, if you put them in zoos, they breed freely."


"Coalition forces" won't touch nacrodealers heaven

Monday April 30 2007, @07:22AM
User Journal
CNN reports about operations of British troops against Taliban:

The operation will not touch Helmand's poppy fields, which supply much of the world's opium and its more potent derivative, heroin. That could antagonize the 2 million farmers whose livelihoods depend on growing poppy, something the alliance wishes to avoid.
'Cause you know, more people die from Taliban than from drugs.