NASA: SURPRISE! LIFE CAN TAKE MANY UNEXPECTED FORMS

 NASA PRESS RELEASE: 10-32
NASA-FUNDED RESEARCH DISCOVERS LIFE BUILT WITH TOXIC CHEMICAL

WASHINGTON -- NASA-funded astrobiology research has changed the fundamental knowledge about what comprises all known life on Earth.

Researchers conducting tests in the harsh environment of Mono Lake in California have discovered the first known microorganism on Earth able to thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic. The
microorganism substitutes arsenic for phosphorus in its cell components.

"The definition of life has just expanded," said Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at the agency's Headquarters in Washington. "As we pursue our efforts to
seek signs of life in the solar system, we have to think more broadly, more diversely and consider life as we do not know it."

This finding of an alternative biochemistry makeup will alter biology textbooks and expand the scope of the search for life beyond Earth.

The research is published in this week's edition of Science Express.
Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur are the six basic building blocks of all known forms of life on Earth. Phosphorus is part of the chemical backbone of DNA and RNA, the structures that
carry genetic instructions for life, and is considered an essential element for all living cells.

Phosphorus is a central component of the energy-carrying molecule in all cells (adenosine triphosphate) and also the phospholipids that form all cell membranes. Arsenic, which is chemically similar to
phosphorus, is poisonous for most life on Earth. Arsenic disrupts metabolic pathways because chemically it behaves similarly to phosphate.

"We know that some microbes can breathe arsenic, but what we've found is a microbe doing something new -- building parts of itself out of arsenic," said Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a NASA astrobiology research
fellow in residence at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., and the research team's lead scientist. "If something here on Earth can do something so unexpected, what else can life do that we haven't seen yet?"

The newly discovered microbe, strain GFAJ-1, is a member of a common group of bacteria, the Gammaproteobacteria. In the laboratory, the researchers successfully grew microbes from the lake on a diet that was very lean on phosphorus, but included generous helpings of arsenic. When researchers removed the phosphorus and replaced it with arsenic the microbes continued to grow. Subsequent analyses indicated
that the arsenic was being used to produce the building blocks of new GFAJ-1 cells.

The key issue the researchers investigated was when the microbe was grown on arsenic did the arsenic actually became incorporated into the organisms' vital biochemical machinery, such as DNA, proteins and
the cell membranes. A variety of sophisticated laboratory techniques were used to determine where the arsenic was incorporated.
The team chose to explore Mono Lake because of its unusual chemistry, especially its high salinity, high alkalinity, and high levels of arsenic. This chemistry is in part a result of Mono Lake's isolation from its sources of fresh water for 50 years.
The results of this study will inform ongoing research in many areas, including the study of Earth's evolution, organic chemistry, biogeochemical cycles, disease mitigation and Earth system research.

These findings also will open up new frontiers in microbiology and other areas of research.

"The idea of alternative biochemistries for life is common in science fiction," said Carl Pilcher, director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the agency's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "Until now a life form using arsenic as a building block was only theoretical, but now we know such life exists in Mono Lake."

The research team included scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey, Arizona State University in Tempe, Ariz., Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource in Menlo Park.

NASA's Astrobiology Program in Washington contributed funding for the research through its Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology program and the NASA Astrobiology Institute. NASA's Astrobiology Program supports research into the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life on Earth.

For more information about the finding and a complete list of researchers, visit:

http://astrobiology.nasa.go/

-end-

CODA 1: "Aliens" from Right Here?

The time has finally come for NASA's heavily anticipated press conference, which has generated quite the Internet buzz since the space agency released an enticingly ambiguous press briefing previewing the announcement of an "astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life."


However, according to more sober minded, but still panting-with-anticipation, chomping at the bit web observers, the truth may be a bit closer to home:
According to Steven Hoffer at the AOL News Surge Desk:
"Rumors hold that NASA researchers have discovered an arsenic-based bacteria living in California's Lake Mono, a finding that radically expands the number of potential habitats for extraterrestrial life to places previously considered unsuitable..."

The NASA News Conference is scheduled for 2 PM here.

Space is the Place: NASA News Conference 2PM Today on Extraterrestrial Life Stirs Excitement

It might be an overhyped bit of scientific minutiae, but NASA's astrobiology team plans to have an important announcement for today, Thursday, December 2. All NASA will say about the press conference is that it will "discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life."



