Human genome editing: why are we silent?

 

This is the link for WHO's page: human editing.

Here some concerns: The CRISPR-baby scandal: what’s next for human gene-editing

As concerns surge after a bombshell revelation, here are four questions about this fast-moving field.

David Cyranoski  26 February, 2019

"In the three months since He Jiankui announced the birth of twin girls with edited genomes, the questions facing the scientific community have grown knottier.

By engineering mutations into human embryos, which were then used to produce babies, He leapt capriciously into an era in which science could rewrite the gene pool of future generations by altering the human germ line. He also flouted established norms for safety and human protections along the way.

There is still no definitive evidence that the biophysicist actually succeeded in modifying the girls’ genes — or those of a third child expected to be born later this year. But the experiments have attracted so much attention that the incident could alter research for years to come.

Chinese authorities are still investigating He, and US universities are asking questions of some of the scientists he consulted. Meanwhile, calls for an international moratorium on related experiments, which could affect basic research, have motivated some scientists to bolster arguments in favour of genome editing.

Some are concerned about how the public scrutiny will affect the future of the field, whether or not researchers aim to alter the germ line. “The negative focus is, of course, not good,” says Fredrik Lanner, a stem-cell scientist at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, who has been editing genes in human embryos to study how cells regulate themselves.

But others predict that the He affair might propel human gene editing forwards. Jonathan Kimmelman, a bioethicist specializing in human trials of gene therapies at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, argues that definitive action in the wake of the scandal could expedite global cooperation on the science and its oversight. “That would stimulate, not hinder, meaningful advance in this area,” he says.

Here, Nature explores four questions still lingering around the births.

What will happen to He — and the children?

He has been criticized, but not just because he pursued germline editing. He also neglected to do adequate safety testing and failed to follow standard procedures in procuring participants. He was subsequently censured by the health ministry in Guangdong, where he worked, and fired from his university. He did not respond to Nature’s multiple attempts to contact him.

At this point, further penalties seem to be in the hands of the police. There are a range of criminal charges that He could face. While recruiting participants, He and his team agreed to cover the costs of fertility treatment and related expenses, up to 280,000 yuan (US$42,000). He also stipulated that participants would have to repay costs if they dropped out. Liu Ye, a lawyer at the Shanghai Haishang Law Firm, says that if such payments are found to count as coercive measures, they could constitute a crime. Guangdong province also found that He used forged ethics-review documents during recruitment of participants and swapped blood samples to skirt laws against allowing people with HIV to use assisted reproductive technologies. (keep reading)

We live in a period that...

Human robots: good or evil?

I still haven't reach a "verdict" about the human robots. I will wait to check more opinions, how
these creeters will interact with humans and gather more info.
But I have to confess I'm a little bit scared. These are not toys. I believe we are in desperate need of a new humanism.

Nobel Prize in Medicine Richard Roberts: Drugs to chronify and not heal

Nobel Prize Richard Roberts interview to Lluís Amiget.

"Because drug companies often are not as interested in healing you as in getting your money, so that investigation, suddenly, is diverted to the discovery of drugs that do not heal completely, but chronify the disease and make you experience an improvement that disappears when you stop taking the drug."


"I’m 63 years old: the worst about getting older is that you consider many “truths” as holy: that’s when you need new questions. I was born in Derby, my mechanic father gave me a chemistry set … and I still enjoy playing. Married, four children, one quadriplegic by an accident, which keep me encouraged to continue investigating. I participate in the Campus for Excellence.

- Can research be planned?

If I were Minister of Science, I would seek enthusiastic people with interesting projects, just give them money so they wouldn’t need to do anything else than investigate and let them work ten years to surprise us.

- It seems like a good policy.

It is generally believed that to go very far, you have to support basic research, but if you want more immediate and profitable results, you must bet on the applied research …

- And is it not like this?

Often the most profitable discoveries have been made ​​from very basic questions. So was created the giant U.S. biotech billion-dollar industry where I work.

- How was it created?

Biotechnology appeared when passionate people started to wonder if they could clone genes and began to study and try to purify them.

- An adventure by itself!

