| Bloodhound budgets Are speed records indulgent or are there big benefits? bbc.co.uk |
Of men and chocolate biscuits It is a droll discovery that on a numerical basis, a human seems genetically less complex than a chocolate biscuitUS researchers have just completed the DNA sequence of Theobroma cacao, the fruit of which provides the world's chocolate and cocoa. The project – funded by Mars, the chocolate giant – is likely to benefit more than six million chocolate farmers in the tropics, by delivering disease-resistant trees, or tastier fruit, or higher yields per hectare, or all three. That the research was completed on a plant of interest to small farmers in the poorer nations is itself a measure of the progress of genomic science.Cacao joins more than 180 life forms for which scientists now have the complete genetic sequence. These include rice, wheat and poplar trees; yeast, grapes and the honeybee; chimpanzees, dogs, puffer fish and Norwegian rats; modern humans, the chicken and the laboratory mouse; and a host of microbes, including leprosy, bubonic plague and the malaria parasite. This is a gathering of knowledge that, even 20 years ago, could not have been imagined. Deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, was first isolated in a laboratory dish of pneumonia bacteria in 1944. Its story has been unfolded in one human lifetime, first by Francis Crick and James Watson, who described its structure in 1953; then by Frederick Sanger, who in 1975 first discovered a way to read the sequence of the genetic code; and lastly by Alec Jeffreys, who in 1985 identified a way of using repetitive patterns in inherited DNA to pinpoint a murder suspect. But even then, hardly anyone believed that it would be possible to "read" the entire sequence coiled up in the chromosomes of a living cell.The first living organism to be sequenced, in 1995, was a humble bacterium. The genetic recipes for yeast, a nematode worm and a fruit fly followed, and the human genome was completed in 2000. The heady mix of high-speed computing, sophisticated automation and research enthusiasm soon built up a momentum that proved unstoppable. Scientists are now matching genetic sequences to answer questions about plant and animal evolution, about the life cycles of disease, about human origins, about individual human responses to drug dosage, and about crop resistance to pests and mildews.The science has already delivered unexpected and humbling answers. Humans, who consider themselves the pinnacle of creation, have only about 30,000 genes. Cacao seems to have 35,000. Wheat DNA is believed to contain 40,000 genes. It is a droll discovery that on a numerical basis, a human seems genetically less complex than a chocolate biscuit. But it was the humans who sequenced wheat and cacao, and not the other way round. So clearly, size isn't everything.United StatesGeneticsPlantsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Morality beyond God | Mary Warnock Calls for a return to faith assume God is the only moral authority, but sympathy with human need is the bedrock of good behaviourWhat is faith without God?It is often assumed that religion is the only source of agreed, stable morality. We must therefore either return to literal faith in the existence of God, or we must accept moral "relativism", which is another word for moral anarchy.Such assumptions, surprisingly common even among those who practice no religion, are, in my view, mistaken; they rest on a false belief about the actual nature of the moral. But before I argue that case, I'd like to ask what recent calls for a return to faith entail. Suppose for a moment you understood Stephen Hawkings's argument that it can be shown mathematically that there is no need to suppose a God as creator of universes; and suppose you rejected it, arguing, like creationists now and in the 18th century, that the universe we live in is such that it constitutes proof of a designer, who is God, what else could you infer about this designer?The answer, surely, is: nothing. We cannot move from believing that God lit the blue touchpaper to assuming that he made man in his own image, or gave him dominion over other animals in the world. We cannot assume that just because a creator must exist, he must also be a loving father, interested in the wellbeing of his children, and aiming for the salvation of their immortal souls, or, on the other hand, a stern judge, condemning the sinful to eternal damnation.These beliefs, as David Hume pointed out more than 200 years ago, are quite extraneous to any belief that the world was created by a divine hand. From the need for a creator you can infer nothing but that a creator exists, or did once exist. About the creator's attributes or character you can know nothing. But those who call for a return to faith call for more than a return to the belief in a creator. They want a belief in God as the great and unchanging moral authority, by knowledge of whose commands we can know for certain what it is right and what it is wrong.However, the enthronement of God as the source not only of the laws of nature but of moral law has its origin not in the argument from design, but in the narrative of the scriptures. In the Jewish tradition, the laws that should regulate life in society, among them the Ten Commandments, were