Brad Sylvester of "Space Matters" via Yahoo News offers his best guess: "My guess, and it is only a guess, is that a new chemical basis for life has been modeled resulting in the discovery of a unique chemical signature that, if found in an extraterrestrial rock (or a terrestrial rock, for that matter), would be a smoking gun for the past presence of this type of life. Perhaps, they have even actually found such evidence, either with a visual examination of martial soils by the rovers, or in meteorite fragments found in the arctic."

Brad Sylvester's article here

Megan Levy of New Zealand's Stuff online reviews and shares rebuttals of some of the rumors here including those stoked by Blogger Jason Kottke's website here

The NASA News Conference is scheduled for 2 PM, Eastern Standard Time. Official NASA site here

Brooklyn Knows: Free HIV Testing/Counseling and AIDS Memorial Quilt Display to Mark World AIDS Day at Brooklyn Borough Hall

On Wednesday, December 1, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and Deputy Borough President Yvonne Graham will host events at Brooklyn Borough Hall to mark World Aids Day 2010.


The New York City Health Department will conduct a lighting ceremony at the Brooklyn Borough Hall for the 23rd Annual World AIDS Day. The event is for today, Wednesday, December 1,  from 5-6:30pm at the Brooklyn Borough Hall Rotunda (209 Joralemon St near Court Street).

The lighting ceremony will be part of a celebration of the launch of Brooklyn Knows, which is a campaign encouraging folks in Brooklyn to get tested for HIV/AIDS and know their status. This ceremony is part of a full day of activities to raise awareness of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Brooklyn and sub-Saharan Africa. Joining BP Markowitz and Deputy BP Graham will be Malaak Compton-Rock, founder and director of Journey for Change: Empowering Youth Through Global Service; former supermodel, maternal health advocate and founder of Every Mother Counts, Christy Turlington Burns; actress and activist Gabrielle Union; Brooklyn-born Academy Award-nominated actress Gabourey Sidibe; teens from Journey for Change; a representative from (RED); and New York City officials.

The Brooklyn Borough Hall will also be one of the 80 landmarks around the world that will be turning (RED) to help spread the message that 2015 is the due date for an AIDS-free generation.

Throughout the day, from 11 AM - 7 PM, the AIDS Memorial Quilt will be on display in the Courtroom in partnership with EAC Brooklyn TASC, who will also offer free HIV testing, counseling, prevention measures and literature on the HIV/AIDS epidemic.


WORLD AIDS DAY established on December 1, 1988, brings messages of compassion, hope, solidarity and understanding about HIV/AIDS to the world, and gratitude and encouragement to those committed to the fight against HIV/AIDS.  According to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH), there are currently more than 107,177 people living with HIV/AIDS in NYC.  ODHMH is committed to preventing and controlling the spread of HIV and ensuring that people living with HIV/AIDS have the best possible treatment and care.  For more information, please visit www.nyc.gov/health or call 311.

NYC Public Schools: Now, A Chimera at the Helm

Andrew Wolf on the Mayor's latest education maneuver:

"So (Deputy Chancellor for Instruction) Mr. Polokow-Suransky hasn’t been working with curriculum or instructional techniques and strategies, the jobs of the educational professional. He has been spinning the stats, which remain the biggest question confronting the mayor’s claims on education. And now Mr. Steiner has caved in to the mayor. The brief euphoria in serious education circles, when on Tuesday evening it looked like the state education commissioner would deny Ms. Black her waiver, was just a mirage.


"If Ms. Black’s mandated deputy, Mr. Polokow-Suransky, is supposed to be the chief educator, shouldn’t he be the chancellor, and shouldn’t the technocrat, Ms. Black, get a title like chief operating officer? Mr. Steiner’s plan has this reversed. Certainly one doesn’t want the educational policy emanating from the administrative office. Are we deciding the way we are teaching children to read or do math to conform to some management imperative?" The post of chancellor should go to a person with top education credentials, a distinguished figure up to whom everyone in New York — and the rest of the country — can look as having substance. Instead we have a chancellor with no education credentials who will have by her side a person who has been facilitating the cooking of the books using bogus test scores."