Yes, but nobody expected to get rich with these questions. It was difficult to get funding to research the answers until Nixon launched the war against cancer in 1971.

- Was it scientifically productive?

It allowed much research (like mine), with an enormous amount of public funds, that didn’t work directly against cancer, but was useful for understanding the mechanisms that allow life.

- What did you discover?

Phillip Allen Sharp and I were rewarded by the discovery of introns in eukaryotic DNA and gene splicing mechanism.

- For what was it useful?

That discovery led to understand how DNA works, however, has only an indirect link with cancer.

- Which model seems more effective research for you, the American or the European?

It’s obvious that the U.S., where private capital has an active role, is much more efficient. Take for example the spectacular progress of the computer industry, where private money financed basic and applied research, but for the health industry … I have my reservations.

- I see.

Research on human health cannot depend only on its profitability. What’s good for the corporate dividends is not always good for people.

- Could you explain?

Pharmaceutical industry wants to serve the capital markets …

- As any other industry

It’s just not any other industry, we are talking about our health and our lives and our children and millions of human beings.

- But if they are profitable, they will research better.

If you only think about benefits, you stop worrying about serving people.

- For instance?

I’ve seen that in some cases researchers dependent on private funds would have discovered a very effective medicine that would have completely eliminated a disease …

- And why do they stop investigating?

Because drug companies often are not as interested in healing you as in getting your money, so that investigation, suddenly, is diverted to the discovery of drugs that do not heal completely, but chronify the disease and make you experience an improvement that disappears when you stop taking the drug.

- It’s a serious accusation.

It is usual that pharmaceutical companies are interested in research that doesn’t cure but only make illnesses chronic with more profitable drugs that the ones that would completely cure once and forever. You just need to follow the financial analysis of the pharmaceutical industry and verify what I say.

- There are killing dividends.

That’s why we say that health cannot be a market and cannot be understood merely as a means of earning money. And I think that the European model of mixed private and public capital is less likely to encourage such abuses.

- An example of such abuse?

Investigations with antibiotics have been stopped because they were too effective and completely cured. As no new antibiotics have been developed, infectious organisms have become resistant and today tuberculosis, which in my childhood had been defeated, reappears and has killed this past year a million people.

- Are you talking about the Third World?

That is another sad chapter: Third World diseases are hardly investigated, because the drugs that would fight them are unprofitable. But I’m talking about our First World: the medicine that completely heals is not profitable and therefore is not researched.

- Don’t get politicians involved?

Don’t get too excited: in our system, politicians are mere employees of big companies, who invest what is necessary so that “their kids” get elected, and if they are not elected, they buy those who were elected.
Money and big companies are only interested in multiply. Almost all politicians – and I know what I mean, depend shamelessly on these multinational pharmaceutical companies that fund their campaigns. The rest are words …

Science teachers in the playground

Geniuses are not peer-reviewed

Do you know the feeling during a discussion when after explaining something that is not common sense someone asks:
"Is there any peer reviewed article about all these nonsense you're saying?"
I dedicate this post to them.
Geniuses and those who dare to dissent have no peers.

Is Peer-Review a Requirement of Good Science?
Idea
Excerpts

Good Science without Peer-Review
Some of the most important and groundbreaking work in the history of science first appeared in published form not in peer-reviewed scientific journal articles but in scientific books. That includes Copernicus' De Revolutionibus and Newton's Principia. Einstein's original paper on relativity was published in a scientific journal (Annalen der Physik), but did not undergo formal peer-review.¹ Indeed, Darwin's own theory of evolution was first published in a book for a general and scientific audience -- his Origin of Species -- not in a peer-reviewed paper. 

Moreover, important scientific work has not uncommonly been initially rejected by peer-reviewed journals. As a 2001 article in Science observed, "Mention 'peer review' and almost every scientist will regale you with stories about referees submitting nasty comments, sitting on a manuscript forever, or rejecting a paper only to repeat the study and steal the glory."² Indeed, an article in the journal Science Communication by Juan Miguel Campanario notes that top journals such as "Science and Nature have also sometimes rejected significant papers," and in fact "Nature has even rejected work that eventually earned the Nobel Prize."³ In an amusing letter titled "Not in our Nature," Campanario reminds the journal of four examples where it rejected significant papers:

(1) In 1981, Nature rejected a paper by the British biochemist Robert H. Michell on signalling reaction by hormones. This paper has since been cited more than 1,800 times.