given to Moses by God in the mists of Mount Sinai. In the Christian tradition, the new covenant of love that replaced the old was preached by God himself through his incarnate son. To return to faith is to accept the authority of these narratives and treat them as the literal truth.But is it now possible for people simply to decide to believe the literal truth of the scriptures? We have become too scientifically and historically sophisticated to accept the story of the Garden of Eden as other than a myth, albeit a powerful and illuminating myth. How can we simply choose to see God's hand in the Ten Commandments? Our historical sense tells us the small, suffering society that was the Jews needed a cement to hold them together contra mundum and that this was provided by their great moral leader Moses and the story of his shortlived private encounter with God, giving supernatural authority to his teaching. Shared legends are cohesive.Similarly, the genuinely great moral reform that constituted Christianity's break from the rest of Judaism was imbued with the supernatural and acquired power over the imagination as the messianic story was repeated. Religious narrative is the imaginative clothing of morality. Religion is born from moral leaders who are believed either to have seen God or to be God incarnate. So their authority is confirmed.Has morality, then, in reality none but human authority? I do not believe that it has; but this does not entail it must be completely uncertain or that there is no real difference between how we must and how we must not behave. For human beings alone among animals can envisage a world that is better than their own. They can understand the faults, the hazards and the horrors of their own, even if it is others not themselves who suffer. They have much in common and can sympathise with each other. This is part of human nature, though it needs to be taught.Morality arises as the predicament of human beings in the world is recognised and their shared responsibility one for another is understood. No human being is exempt from the temptation to make things worse in his own interest, nor from the responsibility not to do so. One way of marking this human commonality is to talk of universal human rights. Another is to call attention to common human needs, and that sympathy with human need that is the foundation of good, rather than bad behaviour.ReligionEthicsStephen HawkingMary Warnockguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Researchers react to news of funding freeze Britain's scientists and engineers will hear today how they have fared in the comprehensive spending review. We ask them for their reaction to the likely freezing of the science budgetPlease post your own reactions belowThe day of reckoning has arrived. This afternoon, George Osborne will lay out where the axe will fall across government departments, and the picture is likely to be a grim one for many in the public sector. Sources in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills tell me that the £4.6bn spent each year on scientific research will be maintained and ringfenced for the next four years, a cut in real terms of around 10% in the science budget taking account of inflation. The capital expenditure budget - a further £1.4bn - is not protected, and could be halved. The full impact of this may not be clear for some time.In recent months and weeks, the science budget has been fiercely defended by researchers and supporters of science. Those in DBIS I spoke with said that science got its act together and put a strong case. I'm told that both the business secretary, Vince Cable, and the science minister, David Willetts, negotiated hard with the Treasury to limit the depth of cuts to science.The chancellor's speech is due to begin at 12.30pm, but my colleague Andrew Sparrow has already begun live blogging the spending review and will push on through until the end of the day. Evan Harris, a former MP and Liberal Democrat science spokesman, has written a blog on how to judge the spending review here. He advises we avoid jumping for joy until the fat lady has sung. I will be gathering reactions to the announcement from researchers and campaign groups and posting them in the comments below, but do please join in with your own thoughts on what the cuts mean. We can only expect an overall figure for the science budget today. It could take months for Cable's team to work out how the money is allocated between the research councils, the national academies, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (which funds university research) and other bodies. Adrian Smith, the Business, Innovation and Skills director general for research, will be advising Cable on this. This is a crucial process, as it will shed light on the fields of research that the government wants to prioritise. The bottom line is that it could be some time before researchers in a particular field know how well - or not - their area has fared.Science funding crisisScience policySpending review 2010Ian Sampleguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
World congress explores soil-borne disease More than 260 scientists and researchers from 16 countries are in Townsville in north Queensland this week as part of the sixth World Melioidosis Congress. abc.net.au |