Full article by Andrew Wolf, contributing editor to the NY Sun (online) here

The Annual YWCA Christmas Day Event Seeks Angels

The annual YWCA Christmas Dinner Event, formerly at the YWCA on Atlantic and Third Avenues in Brooklyn, and now relocated to the Park Slope Armory on Eighth Avenue in Park Slope, has always been a memorable institution for those in need as well as for those in the community -- whether they celebrate Christmas or not -- who are more fortunate and who join together with their neighbors to volunteer to make this special day happen.

In past years, our entire family has spent the day volunteering as part of this unique and good-spirited event. Mr. Lee Perlman, Event Producer, and Ms. Amy Kaufman, Event Administrator, have been long-time coordinators of this YWCA event, report that plans are well underway for Christmas Day 2010. 

However, Mr. Perlman reports that "Because we have had to relocate the event to the Park Slope Armory and due to the limited financial resources of the YMCA of Brooklyn, the out-of-pocket expenses for this year's event are extraordinary, in excess of $25,000. We have to purchase to toys, rent equipment, publicize the event, and pay certain staffing costs."  In the past, Mr. Perlman and his wife, Linda, have subsidized all the out-of-pocket costs with many volunteers providing donations of clothes and toys. "While we certainly need volunteers to continue to donate these gift items, we are asking anyone who can help defray some of these costs to please chip in toward the expenses of running this dinner. Whether it is $10 or 1000 dollars, all help is appreciated. Again, we do not want finances to be an impediment to anyone volunteering, but we wanted the volunteer team to understand the financial constraints and to consider whether they can help us to make this happen."


Whether you are a volunteer or not, if you are interested in making a tax-deductible donation to this important event for children, families and the elderly of our community who are in need, please make your check payable to the YWCA of Brooklyn. In the subject line on the check, please specify "Christmas Event." Please mail the check to:

Ms. Amy Kaufman
Event Administrator
GNYHA
555 West 57th Street, 15th Floor
New York, NY 10019

For further information on making contributions,  please email Ms. Kaufman at - KAUFMAN@GNYHA.ORG

Fred Tomaselli@ The Brooklyn Museum: From the inner mind to the outer limits..and back

Image: Fred Tomaselli, Super Plant, 1994. Psychoactive plant material, acrylic, and resin on wood panel, 74 x 54 inches. Hort family collection. Copyright the artist. Courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York

Made it to the Brooklyn Museum over the holiday. Saw the vibrant Fred Tomaselli show, an extensive collection of the California-born, Brooklyn-based artist's work. Psychedelic, collagist, utopian, graphically stunning, sometimes inspiring, occasionally abstruse, highly recommended. Through January 2, 2011.

Brooklyn Museum website with details here

Art Daily on the net here

The NY Times review here

The artist, with Night Music for Raptors

Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz: 30 Years Later

In the fall of 1980, Rainer Werner Fasbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz was first broadcast on West German television It was a 14-part television film adapted and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder from the Alfred Döblin novel of the same name, and stars Günter Lamprecht, Hanna Schygulla,Barbara Sukowa, Elisabeth Trissenaar and Gottfried John. The complete film is 15½ hours long.

Episode Guide
No.	Title	First aired	Runtime (mins.)
1	"The Punishment Begins"	3 October 1980	82
2	"How is One to Live if One Doesn’t Want to Die?"	12 October 1980	59
3	"A Hammer Blow to the Head Can Injure the Soul"	20 October 1980	59
4	"A Handful of People in the Depths of Silence"	27 October 1980	59
5	"A Reaper with the Power of Our Lord"	3 November 1980	59
6	"Love Has Its Price"	10 November 1980	58
7	"Remember — An Oath can be Amputated"	17 November 1980	58
8	"The Sun Warms the Skin, but Burns it Sometimes Too"	24 November 1980	58
9	"About the Eternities Between the Many and the Few"	1 December 1980	59
10	"Loneliness Tears Cracks of Madness Even in Walls"	8 December 1980	59
11	"Knowledge is Power and the Early Bird Catches the Worm"	15 December 1980	59
12	"The Serpent in the Soul of the Serpent"	22 December 1980	59
13	"The Outside and the Inside and the Secret of Fear of the Secret"	29 December 1980	58
14	"My Dream of the Dream of Franz Biberkopf by Alfred Döblin, An Epilogue"	29 December 1980	112

It was a co-production between the West German WDR, Bavaria Film Gmbh and the Italian network RAI. Production of the film at the Bavaria Film Studios took nearly a year. In 1983, it was released theatrically in the United States, where a theatre would show two or three parts per night. It garnered a cult following and subsequently, it was released on VHS and broadcast on PBS and then Bravo.