(2) In June 1937, Nature rejected Hans Krebs's letter describing the citric acid cycle. Krebs won the 953 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for this discovery.

(3) Nature initially rejected a paper on work for which Harmut Michel won the 1988 Nobel prize for chemistry; it has been identified by the Institute of Scientific Information as a core document and widely cited.

(4) A paper by Michael J. Berridge, rejected in 1983 by Nature, ranks at number 275 in a list of the most-cited papers of all time. It has been cited more than 1,900 times.⁴

Elsewhere, Campanario lists "instances in which 36 future Nobel Laureates encountered resistance on the part of scientific journal editors or referees to manuscripts that dealt with discoveries that on later dates would assure them the Nobel Prize."⁵ Likewise, Tulane University physicist Frank Tipler offers the following anecdotes:

"Another example is Günter Blobel, who in a news conference given just after he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine, said that the main problem one encounters in one's research is 'when your grants and papers are rejected because some stupid reviewer rejected them for dogmatic adherence to old ideas.' According to the New York Times, these comments 'drew thunderous applause from the hundreds of sympathetic colleagues and younger scientists in the auditorium.'"

"[W]hen [Stephen] Hawking submitted to Nature what is generally regarded as his most important paper, the paper on black hole evaporation, the paper was initially rejected. I have heard from colleagues who must remain nameless that when Hawking submitted to Physical Review what I personally regard as his most important paper, his paper showing that a most fundamental law of physics called 'unitarity' would be violated in black hole evaporation, it, too, was initially rejected."

"Today it is known that the Hawaiian Islands were formed sequentially as the Pacific plate moved over a hot spot deep inside the Earth. The theory was first developed in the paper by an eminent Princeton geophysicist, Tuzo Wilson: 'I ... sent [my paper] to the Journal of Geophysical Research. They turned it down.... They said my paper had no mathematics in it, no new data, and that it didn't agree with the current views. Therefore, it must be no good.'"

"On the Nobel Prize web page one can read the autobiographies of recent laureates. Quite a few complain that they had great difficulty publishing the ideas that won them the Prize."⁶

In light of these kinds of examples, Campanario concludes:
Something is wrong with the peer review system when an expert considers that a manuscript is not of enough interest and it later becomes a classic in its discipline (or, even worse, when the work reported in a rejected paper earns the Nobel Prize). ... Contrary to reports by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Sciences, publication in a peer-reviewed journal is not necessarily the best means of identifying valid research.^{7 (read the article)}

Changing the number of safe limit hypocrisy

This is the way science fix some problems nowadays or create others in order to profit.

What is the safe cholesterol level? The level was lowered so that more statins could be prescribed and cause a lot of harm. The risks overweight the benefits. But they keep prescribing.

City or country?

I found it at Facebook: 136.173.000 shares and numerous comments.

It seems something went wrong with the Industrial Revolution. Some people want to grow their own food because of GMO and pesticides and others think that men are not meant to live in boxes. Medicines from plants and other sources other than pills are also a dream.

We would have to start things all over again.

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."

Albert Einstein

Einstein unpublished article found with: universe with no Big Bang

An unpublished manuscript by Albert Einstein recently discovered by two scientists from Waterford Institute of Technology shows that the Nobel Prize winner once considered a mathematical model of the universe very different to today’s Big Bang Theory.

The manuscript, which hadn’t been referred to by scientists for decades, appears to have been written in the 1930s.

The cosmic model it proposes is radically different to previously known Einsteinian models of the universe, but anticipates a controversial theory proposed by the Cambridge scientist Fred Hoyle in the 1950s, which argued that space could be expanding eternally.

The document had been stored in plain sight at the Albert Einstein Archives in Jerusalem. However, it had been mistakenly filed as a first draft of another paper by the theoretical physicist.
WIT physicist Cormac O’Raifeartaigh told Nature he ‘almost fell out his chair’ when he realised what the manuscript was about.

