And man made life

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From this week’s Economist.

Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith, the two American biologists who unravelled the first DNA sequence of a living organism (a bacterium) in 1995, have made a bacterium that has an artificial genome—creating a living creature with no ancestor. Pedants may quibble that only the DNA of the new beast was actually manufactured in a laboratory; the researchers had to use the shell of an existing bug to get that DNA to do its stuff. Nevertheless, a Rubicon has been crossed. It is now possible to conceive of a world in which new bacteria (and eventually, new animals and plants) are designed on a computer and then grown to order.

That ability would prove mankind’s mastery over nature in a way more profound than even the detonation of the first atomic bomb. The bomb, however justified in the context of the second world war, was purely destructive. Biology is about nurturing and growth. Synthetic biology, as the technology that this and myriad less eye-catching advances are ushering in has been dubbed, promises much. In the short term it promises better drugs, less thirsty crops, greener fuels and even a rejuvenated chemical industry. In the longer term who knows what marvels could be designed and grown?

The abstract of the article in Science reads:

We report the design, synthesis, and assembly of the 1.08-Mbp Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0 genome starting from digitized genome sequence information and its transplantation into a Mycoplasma capricolum recipient cell to create new Mycoplasma mycoides cells that are controlled only by the synthetic chromosome. The only DNA in the cells is the designed synthetic DNA sequence, including “watermark” sequences and other designed gene deletions and polymorphisms, and mutations acquired during the building process. The new cells have expected phenotypic properties and are capable of continuous self-replication.

The Economist has a rather good article on it (which is probably behind a paywall). It includes this elegant paragraph:

If it is a stunt, it is a well conceived one. It demonstrates more forcefully than anything else to date that life’s essence is information. Heretofore that information has been passed from one living thing to another. Now it does not have to be. Non-living matter can be brought to life with no need for lightning, a vital essence or a god. And this new power will allow the large-scale manipulation of living organisms. Hitherto, genetic modification has been the work of apprentices and journeymen. This new step is, in the true and original sense of the word, a masterpiece. It is the demonstration that the practitioner has mastered his art.

Sigh. Just when I was hoping for a quiet life. Still, it’s better than cloning Jeffrey Archer.

Euphemism, NYT-style

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Why can’t the New York Times call a spade a spade? This is how it reports Connecticut Attorney-General Richard Blumenthal’s claim — in a speech to military veterans — that he had served in Vietnam:

“We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Mr. Blumenthal said to the group gathered in Norwalk in March 2008. “And you exemplify it. Whatever we think about the war, whatever we call it — Afghanistan or Iraq — we owe our military men and women unconditional support.”

There was one problem: Mr. Blumenthal, a Democrat now running for the United States Senate, never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records.

The deferments allowed Mr. Blumenthal to complete his studies at Harvard; pursue a graduate fellowship in England; serve as a special assistant to The Washington Post’s publisher, Katharine Graham; and ultimately take a job in the Nixon White House.

In 1970, with his last deferment in jeopardy, he landed a coveted spot in the Marine Reserve, which virtually guaranteed that he would not be sent to Vietnam. He joined a unit in Washington that conducted drills and other exercises and focused on local projects, like fixing a campground and organizing a Toys for Tots drive.

And the headline over this story?

This seems a bit of an understatement, to put it mildly. A British tabloid would doubtless scream “Attorney-General Lied About Serving in Vietnam”. The Guardian might have “Memory Loss Afflicts Top Lawyer”.

On balance, maybe I’ll take the bike

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Wow! Impressed by your vehicle’s sophisticated electronics? Well, have a look at this.

We conducted our computer security analyses on two modern cars. These cars were introduced into the U.S. market in 2009 and are of the same make and model. We determined that someone with access to the internal network in the car could use his or her own computer equipment to take over a broad array of safety-critical computer systems.

For example, in live road tests, were able to forcibly and completely disengage the brakes while driving, making it difficult for the driver to stop. Conversely, we were able to forcibly activate the brakes, lurching the driver forward and causing the car to stop suddenly. We were also able to control the lighting within the cabin, the external lighting, the vehicle’s dash, and so on. A full description of the road tests is described beginning on page 11 of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy paper (PDF).

We stress that all our experiments focused on what an unauthorized party could do if they had the ability to access the car’s internal network (e.g., via physical access to the car). For example, that unauthorized party might plug in a computer to the standard OBD-II diagnostic port under the dash. Clearly the risk in this scenario is low — it implies that someone already has physical access to the car — which is one reason we think consumers should not be alarmed by our results.

But our concern is that the increasing use of externally facing wireless interfaces may increase the risks for future vehicles and provide a way for someone to remotely access the car’s wired network. Hence, even though it may be challenging — and unlikely — for an unauthorized individual to perform the actions we describe in this paper, it is still important to understand them so that we can develop solutions that will continue to be robust even as our cars become increasingly connected.

Gravitational pull

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This morning’s Observer column.

So, here we were in this small room. On the table, lying open on a cushion, was Isaac Newton's copy of the first edition of his Principia Mathematica or, to give it its full title, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, the book in which he sets out his laws of motion (the basis of classical mechanics), as well as the law of universal gravitation, his derivation of Kepler's laws of planetary motion and much else besides. It was the keystone of the scientific revolution and was written at Trinity College, just down the road.

On closer inspection, it became clear that the book had been in the wars. It had at some stage, for example, been rescued from a fire. Some of the pages were singed round the edges, but the miracle of its survival paled into insignificance as one turned the pages, because Newton had clearly been dissatisfied with the first edition of his magnum opus. On page after page he had written corrections and added entire paragraphs in his immaculate, tiny handwriting.

What we were looking at was not the creation of this amazing work but, in a way, its recreation…

Hollywood Boobs

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The film critic of ye olde Financial Times is in Cannes, don’t you know, for the filmfest, and reports as follows:

A casting notice for Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean 4, shooting now, said actresses “must have real breasts. Do not submit if you have implants.” Auditionees will reportedly be subjected to a “jiggling test”, as brutally decisive, no doubt, as the ducking stool in witch-hunting days.

So now you know.

How different from the good ol’ days. One of my fondest memories of Cannes is a report by the incomparable Barry Norman in which he told of a publicity stunt involving two topless starlets playing ping-pong on the beach,”watched by 200 male journalists, none of whom could have said with any certainty where the ball was at any given moment”.