Director Fassbinder dreamed of making a 'parallel' film specifically for theatrical distribution after the completion of this series. The cast list he made for this fantasy included Gérard Depardieu as Franz Biberkopf and Isabelle Adjani as Mieze.

Fassbinder died on June 10, 1982.

Leave (Lots of) Room for Dessert: 11/28 Pie Social/Benefit at the Art Room in Bay Ridge

While, following the Thanksgiving Festivities, you may be totally stuffed and dreaming of nothing but fat-free yogurt and two hours of hard time on the treadmill, the Art Room on Third Avenue in Bay Ridge, which clearly believes that "nothing succeeds like excess" is ambitiously scheduling a Pie Social as a benefit for the Guild for Exceptional Children on Sunday, November 28.


The event, the brainchild of Justin Lee Brannan, Brooklyn native, social and creative entrepreneur, community activist, and musician, will be "an opportunity to bring people together to have fun and benefit a great cause,” said Brannan. The event is hosted by the Art Room, a neighborhood art space run by artist Leigh Jewell Holiday and Brannan.

For $20, you get samples of five different pies. In addition to the chance to socialize, and eat pie, the event also benefits the Guild for Exceptional Children, a non-profit in Bay Ridge that addresses the needs of children and adults with developmental disabilities. Says Brannan - "The Guild is a fanastic organization. As a relative of a family member with a developmental disability I care very much about the health, prosperity and progress of the Guild and the people in the community they serve.”

Everyone attending this Bay Ridge landmark event also gets a ribbon, marking their participation, their contribution to the Guild, and their stalwart fortitude in shoveling down five pieces of pie at the end of a long week of eating. "A few more post-Thanksgiving calories, yes," said Brannan, "but for a fantastic cause."

The Bay Ridge Pie Social at the Art Room, 8710 Third Ave. between 87th and 88th streets in Bay Ridge, (347) 560-6572, Sunday, November 28, at 1 pm. Admission: $20 for five tasting tickets.

There is a $5 entry fee for bakers, which includes five tickets. To sign up, e-mail bayridgepie@gmail.com

Ain't Talkin': Bob Dylan @ Terminal 5

Village Voice's Rob Harvilla on Bob Dylan and Band at Terminal 5 last night here

Set List:

Gonna Change My Way of Thinking
Shooting Star
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues
Tangled Up in Blue
Beyond Here Lies Nothin'
Spirit on the Water
Cold Irons Bound
Desolation Row
Summer Days
Forgetful Heart
Highway 61 Revisited
Ain't Talkin'
Thunder on the Mountain
Ballad of a Thin Man

(encore)
Jolene
Like a Rolling Stone

A Native (Brooklyn) Sensibility: Pete Hamill on Writing and NYC

Ross Kenneth Urken in The Huffington Post offers a "Guest of a Guest" interview with journalist and author, editor of the NY Daily News and the NY Post, Pete Hamill.  (Decades apart, I was a fellow parishioner at Holy Name in Windsor Terrace, which we, the jugend of the late 60s and early70s, dubbed "The Mission.")  Mr. Hamill, 75, is in "post production" of a new novel entitled "Tabloid City" as well as working on his next book.

A quote from Mr. Urken's interview:

GofG: What is the ultimate goal of your literary career--entertainment, edification, immortality...?



PH: The personal goal is to live a fully conscious life. At 75, I've already had a long run, but there are books I still want to write, to say something about humans, one at a time. The great abstractions (or ambitions), including immortality, are beyond me. If a writer sits down to a blank screen or page, and says: onward to immortality, he or she will never write a sentence. Or if they do manage a few pages, they will be rubbish.

Also - "I don't spend much time looking at blogs (I've only read Moby Dick once) , but too many of those that I've seen are actually just a form of therapy. Most of the sites are, to me, too specialized: all politics or all sports, or all gossip. There is very little serendipity. But in general, I'm optimistic about the future."

Full item here

Transmedia in Brooklyn: MakerBot Immanentizes the Future

Interesting article by Andrew Belonsky on "MakerBot Industries," a Brooklyn-based company that is a manufacturer of open-source 3-D printers. Three dimensional printers?  3-D printers are "machines that use hot plates and malleable materials, such as plastic, to manufacture three-dimensional representations of a design. This is done by layering materials atop one another, shaped by moving parts, such as robotic arms, to form a solid mold."