Together with collaborators at Cambridge University and the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies, the WIT duo have submitted a translation and analysis of Einstein’s manuscript to the European Physical Journal and have posted a preprint of their paper online (their English translation is available here)

According to the ‘abstract’:
We present a translation and analysis of an unpublished manuscript by Albert Einstein in which he proposed a ‘steady-state’ model of the universe.

"The manuscript appears to have been written in early 1931 and demonstrates that Einstein once considered a cosmic model in which the mean density of matter in an expanding universe remains constant due to a continuous creation of matter from empty space, a process he associated with the cosmological constant.
This model is in marked contrast to previously known Einsteinian models of the cosmos (both static and dynamic) but anticipates the well-known steady-state theories of Hoyle, Bondi and Gold.
We find that Einstein’s steady-state model contains a fundamental flaw and suggest it was discarded for this reason.
We also suggest that he declined to try again because he found more sophisticated versions rather contrived.
The manuscript is of historical significance because it reveals that Einstein debated between steady-state and evolving models of the cosmos decades before a similar debate took place in the cosmological community."

The Irish scientists’ discovery has been picked up by a raft of international publications — in addition to Nature, it’s also been featured in Forbes and Scientific American.
Check out Einstein Archives Online for the original German version.
Read the analysis "Einstein’s steady-state model of the universe".

Source:
Image by esracoon.

Identical Twins' Genes Are Not Identical

I'm always amazed by the complexity of human beings.

Identical Twins' Genes Are Not Identical
Twins may appear to be cut from the same cloth, but their genes reveal a different pattern

By Anne Casselman

Identical twins are identical, right? After all, they derive from just one fertilized egg, which contains one set of genetic instructions, or genome, formed from combining the chromosomes of mother and father.

But experience shows that identical twins are rarely completely the same. Until recently, any differences between twins had largely been attributed to environmental influences (otherwise known as "nurture"), but a recent study contradicts that belief.

Geneticist Carl Bruder of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and his colleagues closely compared the genomes of 19 sets of adult identical twins. In some cases, one twin's DNA differed from the other's at various points on their genomes. At these sites of genetic divergence, one bore a different number of copies of the same gene, a genetic state called copy number variants.

Normally people carry two copies of every gene, one inherited from each parent. "There are, however, regions in the genome that deviate from that two-copy rule, and that's where you have copy number variants," Bruder explains. These regions can carry anywhere from zero to over 14 copies of a gene.

Scientists have long used twins to study the roles of nature and nurture in human genetics and how each affects disease, behavior, and conditions, such as obesity. But Bruder's findings suggest a new way to study the genetic and environmental roots of disease.

For example, one twin in Bruder's study was missing some genes on particular chromosomes that indicated a risk of leukemia, which he indeed suffered. The other twin did not.

Bruder therefore believes that the differences in identical twins can be used to identify specific genetic regions that coincide with specific diseases. Next, he plans to examine blood samples from twin pairs in which only one suffers from asthma or psoriasis to see whether he can find gene copy number changes that relate to either of these illnesses.

The result might also call into question the many findings of previous twin studies that assumed identical twins were indeed identical, Bruder notes. "It's pretty unlikely they're going to significantly change any of the results found so far," counters Kerry Jang, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, who runs Canada's largest twin study. "We can adjust our models to take [genetic differences] into account in the same way we've adjusted for different environments."

The discovery of this genetic variation gives hope for an obscure but pressing issue in the case of a criminal suspect who is an identical twin. "If one twin is a suspect and the whereabouts of the other twin cannot be determined, then the jury is often left without the ability to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt" in cases that rely on DNA evidence, says Frederick Bieber, a pathologist at Harvard Medical School.

"If the twin issue comes up in a criminal investigation it's possible that if there are [copy number variants] that differ between the two twins that might help sort that out," Bieber says.

Given that there are 80 pairs of identical twins in Virginia's convicted offender database alone, this might not be as small an issue as it may sound. And such genetic variation also matters to the population at large.

