The quake triggered a fire in an electrical transformer and also caused a leak of radioactive water at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant, the world's largest in terms of electricity output....

About 315 gallons of water apparently spilled from a tank at one of the plant's seven reactors and entered a pipe that flushed it into the sea, said Jun Oshima, an executive at Tokyo Electric Power Co.

Gojira!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It begins!

Japan Quake Causes Nuke Plant Leak, Fire - Forbes.com

Smoking may be bad for you, but researchers and biotech companies are quietly developing pharmaceuticals that are decidedly good for brains, bowels, blood vessels and even immune systems -- and they're inspired by tobacco's deadly active ingredient: nicotine.

Nicotine acts on the acetylcholine receptors in the brain, stimulating and regulating the release of a slew of brain chemicals, including seratonin, dopamine and norepinephrine. Not surprisingly, the first scientific work that identified these chemicals and how they affect the body came out of nicotine research -- much of it performed by tobacco companies.

Now drugs derived from nicotine and the research on nicotine receptors are in clinical trials for everything from helping to heal wounds, to depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, Tourette Syndrome, ADHD, anger management and anxiety.

"Nicotine is highly stigmatized -- and for good reason, because the delivery system is so deadly," says Don deBethizy, CEO of Targacept. "But the drug itself and the research generated by studying its effects on the brain both show great promise for helping us improve our physical and mental health."

Researchers Light Up for Nicotine, the Wonder Drug

It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.

They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

I don't find this shocking. There are a few things worth pointing out, as this relates to the bigger picture of the risks and gains posed by technological advance...

This could very well be for real, and if so is quite serious. All policy regulating technology is potentially dangers. Many things interrelate in the big picture.

If heavy usage of certain areas of the frequency spectrum is killing bees, the correct solutions may be to breed/engineer bees resistant to it. When we discover a type of sonar is killing all the wales, you have to stop until you find a work around that don't start killing things in large numbers. In this case, bees are easier to experiment with, and their breeding is already controlled to a certain degree, so it's highly likely a solution is just going to involve playing god a bit.

When regarding the places where public policy could collide with technology, research, and anything backed up with an argument that includes the phrase "playing god", one must remember that some problems can't be ignored, and some solutions like turning off all the cell phones are not reasonable approaches. If one technology is getting us unto a problem, another type of technology will most likely get us out. Unless we just drop the damn ball.

I firmly believe that at this point, for the long run of humanity, it might be a good idea to entertain the area of "playing god" for a few decades... We might need to get good at that, in order to solve future problems. Plus, it sounds like fun work.

I've found myself wondering before what we would have done if at some point we found out that the Eisenhower Highway System was screwing up migration patterns and killing all the birds.. And what the future equivalent of such a thing might be..

Furthermore, in a continuation of the William Gibson future meme. We already got ADD, now we have CCD.. I can't wait till we get to the point where we have NAS.

heh..

Birds, bees, mobile phones, and the apocalypse

"I'm a data guy. What I know about is how to analyze big, complicated data sets."

In 2000, he pondered who had the most interesting, most complex data sets and decided "it had to be the biology people."

Biologists are awash in DNA code. Last year alone, the Broad Institute sequenced nearly 70 billion bases of DNA, or 23 human genomes’ worth. Researchers are mining that trove to learn how humans evolved, which mutations cause cancer, and which genes respond to a given drug.

Since biology has become an information science, said Eric S. Lander, a mathematician-turned-geneticist who directs the Broad Institute, "the premium now is on being able to interpret the data." That is why quantitative-minded geeks from mathematics, physics and computer science have flocked to biology.

A Cold War Cryptologist Takes a Crack at Deciphering DNA’s Deep Secrets

Scientists find evidence of a perpetual evolutionary battle in the mind. The process, they suspect, is the key to individuality.

Brain's Darwin Machine - Los Angeles Times

] The World Health Organization urged laboratories Tuesday
] to destroy samples of a flu virus sent out for testing
] purposes after a Canadian lab identified the virus as a
] strain that triggered the 1957 Asian flu pandemic.

] That strain of the virus has not been included in flu
] vaccines since 1968, however, so the WHO warned
] laboratories in the United States, Canada and 16 other
] locations to destroy their samples immediately.

] The College of American Pathologists obtained the
] samples from Meridian Bioscience, a Cincinnati,
] Ohio-based vendor. The strain became known as the
] Asian flu after killing more than 1 million people,
] including about 70,000 in the United States, in a
] 1957 pandemic.

"Oops! Didn't mean to send out that one.. Um, be careful folks!"

CNN.com - Labs told to destroy killer flu virus - Apr 13, 2005

] Yale University researchers say their study that used
] lasers to create remote-controlled fruit flies could lead
] to a better understanding of overeating and violence in
] humans.
]
] Using the lasers to stimulate specific brain cells,
] researchers say they were able to make the flies jump,
] walk, flap their wings and fly.

Coming soon: Orbital Mind-Control Lasers

Scientists Create Remote-Controlled Flies

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Great company name!

Genetic Savings and Clone

] Leaders of a new movement are kicking
] off the first Synthetic Biology 1.0 conference at the
] Massachussets Institute of Technology this week.
] "Synthetic biology" is the blanket term for a
] multidisciplinary attempt to identify a class of standard
] operational components that can be assembled into
] functioning molecular machines.
]
] Central to that effort is the ability to isolate discrete
] biomolecular mechanisms and define standard interfaces
] for them so that they can be assembled in much the same
] way as electronic circuits. This confluence of computer
] science and biology is so remarkable that this new
] movement rises to the level of moon shot initiatives: to
] reverse-engineer life itself.

] "Biology is the nanotechnology that works."

EE Times -BioBricks to help reverse-engineer life

] Doctors claim to have uncovered new evidence that the
] tiny particles known as "nannobacteria" are indeed alive
] and may cause a range of human illnesses.
]
] The existence of nannobacteria is one of the most
] controversial of scientific questions - some experts
] claim they are simply too small to be life forms.

BBC | Claim made for new form of life