The Brooklyn-based first started as "a hobby for Bre Pettis and co-founders Adam Mayer and Zach Smith. The men wanted a 3-D printer of their own, and employed their respective engineering backgrounds — Pettis helped create the NYC-based hacker space NYC Resistor, Smith worked in robotics and Mayer in programming — to make their dream a reality. And with their machine’s completion, the men realized what they had to do: deliver MakerBot to the masses."


"MakerBot, a “rapid prototyping machine” whose “Cupcake” model starts at $750, remains one of the most affordable 3-D printers on the market. You simply need to buy the machine, upload your designs to their computer, and set it to print, a process MakerBot accomplishes by heating plasticine materials, like high-density polyethylene, and molding them into the desired shape."

Andrew Belonsky's full article on "Manufacturing the Future" from ScribeMedia here

MakerBot's website here . While, to DITHOB, MakerBot appears to be part of an emerging transmedia culture, a form of storytelling where content becomes invasive and fully permeates the audience's lifestyle, on any of a variety of media, and even emerging into the physical world, it also offers extremely functional, future-is-now manufacturing potential: One commenter noted that a visitor's car key was broken and the MakerBot was used to actually reproduce a replacement car key right on the spot.   A transmedia project develops storytelling across multiple forms of media in order to have different "entry points" in the story; entry-points with a unique and independent lifespan but with a definite role in the big narrative scheme (Bruno Giussani, TED), something that the 3-D printer can readily do by giving sculptural physicality to images, as opposed to our current digital society where much of a "new reality" exists as diaphonous electronic images on screens of various sizes .

To see a MakerBot 3-D printer in action; check out the video here

Jerry Brown: Zen Mind, Government Mind, and the Tao of Budget Deficits

From the Opinionator column in the N.Y. Times, Timothy Egan writes about Governor-elect Jerry Brown, who, after triumphing over a GOP candidate who spent a record amount of personal wealth only to lose, and the daunting challenge Brown faces to turnaround the huge budget deficits that threaten the Great State of California,  and how the "Zen Mind" and senior citizen status of this quintessential California politician may be just the ticket to accomplish that:

"During the greed-is-good era of the late 1980s, Brown found himself ministering to the sick and dying at Mother Teresa’s hospice in Calcutta."

"...Also, unlike Schwarzenegger, Brown is not dyeing what little hair he has left or pumping up his pecs to impress the babes. California needs someone to act his age, and Brown has settled into his senior years without illusions."


“We need someone with insider’s knowledge,” Brown said, with Zen clarity, “but an outsider’s mind.”




Full article by Timothy Egan here

Dreaming Large: Nostalgia for the Home Planet

Nostalgia for the Future: Tracy Caldwell Dyson peers down at her Home Planet from the International Space Station, about 217 miles below.

Full item from UK Daily Mail here

Monday Blues: Where Do We Go From Here?

NY TIMES: Is it time to awake from the American dream?

"Perhaps because they were making so much money out of it, Americans were slow to notice something peculiar about the American dream, and potentially divisive. The ideal of living “unhampered,” as Adams put it, by the barriers to social mobility erected in other countries is meaningful most of all to those familiar with other countries. The American dream is more evident to elites (including well-traveled historians like Adams) and to immigrants than it is to others. It is cosmopolitanism masquerading as American exceptionalism. When the billionaire Peter Peterson announced this year that he would join an initiative launched by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and use at least half his wealth for philanthropy, he referred to himself as “the son of poor Greek immigrants who has certainly lived the American dream.” Paradoxically, it is Peterson’s Greekness rather than his Americanness that gives him the bona fides to pronounce on the subject.

"Most of the time we do not realize that what we are dreaming is the American dream, any more than we realize that what we are speaking is prose. World travelers, politicians and self-made men are not wrong to see the promise of American life as a stirring and romantic tale. To the median, native-born American with no other frame of reference but his life’s span in this country, however, it is not a dream. It is simply the social contract. We are increasingly discovering that there are rational, nononeiric* ways to measure when that contract is being broken."

(*=non-dreamlike)
More here

NY POST: Why Middle Income Jobs Aren’t Coming Back (hint: the economy is working the way it is currently designed to work) here