Bruder speculates that such variation is a natural occurrence that accumulates with age in everyone. "I believe that the genome that you're born with is not the genome that you die with—at least not for all the cells in your body," he says.

Charles Lee, a geneticist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, agrees. Genetic variations can arise after a double strand of DNA breaks when exposed to ionizing radiation or carcinogens. "It reminds us to be careful about our environment because our environment can help to change our genome," he says.

Plus, these variations may predict age-related diseases. Lee adds: "As you age … your chances for having a genomic rearrangement that causes a certain disease increases all the time."

The differences between identical twins increase as they age, because environmentally triggered changes accumulate. But twins can also begin their lives with differences, according to Bruder's study, and that calls into question their very name.

"Maybe we shouldn't call them identical twins," Harvard's Bieber says. "We should call them 'one-egg twins.'"

From Scientific American.

Not only Monsanto's patented seeds: genetically modified shrimps and salmons are on our table

Genetically modified food became the paradigm and not the exception. I just did watch a video that claims that 70% of the food we have are GMOs.

Take a look at this list of GMO ingredients we are having. It's appalling!
What about the meat and seafood?

"...and that the consumers will not know since there is no requirement that GMO materials be labeled as such."

claims marine microbiologist Stephen Newman at his blog. He advocates that there is no danger whatsoever in genetically modifying seafood:

"As a scientist with  a strong applied research lean, I follow many issues that I believe may eventually prove to have some economic benefits.  As a graduate student working with a pathogen of salmon, the tools I had for genetic manipulation consisted of chemicals that were known to act on genetic material in a known manner and then the use of simple tools for finding the alterations in genetic material that I was looking for. Today this technology is archaic. We can introduce genes into animals where we want them to be and can control how they work, turning them on and off when we want to. Plants have been the target of much of this work in the last few years and genetically modified plants (GMO) are in widespread use and widely consumed by most Americans and have been for some time with no indications of harm (although admittedly this is a complex issue and assuming that there is no potential for problems is naïve.. we need to be vigilant).  

About 15 years ago, I was involved in a project where we were looking at the potential for adding a gene to cultured shrimp that would make the animal resistant to a virus that was decimating farmed shrimp globally. The end result of the project was the knowledge that genes could be stably transferred into shrimp. This important first step has led the way for others to genetically alter shrimp in any number of ways. The question I kept posing to my employer was who will buy these shrimp? His answer was that the need for farmers to have an animal resistant to a virus with the potential for a large economic impact will drive it and that the consumers will not know since there is no requirement that GMO materials be labeled as such. With fish, there have been many successful reports of genetic manipulation in a number of species including multiple species of carp, salmonids including rainbow trout, Tilapia and others and we are now appearing to be on the verge of the commercialization of a genetically engineered Atlantic salmon ." (emphasis added)

I find it very strange that Dr. Newman want to hide from consumers that these seafoods are GMO if he is so sure that it causes no harm. He should produces real good evidences proving the benefits of GMO seafood.

I don't eat salmon for I found it very strange that something that was so hard to find and highly expensive became omnipresent and cheap.
I did a search and there it was: GMOs.

No thank you. I only like fish and never been very fond of seafood.

The problem is huge and it requires a lot of work to have food that is not genetically modified.
There will be a march against Monsanto on May, 25th.
This is a good news but the fight is just beginning. For those who want to eat the good and old fashion way when food tasted good and were more connected to nature it will require a lot of marches.
I have already suffered a lot of alteration in my body due to GMO food and medicines.
We can't have back our "pure race" - equating the expression with human beings who would not have suffered any alteration due to GMO food and medicines plus environmental changes.

But it would be great to stop here.

There are scientists working to stop GMO food for thirty years. Dr. Phillip Bereano is one of them.
Dr. Philip Bereano is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington and an engaged activist concerning genetically modified (GM) foods. His academic work is within Technology and Public Policy, and over the past 30 year
Read one of his articles and watch the video.

The scientists who are working with genetic modification for companies has a very interesting attitude: they say those who are against it are crazy and are part of a conspiracy theory group.
It's part of their work behaving like this.
Integrity in science! Is it too much to ask?

Studies prove most medical research is false

This article is so important by Eric Zit I have to share it. Please read it if you praise your health.

Studies prove most medical research is false
Sunday, March 10, 2013 by: Eric L. Zielinski

NaturalNews) For several reasons, a stigma has been placed on scientific research which has caused many people to become quite skeptical and cynical of what is being produced and published. Much of the reluctance to embrace contemporary research findings has stemmed from Ioannidis' 2005 article, "Why Most Published Research Findings are False." This article has gone viral and has been quoted by numerous websites and right-winged critics in their attempt to discredit scientific research.

Since then, Marcia Ansell, Harvard Medical lecturer and previous editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, has cast wood on the fire. Several of her articles including "Industry-Sponsored Clinical Research: A Broken System," published in the Journal of American Medicine, and "Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption," published in The New York Review of Books, tell a story that sounds like a fiction thriller filled with conspiracy, lies, and evil. Ansell contends that because of the corruption, greed, and significant kickbacks to physicians with prescribing rights, "Children as young as two years old are being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated with a cocktail of powerful drugs, many of which were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration....No one knows the total amount provided by drug companies to physicians, but I estimate from the annual reports of the top nine U.S. drug companies that it comes to tens of billions of dollars a year. By such means, the pharmaceutical industry has gained enormous control over how doctors evaluate and use its own products. Its extensive ties to physicians, particularly senior faculty at prestigious medical schools, affect the results of research, the way medicine is practiced, and even the definition of what constitutes a disease."

Evidently, medical schools in the 70s and 80s did not have extensive financial dealings with the industry, and faculty investigators who carried out industry-sponsored research generally did not have other ties to their sponsors. Today, though, schools have significant ties with the industry. Bekelman et al. report that about two thirds of academic medical centers hold equity interest in companies that sponsor research within the same institution. Moreover, Campbell et al. report that two thirds of medical school department chairs receive departmental income from drug companies and three-fifths received personal income. It should be no wonder that several landmark cases continue to reach the judicial system as more and more "Big Pharma" suits cost pharmaceutical companies and executives billions in damages. The system has been proven to be false and corrupt.

Sources for this article include:

Ioannidis, JPA. Why most published research findings are false. PLoS 2005. Med 2(8): e124. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
Angell, M. Industry-sponsored clinical research: a broken system. : JAMA 2008; 300(9):1069-1071.
Angell, M. Drug companies & doctors: a story of corruption [online]. The New York Review of Books 2009; 56(1). [cited Sept 2012]. Available at: http://www.nybooks.com
Bekelman JE, et al. Scope and impact of financial conflicts of interest in biomedical research: a systematic review. JAM 2003; 289(4):454-65.
Campbell, E, et al. Institutional academic industry relationships. JAMA 2007; 298(15):1779-86.
Gever J. Research fraud probe leads to criminal charge [online]. c 2012 Medpage Today. [cited Sept 2012]. Available at: http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/Ethics/17985
Thomas K, Schmidt MS. Glaxo agrees to pay $3 billion in fraud settlement [online]. c 2012 New York Times. [cited Sept 2012]. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com
Szalavitz M. Top10 drug company settlements [online]. c 2012Time Healthland. [cited Sept 2012]. Available at: http://healthland.time.com
Harris PE, Cooper KL, Relton C, Thomas KJ. Prevalence of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use by the general population: a systematic review and update. Int J Clin Pract 2012; 66(10): 924-939.

About the author:
Eric is a peer-reviewed, published researcher. His work on heart disease and autism has been accepted internationally at various scientific conferences through organizations like the American Public Health Association and Australian-based Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute. Visit his blog. Track his work on facebook. Read Eric's other naturalnews.com articles.

Complementary colors: Color Dove Illusion by Yuval Barkan & Hedva Spitzer

Tel-Aviv University, Israel

© 2009 Yuval Barkan & Hedva Spitzer

1- Fix your gaze on the central black point on the bird, as well as while the sky flashes. When the bird starts to fly, follow it, and keep staring at the black fixation point.

2- You’ll start to notice, that the “empty bird” is filled-in with a color similar to the previous background’s color. The colored image produces illusory colors, an afterimage on “empty” shape, which induces an effect opposite to the well known “afterimage” effect.

3- The common “afterimage” effect yields perceived complementary color, whereas the current effect shows an appearance of a color similar to that of the background, where originally, no physical color was present in the empty shape.

I could not help sharing it. It was 2nd prize at 2009 Best Illusion of the Year Contest. Change the colors. It is really amazing!
There are many works based on the fact that when our eyes stares at a color with a white background we see the complementary colors.
At this site you can do an interesting experiment with your children.


© 2009 Yuval Barkan & Hedva Spitzer
Source: Illusion Contest.
It's copyrighted and I didn't ask permission to the authors because I didn't find their address. I hope they understand that I'm publishing it here instead of sharing the link to assure people watch it.
Few people click at links. I think I'm promoting this work and it has to do with science that must be known by everybody.

If the authors ask I can remove it. I hope they don't.

Eadweard Muybridge and the integrity in science

Today Google's doodle is about Eadweard Muybridge's 1892 experiment for the former governor of California Leland Stanford a businessman and race-horse owner.

Muybridge, an English photographer who lived in America, received $25,000 to perform an experiment to prove  that a horse has all his hoovers off the floor for a very brief moment when trotting.
It was a subject of controversy in horse-racing circles.

It was necessary to capture the images slowly because human eyes cannot see where the legs are.
Muybridge took  numerous pictures in the experiment called The Horse in Motion.

This experiment was used by some artists later like Marcel Duchamp.

I want to stress this aspect of the whole story: Wikipedia:

"Muybridge and Stanford had a major falling-out concerning his research on equine locomotion. Stanford asked his friend and horseman Dr. J. B. D. Stillman to write a book analyzing The Horse in Motion, which was published in 1882.[15] Stillman used Muybridge's photos as the basis for his 100 illustrations and the photographer's research for the analysis, but he gave Muybridge no prominent credit. The historian Phillip Prodger suggested that Stanford considered Muybridge as just one of his employees and not deserving of special credit.[16] As a result of Muybridge not being credited in the book, the Royal Society withdrew an offer to fund his stop-motion studies in photography. Muybridge filed a lawsuit against Stanford to gain credit, but it was dismissed out of court."

This is the way scientists have been working. They receive money from corporations and their work is driven according to the corporations needs.
Scientists research what the corporations tell them to research and the results of their work that is published defend what the corporations need usually with no consideration to those who will use the products. The aim is profit.

This is the way science is being done and this is why there are scientists fighting for integrity in science.
Leland Stanford was the founder of the Stanford University. He considered Muybridge as one of his employees.

The Big Bang Theory: Bazinga

The Big Bang Theory

Being broadcast in many countries this American sitcom is promoting science in a very good way. Sheldon is funny and so boring! I really like him and he is my favorite. I just came across with a physicist Warner Brothers calls in time of doubt David Saltzberg is at the blog The Big Blog Theory and describes at this post what he explained to the authors of the series, something I will never understand. But it doesn't prevent me from understanding Sheldon and the show. Bazinga!

Light dispersion - Newton's prims experiment

Light being dispersed into it's component was the other side of Newton's experiment. It is amazing to know that light cannot be white in itself.

A demonstration of Issac Newton's colour wheel - white made of colors

I found this demonstration of Newton's color wheel at Wolfram Demonstration project. Newton proved that light is a combination of a seven colors spectrum (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet).

I remember doing a color wheel in high school and it was a very interesting experience. The disc may have the right hues of the light, colours of the rainbow, and must be rotated quick enough to make our eyes not distinguish each one.

I cannot help to thing that white is a kind of illusion and if our eyes could see more quickly... well... I'm rambling.

Escher Moebius strip and Camus's myth of Sisyphus

Here is a variant of the Moebius Strip formed out of Escher's ants walking forever and covering both sides of the ring. Click on this small movie on the right to see the real large version.
At this site "Escher for Real" there are works of Escher that are not illusions and they did a great work showing the real side of Escher's work.
I only pity these ants that will walk forever without going anywhere but I did a post about Camus Myth of Sisyphus so "One must imagine the ants happy".